Picture by Harlem Photography Inc
Sometimes you need a good laugh and yesterday the south’s government provided it. They have, they declared, after mature reflection, decided to sell their 25% share of Aer Lingus. Fianna Fail told them in effect they were a bunch of arses; Fine Gael responded by pointing out that Fianna Fail sold off 75% of Aer Lingus. Tweedledum hits Tweedledee on the head with a saucepan, Tweedledee responds with a frying pan.
This sale, we’re told, will be really good. The Willie Walsh lot (IAG) are going to give the government lots of money AND they’ll give them assurances/guarantees that they’ll be nice for seven years. Seven years! Sure what more could anyone want? And Willie Walsh is an honourable man. They are all honourable men, with the best interests of the workers in their thoughts and hearts.
Will there, as so often happens with buy-ups, any job losses? Willie was very clear on that. There will be. But hold! Good news on the way. Aer Lingus jobs will be lost but there will be 650 NEW jobs. Probably. Some time. According to projections. And if you can’t trust a projection, who can you trust?
One of my sons used to have a similar accounting system, involving alcohol. He had located a pub which, for every three drinks you had, you got another one FOR FREE! So obviously, the more you drank, the more you saved! What a brilliant system.
So that’s what Enda and his Gang are intent on doing. The more they sell off, the more they really get greater protection for Aer Lingus. And the more jobs that are lost, the more jobs there will be created! Stunningly simple.
Sure George Orwell and his War Is Peace were only in the half-penny place behind Enda and his Gang. No wonder Pascal Donohoe looked so happy being interviewed on RTÉ the other night.
A state, a state, anyone interested in buying a state?…What do you mean, a state what, Virginia. A state nothing. Just a STATE. Going cheap, by the way.
I’m afraid it’s already been sold. Not the biggest Aer Lingus fan( didn’t they refuse to carry the bodies of Sean Savage, Danny McCann and Mairead Farrell from Gibraltar?) but the question of selling ‘the nations airline”seems like another NAMA selloff to current government. ” For what died the sons of Roisin… was it gold?”
The sale of Aer Lingus, Esteemed Blogmeister, is all to do with the most mellifluous of lapdog, oops, laptop words; Connectivity.
Which of course is the long version of the poster girl for Aer Lingus; Connie.
Connie, the Dail’s favourite Trolly Dolly, is on record as saying, very possibly on the critically acclaimed Emma Empathy Show on RTE itself: while it is okay to be Gay in the Free Southern Stateen, to be Gaelic is just a, erm, lick too far.
You namechecked Pascal Donohue, Esteemed Blogmeister; newish to the role of Minister for Transport with responsibility for planes and boats and trains and bikes and skateboards and state boards and things. And the flogging of family silver.
And even though still in the L-plate wearing stage (being Pascal Dunno Who till the v. recent past) , nonetheless his silver-tongued eloquence is such that it has already enabled him to enter the political scene in a, erm, blaze of something approaching the g for glory word.
Aptly named? That doesn’t even begin to describe the L-plated lad. It was Blaise Pascal after all who once opined: ‘The only shame is to have no shame’.
But then, as a member of the blue-chip button-down Blue Charvet Party this is but par for the Royal Down Here Party. Thus, his L-plated eloquence is, perhaps, to be expected. And is not to be compared with the glib Sound of Silence of his fellow minister and member of the blue-collar Party, who wears the bib of Minister for Equality: Aodhan O Riordain.
Yes, AOR who proudly and gaily wore the ‘Yis’ badge on a recent pre-Ref RTE Programme has kept mum on the the question of selling Aor Lingus down the old lease giver. The prospect of Connie joining the shameless ranks of the Heathrow Sluts, oops,Slots has not fluttered a solitary eyelash in his dashing physog.
That aor just happens to be the leprechaun for ‘satire’ is definitely neither here nor there, whatever about in the air. Nor is the factoid that his spouse is a former pol cor of the Irish Dependent. Which wench doesn’t even rate a mench.
What a sporting attitude from a Minister who, unlike, PD (see above) does not actually have responsibility for Sport is nonetheless, not slow in commenting on sport himself.
Aodhan O Riordain e fein/ himself waxed loquacious of late on that unfinished work in progress, Croke Park. Which he seemed to be under the impression was actually finished while simultaneously thinking Aer Lingus is not finished.
Odd in a O.T.T. fashion.
This is indeed passing strange, considering AOR himself was instrumental in mobilising the Croke Park Residents (not including one not insignificant one who was actually resident in distant Castleknock) in opposition to the Grab All Association (GAA). And that rapacious outfit’s ill-judged and outrageous efforts to actually put the finishing touches to what they laughingly call their National Stadium.
Come to think of it, the same Aodhan O Riordain, footie fan, has been keeping mum in the Q’s English regarding the overnight attempts of FIFA to homerically wrest the much coveted title of Grab All Association from the GAH.
Could be, of course, – and one is loath to pre-empt his measured response – that his FIFAffing around on this sporty topic, is an indication that he is waiting on the dependable columnist of the Sunday Dependent for the definitive take.
That, of course, is Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch, GAH-basher supreme and unsurpassed apologist for the Bootyful Game.
Perkie is especially looking forward to next Sunday’s Dependent, not least to see how the noosehound will distance himself from his shameless namesake, the USA Attorney General and former soccer mom.
Loretta Lynch (for it is she !) has the unforgiveable tendency to call ‘football’ by its spade- shaped name, ‘soccer’. This is the ultimate,erm, solipisism for sporting prudes like Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch. In fact, it is the ultimate no-no as befits all those suckers on the No side of whatever.
Worse even than her dismantling the scaffolding and ditching of the family trade in favour of, yep, asking for the head of Sepp on a, erm, platter. One’s reader of a certain vintage will recall the toon-inclined biopic of the Attorney General, entitled ‘The Goalminder’s Daughter’.
To conclude on the topic du jour: farewell Hibernia, welcome Hubernia.
There is an ancient, moss-covered blessing in leprechaun which goes as follows:
-Saol fada agus bas in Eirinn !
Which translated into the Q’s English, goes:
-Long life and may your bucket be kicked in Ireland !
In Hiberno-English, this might read as:
-A short sale and your boss in the Airport of Heathrow !
PS The player on the Cavan GAA team who walked tallest in the Kingspan Breffni Park last Sunday was one, Michael Argue. There was a certain inevitability about this, the FSS having spent the previous torrid few weeks, erm arguing about Michael.
Smoke, Mirrors, and the art of flying. The “more you spend, the more you’ll save” classic from big retailers’ is an inverted form of this. 2+2=4 wrote Winston in 1984. No matter the extent, and high winded doggerel that may embellish the “Projections” you aptly attack Jude, 2+2 will never =5.
The sell off of the Post Office by our near and Dear neighbours in Britain, has been, and is increasingly becoming, a nightmare for the workers on the ground. As Communities in Britain and Ireland are finding increasingly, it is a case of, to compromise a term from John Donne, a case now of, For whom the Axe swingeth, and sadly for many people struggling in the margins, it Swings for thee…
I voted People Before Profit last election. I voted Carroll where I might have voted SF as a bulwark against the Tory/Unionist alliance last election.
When SF quietly ushered in an endorsement of the policy, years ago of Tax cuts for Multinationals,- I shuddered.
On walking through the centre of Belfast recently perusing the domain where the good people dwell, in the Cathedral quarter, then on to the Newlodge for a catch up,- a literary grandee need not have reflected on the the disparity and thought it a tale of two cities indeed……When our Ex SF Mayor of Belfast, championing the rights of small businesses (and larger ones) in the City Centre against those destitute nuisances street drinking( who might not be so tempted when a dank doorway provides an unwelcome, but necessary roof?!,-Challenge on….?), he prioritized the Chamber of Commerce, over the dispossesed…I gagged with nausea at hearing the retreat he made about balancing this and that…..Homelessness needs tackled at the root, and rather than address a withered branch, a challenge to the poisons polluting the tree…..Something rotten in the State of Denmark.
….”Yes of course, we need to consolidate this before we attain this, ect, ect”…Tripe.
Deferrals’ Deferrals….Povery is a Crime that can be solved, but the police are protecting the damned Criminals.
When Larkin led the workers, and workless, on a march for rights, jobs, better housing/ social conditions ect a century ago, Irish Nationalists, and Unionists United. The Orange Card was swiftly played to stop these United Irish, and Marxist sympathises from spreading.
Where is grand Wizard Chissick on the increasing Homeless crises?….Exactly….same place as Hutchinson, Nesbitt and Mc Causeland,-same Committee at camp Twaddle Dumb.
When we allow distractions of an ultra simplistic Nationalistic flavour to divert us from our current humanitarian crisis in Ireland, and beyond, we miss what Connolly infused with his positive intwining of the positive potentials in Ireland for Nationalism here to act converged with true Socialism to protect all the Children if the Nation. Such unity crosses, and needs must from the Shankill to Turf lodge, the Whiterock to Ballymun….
One left behind, then stop the bus. When asked for Whom the Axe swingeth, it swings for We.
“For what died the sons of Róisín, was it greed?
Was it greed that drove Wolfe Tone to a pauper’s death in a cell of cold wet stone?
Will German, French or Dutch inscribe the epitaph of Emmet, when we have sold enough of Ireland to be but strangers in it?
For what died the sons of Róisín, was it greed?”
Seaweed is the next natural resource we need to protect I think the government are planning to sell of the rights to harvest seaweed on the west coast.
Colmán, going, going…Seaweed went to Acadian Seaplants Ltd in May 2014
off*
I thought you were joking Colmán. Maybe when only our rivers run free….? Plans are probably afoot to sell the fret rolling in from the Sea also, while taxing the air in the winds and rains in the hills.
They’d sell their own mother of they could get a few euros for her, for what died the sons of Roisin indeed,frign kip isn’t worth fighting for, me fein is your only man nowadays.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I was under the impression that the Stormont Executive(of which Sinn Fein is a major player) was preparing to sell off a number of State assets under the Stormont House Agreement .But I suppose it’s worse when bad old Enda and his government do it!!Maybe that great economist Gerry Adams will have some insights on the whole matter!
I can see you’re a keen reader of the Daily Mail, argie…
Not so,Jude.My point was that there seemed to be double standards at play hereSinn Fein agreed as part of the Stormont House Agreement to sell off certain state assets but is opposing the sale of Aer Lingus to I A G in the South.Its rather a lazy response to accuse anyone who points this out to be a Daily Mail reader!
Ah-ha, Argenta! I note you don’t deny the Daily Mail suggestion. And its associated shame. I feel I know you better every day. Even though you wear a mask…
What part of “not so” do you not understand ,Jude?!Do I have to spell it out for you?!By the way,I note that you haven’t addressed my point on double standards by Sinn Fein in the North and South!But I suppose the best method of defence is attack!
I understand both parts of ‘not so’. So? As to SF double standards: in the south they are attacking the government for making the public pay for debts they never incurred; in the north they’re refusing to implement Tory cuts. I’m afraid I don’t quite see the double standards in that.