It’s time to take control away from incompetent government

Date Published: {J}

So the one person who took direct and dramatic action to protest this government’s uselessness turned out to be, of all things, a property developer. We should be ashamed – but perhaps not surprised. The go-getters are the go-getters, whether they’re out to get the money or the government. Look how pathetically the rest of us demonstrated last week. While in private we’re all outraged by the sickening way this shower have destroyed the economy, on a day of Europe-wide protest we mustered something like a thousand people. What the hell is wrong with us?

We are in general a pretty passive nation, we put up with a lot. You could blame foreign or religious oppression for that, as is your preferred demon. Perhaps a heady cocktail of the two. But people who put up with a lot tend to have a lot to put up with. We have made a wonderful land of opportunity – for those who don’t mind trampling all over everyone else.

And so our leaders, in politics or business, tend to be the sort who blunder into rooms where people are talking quietly and start shouting, whose inability to see themselves as others see them borders on the sociopathic. And weirdly, we put up with it. We think leaders are supposed to be like that. It’s a case of the blind being led by the oblivious. Consequently . . .Well, look what we get. Go on, look. It’s not impressive, is it? A bunch of incompetents.

We are in crisis, and all the action they have taken has made things worse. Our whole commercial banking sector made stupid, reckless, fatal errors – and our leaders promised to back those fatal errors to the hilt. With our money.

Now they are going to decimate our services, ruin our education, waste our health, tear investment out of the country just when we need it most badly, and turn what should have been a recession lasting a few years into one that may last a generation. But they think they’re doing well! This is the crazy part. They’ve convinced themselves they took firm corrective action, when in actual fact they shat the economy’s pants.

It’s not just Fianna Fáil of course. It’s not even just politicians. There’s a whole ruling echelon to our society who are not abashed at expecting the state to bail out their hopeless investments, to pay their ludicrous professional fees, to reward them just for being their loveable privileged selves.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.