WE live in grim times.
In more ways than one.  For a start, the weather in Wellington would drive anyone crackers.  I just can’t believe so much wind, cold, rain, sleet and narrow, hilly streets can be packed into such a small city.  And it must have an effect on our mental state.  The short, sunless days and unbearable cold are reflected in hard, flinty faces that only come to life at times of brutal conflict.  You notice it particularly when you’re standing in an exposed bus-shelter and a packed bus goes by without stopping.  A deep, pitiful groan, full of suffering and broken dreams, rises from the chests of many of the duffel-coated commuters standing beside you.  And this is just the response of the go-getters amongst them.  Others, emotionally numb and almost deprived of brain function, just stare coldly at the missed bus and all the single-occupant cars crawling by in their usual envirocidal cavalcade.  It’s absolutely killing.  Still, mustn’t grumble.
But we are not totally alone with having to survive horrible conditions.  Apparently, humanoids in the Northern Hemisphere have confronted winter for two million years.  Maybe we could learn from them.  Maybe we have learned from them.  Two thousand years ago, with no Facebook or iPods to help kill the time, it seems that community-minded event-managers came up with the idea of running gladiatorial contests.  You know the scene: dress up like Russell Crowe and arm yourself with a razor-sharp butcher’s tool and then perform as many amputations and tasteless executions as you can while the crowd cheers you on.  We know this because a graveyard of buried skeletons was recently unearthed on a building site in York, England. The bones belonged to Roman gladiators who met their bloody ends fighting both men and wild animals in the public arena. The spectacle would have been entrancing and no doubt took people’s minds off the cold weather.  But just from a ‘player’s well-being’ point of view, it’s a bit worrying to find that many of the skeletons show bite marks from lions, tigers and bears.  Ouch! And some skeletons have no heads. (In those days, losers didn’t talk to the media afterwards.)
In Wellington, local government was once the “Colosseum” of conflicting ideas and policies.  Nowadays, it’s as if the councillors are neutralised, headless, disarmed, held permanently in a cosy sleeper hold.  Wellingtonians just think: “They’re not hurting anyone, so let’s just leave them alone.”  Instead, I think Parliament has become Wellington’s surrogate Bear Pit, and in the cold winter months, we divert ourselves by watching parliamentary brutalities enacted before our eyes by our elected Sumo wrestler-like prima donnas clad in pinstriped suits.  But the wounds inflicted by “housing allowances” (paid back or not), bailouts for “legal fees”, “massage” sessions, private planes and gluttonous consumption of food and foreign wine, don’t sit with the image of brave warriors.  Not even once were warriors. 
Boos all round!  We want our money back!