Driving the bus off a cliff

There’s a problem with the bus we’re all on, which is that some of the people on it want to drive it over a cliff.

The old driver didn’t think this was a brilliant idea but he agreed to let the passengers have a vote on it because he didn’t think they’d actually vote to drive a bus off a cliff, and he wanted to shut the mouthier ones up for a bit so he could get on with selling off the best seats to the highest bidder, which was very much his favourite thing to do.

Unfortunately some of those people in the best seats didn’t see why they should pay their fares when fares are almost non-existent in Panama, so they all started moaning about dangerous experts at the steering wheel and how to get rid of them. They joined up with the people who thought driving the bus off a cliff was the best way of taking control of it, and between them they managed to persuade just over half the other passengers that if they let them drive the bus over the cliff they’d throw out the Polish couple at the back on the way down and do a nice controlled landing on Sovereignty Rock at the bottom, at which point life would suddenly be a beach all the time with ice creams and donkey rides just like the old days.

Actually winning the vote was just as much a surprise to them as it was to everyone else, because why the hell would anyone deliberately choose to drive a bus off a cliff? They realised they were in real trouble when the driver got off the bus and left them to it, and at that point they had a bit of a panic. In the end they decided all the people who'd wanted to drive the bus off a cliff were too silly to drive the bus precisely because they wanted to drive it over a cliff, so they picked a new driver who'd been quite happy on the road but now said OK, over a cliff means over a cliff and we're going to make a success of it.

And that’s where we’re at. Of course voting to drive off a cliff is one thing, but sitting behind a steering wheel and doing it is another thing entirely. This gives the driver a problem. If she doesn’t drive the bus off a cliff all the people who voted to drive the bus off a cliff will be cross, but on the other hand if she does then they’ll be even crosser because she’s driven the bus off a cliff and why would you do that?

If she could she’d probably just drive along the edge for a while until the fact that everyone had voted to drive the bus off a cliff started to fade from their memories, but unfortunately everyone is constantly talking about Cliffexit and completely failing to forget about it, plus the people that own the road have been hoping to get rid of the bus for years because it’s in the way all the time and keeps slowing everything down, so they’re hassling her to get on with it and saying why don’t you just give that steering wheel a good hard swing right now?

And me? I’m sat on the bus watching the driver wrestle with her dilemma, while the all the idiots on the bus shout at her to get on with driving off a cliff. I find the days fly by.