Unlike 99.99% of politicians that I have heard in recent days, I will ADMIT that I don't understand this whole Anglo Irish Bank debacle. Problem here is that, while I'm admitting it, none (I'm convinced) of the other 99.99% understand anything about it either. But that doesn't stop them spouting off as if they had done their PhD's on the very subject.
They are merely parroting what they have been told - each given a few standard lines to throw out when they are asked about it. These include: "it would cost more to wind it down"; and "it's the lesser of two evils" and "it was the Lehmans collapse that caused all this not government policy".
They are the very worst of sheep, following dutifully into the Dail chamber and supporting the Government, as the voting fodder they are while ignorantly not knowing or caring about the well that they have thrown our economy down. Sure, it's the lesser of two evils they say confidently. Gobsh*tes! The whole damned lot of them.
Did the Government really guarantee all those debts in the midst of an emotional night of hand-wringing by the banks - with no more examination of the consequences for this country than that? Are they really that stupid? I don't know why I'm even asking that question: we know now that they did (according to Cowen) and we know that they are (stupid that is).
I want to know: what damage to Fianna Fail is contained in those Anglo Irish vaults? What skeletons lurk there that are so damaging to them that the whole country has been sacrificed to keep them secret or to keep those who know about them quiet? We're a mad little country all the same.
I don't understand it no. But I know a pup when I'm being sold one. And this is no pup. This is a foul, diseased beast that in my opinion is going to grow and grow with an insatiable appetite that is to be feeding from the trough of this tiny economy for decades to come. It will devour schools, hospitals, jobs, businesses... And the most worrying thing is that the people we elect to run this country haven't the damnedest clue how big it's going to grow, what it's going to cost or how to control it.
Gilmore was right. This is economic treason. This is self-harm on a national scale. Ho hum, and in the FFr's troop to do what they're told.
Remember now lads, all together: "it would cost more to wind it down; it's the lesser of two evils; it was Lehmans not us.....louder at the back!"
2 comments:
Yes, Mary, I agree it's difficult to know what to do about Anglo-Irish Bank. But we can say who is responsible for this mess.
Brian Cowen was Minister for Finance 2004-8. He was a solicitor before he went into the Dáil and ought to be able to read a balance sheet. Either he knew that Anglo Irish Bank was heading for trouble or he didn't.If he didn't know, he wasn't doing his job (their shares had fallen on the stock market months before the full-scale crisis). If he did know and didn't act, that's worse. A month before he became Taoiseach he had a "private" dinner with the Bank board. What did they talk about? Golf? He told the Dáil last week he had "contempt" for people who want to know what that dinner was about. None of our business, it seems. The same contempt that leaves 3 Dáil seats vacant because it doesn't suit his government to lose them at by-elections. Remember too that Brian Cowen recklessly increased expenditure in his 2007 and 2008 budgets despite signs that we were running into trouble. As aresult we have a State that can't balance its own books old by the man who wrecked our finances that we have to dig out a bank that was run like a casino, on a roller-coaster that he could have stopped. Paudie Coffey estimates that Waterford's share of just shoring up Anglo Irish Bank will be €540 million. It's mind blowing.
But can you explain, Mary, why one person in 4 still tells opinion polls that they will vote FF? Politics isn't like GAA, where you're born with a team and you stick with it. It isn't like religion, where you believe in a faith and stay loyal to your Church even when it falls down badly on its own standards. Yes, we've FF politicians who have worked hard for people, but all that knocking on doors and fixing up medical cards and attending funerals was designed to deliver votes to governments that have run this country into the ground. Any Fianna Fáil politician who has been around since the 1980s is one of Haughey's helpers and Bertie's buddies. People who say "I come from a Fianna Fáil family" should ask themselves: what would De Valera have made of this shower? If you're FF because your family have always been FF, then more than anybody else you should vote to chuck them out so the party can go back to basics and work out what (and who) it is for.
Very cogently and succinctly put. Couldn't agree more but if I knew the answeer to your question Hillside Man.....well, we can dream can't we?
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