With pensioners, teachers, farmers and students marching through the towns and cities of the Republic these days, these are truly the times that test men's soles.
A winter of discontent has been initiated by the Budget of October 14, announced as it happened, on the birthday of Eamon de Valera, the founder of the Fianna Fáil party. Whatever the shortcomings of Fianna Fáil in the past it could never be accused of being out of touch with the Plain People of Ireland.
That is why there was such disbelief inside and outside the Party, that FF could shoot itself in the foot with the proposal to remove medical cards, entitling the holders free access to medical and hospital facilities be removed from something like 125,000 people in the over 70 age bracket. The entitlement was introduced seven years ago, and many of the beneficiaries would not be alive today without it. The government has to find ¤15.8 billion to balance the books, the scheme, as originally conceived, would have saved something like ¤100 million. In electoral terms it was a dearly-bought measure, as the governing coalition was soon to find out.
The budget had been brought forward from December in the light of the global economic crisis. Or so the government said. The more cynical are of the view that with local and European elections due in June 2009, the politicos wanted to put as much time between the bid set and the elections as possible, in the hope that the furore engendered by the budget might have abated. It has been said that FF back-benchers were not made aware of the Minister of Finance's budget proposals until an hour before his delivery in the Dáil, on the day. And, that, as the fellow said, is no way to run a railway. District councillors were even more poorly briefed, and it came as no surprise that a U-turn came about within six days, exempting 95% of the over 70s from having to pay their health expenses. Credit for this is being claimed by two Independent TDs, Jackie Healy-Rae and Michael Lowry who threatened to withdraw their support to the government, following their defection of another Independent, and a Fianna Fáil TD. The medical card proposal was apparently the brainchild of some anonymous civil servant. The Health Minister, Mary Harney bought it, and the cabinet, in a fit of abstraction, rubber-stamped it. The proposal was not just badly thought through, it was very poorly sold: the Taoiseach said one thing, the Minister for Finance said another, and the Minister for Health said something else altogether. Confusion reigned and many pensioners who would not have to suffer still had no idea where they stood. And could anyone blame them?
Even after the climbdown, the pensioners argued that what the government giveth one day it could take away on another day. 15,000 pensioners demonstrated outside the gates of the Daíl last Wednesday, in a very angry mood. Some speakers made the point that the pensioners may constitute only 10% of the electorate but that they represented 17% of those who actually came out to vote. They are an active, alert, and energetic constituency. Grey power has arrived. Government ministers, who tried to argue that the small minority of over 70s who could afford to pay should do so (to help the State fund the less fortunate), were shouted down.
On the same day another 15,000, mostly third-level students, marched down O'Connell Street in protest against the restoration of College fees and increases in registration fees. Teachers' unions who foresee that the loss of hundreds of teaching jobs will bring to Ireland the most crowded of classrooms in Europe, as well as the likelihood of children being sent home, because there are no teachers to cover for absent colleagues. The number of teachers of children who do not speak English, the children of migrants are also to be cut back, as are those who cater for the educational needs of children from the travelling community.
All of this has seen Fianna Fáil registering it lowest ratings in opinion polls since polling began in Ireland. The people of Ireland demand first class services, but do not want to pay for them by way of higher taxes. This being the case, all political parties well aware of this reality, have tried every other option. The latest budget was felt by many to have come down hard on the most vulnerable groups, children and the elderly. Subsequent budgets will have to find other targets, with the super rich being required to contribute more by way of taxation.
Comparisons are being made with Ernest Blythe who reduced the old age pension by one shilling in 1924, and with John Bruton who attempted to levy a tax on children's shoes in 1982, the Taoiseach of the day, Garret FitzGerald fearing that women with small feet would avoid paying the tax on shoes. His government fell on that issue.
The next Dáil can run, constitutionally, until 2012. Resignations and defections from the FF, Greens or PDs could shorten its life. The Labour Party has already been put on an election footing. The last thing that the Government wants these days is an election. So, as Ben Franklin told the Continental Congress, they will hang together in the realisation that if they do not, they will most assuredly, hang separately.
In evidence the court heard that the defendant was being charged with larcency. He has been in trouble with the law in the past, but had promised that he would go 'straight'. He had produced, on an earlier occasion, a character reference from a retired Garda. He had expressed remorse for succumbing to the temptation to offend again, and felt that he had grievously betrayed the trust which had been placed in him by the person who was obliging enough to furnish him with his reference. "He felt," said the presiding judge, "That he had let his guard down."
A circus parade, comprising two elephants, was stopped by the police in Bangor last week and reported to the Parades Commission, on the grounds that the organisers did not have the requisite documentation for conducting a parade.
As the recession bites, a Virginia lawyer, one Bob Battle considers the investment market: "If you had purchased $1,000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you would have $49 today. If you had purchased shares in AIG one year ago, you would have $33. If you had invested $1,000 on Lehman Brothers you would have zero. However, if you had bought $1,000 worth of beer one year ago, and had drunk it all, you could have got $214 from the recycling refund for turning in the aluminium cans.
A lady in Colorado has been awarded $15,000 compensation after she had been brought to court by neighbours who overheard her swearing at an over-flowing lavatory bowl near an open window in her own house. If convicted of disorderly behaviour she could have faced a jail sentence of 90 days.
The judge ruled that swearing is not illegal, and, as free speech, is protected by the Constitution.
From The Weakest Link (BBC 2)
Q: The Irish President elected in 1990 the first to visit a British monarch, was Mary who?
A: Mary Queen of Scots.
