Our lives in cycles - Politicians are failed by system too

ONE of the ways we cope with the bad days is to tell ourselves that everything is cyclical, that if this is a bad day then the good ones can’t be too far away.

It may or may not be true but it offers the comfort of the familiar; it’s security-blanket thinking when we may not have the resolve to do much more.

Putting aside the fatalism inherent in such sangfroid yesterday’s announcement by Prime Minister Gordon Brown that Britain will go to the polls on May 6 will probably start a new political cycle in Britain. Polls tell us to expect that Labour — and Fianna Fáil — will face a period in opposition. If the truth be told such a dismissal might bring considerable relief to senior figures in both careworn and exhausted parties.