An awareness of someone else’s upset, yesterday, distressed me and took away my resolve to write. It was nothing to do with me personally. It was another outrageous story of abuse via social media, that has become all too common. It seems there are a lot of vicious, unbalanced people out there.

Which brings me to what came to mind this morning:

It is no doubt inevitable, that I return to aviation when trying to draw parallels, since I spent so much time around aeroplanes.

My favourite task at work, since it did not involve dealing with the travelling public, was weight and balance.

An aircraft prepared for service, that is, in working condition and with everything loaded that is required for commercial flight, such as crew, catering, seats and so forth, has a basic Centre of Gravity.

The calculations we made were very basic. There is a whole set of guidelines calculated by aviation engineers, that dictate what is a safe range of that C of G.

As you load the aircraft with passengers, baggage and cargo, the centre of gravity moves around, and every aircraft has a “safe” range. As long as the aeroplane, fully loaded, ends up in the safe zone, it will be able to fly safely and efficiently.

It’s called being “in trim”.

I do not sail, but I imagine having your sails “in trim” amounts to much the same thing.

An aircraft that is “out-of-trim” cannot be legally cleared for flight, because it may, in fact, not fly. If it does, it will not be safe. You don’t want to have that happen. Obviously. If other, uncontrollable and unknowable factors come into play, the result will possibly be: CRASH.

So this is how I see our government, currently. Severely out-of-trim and at risk of crashing.

One could draw other parallels. Insufficient fuel. Lack of catering. Oversold.

Yes. I think that last one really applies. We are indeed, severely OVERSOLD.

Too many of us .

When dealing with over-sales, the airlines have an “order of offload”. In other words, who gets dumped first.

Of course, now, like in everything, money comes into play.

What is fair has nothing to do with anything.

It is no secret that the government considers the elderly, the frail and the incapacitated as first-line dumpees.

But I would love to see the rest of their list.

And make it public.

Government in the USA is like a seesaw. Oh, there are other parties, but they don’t count, unless you want to throw your vote away. At either end of the seesaw, Republicans and Democrats.

How do they hope to get the aeroplane of their government to fly efficiently?

For the longest time now, it seems to me, they don’t even try. All they do is stand at each end shouting at each other and when people shout, guess what. No-one hears.

I’ve been to meetings like that, and as I rarely shout, I became a spectator. The interesting thing was, that as such, I was able to observe that what one person was shouting was invariably, not what the receiving person was hearing. No wonder nothing ever got resolved.

The word no-one ever seems to consider nowadays is COMPROMISE.

In simplistic terms: If you load 100kgs on one side of the C of G, you may have to load 200kgs on the other, in order to maintain a “safe trim”. Depending on where you started out.

In other words, it isn’t always equal, not always what people yell and scream about: “FAIR”.

Well no-one ever told me that life would be fair. It isn’t. It can’t be. There are too many variables.

But negotiated compromise can be AGREEABLE.

“If you give me more this time, maybe I’ll give you more next time”. It should be so simple.


William Gladstone was a British statesman c 1868-94

As it happens he was a Liberal.

Apparently they once had power.

How would it be, if we had a third significant party in the USA? A party dedicated to all the people. A party that considered not the immediate changes an alteration of policy might create, but what the long-term results could be.

As opposed to:

” Let’s close down all our factories and get things made in China for 95% less. We keep the 95% and sell ‘at cost’. Everyone will be happy. Everyone except the now jobless factory workers.

Yes, I know it’s not as simple as that, but corporate greed is most certainly a large part of our problems. How much money can people possibly need?

There is no way I know of, to discover how many multi-millionaires have stepped up to help during this crisis, I know some have, but Carolyn the cynic thinks most of them have not.

Then there’s this.

OMG. Refusing to wear masks because it “infringes on their rights”. Won’t be told what to do.

For God’s sake, people. Get a grip on reality.

What harm can it do you? But if you don’t wear one, it could cause harm, sadly possibly not to you. Otherwise, well who would care if you croak?

The coming of Cov-19 was no surprise to me. I have expected it for many years and had hoped it might arrive after I had departed this mortal coil, but here it is.

It’s no secret how I feel about population control. Mankind seems incapable of achieving it, so Nature has stepped in, once again. Yes, I do, really believe it.

Reducing our numbers is the essential thing, but I would hope that giving us time to pause and think, maybe an equally good result. (And no, I am not saying I want people to die, after all I am one of the aforementioned “dumpees”.I am just trying to be realistic.)

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