Madam, – Prof Ray Kinsella (“Saving economy requires changed political mindset”, Opinion, October 6th) argues that handing over economic control to the IMF would be “a bleak commentary on the capacity of an ancient and cultured people to manage its affairs”.
Given that our current options for taoiseach are Brian Cowen, Enda Kenny, and Eamon Gilmore, perhaps it is time to face the hard truth – we have given the whole self-government thing a go and we can’t do it. This may be a betrayal of Éamon de Valera’s vision, but then Dev also imagined an Ireland where everyone spoke Gaeilge while cailíní danced at the crossroads, so he was a man given to unrealistic ambitions.
Once we accept that we cannot govern ourselves responsibly, we can accept the only viable option left to us: we can auction off the entire country to the highest bidder. As a strategically situated island off the coast of Europe, we may be able to play off superpower interests and raise the price for the whole country to about €4 trillion, which would mean €1,000,000 for every person in the country to move to a much better-run country and start a new life. Those with a particular fondness for the Ould Sod could probably stay on as cleaners or tour guides, giving vibrant accounts of the glories of Irish civilisation to sympathetic tourists.
This may seem a bit drastic, but in the absence of any meaningful desire among the Irish people to change our current political structure so as to find leaders who can actually do the job of running the country, I see no alternative that we could hope to carry out. A public auction of everything we own in order to emigrate is at least well within the Irish experience. – Yours, etc,
Then all we would have to do is sort out our visas.
Back to Gombeen Nation main page
7 comments:
Unbelievable letter from Stephen Joyce and SOOOOO timely. Tasmania is about the same size as the 26 counties (You didn't want to migrate with the mob from norn iron too did you? - Nah didn't think so) Right so here's the deal. The weather's much better here of course and there's tons of cheap wine and great fresh food etc - the perfect place for Nova Hibernia. A great opportunity too for the Church to nominate one of their disgraced bishops to drive out the snakes here thus ensuring his canonisation in the new land and the re-establishment of a new fresh look nova catholicism with its first saint - st Nova Paddy. I'll be proposing to the people of Tasmania that they accept my generous offer (there's 400,000 of them) of one way business class flights to Burkina Faso along with a whacking relocation fee of 600,000 euro each (that's 240,000,000 Euro to get rid of the entire population. See where I'm going with this...??? Your job GM is to talk the Irish population into paying up let's say 400,000 Euro each for a new start here in Tas (sorry Nova Hib) which when we've sorted out the logistics from this end and waved bye bye to the last of them leaves us with an enormous big bucket full of euros to split up amongst the blog faithful - with yourself getting a few extra paper bags full of course - see how the corruption slips into the most honest of schemes. Oh and just a little something, it's the first time i've seen eamon gilmore's name on the blog. He and I were were in the same class through high school. I always found him to be most genuine. Don't tell me he's no better than the rest - is he?
I like emaonn gilmore_ I lived here in Dun L for tth emsot part of 13 yrs- always heard he was a hard working local rep, aand i alwasy voted labour & green.
I think the desperate Irish nation are now seeing him as the second coming of Christ: the man who will save this nation and put it on the path we devaited from 90 yrs ago: Then we were on the same road as scandinavia, desperatley poor nations with stong socilist leaders ( eg Jim larkin...and then we forked off.) So people are expectign miracles from a man who expected no more than to be a competent coalition partner to Fine Gael...but yes he could be next Taoiseach ... I hope so ...but hehas a hevy work load ahead
Who would buy this soggy collection of fields?
mr GM iam strongly against putting our little paradise on the auction block there is no telling who the highest bidder might be,just think for a moment the chinese the saudies the ruskies even the welsh or the auld english could be high bidders god forbid any of the above gets a chance.my proposal is that we get on the green bandwagon and declare evey inch of irl a WIND FARM we can then lease the whole package to the GERMANS for 20yrs and tell the bond holders to go flockoff, in 5yrs we will be selling green certified oirish electricity around the world kinda like oirish spring soap, there will be thousands of jobs packaging and shipping this green coloured electricity a around the planet much like the present day pharma workers once again irl will have the world by the arse- cheers - BH. BTW will ELLA be heading for nova hiernia with you
@Ponyboy. Nova Hib sounds like a brilliant idea to me. The one stumbling block I anticpate is the little matter of raising that €400,000 each. Not even my mattress has that much dosh stuffed in it.
Apparently there is €88 billion in deposits/savings in Ireland at the mo' and that works out shy of €20,000 a head if you divide by Ireland's population. But as 1% of the population is said to own 34% of the country's wealth, I would say that ordinary Joes and Josephines are more likely to be in debt.
The likes of Sean Fitzpatrick and all the supposedly penniless developers would not have a problem though.
Of course if readers felt it might be advantageous to send me on a fact finding mission to Tas my offshore bank account details are readily available upon request. And maybe a little bit of expenses money too? Oh, and business class - I need to arrive refreshed and capable of making the best decisions for us all.
@ Anna (and PB again). Yes, Gilmore is the only one of them capable of stringing a few words together relatively convincingly. Labour usually gets a vote of some sort on the GM polling card, as the local TD is Joan Burton. She was the only one consistently saying that the property tax shelters were a bad idea, and she does a lot of good work here too.
@ Anon. Valid observation. We'll have to play on the "strategic importance" bit, I'm afraid.
@ BH. Good points. I mean, how tragic would it be if those awful Brits bought up the place: thus invalidating the 800 year stuggle at a stroke!!! Then again, we could always hook up the grave-spinning patriots to the national grid to supplement the windfarm output.
Greetings to all on spikey Island. Not sure anyone would buy this land, could be waiting a loooonnnnggg time. Anyways in the meantime the landscape maybe a little dour. Don't be annoyed or upset if crowds gather shouting STAMP DUTY, STAMP DUTY, STAMP DUTY, we paid stamp duty, to which the powers that be (PTB) will inevitably reply that was just the admission charge, NOW YOU MUST PAY the clubs annual fee. This should pacify the multitude, as they like the exclusivity of it. Then some in the crowd may get the courage up to cry, what about taking a pay cut yourself? To which the PTBs will reply - as quick as you like - in their most serious of serious voices, nopey because you're the dopey, la, la, la, la, la,,,,this could silence the crowd (as they secretly like to think they are still rich). Yet out of all this the ones with the most debt (ahem Credit awareness) will see the signs EXIT CHARGE FROM THE ISLAND 1,000 000 euro, payable on exit.....Hey hum you thought you were rich again?
Ha ha. "Credit awareness". I love it!
Post a Comment