So – this is the day. Der Tag, the Germans call it. The day when the people of the south will find out whether they hold real power or whether they gave it away when they listened to Fine Gael and Labour promises and voted the present government in. Paul Murphy TD, a leading Right2Water protester, was on RTÉ this morning. He was confident that the demonstration today would bring down (that’s bring down as in eliminate/remove) water charges and in the wake of its fall, the government. Enda Kenny said in the Dail yesterday that he had no intention of holding an election in 2015. So who’s right?
Well, as I speak it’s pissing down and the winds are considerable, so clearly God is on Enda’s side. It’s one thing to join a demonstration on a sunlit day where you feel glad to be alive and outdoors. Another to pull on your oilskin and head out to be soaked. The weather may be the winner today, and hanging onto its coat-tails will be a grinning Enda and Joan.
Or maybe not. Maybe the rain with end its urination. Maybe people will show themselves so angry with this government, they’ll head-butt into the elements and send a message to Enda and Joan along the lines of my last communiqué from the discerning editor of the VO: “Your services are no longer required”. Polite while putting the boot as far up the butt as possible.
When I was young there was a big movie musical called South Pacific. In it, Mitzi Gaynor sang a song titled ‘I’m only a cock-eyed optimist’. Ask the present Mrs C and she’ll tell you that’s what I am, and will add the next line of the song “Immature and incurably green”. But I saw the determination on the faces of a lot of people interviewed by RTÉ in recent days. One in particular was unforgettable: a woman who had never been on a march for anything telling the interviewer that not only would she be on the march but she wouldn’t pay her water charges and she was prepared to go to gaol if that’s what it took. I think that’s the feeling of a lot of people in the south. Thousands. Tens of thousands. Maybe more. And they’ll be on the streets all over the southern state today. Listen up, Enda and Joan. God and the elements may be on your side but your services may no longer be required.
The present Mrs C have you got something you want to tell your wife looks like the spare bedroom for you now!
Personally, I think “Water Charges ” is ,or are, the proverbial last straw…..lie after lie ,insult after insult, taxation after taxation…..but the hurts cutting deepest are the bankers ,not only escaping scot-free….but enormous pensions guaranteed ,the bondholders guarantees , the government ,so aloof from the people that they are, oblivious to the seething anger and shamelessly unaware of the suffering and poverty they are causing. We are ,with a certain amount of smug wryness watching the government squirm and flail as it attempts to cling to the last vestiges of power. If the inclement weather brings them temporary respite today,…..temporary is exactly what it shall be !
You’ll have to tell us some time Jude about your time working for the VO ( Irish News).I presume the editor who sacked you was Noel Doran and I’m sure many on this site would be interested to know how he runs the Fitzpatrick tabloid.
Michael C
You’ll be lucky .Jude seems to have taken a vow of silence on his departure from the Irish News!!
Tag is not at all inappropriate not only for the day that is in it, Esteemed Blogmeister, but indeed for every day this current Shovernment of the Free Southern Stateen is in office.
For not only is Tag the name of a childrens’ street game which the same Shovernment love to play but they are adept at goading a goodly number of the electorate out on to the streets as well.
Though within the walls of Sinister House (which in leprechaun comes out as Tig Laighean) the game is known as, of course, Tig. Here, a group of players (166) in this case decide who is to be ‘it’ (or Can of Cola in leprechaun) and they do so by using a counting-out game such as ‘eeny-meany-miny-mo’.
This time round they picked a real ‘meany’ or at least one who likes to be seen as a real ‘meany’. Needless to say, schtrict impartiality would not be exactly his schtick. That would be SB who is not at all to be confused with SBB, the Raidio na Leiprechan broadcaster. The latter’s ‘logo’ of course is ‘SBB ina Shui’ which comes out as ‘SBB Sitting Down’.
SB in Tig Laighean is not one for bonding his bum with his bench.
While the Yawnaiste’s favourtie game is ‘Queenie-eye-o’. This game involves the Laborious One, as she is also affectionately known, turning her back on the chamber and tossing the ball over her shoulder (being in possession of a rare sense of humour, she always chooses her left shoulder) across the floor. Then, turning around, the opposition benches chant:
‘Queenie-eye-o, Queenie-eye-o who’s got the ball?
Is he tall, or is he small
Is she bouffanty, or is she bald
You don’t know,because you don’t have the ball !’
And the way the breakwinds of change are blowing at the moment there is every indication that the recipient of the ball may indeed well be bald, thus causing the only MP who is tall, bouffanty and fluent in Swailhi to emit the shrill screech:
-Uhuru !
Aras Unattractive, or what.
The Prime Minister orders things differently. Enda K (who is on less than half the salary of D’Arse of RTE who’s on 500 K, underlying where the real seat of Shovernment is located, perhaps,in the FSS) prefers to play his street games where they originated, i.e. on the streets.
So, this saw him indulge in a spot of highly unpublicised streetwalking last week.
Surrounded by his customary phalanx of Spin and Spinach Doctors, and whistling ‘Moonlight in Mayo’, his first port of call was the steps of the Custom House where the local derelicts, dossers and down and outs of Dublin greeted the God help us from Mayo whom they understandably mistook for a Clinician with a bog Latin chorus of ‘hic,hoc,haec’.
While he did indeed decline to share their crack and craic with them, with a hissy declaration of Declension out of earshot of the roving microphones, nonetheless the PM did condescend to engage with them in a game of Hopscotch.
Of course, Enda’s inner former primary school teacher, had a shtick of chalk in his culphoca/ backpocket and generously handed said shtickt to one of his spin doctors to kneel down and do the needful, ie. , chalk out the game’s diagram of squares on the technicolour-yawned pavement. Unfortunately, not one eager spin doctor but rather a veritable College of Surgeons of same reached out for the privilege of doing their P.M.’s bidding in the A.M.
Alas, the game had to be abandoned due to the shtick of chalk being broken into shmithereens, amid a chorus of Hippocratic Oaths. Which may have been just as well,in retrospect, as instead of the clay-filled tin of shoe polish which the P.M. had been used to prodding on one foot on the avenues of Cashtlebar during his far off boyhood, the projectile in this game of Hopscotch in the purlieus of the Custom House was a forlorn bottle of Scotch.
Leaving a chorus of famous grouses in his wake, it was sharp, about turn time at the urging of his Spin and Spinach Doctors and quick march from Syringe Street wesht along the quays as far as a far more congenial setting of Capel Street.
For what occurred within the confines of the Panti Bliss Bar, it is wise to recall the ancient piece of poetic wisdom: it is folly to be wise. Except to make two points: 1. grey was not the colour most in evidence within or Thomas Gray the most quoted poet;and 2. as the number of street folly-‘m-uppers along the quays had increased exponentially from the Streets, Syringe to Capel, it was found necessary for Enda to enter the bar du nuit in reverse, as it were.
Those on the street outside had to content themselves, ironically enough, with the strains of the following street rhyme emenating from within:
Ring a ring a Rosie
A pocket full of posie
A tish-oo, a tish-oo
We all fall down.
Contrary to certain sources of misinformation, the street game of Relievio was not played within.
Repeat, NOT.
Well Jude, it’s been a long day. Just reporting in after coming back from the water protest in Dublin. Up since 6 a.m., but well worth it to be part of history in the making. In case anyone tells you otherwise Jude (you can discount the usual media hacks), I would estimate there were the bones of 100,000 give or take a few thousand, in a good humoured, wonderful atmosphere and a beautiful, if bitingly cold day, but hardly a cloud in the sky.
The most interesting thing was the roar of acclaim when Gerry Adams took to the stage and addressed the crowds. I think Mark Twain’s often misquoted comment ‘The report of my death was an exaggeration’ is a fitting response to those who would like to see him put out to grass..