Not my debt

The 35-40 billion euro quoted today as the (current) estimated cost of the Irish banking bailout is not my debt.

So I'm not going to pay it, and I urge everyone else who is not responsible for the debt to behave likewise.

Iceland has demonstrated that the idea that keeping bogey banks afloat is essential to the survival of a state is nonsense. Anglo and the other banks gambled and lost. They should have been let go to the wall, as capitalism suggests. They should still be let go to the wall even now.

This transfer of cash, from the taxpayer to the banksters, the banks and their bondholders is nothing more than corporate welfare. These scum speculated and lost. But when I lose a bet, neither Paddy Power nor the Government intervene to secure my money. So why do the hyperrich get their losses nationalised?

If you weren't in Fianna Fail's Galway tent, if you weren't on Seany Fitzpatrick's dinner party list, if you didn't help run up these spectacular losses, then it's neither morally nor legally your responsibility to pay them.

Brian Lenihan and the pondlife in Fianna Fail want you to pay these debts to bail out their pals. Don't do it. Only a policy of public disobedience in this matter will see this Government removed, the cancer of their corruption excised and the debts transferred to where they belong - to those who ran them up in the first place.

You can't stop them taxing you. But you can do everything possible to minimise your taxes. You can't bring down the banks, but you can hurt them by transferring your savings out of the state. You can't refuse to pay moneys due to the state, but you can delay paying them for as long as possible, and eke out those payments in instalments to create maximum difficulty for the state.

Or you could go further. I don't mean drive a cement truck into Leinster House. I mean get out on the streets and demand change.

There are only two ways to avoid being saddled with 40 billion euro of debt you never ran up - emigrate like hundreds of thousands of people are doing already, or protest. REALLY protest.

It's not my debt and I won't pay it.

Jail the bankers and their politician protectors NOW. Let THEM pay the debts THEY ran up. Or let them rot in prison.