With the advent of a new Parliament in the Duchy of Corktown, The One shares one's considerable experience as an armchair critic and practitioner to bring you a series of treatises on the wonders, rewards, and perils of awesome power.

Today, we focus on the ability to wend one's way through the hills and valleys and ebbs and flows of life in the Duchy whilst keeping one's destination in mind, for, as the Cheshire Cat once said to Alice:

"If you don't know where you're going, then any direction will do."

With this in mind, The One suggests that the new Parliament move quickly to set priorities for its term in office - including having a vision for the Duchy, because in our opinion, the previous Parliament would have benefitted from a trip to the optometrist - though not the one Peter Silverman has been waltzing with of late.

While we would like to see a vision like Free Beer for all Corktonians, we suspect this might not be popular with every subject. The one, therefore, suggests that:

• the Parliament use the March meeting to work with (or is it for?) its subjects to define what the vision for the Duchy is. And that it use its time between now and the next meeting to get word out to all its subjects about this, to hopefully increase meeting attendance above the usual 9 or so participants.
• that the Parliament also work with its subjects to decide on no more than three priorities to work on over the coming year, and that none of these should include the words needles, gunshots or McCord. Better words, in The One's opinion, might be member(ship) growth, community beautification, and communication. Not to mention repairing relationships with the myriad of organizations and groups who may be having trouble taking the Duchy seriously of late.
• that the ruling class and community work on the priorities they establish in consultation with the community over and above anything other than a crisis on the level of nuclear war. And that if some subjects have a problem with this, they be directed to resources that can help them resolve their concerns themselves.

The One believes this approach will help the Parliament of Corktown to a position of esteem within the Duchy.

What do you think?

Add your comments below!