Profiting from our Misery

The first duty of a Government is to look after the citizens which it claims to protect under the Constitution of the country of Ireland. This is the mandate they were given when elected by those same people.
The world is in the grip of an economic crisis caused by many factors, one of the main ones being the price of oil. Oil is at the time of writing priced at $138 per barrel, 63% more than it was 12 months ago. Reflected at the pumps, this means a massive increase in costs for those who drive to work. Home heating oil has increased by the same ratio, agricultural diesel ‘ditto’. Manufacturing industry is being crippled under the weight of higher energy costs.
Everybody from the small homeowner to the large industrialist is suffering because of events outside their control. There are no winners in this situation. Right?
Wrong!
Every time the price of a barrel of oil goes up, the Government of this banana republic of ours wins. They win because of the high levels of excise duty and Vat on the price of oil. Every price rise at the pumps means more money is extracted from the unfortunate drivers of Ireland, who have no choice but to use their cars to get to work because the lack of alternative transport infrastructure.
Having blown away fifteen years of boom-time revenue, our Government doesn’t have a bean to see out the bad times that we are now facing. Therefore, despite numerous calls from various industry lobby groups for some sort of fuel rebate, the Government has refused to even consider the matter. They are making money on our misery.
One of those lobby groups is the Irish Road Haulage Association (IRHA). This body is so weak that the Government just swats away the feeble protests from it, not unlike you might do with an annoying fly. It might listen to the farmers (IFA) but the stuff the truckers.
The IRHA should consider using the ammunition it has in its arsenal.
If unity could prevail in this most notorious of fragmented sectors and a combined transport stoppage strategy was employed, the Government would soon wake up to the crisis facing all sectors because of their inherent greed.
If all trucks, buses, and smaller commercial vehicles stopped tomorrow, carnage would ensue.
In five working days there would be no food or general provisions left on the shelves of supermarkets.
In three working days there would be no fuel left in any of the filling stations.
In seven working days, stocks of critical medical supplies for hospitals would run out.
In five working days, pharmacies would have no medicines to dispense.
Pubs would close because deliveries of drink would stop. Restaurants would do the same.
Because most major factories use a JIT system (Just-In-Time) of ordering and receiving raw materials for production, factories would close within two working days, throwing tens of thousands out of work.
Schools would close immediately because there would be no buses to transport the pupils, and even if there were, there would be no heating in the classrooms.
Airlines would have to stop flying because fuel would not be delivered to their tank farms.
Within ten working days, the country would descend into anarchy. Riots and looting would be commonplace and a dysfunctional society would turn on itself. The Army would patrol the streets, but what services can hungry soldiers perform?
And, if you are waiting for the Government to implement the National Emergency Plan, you will wait.
We are an island nation that depends on transport to provide the links so that we can live. Without transport, any island is doomed.
Will the IRHA and other transport organizations please get together and tell the greedy mandarins in Government the consequences of ignoring the pleas of the transport sector.
For once in your life, show them the power that you have. They might just listen this time.

A BLOODY NOSE NEEDS A TISSUE

Well, look what we have done to poor old Europe! Left their Lisbon Treaty in shatters, it seems. Ireland is now the pariahs of the European Union. A little island in the North Atlantic, population 4 million, has wrecked the plans of the other 496 million people in the EU by voting No to the Lisbon Treaty.


One German MEP stated that we should “be thrown overboard from the EU boat without a lifeboat” for doing such a thing.


It is only when you hear such a statement you realize that we were so right to vote No in the first place. The bullies in the European schoolyard, having muttered veiled threats before we voted, now are very clear about their desire to kick the shit out of us for not doing what suited their agenda.


Ireland has a constitution, which demands that any changes to it are voted on by the people. This amendment required just such a vote. In this instance, that luxury was not afforded to the citizens of the other 26 countries that make up the EU. We wonder if it were, how many of the 500 million people would have voted against the Lisbon Treaty?


In 2005, the basis of what is now the Lisbon Treaty document, was put to the French people and roundly rejected by them. France took no chances this time and did not allow a free vote on the issue. They have some cheek is lecturing Ireland on the democratic decision reached by their people.


Already the blame game is underway in Ireland and in Europe as to who is responsible for this so-called `failure' to bend the knee to our masters. So what really happened to make Ireland reject the Treaty?


The answer is a combination of factors.


First, the intelligence of the Irish voter is of the finest calibre. In all our general and local elections, we have always the PR (proportional representation) system. Experience of this complex voting exercise has educated the Irish voter.


Secondly, the arrogance of all the mainstream parties in personalizing the canvass.


Images of your local TD or councillor, seeking your Yes vote insulted the electorate by asking them to vote along party lines without actually examining the contents and implications of the treaty.


Thirdly, the bullying tactics of Brian Cowen and his cohorts in Europe, who were wheeled out to the Irish public telling them to be grateful for 35 years of EU benefits and implying that Europe was owed a Yes result or there would be hell to play.


The fourth, and probably most pertinent reason, was the strength of the No campaign. Normally a plethora of loony left-wingers, Greens, Sinn Fein and various shadowy anti-establishment organisations would have comprised the No opposition. They would have been dismissed by the media and the politicians for what they were - a disaffected bunch of no-hopers with spurious agendas. They would have little or no credibility with the electorate.


However, this time the No campaign was painted with a veneer of respectability and


authority by the presence of the Libertas group, led by businessman, Declan Ganly, together with the campaign fronted by another well-known and successful business magnate, Ulick Mc Evaddy.


The articulate arguments of these men in relation to the tax issues, amongst others, made the floating vote suddenly sit up and as their own questions. These were no head bangers telling the nation to vote No because an endangered snail species in Kerry might become extinct if the Yes campaign got their way.


These guys had street credibility and a history of business achievement envied by many, including those in Government, who questioned their source of funding in a effort to blacken them.(just tell them you won it on the horses, lads!)


The high turnout was reckoned to favour the Yes campaign but the reverse occurred because those higher numbers were people who were informed of the alternative and arrived armed to vote No.


The schoolyard bully is always a coward. It is no different this time. Cowen and EU president, Barriso, have crawled back into the undergrowth threatening that when we are on our own they will get us.


And they probably will, you know. But for now at least, they are looking for some tissues to wipe the blood of their noses.

LISBON TREATY MY ARSE !

It is only when you see the flustering and blustering of Brian Cowen and assorted Government ministers in the last week as the polls showed that the No vote was equal to the Yes vote that you realize the Irish people are being sold a dummy by their own Government on the Lisbon Treaty.
Cowen and his fellow puppets in all the main parties are afraid of displeasing their masters in Brussels. What we are getting, in effect, if we vote Yes, is a Constitution of Europe, which will take precedent over our own. It is fair comment to say that our current Irish Constitution allows the people have a say in their destiny in Europe. Most other countries steam-rolled it through, with recourse to the opinion of the people who elected them to high office.
In Ireland, thanks to the foresight of our fore fathers, issues like these have to have the approval of the people. In this sense, we will be used as a barometer of opinion as to where the EU is headed. There is no doubt that a federal Europe on the lines of the United States is the ultimate aim of the bigger states like Germany and France. here. The Lisbon Treaty is of course partially the work of Bertie Ahern who got agreement on a great deal of what we are voting on when Ireland had the EU presidency for six months in 2006.
Of course, as we now know, Bertie had only his own interests at heart when he brokered that deal. Ireland came way down the list on Bertie’s agenda.
He had his own goals to pursue, which was a nice job in Europe in reward for being a good boy and leading little old Ireland into the starting stalls, to use a horseracing term. (Not that Bertie would know too much about horses. Oh! Wait a moment – he does! He made a fortune on the English racetracks in the nineties. Christ! I nearly forgot about that.)
Anyway, Bertie probably has the best of both worlds now that he is no longer leader of our country. Cowen will take all shit from Brussels if he fails to deliver and Bertie will claim all the glory if the Yes side wins by saying that he was the architect of the Treaty. Cue a plaintive cry from Drumcondra about that job he was promised.
The truth of the matter is that the powerful Eurocrats will swipe Bertie’s interest away as that of an annoying fly buzzing around their big room. And they will do the same to Ireland. Make no mistake about that.
The EU is a much more culturally and geographically spread entity now. It is not like the days when it was made of ten states and Ireland had one tenth of the power and a proper veto on items of national interest.
In those days, Albert Reynolds could win an election by boasting about the £8 billion punts he extracted from the EU coffers for Ireland. Those days are no more. The EU is a community of 300 million people of which we make up a little over 1%.
What clout do you think we are going to have in such a monolith? Very little, under the proposed Lisbon Treaty and no matter what way all the Government and opposition spin it you can be sure of one thing – we will be shafted.
Tax harmonization will enter through the back door, be very sure about that.
Take no heed of the so-called get out veto clause for Ireland. It is so vague and open to interpretation that we will not stand a chance of imposing our will upon the rest of Europe. They have looked on for the last 35 years as we rifled the coffers of Europe to make the country temporarily rich, only for Bertie and his cohorts to blow all the gains away on crazy projects and arse-licking the unions.
Vote No for a chance to make the many grey areas of this Treaty more black and white. Do not let the vested interests of Cowen, Kenny and Gilmore (not to mention Bertie) allow us to sleepwalk into a federal Europe without any protection.
Do not believe the false and alarming rhetoric that comes from them about us being the black sheep of Europe if we vote No.

Vote No!
And, if you get the chance, vote No a second time!

THE BANKS – DEVILS IN DISGUISE

I have never seen the devil in the flesh. For many years, I lived with the comfortable notion that the devil was an invention of my mothers in order to get me to bed early and generally behave myself. In the bright spring of youth, every pleasure was apparently a sin in the eyes of my parents and their peers.
Drink was the devil’s potion and Hell awaited you if you abused it. The pleasures of teenage fornication were denounced from the pulpit, and pronounced as a fast track route to meet Satan. Needless to say, all thoughts of the devil and Hell were quickly extinguished by the lust engendered by Susie next door. For her part, she didn’t seem too interested in the devil either! Neither of us had the good fortune to meet him and if we had we would have probably sought his approval and carried on with our shenanigans.

Decades later, I still have not encountered the devil in the flesh. However, I have met him, and he exists all right - in the shape of the bank manager.
Not any individual bank manager, let me say. The modern day bank manager dealing with clients at the coalface of business and living is mostly a decent sort.
He will do what he can for you but he is controlled from on high. He or she has no power.
In days of yore in Ireland, the local bank manager was a powerful figure. He was his own man and had the power to make or break you with his sole decisions. He had no need to refer to higher office for decisions made on a point-scoring chart. He looked in your eyes and made a character judgement that was seldom wrong. Nowadays, the bank manager in that sense no longer exists.
Instead, you deal with a faceless credit committee that lives somewhere in a shiny glass building in Dublin and never has eye contact with those they loosely term ‘customers’. Victims would be a more appropriate word.
Your account manager in your local branch doles out the good or bad news to you these days. If headquarters hasn’t approved your loan request, they will make suitable sympathetic clucking noises as to the grey suits taking the matter out of their hands. This of course is all an act, mastered by years of training by those same grey suits in the game known as ‘Pass the Buck and care not a Fuck’
The devil in Irish society is the Bank. Not just any bank, all banks. The Bank controls your life whether you are a small business, a regular worker, a home carer or a large business.
The Bank is the many faces of the Devil. Never was it more evident than today in post Celtic Tiger Ireland. For the last 15 years, the banks have thrown money at people who did not even necessarily want it. You were encouraged to borrow by all the banks. In fact, you were made to feel somewhat inadequate and lacking in entrepreneurial spirit if as a small business, or developer or whatever, you did not match the banks expectations that you were good for another million or so. It was very much akin to the scene that took place in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. The banks dangled the apple in front of you and seduced you with promises of great things in the future.
Now however, as the credit crunch bites the Devil reveals himself in glowing red.
He arrives in the shape of a dull grey-suited bank auditor who tells you that you were very foolish to take up that loan offered by his colleagues by some years back. They need to increase the security, they need a higher rate of interest, they need this, and they need that to cover their red asses from being burned by the Devils own fire.
Mark Twain was right when said that a banker is somebody who offers you an umbrella on a sunny day and takes it away on a rainy one.
Yes Mother, you were right all along. The Devil does exist!

FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS

In the week that was in it, a scan at the headlines in the newspapers says a lot for our priorities, or perhaps more pertinently, the impression that the sub-editors of our national dailies (and not just the red tops) have about our priorities.

Our new Taoiseach, Brian Cowen, was caught using what was termed unparlimentary language in our parliament. In some heated exchanges in the Dail on Tuesday last, he was heard to the term ‘fuckers’ after a discussion about the cost of living in this country of ours. This was a muttered aside to his Tainaste, Mary Coughlan, after the debate had finished and the microphone in front of him was still switched on.

The next day the headlines screamed as though the man had murdered some of his opponents in the Dail with his bare hands. Banner headlines and various conspiracy theories as to whom he was referring to dominated all the papers, the venerable Irish Times included.

Is it not enough to make you sick?

The country is going down the tubes at a speed that is as bewildering and scream inducing as going down a 200 metre slide with grease on your bare ass and all that concerns the masses is apparently the F-word was used in the Dail!

Is there any hope left for us at all?

We are giving Cowen a small honeymoon period to show his mettle. It has to be very short. Drastic action is needed to avoid the country having to be taken in charge by the IMF.

Bertie has gone to the backbenches with the daft notion firmly fixed in his head that he brought prosperity to Ireland by his cunning methods and grasp of economics (he once claimed to have a degree from the London School of Economics). This notion on one side of his brain refuses to be overcome by rational thought that he was lucky and the real test was how he would prepare the country for the inevitable downturn that would come.

We know now the answer to that question.

He blew 15 years of good times in a variety of pet projects, a vastly inflated public service and a total cave in to the main cause of our current perilous state, the trade unions. His legacy will be one of utter waste of everything that was accumulated over 15 years.

In one year alone, he presided over the evaporation of the gains of a decade and a half.

In Inchodowney, in a famous Fianna Fail think-in, he declared himself a socialist. That was in 2005. The truth is that Bertie was who you wanted him to be during his entire career. Like the chameleon, he could change his colours to suit all occasions.

He will find a nice job in Europe (there will be none left in Ireland) and he will go to his grave with the delusion that he made the people of Ireland rich.

Meanwhile, Cowen is left to deal with the war. Time will tell if his efforts and potential will work.

Sadly, in the meantime all we can do is fill acres of newsprint because he uttered a curse in the Dail. Truly, the country is fucked!

BERTIE THE BOLT

Taoiseach-elect, Brian Cowen, faces his first major crisis just days after being installed as the leader of Fianna Fail.

Ironically, the pressing issue involves none other than the man he is set to take the reins from as leader of the country on May 6th next, Bertie Ahern.

This time the problem has nothing to do with Bertie’s finances, houses, lovers and all the baggage that was unloaded at the Mahon Tribunal.

Bertie Ahern is the only man struck by lightening twice in the history of the planet, which goes back billions of years. Not alone that, but he survived both attempts!

On Thursday last, Bertie and his entourage were making their way to Belfast for the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. They flew from Dublin to Belfast by the Government jet and were beginning their descent into Belfast when the plane was struck by what Government aides later said was a bolt of lightening. The bolt singled out poor Bertie and the man went into contortions in the seat.

There were four pilots and various aides on board totaling in number fourteen. Nobody was harmed except Bertie, who later bravely shrugged off the incident in his typical understated manner. “Ah shure, these things happen. I got the same dart some years ago on the way to see Bill Clinton in the White House. You get used to it, I suppose”



Back in Dublin however, questions were being asked. The Special Branch was called in to investigate conspiracy theories that were circulating on the internet. Rumours were spreading to the effect that this was no accident at all. Nobody ever is hit by lightening twice. There was some mysterious aura to the whole incident.

Why did Bertie and party need to take the Gulfstream V Government jet with a range of 13,000 kilometres to travel 150 kilometres from Dublin to Belfast? Why did they not go by road up that brand new M1 motorway? Has the toll bridge at Drogheda got so expensive that it is cheaper to take the jet instead?

What about the carbon footprint left after such a method of travel? Was this Bertie’s way of giving the two fingers to the Green Party who were holding their annual conference in Dundalk?

There was much scratching of heads at Garda headquarters. The CIA was asked for assistance as the unanswered questions mounted. They immediately re-assigned a crack unit, based at Shannon Airport, from their normal duties of kicking the shit out of prisoners on their way to Guantanemo Bay, to add their extensive knowledge and forensic skills in the search for the truth.



The CIA blamed Bin Laden for praying loudly to Allah and convincing him to unleash a bolt of lightening targeted to hit Bertie. Brian Cowen rejected this crazy notion outright and offered the scenario that Celia Larkin released a surface-to air missile from Killaloe to extract revenge for Bertie not marrying her when she asked him.

The Special Branch, clearly annoyed at having the CIA operating on their patch, suggested that this was much ado about nothing. They opined that Bertie was always a sitting target to be struck by lightening twice – didn’t he lead a misfortunate life, as sort of a political Jonah dogged by ill-fated events all during his political career.

People giving him money when he did not need it. Other people giving him houses just for the fun of it. Bankers refusing to open accounts for him, even when he was Minister for Finance. Disaster followed him everywhere. His daughter even married a guy from Westlife – the shame of it all! Sure, he was a sitting duck for a bolt of lightening.

As we write, the crisis continues. Watch this space. Space? Who said space?

BERTIE BOWS OUT; WHY WE SHOULD BE GLAD

Bertie Ahern succumbed to the inevitable this week when he tendered his resignation to take effect from May 6. This timeframe allows him to address the joint US Congress and Senate and provide him with an opportunity to say farewell on the grandeur of a world stage and add an impressive last line to his CV.
It is all a long way from the petty nit-picking probing of the Mahon Tribunal into his financial affairs, (as he seen it) which led to his departure on a very low note this week.
These revelations, and his incredulous explanations of his dodgy dealings with cronies in the mid-nineties, probably reveal the true Bertie that he so cleverly camouflaged during his political career.
In the end, he lied like an intellectually challenged eight-year old altar boy caught red-handed drinking the altar wine. It was farcical to see him digging a hole so deep for himself and then insulting the intelligence of the Irish people by his pathetic stories in trying to get out of it.
Let us credit him first with his undoubted achievement.
The torturous negotiations in bringing order and peace in Northern Ireland leading to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 stands as his greatest contribution to the people of the 32 counties of Ireland. His skills at achieving consensus helped to bring a solution that eventually morphed into devolved Government in Northern Ireland. Bertie Ahern deserves credit for his involvement in that process – but only as part of a team. And, bear in mind that his predecessors, Albert Reynolds, along with John Hume, were the real architects of the peace that is now in place when they opened secret dialogue with Gerry Adams and Martin Mc Guinness in 1994. Ahern never gave credit to either man in all the backslapping that occurred when eventually the North started looking after its own affairs.
In fact, he shafted Reynolds in the most two-faced manner when Fianna Fail nominated Mary Mc Aleese as Presidential candidate to replace Mary Robinson, having promised Reynolds his vote, only to betray him at the last minute.
Bertie Ahern is a complex character. Being educated in politics by Charles Haughey and graduating with first class honours – “the most cunning of them all”- eliminates him from any tolerance of the notion that he was some political innocent abroad. He cultivated the image of the ordinary north-sider made good in politics by sheer hard work and a disciplined constituency organization. At the same time, he was possessed of Machevellian purpose and intent that only the ‘Master Haughey’ could have honed to supreme levels. Bertie was clever enough to build around him an army of cohorts to do the dirty work and retain his innocent “wouldn’t harm a soul” image in his power base of Drumcondra.
When the top job became his, he brought many of these comrades with him and placed them in positions of power that was not for the good of the country, but for the good of Bertie. Added to that, he appointed a huge raft of professional advisors to go along with the public servants already paid to advise him. In a country of less than four million people, Bertie had enough of staffers to run the United States.
Clever people surround themselves with cleverer people. It is doubtful if Bertie ever had an original thought in his political life such is the array of knowledge at his disposal. His inability to think for himself was cruelly exposed at the Mahon Tribunal when forensic question about his financial follies were met with the most ludicrous and incredulous answers. Once away from the strings of his political puppeteers, Bertie was a walking liability to Fianna Fail and there was no way the party was going to let him go before the tribunal again as Taoiseach and pile more agony on them.
Therefore, it is hard to make out the character of the real Bertie. Was he a buffoon who brought Fianna Fail back together with his conciliatory methods? Was he a brain who had a great vision of what he wanted to achieve, and the cunning to carry it out? Apart from his positive role in the North, what did Bertie achieve for the people who actually elected him to office?
In a nutshell, very little. He presided over unprecedented economic boom that was under way when he took office in 1997 and to which he made little contribution. His greatest act was to appoint Charlie McCreevey as Minister of Finance. McCreevey was a maverick that could bully Bertie and his ministers into his way of thinking. A range of measures introduced during his reign as Finance Minister, most notably the cutting of Capital Gains Tax from 40% to 20%, ensured that McCreevey contributed more to the Celtic Tiger than Bertie ever did, despite the former hiring more public servants than the state ever needed.
Ahern wasted the billions that reached the coffers of Government, mostly from the property boom. He must take sole responsibility for his own vanity projects and the failure of his ministers to control budgets on various projects.
It is frightening to consider what was lost on the likes of the Luas, Port Tunnel, electronic voting machines, the M50, the Ppars health IT exercise, Bertie Bowl, Aquatic Centre etc etc.
Worst of all though was the Benchmarking Commission that gave away over a billion euros to public servants that were already overpaid. This was solely Bertie’s baby.
The ability of Ahern to achieve consensus was not a skill at all. It was a weakness. He gave into the unions for the entire duration of his political life. The PR people would portray agreements a victory for common sense when, in fact, Bertie surrendered. The unions played their part in the charade and sniggered up their sleeves at the meekness of the man.
In summary, Bertie Ahern was a lucky politician who in time will be remembered not for what he done for the state, but what he didn’t do. He rode the wave of the good times he was fortunate to find himself in and then washed the proceeds down the toilet.
He departs his office, leaving the country in a mess.
He did the state no service at all.