Paul Malpas

My darling wife of almost 40 years and myself have been enjoying full time life in Ireland, this land we considered our spiritual home, for the last seven years and before that part time for yonks, going back into the 1960s.  In all that time nothing really has changed, some people got a little uppity when money was flowing like the Niagara Falls in full spate, during the era known as the Celtic Tiger years, but all in all those years of excess passed our little town of Boyle by.  A few profited and lost but most carried on struggling as they have always done.  There was a lot of losers, in the main young married couples who were forced to pay hyper-inflated house prices and are now in hyper-negative equity, to the tune of a couple of hundred thousand euro, which they will spend the rest of their lives recovering from, if indeed they ever do.  I said nothing has changed, but for a few greedy bastards in Dublin who forced the situation in the good days, although they have had some come-uppance, are still left with a nice little pile under the mattress.  This cabal of high ranking politicians, civil servants and bankers have been screwing this state since DeValera learnt to write his signature on Government documents and they are the only winners and always will be if we kowtow.

I have no real complaints, if we take the above mentioned filth out of the equation but I was also caught up in this octopus like struggle against ever diminishing financial returns and I know how soul destroying it can be.  However the people are lovely and the countryside is beautiful and I am glad we made the move.

Unfortunately there is one thing I have noticed and which I was not aware of when living in England and that might be because as we get older we have more need to contact government and public sector departments.  My wife certainly has because she decided, shortly after coming here, to devote her life to the needy in our little society and decided to use her talents, carefully honed on the cut and thrust of rearing a family in England.  She became a volunteer information provider at the Boyle branch of the Citizens Information Centre dispensing information and advice to the mass of disadvantaged people trying to work their way round the well wrought maze of social protection, health, taxation and employment legislation that had been succinctly brought together by successive governments to, at the very least, confuse the most able in our society.

All the departments in these government organizations had been filled over a number of years by a class of people who were more interested in collecting their hefty wage packet at the end of each pay period than in giving  sometimes vital help and service to the public.  When times became hard and although they had to take cuts in pay which were nowhere near as bad as those employed in the public sector, they , themselves, hardened their outlook on the deserving outside world.  Their philosophy was, “I’ve got a job, I’m not earning as much as I used to, so fuck everyone else.  Why should I bother my arse helping other people and as for these volunteers, who are doing it for nothing, fuck them.  They are only keeping my mate out of a job”

More and more, every day, this philosophy, this canon, was adopted by every public service in the land.  They became experts at obfuscation, delay, the need for consultation with their seniors, buck-passing and general zombie-like behaviour which has enraged those who look for help.  Now this unresponsive behaviour might well come as a result of policy from the upper echelons of their departments but it does show how these people are willing to embrace this negative atitude to their fellow man.  It is amazing how they can sleep at night with this antisocial mantra praying on their minds.

Examples of this behaviour are numerous in every department, in all taxation departments whether the money is being paid to them or especially when they have to pay rebates this total lack of spontaneity and interest is apparent.  Throughout all departments of the HSE and especially in the department responsible for the issue of medical cards to the old and needy for free medical assistance this philosophy reigns.  Mr James Reilly TD, Minister for Health in Ireland said yesterday “Those who are most vulnerable get looked after” but this is patently not true because Helen has been fighting for the renewal of medical cards for a needy and vulnerable mid-70s couple on limited funds for four months after they had tried unsucessfully themselves for three months prior to asking for help.  Note that this is a renewal not an application and Mr Reilly’s department in Finglas just sit there in dumb isolation offering anything but progress in the matter.

Other departments now just do not bother to answer the phone, thus saving themselves the problem of thinking up an excuse.  The Small Claims court and the Department of Social Protection who deal with the bulk of benefits must sit in an office 200 yards down the road from their previous handsets, they just do not answer enquiries.  If they do this, of course, they do not have to embroil themselves in other people’s problems, but is that not why they are there?

Now even the Citizens Information service is suffering from this same disease.  When my wife first joined this organization whose ethos was to help the disadvantaged of society she found the bottom layers consisted of an admirable bunch of unpaid volunteer information providers doing their best for others but when she had to go upstairs to talk to the paid management level she found the same malaise, the same disinterest as in other branches of the public service.  The management were only there to propagate their own positions, they were not interested in the ethos or the progress of their organization nor did they have the skills to improve or even carry out their departments purpose which is to empower citizens in their rights and entitlements.  These managers could at their best only organise meetings to discuss nothing but just to be there.  Results did not enter the equation.

In all my wife’s four years in this most unenviable of tasks and with every public department she applied to, she was initially  surprised and then desparately worried at the lack of any determination and application in these sectors.  She found the levels of interest and help abysmally low.  There was no enthusiasm, care or willingness from the public face of these departments.  Nobody could  bother their arses when it came to solving a problem or even to consider the sad cases that she put before them.

For Ireland to drag itself out of this morass it finds itself in, something first has to be done to reset the moral compasses of those that languish in the public sector, which I understand is approximately half of the working population of this country.  A stiff task for any body especially that inert body they call the Dail but  hopefully there might be a latter-day Daniel O’Connell in our midst.

Life in Ireland is no different to life in England except really in two different ways.  The casual immigrant, as I class myself as being, one who never did his homework before coming here, one who classed Ireland as his or her’s spiritual home and had to get here come what may, all of a sudden runs up against matters that do not seem to make sense.  Take for example the Health Service here.  If you step outside your door intent on a visit to the doctors, the euros start to clock up.  If the doctor is at his surgery and you nod in his direction he charges you €40 if you are lucky, then there is another €20 for a blood test and when you go to the chemists with a prescription you can be charged anything.  I remember being asked for €193 for some pills for my wife.  There is also 50 cent government  levy on each type of medication you walk away with.  I did not of course pay the €193 but handed same back to the pharmacist explaining how my wife has decided to take the old fashioned remedy and chosen to ignore her complaint because in most cases complaints fade away unless they are very serious and then the doctor or pharmacist cannot really help.  All pharmaceutical products and doctors work on the fear factor to cower you in to partaking.  Why cannot they set up a National Health Service here.  A think tank of doctors and health professional spent a year recently looking into this ideal and came to the conclusion that the transition could be done smoothly and at no real cost if the motivation was there but it isn’t and the consultants and medical practitoners continue to make hay without any real discipline as they have always done so.

So with these kind of costs clicking up like a till register in a superstore, the potential patient has to be quick on his feet to avoid bankruptcy and like most problems Irish there is of course a way round the problem but you need to take a combined 3rd level course in computers and psychology to prevail.  Either that or take a lesson off the simple man in the street who at all times and in every country has found out a way round every barrier known to man.  So within weeks after taking some very intense lessons on life and how to live it, stood at the various bars around town, I passed my examination with flying colours and now the mazuma stays in my pocket and does not grace the doctors.  This medium is not the place to relate the secrets in which I matriculated but if you, like me, will stand at the bar or better still sit on a high stool at your favourite watering hole and invest in copious quantities of Arthur’s finest cordials, your investment will be well rewarded.

Another happening yesterday made me stop and ponder on the conundrums of Irish life as opposed to the puritan English.  Mary Lou McDonald, the Sinn Fein TD and Deputy Leader of her party, and champion of all that is foolish about her party, stood up in the Dail and roundly criticized the Coalition’s minister for Social Services, Joan Burton, for once again attacking the very poor in this country.  The reason for this broadside was the fact that under the present rigourous belt tightening that the Fine Gael/Labour Coalition Government is imposing on the inhabitants of this fair isle, Joan was looking seriously at the social service payments paid to thousands of parents throughout the country for Communion and Confirmation dresses hopefully intended for their little cherubic daughters to go lightly tripping up the aisle of their parish church on those two annual sacramental days ordained by Holy Mother the Church.

Now I do not know how the lads fare out in this fashion parade and I hope they are not left with their arse hanging out of a scraggy pair of trousers they have worn every day for the last two years, but yesterday in the Dail only Communion dresses were mentioned.  It might be a case of the Government giving early lessons in cross-dressing which would ease their financial problems no end with the thought of the word gender being thrown out of the window and the lack of need for distinguishing the sexes.

However the thought that these little Catholic children of Christ are getting free party dresses while the poor Church of Ireland, Methodist, Presbyterian and all the other myriad of religious and non-religious parents do not get even a sock fills me with distaste.  Is it a fact and so I was told since being knee high to a grasshopper, that the Catholic religion is God’s chosen course and that all the rest of them and now me included, are damned or is the Catholic Church in Ireland after years and years of abusing these little children getting more than its fair share of the financial cake?

Now it is obvious to the casual observer that because of this clerical abuse of the little children of Christ and their abuse of so many things, in so many walks of life, that the attendances at mass are dwindling and that the congregations at Catholic churches now seem to be limited to people over 70 years old who stopped thinking about their redemption 40 years ago.  So why should it be that the thrusting and vital young parents of today, who only see the inside of a church at Baptisms, Communions, weddings and funerals find the need to equip their loved ones in the finest couture the government can buy.  The answer is obvious, because it is there.  Once you see an apple on a tree it is nature’s course to want to pluck it.  The communion dress serves a variety of purposes and if the mother is wise she will design the dress that it fits the child for every social occasion for the next seven years and after puberty is passed, can be cut down by the able and made into very decent curtains for the back bedroom.

Last year the average payout per child was €242 and Joan said yesterday, whilst under constant attack from that party who value family life above everthing else, she might have to limit the payment to €120.  Tell me why in this day of total financial insecurity, where handicapped children are being denied their basic rights, where every government penny is counted, is it even thinking of giving parents, who never dream of going to church, unless there is a party afterwards, €120 towards a new frock.  I am not annoyed, I am slightly shocked but I am also completely dumfounded.

The ordinary decent folk of Ireland are getting well fed up, they are getting over-taxed,  over-charged and overcome by a political ruling class that none of them want to own.

In Ireland it is the political sons and daughters of political fathers and grandfathers, aunties and uncles, who have effectively and wealthily lived through the financial bubble that was the Celtic Tiger, which had been successfully manufactured by their friends and relations, thr benighted bankers and nurtured by the avaricious developers of this country.  These unfortunate politicians, having corruptly managed the good years, now turned their backs on the black hole opening up in front 0f them and decided to ignore what was going on around them for four years until everything and everyone had disappeared down the same black void.  They then decided to approach their masters, the Eoropean Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund, for a bail out that they said  they did not really need.

The conditions of this bail out meant that the ordinary decent folk of Ireland, many of whom had lost their jobs, would have to be taxed out of existence, forbade the benefits they were unwisely given in the bubble years by these vote seeking politicians in their vampire like behaviour at seeking further blood on the political roadshow and have their devalued and over-mortgaged properties taken from them because they now were  no longer able to pay the enormous monthly payments that they had been inveigled into by these same benighted bankers and their partners in crime, the developers.

You only have to look at a little backwater like Boyle, to see how the country is being squeezed.  Unemployment queues embarrassingly trail down Elphin Street on signing on day, businesses are closing down all over town, until now the main traffic junction is now more like a ghost town.  The only businesses still open besides, the food emporiums, are the pubs, and they only just, the bookmakers and the beauty parlours.  Those twin arbiters of a decayed state, where the men gamble as a last resort on horses and women gamble on their looks to bring them through this awfulnessof an Armageddon.

With the bottom 90% of the country on their arses,  the politicians are reinforcing their pensions, the bankers are immorally paying themselves multi-million euro bonuses and the developers are ducking and diving and still living the lifestyle they have been accustomed to, without a thought for the billions they have borrowed and with no thought of paying a cent back.  None of them have been affected by the massive downturn caused by their inherant stupidity and criminality and their survival skills have been enriched during this four year stumble.  It gave them time to rethink their own rich futures whilst the ordinary decent folk were enmired and powerless.

Now there is a general air of despair and disillusionment around the country, there is nowhere to go for improvement only possibly Australia, where you need skills or education and most of these people have none of them.  The historic places of retreat or emigration are no longer feasible.  You cannot get into America and there is nothing in England, who are in as similar if not quite as bad a state.

In England, although not as seriously affected, having had hundreds of years of mature fiscal and political management under their belts, there has been a massive overspend by the previous Socialist government, who seemed to have Nero like tendencies when trying to deal with a worsening economic crisis and watched and did nothing, only spend, as the dole queues lengthened, and  property values fell.  The people wanted to change things if the government did not and they did by voting in an ambitious coalition government who thought they could manage their way out of the morass by stopping spending, upping taxes and curbing benefits in a couple of years rather than by a more merciful but slower system that would take twice as long, but they knew they had only the lifetime of one parliament to achieve their aims and bugger everything and everyone.  Dole queues continued to lengthen, property remained in negative equity and then they made their big mistake.  They handed the youth of the country or at least the 47% of youth who take Third Level education seriously, with a burden, a mortgage, that will take them at least into their middle thirties to pay off.  Their Student Loan, which now increased by massive tuition fees could well reach £45,000 to £50,000.  This they would be expected to pay off whilst concentrating on careers, marriage, raising families and trying to find somewhere to live.

Not surprisingly the youth did not like it and have started to show their own kind of political muscle and mark my words this civil unrest will not stop here.  This will go on until the whole stinking situation is redressed.  It will be the Coalition’s Poll Tax that bedevilled Margaret Thatcher and contributed greatly to her downfall.

Back to Ireland and its dormant civil unrest, although there have been one or two notable exceptions of late, the beast has not yet got into the people, the politicians are still hanging in there, what it needs is some catalyst which we are all seeking.  My answer would be to all this is not to stick a stiff object into the likes of Camilla, because she is well used to that kind of caper but for the  ordinary decent folk of both countries to involve themselves in a campaign of peaceful civil disobedience.  No longer can the so called leaders tell us what to do brcause they have not deserved their leadership, especially those idiots in the Dail who politically are a thing of the past.  They can no longer treat us like First World War soldiers, we are educated and know black from white, we can even distinguish the various shades in between, however we are slightly unempowered.

What I am looking for is for every individual person to look at his or her own circumstances and in one way or another without damaging yourself or your families or communities, start to say no to wherever the state says yes.  If the Government want to tax us, let us tax the government.  Stop feeding the beast.  Stop giving money to churches and charities.  One the master of the government, the other a tool of the government.  Realise that the law is not necessarily the law but something put in place by a now disfunctional bunch of failures, work your way round it by being smart.  It is now time to tell the Dail and Parliament to fuck off.  The websites  like “Tir na Saor – Land of the Free” and “The Shame of Ireland” can give you some tips.  Let us start off with a total embargo on the forthcoming 2011 Census of Ireland either by not applying for temporary jobs as enumerators or even just not filling the census  forms themselves.  Let us not vote at all in the forthcoming General Election in Ireland, for after all the alternative parties are no better than those whore’s bastards from Fianna Fail.  Just throw any letter you receive with a harp on it, onto the fire and say you  did not receive it.  Delay to the very last second any kind of payment to any government agency, only cough up before a court beckons.  There must be hundreds of different little ways of making yourself appear like a stone in the governments shoe.

It is sad that the talentless ignoramuses who inhabit the Fine Gael party have done enough to make sure that George Lee threw in the towel with their hapless party.  Whether through ignorance, disbelief or pure jealousy, these clueless politicians decided to give George the bums rush and thus deny Irish politics of the one talented specimen the Dail had. These sons of publicans and solicitors sons, who have shuffled in their father’s footsteps since 1922 have shown themselves to be the diluted talent of diluted talent.

Why cannot the talented people in our society not rise to the top in the political echelon, the money ain’t that bad and there is plenty of time to earn more  if everyone forgot about the fact that politicians are needed as funereal appendages and fillers-in of pot holes?  The Dail only meets for 80 days per year so that leaves plenty of time for the talented and truthful to earn an extra crust.  It is only the “Never done a day’s work in his life” politician, who these days inhabit the Dail and pay regular lip-service to the incumbent arseholes who dwell in the Cabinet Office and pass legislation that they have probably read about on the backs of cornflake packets. Funeral attendance and road maintenance should be left to the equally talentless and hibernatory local authorities and semi-grieving friends and family.  Let the politicians do what they should be doing ie, govern, and they surely would if they had that gift.

The sons of father’s sons have proved time and time again in all historic societies that they have neither the wit nor the acumen to deal successfully with matters of import.  Therefore why not start again.  Form a new party.

A new party filled with people of talent, not hucksters and corner-boys who are in the system because they are no good at anything else.  People believe George and his ilk because they know he speaks the truth, they know he is not trotting out garbage.  The listeners to the Lifeline programme proved that the other day when in a snap poll a massive % voted for the correctness of George Lee’s actions in the face of disapproval and criticism by the politicians.

The Progressive Democrats did it nearly 30 years ago and managed to hold on to a semblance of power for a long time, but when they got fed up kicking Charlie Haughey’s arse, which was their raison d’etre, they reverted back to whence they came, members of the Fianna Fail party.

This new party of sense, truth and talent could take this country by the scruff of the electorate’s neck and shake out these 90 year old encumbrances that make people take the FF or FG side no matter what.  The country is in a mess like it has never been since the Famine.  The people want a new way.  It is there for the taking and I am sure there is enough commercial money knocking about to ensure early funding.  Commercial money that does not want to see itself squandered like it has been; commercial money that is not after a regular supply of brown envelopes. This new way is  a tangible and necessary process.  So arise George Lee and David McWilliams, you two could be the Daniel O’Connells of the 21st century in Irish politics.  It will not be easy but you are young enough and good enough.