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.

Budget carnage

Did you enjoy your decade of gombeen government?

I hope you did, because the bill just arrived:

1% 'levy' on all earnings.
2% over 100K.
HSE middle management axed; review of public service to find more job cuts.
Decentralisation paused till 2011.
8c a litre on petrol, 50c on pack of fags, 50c on bottle of wine.
'Review' of pension reserve fund (he's going to raid it later.)
Dublin Metro on pause.
Over 70s med card axed for those who don't qualify - but they'll get a 400 euro donation towards med costs in its place.
Capital gains tax up.
10 euro tax on airport departures, 2 euro for 'shorter' journeys.
Tax on second homes and let homes, but not on homes for sale but not sold (got to look after those poor builders).
Child benefit halved for 18 year olds, and to be scrapped in a couple of years.

When your next pay cheque arrives, notably lighter than before, remember who to blame. You'll get a chance to have your say next year, when the local government elections come around.

(Pic shamelessly nicked from the geniuses at The Irish Sentinel)

The lies they tell: Part 5

Two weeks ago, Bertie Ahern said Enda Kenny told a 'bare-faced lie' after the Fine Gael leader had pointed out that the Taoiseach is not tax-compliant.

It turns out that the Taoiseach was telling a bare-faced lie. He is not tax compliant.

Ahern then went on to claim he was unable to become tax compliant until after his involvement with the Mahon tribunal ceases. He said the tax authorities told him that.

This also was a bare-faced lie.

Bertie then claimed he had meant to say 'authorities on tax' (ie his accountant), rather than tax authorities (ie the Revenue.) Yesterday in the Dail he finally admitted that the Revenue have made no mention of Mahon and are not intending to, or required to, wait until the end of the tribunal to deal with the Taoiseach's tax issues.

So, Enda Kenny told the truth. And the Taoiseach has repeatedly told lies about his tax status.

The only remaining question to my mind is why anybody in this country still believes a word this man says.

He's still laughing at us.

More on this from Slugger and Public Inquiry.

Man on the moon?

Everyone is entitled to believe one crazy conspiracy theory.

Human minds being what they are, discerning patterns among unrelated events is both the reason we rose above the other great apes to the level of civilisation and the reason paranoia is endemic.

Hence the popularity of clearly mental propositions, whether they be the Zionist one-world government, the secret bloodline of Jesus, the CIA took out the twin towers on 9/11, or my personal favourite, the faked moon landing.

Now, being by nature too lazy to research the facts about dubious issues, I am happy in my ignorance over whether man ever did make it to the nearest satellite or not. Suffice to say, that in my lifetime precious little advancement in space travel has occurred.

So either NASA hit a wall pretty quick in terms of what's technologically possible, or they faked their early successes in order to get one over on the Russkies. Since whatever factual records exist are edited, or classified, or possibly faked, it's hard to know for sure.

Certainly, the issues over lighting in the moon landing footage, and the inability of satellites to discover where the original landing site is today, do raise a few concerns. But let's face it, none of this particularly matters in (and on) a world suffering so many wars, famines, corruption and atrocities as the one we inhabit.

There are other things to get upset about, you know.

Like the Jews running the world with the shape-shifting lizards, who got the Vatican-controlled CIA to blow up New York and blame it on the ragheads because otherwise people would find out about Jesus's children, for example.

The moon landings, fiction or fact, don't rate highly in terms of contemporary relevance, I'd argue.

But you'd think that NASA, conscious that there are people out there who doubt everything they've ever claimed to have done, would be sensitive to anything that would imply it was all a big game.

Apparently not. The defunct Multideath Corporation, so defunct in fact that they never got to funk at all, has drawn my attention to NASA's latest project: they're looking to team up with a computer games firm and create an educational online game about space travel.

So NASA intend to go up against the World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings online and all those other outlets for net-enabled nerds with too much time and not enough social life.

Fair enough, one thinks. A little bit harsh on the games companies who will have to compete against the US government in their own market, but if this is where NASA are going, so be it.

But it does leave me wondering why they're ploughing US tax dollars into creating games software, designed to allow people to pretend they've visited the moon when they haven't left their unkempt bedrooms. Unless, of course, NASA have a special expertise in this area.

Is this a prelude to NASA admitting that they've been spunking tax dollars on fantasy space travel for the past fifty years?

Just a thought. A crazy, paranoid conspiracy theory thought. But we're all entitled to one.

P.S. Seems like Fred Reed agrees too. I'm becoming worried at how many opinions I find I'm sharing with a notoriously unhinged, former 'Soldier of Fortune' staffer.

Death and Taxes

They say the only two certainties in life are death and taxes. Well, that's probably correct in most cases. But then you think about Jesus Christ, or Charlie Haughey, and you remember that there's always someone bucking every system.

Anyhow, I had to go and file some returns at the O'Connell Street Revenue office yesterday. That was, of course, great fun. My mate Rusty the Taxman had warned me that the Revenue office had moved to temporary accommodation, and he wasn't lying.

The usual queues of non-nationals seeking PPS numbers to legitimise their stints working behind the counter of my local shops were still present, of course. But with the original building around the corner being refurnished, the current Revenue office is even less cosy and comfortable than the original.

Plonked in some rent-a-room palace next to a shop selling pictures of the Virgin Mary, there isn't even a seat anywhere. You have to queue, standing, for hours. Then you finally reach the revenue officers, who are sat at their desks, and you have to stand there too, like naughty schoolchildren brought before the principal, while they ruffle your papers and pretend to be busy.

Anyhow, I took my ticket from the machine, surveyed the mammoth queues of various Balts and Africans waiting to legitimise their work in the eyes of the Irish exchequer, and promptly fled to Burger King next door, where there are seats a-plenty.

I reckoned that I could peacefully relax and read my paper for a good half hour, then wander back into the Revenue's temporary home just in time to be called.

So I was quietly mulling over my crap coffee when I was approached by a gold-toothed, heavily bangled Roma gypsy (see image of similar above), a grubby hand thrust under my nose, seeking money.

I pointed out to her that begging is illegal in Ireland. She shrugged and went to the next table instead. Looking over her shoulder, I could see three others like her working the room.

I went to the poor lad whose job it is to clean the place and asked him to throw the beggars out. Let's call him Pablo. Pablo is from abroad, and he came to Ireland to work. He has possibly one of the worst jobs in Ireland, cleaning up the tables in O'Connell Street's Burger King.

Every twenty minutes, a load of Roma gypsy beggars come into his place of work and annoy everyone in it, begging for money. He used to tell them to stop. That's when they stopped him, on his way home after his shift, and threatened to kill him. He's seen them getting into Mercs at the top of O'Connell Street with Dunnes' Stores bags full, literally full, of cash.

So he sympathised with me, but explained that he wasn't going to risk his life or job trying to stop these gold-toothed scam artists from begging anymore.

Back in the tax office, waiting for my number to be called, I looked around at all the faces - the black faces, the white faces, the yellow faces - that surrounded me. I listened to the Russian language, Polish language, Spanish language and French language being spoken.

I thought about all the decent people from so many different places, like Pablo in the burger bar next door, who had come to Ireland simply to earn a living.

Then I thought about the Roma gypsies, their begging scams, their threats on the life of a poor man asking them to stop plaguing his workplace, their Mercedes lift home in the evening.

And I wondered when I'd ever see any of them in the tax office seeking a PPS number and filing a tax return. And I wondered when the Gardai on the most policed street in Ireland are ever going to give poor Pablo a hand and arrest and deport this criminal gang of scum gypsies.