20% swing in Lisbon vote

So now we have a figure on what proportion of the Irish electorate are easily scaremongered. I suppose the 17 million euro we spent on Lisbon II was worth it to at least find that out.

I hope everyone who made the mistake of voting 'yes to jobs' and 'yes to recovery' noted that not one of the grinning politicians mentioned jobs or recovery in their self-aggrandising speeches today.

That's because Lisbon won't be leading to any jobs or recovery, obviously. The Irish Times business section (about the only bit of the paper worth reading) published a very astute article recently detailing seven reasons why we'll still be bolloxed when the rest of the world is booming again.

The really scarey bit? They didn't even refer to the NAMA black hole that Fianna Fail are cooking up for you and your children to pay for.

Declan Ganley promised to return to the RDS next October with some 'Yes for Jobs' posters and see if the jobs had materialised. He may or may not turn up next October, but you can be sure the jobs definitely won't have.

Another potential plus of this referendum is the Donegal vote. That surely has to undermine Sweary Mary Coughlan. Biffo's government is already on life support, and will face a torrid two days explaining itself over Rody Molloy's golden handshake in the Dail next week.

And then on Saturday, the hobbits will gather to decide what magic beans they'd like to get from Fianna Fail in order to stay in government. And the NAMA banker bailout is yet to come.

So there are a number of potential banana skins there for Biffo. The last thing he needs right now is someone lobbing more of them onto the path in front of him.

He should heed the words of the 'most cunning, most devious of them all', Bertie Ahern, who pinpointed Sweary Mary as a wrong un in his autobiography. He made a mistake in appointing her as Tanaiste, but clearly couldn't resist the culchie coup.

Well, here's his chance to ditch some of the dead weight. Even the meeja think it's time she went. She failed to carry her own county in the referendum. That's a reason the grass roots gombeens will accept for dumping her. It diverts attention from the mistake he made in appointing her in the first place.

On a personal note, I'm inclined to agree with Pearse Doherty (probably a first) in paying tribute to the people of Donegal who were not bullied into doing what the Euro elite wanted.

The rest of the country may have voted to be serfs, but they did not. Fair play, Donegal. Stand tall tonight.

Bankrupt of ideas, bankrupt of money

Ireland is bankrupt financially and its government is bankrupt of ideas on how to solve the problem.

This is to be expected, disastrous though it may be. We are now reaping the property whirlwind that laughably went by the title of 'Celtic Tiger' for the past decade or so.

We were warned, repeatedly, but wouldn't listen. Specifically, we bought into the idea (metaphorically and literally) that there was a property 'ladder' we had to climb, even as prices went up indefinitely and spectacularly.

We bought into the idea that rent was dead money, and that we should all mortgage ourselves to the hilt in the hope of making ever greater returns as prices rose forever.

We know now that it was all a 'Ponzi scheme', a pyramid selling project designed to enrich the developers, who as we know from the tribunals, were backhanding a proportion of that cash to prominent members of Fianna Fail.

Now the credit crunch has happened, and there is a threat of the entire country going to the wall, as Iceland just did.

Our government's response? Raid the pension reserve fund to buy zombie banks that lent money to the developers. Plough hundreds of millions into 'affordable home' schemes, which would be better titled 'developer bailouts'. Then slash public services and public sector pensions (but not ministerial pensions or car entitlements, of course.)

So we're in a series of laughable positions after yesterday's mini-budget (the first of a series, I predict.)

We hand over nearly a billion euro in overseas development aid annually, even as we're expensively BORROWING the money that we then hand over to African despots for vanity projects that achieve little in sub-Saharan Africa.

And this on the same day that the latest exchequer figures came out indicating that we need to find 600 million euro MORE than we thought we needed back in October! (Which is why there will inevitably be more mini-budgets, since this government is incapable of working from up-to-date figures.)

We'd be better off sacking Irish Aid in its entirety and cutting a cheque to Oxfam or Goal, who are at least efficient and responsive to the needs of the communities they work in.

Or we could accept both the argument that we're skint and the argument that Africa does not benefit from the aid we send, and cut our borrowed losses.

But that's just one billion out of around 20 we have to find from somewhere. Sure, cuts are necessary, especially in the public sector. Actual staff cuts are needed, to weed out the Tetris-playing chaff. And pay cuts too, though that sort of happened yesterday.

What's most frightening about the position we find ourselves in is that clearly the government, such as it is - a village solicitor who inherited both his parliamentary seat and the Taoiseachship, a rural housewife as number two, a moustachioed gun-toting idiot in the jump seat and a collection of failures, ne'er-do-wells and shysters as supporting cast - haven't the foggiest notion what to do.

They should quit is what they should do. They should go to the country and seek a mandate to reverse the damage they have inflicted on this country over the past decade. They won't get that mandate, of course. Instead, they'll be slaughtered at the polls. But it would show good grace, respect for democracy and that rare thing in Irish politics, penitence for their mistakes.

But they won't quit. They won't even admit to doing wrong. Last night, Justice Minister Dermot Ahern told the nation that our current economic plight was no one's responsibility. Wrong, minister. It is YOUR responsibility, and that of your government.

Fianna Fail historically has always been a shallow organisation when it comes to principles, and they are beloved of playing government and opposition all at the same time. Instead of policies, they fly kites to guage public opinion, backing down if pensioners march on Leinster House, or pushing ahead if the public sigh heavily and accept another bitter pill.

But at this point in time not only are Fianna Fail bereft of ideas, they have also bankrupted the country quite spectacularly.

It's time for them to go. Those who created the problem cannot be trusted to resolve it. Especially since they are Fianna Fail, who can never be trusted with anything anyway.

Every day, every hour until they leave office is another day, another hour where the possibility of recovery is postponed or delayed further.

And while that continues, while they take 160K flights to America and swan about in 150K Mercs driven by Gardai on 70K euro a year, things will keep getting worse for us, up and until the point where the International Monetary Fund is called in.

We're really not too far from that vista right now, and if it comes about, the pain will be unimaginable - Russia in the late Yeltsin era, Argentina a few years back, that sort of national, hard to forget, deprivation.

We can't let it come to that. The bereft bunch of chancers on the government benches today looked guilty and sheepish and most of all tired. They should go, for their own dignity's sake, but primarily because every second they stay they hurt this country more.