The name is as unoriginal and intellectually banal as those who write its reports. I don’t know what language it belongs to. It’s like something from some thir-wotrld pidgin, used as a means of very basic communication betweenn cultures. though knowing the types who use it I think that languages like Tok Pisin or Police Motu would appear as the finest Athenian Greek in comparison.

I’m sorry but I’m a heterosexual male and the word snip makes me uneasy. So I  propose another name for the organisation. An Bord Vasectomy.

A lot of those associated with it have had that most effective of snip jobs, the gargle. Decades of imbing the old water of life have completely burned out their stomachs and livers while their bollocks are, to coin a phrase, bolloxed. They’d get heart attacks if they tried for erections now and if anything came out it would be a cocktail of piss and Milk of Magnesia.

Oh to be stupid in contemporary Ireland –but to be thick would be very heaven!

 Were I stupid I wouldn’t realise how much I am being fucked up on a daily basis.

 I would swallow unquestioningly all the crap I heard. I would believe that those with better jobs – or in my case any job – were inherently better than me, cleverer, more intelligent, more able all round.

 I would believe that those governing me did so always with my best interests at heart, and that even when they were forced to take tough decisions they did so motivated by my well-being. They were far cleverer than little me, and most of them had degrees, which is something to do with universities.

 I would also hold it as an article of faith (well because I’m stupid I wouldn’t know what an article of faith was) that those given the tasks of enforcing government policy carried out their tasks selflessly yet courteously in even the most trying conditions. In turn they were also much more intelligent (maybe a little cleverer than the politicians but they never let on), so that when they said that black was white I could not contradict them – which I wouldn’t do anyway because I probably wouldn’t know what contradict meant.  

 But because the good Lord above saw fit to give me average intelligence and understanding of the world around me I must wear a veritable crown of thorny unhappiness. For I can see too well that many of those with jobs are often much stupider, or they do stupid things, and are bound by equally stupid rules. What’s more they often owe their jobs to their relationships to local politicians or to their family’s membership of certain political parties.

 I see so well that those who govern me (as well as many of those who would like to govern me) are a pack of dissembling, dishonest liars, motivated by a desire to enrich themselves, their families and cronies; who every so often indulge in a perverse pantomime of seeking my vote so that they can continue their larceny. They count amongst their raks a fair share of drunkards and drug addicts, and they participate in a a system which,m both at national and especially local level is veal and corrupt.

 And I observe impotently that those who work for the government are a group of retards, with intellects the size of petits pois (and personalities to match), who are motivated by nothing except craven self-preservation and awesome disregard of their fellow men and women.

 The first president of Equatorial Guinea, Francisco Macias Nguema (about whom I have written elsewhere), once outlawed unhappiness in his country and made it a mandatory duty to be happy.

 If I were stupid I’d be happy and content. Come on swine ‘flu.

Last Saturday  a group of farmrs staged a protest demonstration in Cavan town against the restrictions that have been put in place on the REPS scheme. They had hoped to meet minister for agriculture Brendan Smith, but the minister – he no show up senor.

Brendan probably feared that he would have got a rough reception, but he’s been in politics long enough to deal with harsh words. What’s more I’m sure that no matter how angry the farmers were he could have brought his personality (which has seen him constantly elected in this constituency) to bear on the situation.

But his non-appearance smacked of cowardice. Surely he wasn’t afraid of a crowd of farmers (probably from the arse=hole of God-knows-where)? What could they have done to him – shower him with pig shit?

Such no-shows are I fear a part of government policy. The people may be revolting but ministers are being told to ignore the whingers.. When they appear they do so with the “people who matter”, in whose interest the economy is being driven and who will pull the nation out of its economic difficulties, and who will get richer in the attempt anyway and may give us a few bob in recompense while they’re at it.

I believe the demonstrators then hung the minister in efegy, but it wouldn’t have been accurate unless they had castrated the dummy first.

Foreign Minister Micheal Martin has said that, because Ireland’s minim minimum wage is the second highest in Europe, it must be examined, with a view to reducing into doubt.

 Now Martin is minister for foreign affairs, so why is he being allowed to comment on what is a domestic issue? Do we see Hillary Clinton commenting on President Obama’s health-care reforms?

 Martin should have noted, in his statistical comparisons, that Irish ministerial and prime ministerial wages are amongst the highest in the western world.

 The Irish hourly minimum wage would hardly extend to one of the hors d’oeuvres offered at banquets attended by minister Martin, and it wouldn’t go near to covering the price of the bottles of wine consumed there.

 But the minimum wage has long been a bugbear of the right, for example amongst small-town shopkeepers who regularly telephone the police to move on “black Romanian bastards” selling The Big Issue near their shops.

The Public Spending Paradox is a feature associated with an important part of the economies of western countries. Unfortunately, it tends to be overlooked by many economists whose models and understanding are based on clear, measurable ,numerical variables. The true extent of the Public Spending Paradox often relies on rather complex even “fuzzy” variables, which may not be easily measured. What’s more it also relies on that most troublesome form of data – anecdotal evidence.

Put simply, when a government announces say a ten per cent increase in a specific area such as health, the people in whose interest the increase has been made (the sick etc.) don’t see any real improvement in the service delivered.

Let’s stick with health spending. The UK government has announced various increases in spending, yet hospital patients are still plagued by a host of problems, from bed shortages and inadequate clinical cover to problems like misdiagnosis; regional health trusts still report deficits leading to ward closures. Now if the government were to announce a ten per cent cut in health spending the results would be far more immediate (and no less dramatic), with widespread hospital closures and withdrawal of services such as physiotherapy.

In other words an increase in spending leads to indifferent results and no very clear cut improvements for the sick, whereas a cut leads to immediate disimprovements and hardship for those relying on the health system.

What is true of health is also true of education and the social welfare and training sectors, and what is true of our sister isle is very much true in Ireland.

The reasons for this? Well these areas are part of the public service and are dominated by hierarchical systems and bureaucratic mindsets. Inflexibility is the order of the day. Rules and regulations are to be observed tout simple. There is just no point in questioning them.

An increase in spending is like pouring water on a sponge above the mouths of the very thirsty. Now some will eventually trickle through the sponge and into the thirsty peoples’ mouths, (who incidentally are tied to a chair, so if the water coming out of the sponge is insufficient they can’t raise their hands to administer a vigorous squeeze.) And let’s not forget a not inconsiderable amount of water stays trapped in the sponge.  On the other hand a ten-per-cent cut means that no water it poured on the sponge and the thirsty people can cry all they want but no water will come out of the sponge because none has gone in (well hardly any, except for “essential” salaries), and all things considered the best thing is possibly to shoot the poor bastards to put them out of their waterless misery, so long as the petty cash extends to the bullets. But remember, the sponge remains: it’s a vital part of the system.

So public sector cuts in areas like health, education or social welfare hurt – far, far more than any comparable increases. Anyone who denies it is a bit like the parsimonious dentist offering cut-price extractions and fillings because he’s saving on anaesthetic. “I promise you, you won’t feel a thing, and you know it’s for your own good so open wide…”

I have the greatest of regard for some economists, people like Mohammed Yunus (founder of the Grameen Bank) and Oxford’s Professor Paul Collier.

 Sadly the aficionados of the dismal science in Western Europe have been taken over by nasty ideological corner–boys, puppets of the likes of Hayek and Friedman. Many of these people have never read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations – otherwise they would know what a contradictory book it was, albeit one penned by a genial Scotsman who did not wish harm on his fellow men.

 The McCarthy report could be summed up in one word, but, because I’m anxious not to encourage bad language I’m reluctant to use any of them.

 It is a rather tired and predictable recipe based on Reagano-Thatcherite principles. It is unoriginal and unimaginative.

 It is also cowardly as its recommendations seem to rely for their effectiveness on the Public Spending Paradox. They attack unfairly the weakest in our society, the sick, the poor and the nation’s children – those who cannot be blamed for the economic morass in which the country stands and who never benefited during the years when the Celtic tiger was roaring. But of course attacking the poor and the vulnerable is music to the ears of some right-wing commentators.

 More than anything it is dishonest. First McCarthy speaks about the almost imperative need to cut spending in areas like health, education and social welfare. One would assume that spending in all these areas stood on a high plateau of government generosity. The fact of anyone with exposure to areas like health and education is that they have been suffering for years from cutbacks and indeed cannot endure any more.

 But the report’s greatest dishonesty is in its aims; to pull the country out of an economic quagmire and restore it to health. Nothing could be further from its goals, which are to entrench and consolidate the economic hierarchy of this country, while strengthening, deepening and widening the gaping inequalities in Irish society. Put in fewer words, it’s about making sure the rich stay rich and the poor get poorer. This is why the report has been taken up with such unashamed glee by the right. McCarthy has pressed all the right buttons, or more accurately he has pressed the right button – he wants to cut social welfare payments. Indeed, it is only because he is too afraid of antagonising the liberal lefties that he has not advocated the real solution: cutting social welfare payments altogether and forcing the work-shy to work while throwing the poor onto the good offices of groups like the St Vincent de Paul society.

 Income disparity is a fact of life, and within reason it’s not necessarily a bad thing. This is not the form of inequality I’m talking about. The worst form is the way many jobs are held by people who try to shield their incompetence behind some self-important title. These people, more often than not, owe their positions to family and political connections. Others who would be far better in the jobs are confined to the bottom rungs of the economy and society, frequently have no jobs and are denied an opportunity to make a worthwhile contribution to society.

 We all know about the “haves” and “have-nots”; contemporary Ireland is about the “always-haves” and the “never-haves”. Why is it that those lucky to be born near the apex of the economic pyramid can take hope for granted. They know that hard work will be rewarded and even mediocre effort is tolerated. For those who are disadvantaged, whether by economics or say by disability, labour as hard as they might, they will never break out of the bottom rungs, so the smarter ones just don’t bother.

 I hate always reverting to personalities but I cannot but say there is something seriously wrong with a society that allows a person with a doctorate, who has written nine books plus over a hundred articles, speaks a dozen languages, to languor at the bottom, dependant solely on a miserable blind pension which he expects to be cut still further.

 I want to finish by asking a question of a historic personality, Patrick Pearse. What the hell did you bother for?

During the height of the McCarthy era in the United States labour leader Walter Reuther is supposed to have said. “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it just maybe a duck.”

Here in Ireland we are living through our own McCarthy era, heralded by the appearance of Colm McCarthy’s cowardly,  dishonest and unoriginal report on the Irish economy.

(I would just like to paraphrase Reuther’s remark. “If it looks like a drunkard, talks like a drunkard … then it just maybe …”)

I know that not all economists can measure up to the oratorical panache of Ralf Dahrendorff or the engaging presence of the late John Kenneth Galbraith. But I find Colm McCarthy’s delivery repulsive. Had John Maynard Keynees ever met him he would have recolied in horror, while Milton Friedmanwould probably hvw called security.

He speaks with a  broad Dublin accent. Now after having lived for over twelve years in Dublin I came to like most Dublin accents, some of whic are very pleaswant, but he speaks las if he’s come up through a man-hole, in a slightly menacing monotone which is as unpleasant as one of John Gilligan’s enforcers. “”Ya can pay the fuckin’ money or say goodbye to your legs – it’s up to you.”

It goes without aying that I cannot listen to him. Podge and Rodge once described Sean Ban Breathnach’s singing as like a fellow tyring to cough up a piece of dog shit he’d swallowed for a bet. But with Colm McCarthy there’s no coughing up;  the dog shit flows out in an endless, rank-smelling torrent.

His delivery also  reminds me of a man who wakes up after spending the night on a park bench because his wife  barred his entry to the house  due to the drunken state in which he’d rerturned from the boozer. You just expect McCarthy to finish one of his nauseating rants about public spending cuts with the exclamation. “Oh Jaisus me fuckin’ head!”

A few weeks’ ago I made a humorous post to my blog entitled “Is Cavan County Museum worth a mass?” This spoof informed my readers that that supe-annuated white elephant in Ballyjamesduff was about to fall victim to the economic downturn. Anyone with a titter of wit could see that it was not to be taken seriously, but I obviously hit a nerve and there were not a few who believed it. So much so that the imminent closure of the museum featured on local radio and in the local press; the local authority was forced to issue a statement denying any intention to close it.

Pardon me for being a litte ego-centric but the Cavan Echo has recently dccided to discontinue my column “Echoes of the Past”. Many people both in Cavan and further afield enjoyed this, and I certainly enjoyed writing it, and  I am really touched by the messages of regret and support I have received. This is  not a joke. I am conscious however that this development, which I see as having a far more detrimental impact on historical studies in Cavan than the closure of the museum, has not produced anything like the outrage occasioned by my spoof.  No! I am not expecting people to ‘phone up Northetrn Sound or write letters of protest.  I do know that many of the museum’s biggest friends and defenders will be only too glad that I am no longer writing about history – that loud mouth badmouthing his betters and those whom God has placed abovce him could have no better luck - they are no doubt saying to themselves.

I feel I owe an explanation to my many readers for the non appearance of a piece by me in the Cavan Echo. It’s not my fault.

 Last Monday I got a message from the Belfast Media Group telling me that the Cavan Echo was switching to a 28 page format. As a result contributors including myself, Breifne O’Reilly and Stephen were being given “a holiday”, and that contributions weren’t being sought from us until “the end of summer” – whenver that is. As the frogs say On verra bien.

 I’m not holding my breath that my “Ecfhoes of the Past” will resume anytime soon, and I’m highly doubtful it would be in the Cavan Echo.

 This will cause many people disappointment. I think it was apparent that I really loved writing my pieces, andf this was enhanced by the feedback I got.

 I pray that I may be given an opportunity to continue publishing my scribblings some time soon.

PS. I may be a rat but I stayed with the ship until the end.

cavangenealogy@eircom.net