HEART BEAT:Bertie and Charlie were no Laurel and Hardy – at least those guys were funny
WE’RE BEGINNING to wake up after a long period of blissful sleep in which we dreamed of inhabiting some Hy-Brasil type “and of the blest”.
Now it’s cold and chill and somebody has just removed the blankets and we have to get up and face the real world.
The first thing we note is that it’s dark outside, no sunlight breaking through the sombre skies. It can’t be that gloomy, we think. Oh, but it can; it is. TS Eliot wrote that “Human kind, cannot bear very much reality”, but the real world is now where we are and it doesn’t look very appealing.
It seems pointless to talk about the inadequacies of our health and education services and about shortfalls of funding, in these and other essential services. What we need to talk about right now is whether we can get out of this morass on our own before unsympathetic outsiders have to come and do it for us.
At least we did not further damage our frail barque by turning down Lisbon. That rocky shoreline has been navigated and the shoals of the unedifying debacle over the Ceann Comhairle have been hopefully left behind.
The awful problems and the lethargy, bordering on paralysis, in dealing with them remain to be confronted. Yet for some, the circus seems to remain in business. In their dreams.
There are few saving graces in deep recession and deprivation. For me, however, there was the realisation that I can’t afford Bertie Ahern’s book.
I cannot say I was surprised not to be asked to the launch and I suppose it is too much to expect that Bertie will send this old pensioner a signed free copy.
I would like to have heard Charlie McCreevy saying that “our double act was a winning formula”. I normally like double acts, Laurel and Hardy, the two Ronnies, Podge and Rodge spring to mind, but they were genuinely funny.
This twosome was not even remotely amusing, other than accidentally. We are now being left to sort out the detritus of their delusions.
The Green Party as I write is consulting its members as to whether they can continue in government. That will be their decision alone.
Personally I feel we need a General Election as soon as possible followed by the formation of a National Government in proportion to the electoral results.
I also believe that for its duration, party politics should be suspended. Parties contesting the election should be asked beforehand if they would participate in such an approach. The electorate can then decide.
I also feel that such a Government should be able to call on appropriate figures outside the political process to participate in planning national survival.
The affair of the Ceann Comhairle unfortunately showed how much the political establishment has become detached from reality. They really appear to think they own the country and can do as they like. They posture that their motives are the best and that they somehow have the answers to the problems that they themselves through omission or commission have created.
John Adams, former American president, wrote that “power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak”.
Well now the weak have views and want to express them. They’re not happy just to leave it with the present regime and would expect that all can pull together in a time of unprecedented crisis.
This State has been rendered almost ungovernable by the comedy duo referred to above, with their benchmarking and national agreements and the infamous “when I have it I spend it” philosophy.
There is no way out of this, without major retrenchment across all sectors. There are to be no pain-free zones and nobody can or should be exempted. It is time to put the country first.
The necessary and harsh correction cannot be achieved by any current combination of parties. We need and are entitled to the best of all.
In all my years I have never encountered such public anger. It is at dangerous levels. How can we tell these politicians that it cannot be business as before; that things must quickly change?
I would like Messr Cowen, Lenihan, Gormley et al to bear in mind Machiavelli’s words in The Prince: “Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their possessions.”
The citizens have lost their possessions; their children may lose their futures. It is time for you to go.
PS. It has been suggested that the Green Ministers might be safer in the boot of their State cars, rather than riding around on bicycles, where the public might be able to get at them. This would be basic health and safety.
- Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon