Michael Lane Outwood, Surrey What chance that the rudderless parties, before electing leaders, sit down with the Greens and assorted Nats to discuss how many outfits we really need to represent the 63% of us that didn't vote Tory.
"The nats?" the other asked, raising an eyebrow.
It also recalls the nats' main argument ahead of the referendum no more Tory governments, ever which is the very thing Mr Murphy wants to leave behind.With more time, he might have found a way around these troubles.
The answer is that, for all the "nats" are little Scotlanders, the "Kippers" little Englanders and the Greens a little crackers, all have a clear and positive vision of a kind the mainstream parties struggle to offer.Disgruntled, but open to a good offerThis cannot be fixed by May; the post-financial-crash complexities, which are at the core of the problem, are imposing.
Nats are appeased by offerings of food or flowers, given on all important occasions.
The Tai seem to have professed an animist nature religion, resembling the early form of the Burmese cult of the nats (see above Burma).
The nats are a mixed collection of spirits that act supernaturally, each according to its character.
Even in the 21st century the nats exerted a powerful influence on the lives of the ordinary people; every village had its own nat house a fragile pavilion built into a tree, after the pattern of the tribal house, and adorned with shreds of coloured cloth, glass, and other offerings.
The nats were worshipped with orgiastic ceremonies and trance rites of spiritual possession.
Their animist religion, which has no canonical group resembling the Burmese nats, is still very much alive today.
They were converted to Buddhism by the Pyu and later by the western Mon; but they never completely abandoned their own original cult of nature spirits, known today as the nats.
