Clare Short is Tall

Well, there are times when one wants to bite ones own tongue for  uttering post-haste such things as one had already done. Even more heinous would be to remain deafeningly quiet when events have changed dramatically to the opposite. The past few days are  the days of reckoning with that tall grass I  once said it did not look tall enough to help fugitives camouflaged from predators. After all Clare is tall grass one could  fall in her wings for such a shelter.  I will not go in to details to defend the  things I once had said about Clare Short. I am sure I can. But that is not the point I wanted to dwell on. It would be coward on my part to hide behind my words of detraction.  Besides,  that would be tantamount to  taking away, through the back door, the quality I am now trying to  bestow on her for doing what she had done - resigned  from the her post in Prime Minster Tony Blair's Government  as a Cabinet Mister for Overseas Development.

We all make mistakes and Clare is no different than the rest. The question is how does one deal with a  mistake one had committed? Some would continue their ominous journey along that declivitous  lane.  Other would put a break and try to reverse direction. These are people full of courage for the journey they have decided to take is the unknown.

Reversing direction is more frightful than being carried away along the hapless declivitous journey  of deceit and deception; it provides temporary security one is desperately clinging on to.

Reversing direction would not earn one new friends. Nor would it  bring back quickly rapprochement with  old friends. It will on the other hand erode the support from the newly acquired seemingly  friends. In short one would feel  bewilderment and loss of support from old and new, from the right and left friends. But come what may, that is the right course of action to take and Clare Short must be admire for doing so despite her initial lapse of judgement . It is time for others to learn a lesson  or two from her and take similar course of actions than simply waiting to be told that they are no more wanted and would be  thrown out from the good old couch they love to sit on.

Haileselassie Germany

15/5/2003