Do you want a downright ordinary chat about downright, everyday troubles? Something you won’t remember, because it’s part of the everyday meetings at cafes, at home while the TV is the background of the family atmosphere, at work during a break…Something totally unspectacular and unpretentious…Just ask yourselves, how many times a day you think of what you’re about to read from me today. Our lives passed with such questions and thoughts. We became bitter, but also completely made peace with the hard life, with the always “same situation” (a thing from the Fall of Byzantine).
Read, before the bosses start to overly-indulge in luxerious hotels…Send them to their inboxes. I find it hard to believe that a salmon bone will get stuck in their throat, because the expensive wines wash down everything into the big stomachs of the enjoyment of those in power. Do not stand still!
We remember Gruevski’s regime by the fines. And by many other things, but the fines were one of his main features. Indeed, the fines are now reduced, but the punishment is becoming ever more intense. Starting from the zealous parking controls, and ending with the strong pressure on companies to pay their dues, regardless of whether they have money or not. The famous compensation for holiday known as K-15 can be avoided by almost every company that is a bit bigger, thanks to the inconsistencies in the General Collective Agreement. That is why companies with only one employed (just the owner), get their accounts blocked if they are late with payment. “Don’t I want to pay myself salary, contributions and K15? How can I, when I can’t find the money?!” – complained to me an owner of a one-man company. The blocking of an account implies expenses for executors, unblocking of the bank account (which costs an indecent high price), interests and much more. Meaning, punishment. Punishment after punishment.
It’s nice to respect the law, but only if it applies to everyone. The biggest polluters receive state assistance, which means our money. The poorer and the smaller you are, the worse it is. Those who are barely making ends meet, need to “tolerate” bigger punishments. Superhik philosophy, “I steal from the poor, to give to the rich”.
(This is an illustration). It’s nice to have order at the parking lot and to charge for it. There’s nothing not normal about that. But to charge high fines for wrong parking, there should be at least nearly enough parking spaces. More important, to have well-organized public transportation that doesn’t pollute, that doesn’t cost much and is on time. Sounds like a fantasy story, yet is such a normal and everyday benefit for every person in Europe. But in order for us to experience something like that (so ordinary), the urban mafia in conjunction with the authorities, both local and central, needs to brought to a minimum. No, that has remained a dominant “activity” of the politicians, officials and of the administration.
In order to charge fines for unfulfilled obligations towards the state, the state has (an obligation!) to provide conditions, at least minimal, also for those obligations to be fulfilled. That endless negligence is annoying, that cynicism and arrogance about the common needs of the ordinary person that has not been touched by the “mercy of the state”.
The people have money, they will pay. There’s no money in the budget, strike with an increase in prices. The highways are full of holes, while the pay tolls remain the same or are increased. The streets are full of holes, without any signs, too small for the garbage bins on four wheels, and dark as if there was a bombing…We have an administration as if we were a nation of six-million people, but that’s why you wait in line as if you’re punished, and are addressed as if you’re a criminal. Well, it’s not surprising. There’s just too many of them, and they’re poorly paid. We can throw sticks and stones at the entire administration, with a right, but that’s why many of them, individually, have trouble making the month decently and in a dignified manner. Just like us, the ordinary mortals.
Everyone is stuck in debts, but that’s why the water company has no problem “digging out” an unpaid (if it actually is unpaid) bill old 12 years, or for the heating company BEG to charge a lump sum when a pipe from the heating company doesn’t go through an apartment…
There are solutions. They are known, clear and light as day. They are written, said, promised. They just need to be implemented. Even the seller of chestnuts on the street of Macedonia knows how to improve the lives of people, the school teacher in primary school and the nurse in the hospital. It’s not difficult. Not everything is in the tenders, someone has to pay them. Loans have to be returned, and that is not done with fines and raising prices. There cannot be just celebrations, drinking and eating without control, at the same places that the regime made for itself and in which it feasted as if it would last thousands of years… We agreed (or not?) completely different. That work would be done.
The Prime Minister cannot finish the whole job. Or can he?
