Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

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!”