Saturday, August 05, 2006

A sunny disposition to go along with Saturday's weather forecast

How could a blog entitled Alan in Belfast not pass comment on the National Lottery research that finds people living in Belfast are optimistic about their future than city-dwellers elsewhere in 30 other locations across the UK.

94% of people surveyed were hopeful about their future, and 79% were satisfied with their life at the present.

It makes me stop and wonder why.
  • Maybe with all that has happened in our past, the future has got to be better? From the bottom of the abyss, everyone looks up?
  • Maybe everyone interviewed had just poured off a cruise ship that had anchored in Belfast Port for a day's Shillelagh shopping? (I'm surprised to find there's no separate Wikipedia article for Shillelagh - yet!)
  • Maybe it's really bad everywhere else?
  • Maybe there really is a peace dividend, and the local economic condition has turned people's spirits up?
  • Maybe they caught us on a dry day!
(Via BBC News NI)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

what I saw in Belfast was history still molding itself, with everything happening right here, right now, which made it very attractive for tourists.
and what did help was that I visited during the warmest and sunniest weekend of the year ;), which was a pleasant deviation from the hot weather on the continent.

Anonymous said...

I make no apologies for injecting a note of reality here. It may not seem pleasant to air it but someone has to do it.

This article says that Belfast folk are of a sunny disposition about their future? What psychedelic drugs could they possibly be taking?

Does anyone remember the saying "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it"?

Some Belfast citizens may blithely try to wish away all the heinous acts of murderers and the vile chicanery they have seen coming from our useless, spineless Westminster government and may well buy into their distorted vision of a new Utopia.

Unfortunately for the rest of us that will simply ensure that we will be subjected to even more Goebbels-standard propaganda in an attempt to overwhelm us and our most cherished, civilised values.

We have shown and we will continue to show to the Nulabour tyrants that we will never succumb to their blandishments and subvert the most basic tenets of law and order for their perverted illusion of "peace in our time" - a peace bought through their craven surrender to some of the darkest forces of evil that civilised society has ever seen.

We (i.e. most of us) teach our children that bad acts bring bad consequences so why would we ever dream of handing the vilest mass murderers, serial bombers and their mouthpieces a say in our civic life?

It is fortunate that there are still enough of us with the backbone to ensure that such utter treachery shall not prevail in this part of the UK.

We will never, EVER surrender to such evil.

Get used to it.

Alan in Belfast (Alan Meban) said...

Yeah. It was a survey. They asked people silly questions, and they answered. I'm sure 6% of the people surveyed didn't feel hopeful about their future, and 21% weren't satisfied with their life at the present.

Sounds like anonymous would be amongst those people. But lots weren't.