The End is Night Part III: The Island of No Jobs

The Live Register jumped a staggering 6,600 in May, making a mockery of the government's claim that we have "turned a corner". Such optimism is at best dangerous, at worst treasonous, in the current economic climate. How can an Irish government be so irresponsible as to actually claim that our economy has bottomed out and will soon start the long haul back to some semblance of real growth when multi-nationals lik HP seem set to cut jobs here? How has our economy turned the corner when we still have more than 300,000 houses unoccupied in this country, 32,300 people in arrears on their mortgage (not including the 15 odd thousand who are paying only with government support), and the prospects of ECB rate rises in at least the next five to ten years? How can our economy be on the rebound when we are borrowing €500 million a week, and as the maestro David McWilliams notes, the global markets may soon cut off our supply of credit?

It is becoming increasingly clear that this government is simply kicking to touch, playing for time and hoping that they can avoid as many cuts as possible before the next General Election in 2012. They can then hand the entire mess over to Fine Gael and Labour, who will be blamed by an amnesiac electorate for having to take truly tough decisions, before Fianna Fail can swan into power again, surfing on a wave of pork-barrell promises.

I do not hate Fianna Fail, the Republican Party, the party of Sean Lemass, the party of the urban worker and the rural labourer. But I hate this government, deeply, totally, instinctively, as they have put the selfish interests of the newly-monied and propertied ahead of the common good. There is nothing more vile or harmful to a society, and especially to a Republic, then "socialism for the rich, and capitalism for the poor". Sadly, this has now become Ireland's official state ideology.

Our Only Hope?

I wonder is it even beggining to dawn on our main opposition party, Fine Gael, that winning the next election will simply not be enough? It's no good if FG simply replace Fianna Fail government hacks, cronies and gombeens with their own insiders, clogging up the apparatus of power with more incompetent, irrelevant bods who are just marking time till they can claim their massive pensions.

No, it's clear that FG need to do much more than simply win the next election; they need to lead a revolution. True, a very boring, grey middle-class kind of revolution, but a very necessary one at that. One based on the appropriate spending of taxes and the slicing down to size of unnecessary pork. Most importantly of all, I would argue that it is vital that FG introduce a major overhaul of the electoral system, introducing a national list system or some other mechanism with which to break the link between national government in Ireland, eh sorry, "Lyonnesse", and the parish pump politics that has hamstrung government on our island with the most asinine of parochial concerns.

But how will Labour, FG's obvious partner in any coalition government, view the above steps, necessary though they are. I would suspect that Labour and the Labourites, prone as they are to bouts of intelligence unbecoming of Irish politicians, will see in the long term the necessity of a national list system. But could they stomach trimming down the fat in our national budget? I'm afraid I think not. Will revolutionary red Labour be the main roadblock to change in our country?