Disgruntled Nation

It has been almost a year since my last confession father, and these are my sins.
Can you forgive me? Can you forgive me for not updating in so long? Surly not. Surly I am damned to carry my shame with me, alone, for letting ye all down in such a dire time of need. Yet I have excuses, and excuses aplenty. Do ye want to hear them? Do ye have much of a choice?
I was shocked to awake one morning in the back of a car. I often awake in the back of a car but this was the first time that I was sober. I was taken to a large grey building with a big kind of a round table thing, Shane Ross was there, gas man, and asked a lot of questions about things I didn’t understand or was too sober to understand at the time. I was put in a room with 15 crates of Paddy, a Biro and a half ton of photocopying paper. Look, there was a lot of drink involved so I’m not completely sure what was going on. All I know is that at the end of it, when I was let out, I was three stone lighter and was made sign a document stating I did not develop the Bank Guarantee Scheme. Truly, I don’t know if I did or didn’t. The whole thing was a rather strange affair but not totally un-enjoyable.
I was then asked if I would help with the countries unemployment problem. I said I didn’t know who was doing the asking but that I would. I was shocked to awake in Poland. I don’t often awake in Poland, sober or otherwise. While it was one less dole check to pay I wonder how much the government lost in VAT from booze.
I spent 2 months in Poland working with a company building Irish pubs for the returning Poles who couldn’t settle back in to their native land. A rehabilitation centre was build outside Warsaw which I worked on as well; the spit of O’Connell Street it is except they only put up half a spire and their replica of the GPO has steps. All the doctors wear green high-viz jackets with “GARDA” written across the back of them and they got an old tram and painted “LUAS” across the sides of it. The place had about 5,000 patients living in it by the end of its first week, lads mainly for whom the strain of living without the smell of the Liffy was driving mad. They have a machine for that; I would have stayed working there longer only I saw one day what they put into the machine to replicate the smell.
From here I had three options. East to Russia and the promise of drink, south to Africa and the promise of God only knows what, or west to Ireland and the promise of enough dole money to buy hairy bacon and Bovril. I headed for Russia, took a wrong turn and ended up heading South-West, passing through Italy and not knowing the difference until I hit water. “That’s not meant to be there, says I” said I. It was then I realised I had a forth option originally, head North, but blast it it was too in the evening by then.
I swam the Italian Channel, or whatever a man would call it, and ended up in Libya. On finding out I was Irish I got a fierce reception but was told for some reason that they had no guns. I told them that was fine, I had no interest in such things and that it was work I was looking for. At this stage I was thrown out of the country. I headed for Chad and tried joining up with the Irish Army but of course I wasn’t even aloud inside the gates so I joined the Janjaweed. I didn’t so much as join them as find a gun somewhere, cover myself up well and follow them around for about two weeks. Them boys gets awful bad press but in fairness now it’s not all deserved; most of it was my fault.
What was killing me at this stage was the lack of porter. I’d turned a quare shade of green and was told by a doctor that I would die if I didn’t get some porter into me. Heading south again on a dunky I made it as far as South Africa and managed to get work in a gold mine. It was tough work but paid well; the crew I was on found a new gold vain and we managed to set up our own company with the money we got from it. We hit rich on our own; we had this Frenchman with us and no matter where he put the pick there was gold. I was personally worth about €4 Million when he got killed; a pane of glass fell out of one of the upper windows of the office when he was coming in the door. It was an Irish Construction company and all.
My fortune began to whittle away as we turned up one dead end after another. I was forced to sell both jets I’d bought and after a while sold all my stock in the company to an Arab for a bottle of brandy and three packs of fags, rotten things they were. They hit more gold 4 days later. As for me, I was driven to teaching what little Irish I knew to Africans and there was a fierce demand in it for a while.
Then one morning less then a week ago I was shocked to awake in an airplane. I don’t often awake in airplanes; I usually sleep through the whole thing. We landed in Dublin and I was taken back to the grey building I mentioned earlier. Shane Ross was still there, I don’t think the basterd every goes home, probably doesn’t have one to go to. I was informed that I would start work as an adviser to the Minister for Industry on Monday. It’s going well so far, being paid in fags with the odd bottle of Jameson thrown in. That tacks a bit too strong even for me though.
So that’s my excuse, all of it true and most of it fictional. From the Ivory Tower now put at my disposal I can survey the surroundings and report to you with vile and anger and just a little intoxication.

Disgruntled Nation Lives!

Yes, it’s the newest dance craze and they’re all doing it. France wants Ireland to run a second referendum on Lisbon but won’t let its own people have even one. The Lisbon No side want every EU nation to be allowed a referendum but doesn’t want a second one for Ireland. Sarkozy has said that Ireland will not be allowed to make amendments to the Treaty of Lisbon and it’s not right that Ireland should be allowed to hold the other EU nations at ransom. Yet now he’s threatening to ‘torpedo’ the WTO talks unless major amendments are made and if he isn’t gotten on side HE will hold the talks at ransom and they’ll collapse within the next 24 hours.
The EU shuffle is a nice little 3-step and anyone can try it. You simply pick a spot on the dance floor, take one step forward, turn around 180 degrees and then take another step forward. You can repeat the last two motions until the DJ stops playing Ode To Joy.
Some times it’s practical, like the No sides refusal for a second referendum. While the shouts of ‘Respect Democracy’ ring loud, you can just about make out the strains of fear and the memories of Nice II are never far away, from either the Yes or the No sides minds.
Ireland is becoming very good friends with two words these days. ‘Crises’ and ‘Recession’, both bringing joy and mirth to our lives at pretty much the same time. But even with the medias pathetic attempts to cover up the losses in the National Pension Reserve Fund by saying a 12% drop isn’t bad compared to other pensions it was ‘Crises’ that jumped up in today’s news.
‘What have we done now?’ You may ask. For we’re the crises makers. By rejecting the Lisbon Treaty we have near completely destroyed Europe’s ability to negotiate trade, reduce carbon emissions or regulate justice policies. Because of the Irish thousands of people in the developing worlds are suffering from lack of EU aid and Polar Bears are being forced to retire and become Grizzlies. But no, this time around it was Sarkozy who was causing trouble.
Like I said, many told us that Irelands No vote meant Europe would not be able to negotiate foreign trade policies along with a lot of other hocus. But Europe seemed to be doing fairly well today, No or no No, at the World Trade Organisation talks in Geneva which King Sarko is threatening to scupper, throwing the talks into ‘crises’. So we’re not the only trouble makers around.
Europe didn’t explode. Italy didn’t sink, Portugal didn’t say ‘F**k you all’ and swim off to join South America and Germany didn’t erupt in flames. The No vote wasn’t the end of the world. And maybe Sarkos No vote on the WTO talks won’t be the end of the world, just the start of more talks which will get a better deal for all involved.
But hopefully this won’t turn into a situation where if something is put to the Irish and they reject it they are in the wrong but if something is put to the French, indeed if its just put to Sarko and he doesn’t like it, well they have full power to re-negotiate. ‘They’re two completely different things!’ you may say, the Lisbon Treaty and the WTO talks. And you’re right. A No on forcing poor oul’ Charlie to retire his comfy Commissioners job and a No on opening avenues of trade for Europe at a time of dire economic need are two very different things.

With a fishing boat.

RTÉ reports that a fishing vessel and the LÉ Emer naval vessel were “engaged in a confrontation“ off the cost of Co. Wexford earlier today. And by all accounts the fishing vessel won.
Said vessel, the Emer Jane, was boarded by navel personal who have nothing better to do then count fish and was ordered to proceed to Dunmore East to be detained on account of ‘fishing for scallops without a licence.’ What exactly is a scallop? Anyway, Emer Janes skipper refused and said that the vessel would proceed to his homeport of Kilmore Quay where the navy could arrest him if it so wished.
The skipper has even gone so far as the claim that the LÉ Emer threatened to fire on the fishing vessel which the navy ‘strongly denies’. And I fully belive them. Other then canned food or maybe a fork, I can’t imagine the vessel had anything which it could fire.
The Emer Jane has began its track back to Kilmore, its two boxes of war booty scallops proudly displayed on deck. It catches the scallops as a by-catch and while the skipper has said he didn’t know there was anything illegal about keeping them he can’t have been serious. Over 200 fishermen protested at Brian Blubbers kissing of the King of France Nicolas Sarkozy over restrictions which are seriously hampering their ability to make a living, such as forcing them to dump any by-catch overboard.
Cowed, with its nautical tail between its metaphorical legs, the LÉ Emer is just sitting there, watching them sail away off, powerless to do anything other then shout ‘We’re going to tell the Guards!’
Is that Gilbert and Sullivan or The Village People I hear in the background?.

The Lisbon No side has a new champion. A man who’s every action, every word, is solidifying the cause in the minds of its veterans and bringing fresh new blood to the banner. No, I’m not talking about Ben Dunne. I’m talking about Nicolas Sarkozy.

After the failed Yes campaign the Government was silent as to whether a rerun would be ran but now Brian Blubber and the opposition leaders have had to come out and firmly tell Sarkozy that another referendum would be counter-productive. Or he might just tell him to f**k off.

A protester was arrested for throwing two eggs at his car as he approached Government Buildings today, passing by the protest of over 200 fishermen. It wasn’t all bad though as the IFA got a few Massy Fergussons and painted them in the French colours to show their support. What a droll spectacle it must have been for him. Back home they would have supported him with tanks rolling down the Camps on the Lee-cee, the fishermen would have protested by demanding local supermarkets to stop stocking fish and instead of eggs disgruntled activists would have tried to shoot at him, like in the good ol’ days of Jack The Rack.

With all the talking done early last week, or with all that could be said thrown out the window early last week, Sarkozy’s visit seems to be one of the most uninteresting affairs ever to grace our shore. When, I ask you, was the last time so little attention was paid to the visiting head of a foreign state? Lands, eggs, cúpla focal Français, hand shakes all round and snails in Paris. And Biffo after bringing out his best ironed suit and all for the occasion.

Ah to be woken in the morning by the melodic tones of Ssam Ssmith on the Sunday Morning Business Thing on Today FM. As you can tell I am not an early riser. Indeed the show was half over before I woke up.
Smith was discussing the apparent upcoming literary contribution by the De-crowned King of Ireland Bertie Ahern. In studio with him he had Brian Hayes of Fine Gael and some random Fianna Fail Councillor who’s name I didn’t catch, traumatically telling Smith not to talk about her defeat in the General Elections and declaring repetitively that she wasn’t an economist (and by God she wasn’t!) when trying to defend FF’s recent cutpausehalts. ‘I’m not an economist but I do have a basic understanding of accountancy’ she announced at one stage. I think that makes her overqualified for the position of Minister for Finance.
While various plays on P.S. I love you (P.S. I owe you, P.S. I robbed you) were offered nothing yet is known of Aherns proposed autobiography. Surely inside the cover we will find a slight extension of Oliver St. James Gogarty’s foreword to ‘As I Was Going Down Sackville Street’:
The names in this book are real, the characters and events fictitious.
Not a word of it has been written but already Smith is getting ahead of himself and elevating Ahern to the pantheon of Irish Arts. Hayes was of the opinion that former Taoisigh should be put to further use after their retirement and should be made non-voting members of the Seanad. The prospect of wheeling Garret Fitz. in with his trousers hoisted up to his shoulders where he has now decided to wear them and discussing the future of the Irish economy with Albert Reynolds and Charlie Haugheys freshly exhumed coffin give me little hope for the future. The cost alone of brining de Valera out of cryogenic freezing should be enough to scupper the idea. And perhaps Sam was of a similar mind to me. His first suggestion was the Council of State. Suggestion may be too strong a word. He just started throwing organisations at Hayes who replied that the Council was really just a joint meeting of the two houses of the Oireachtas and seldom convened. With Hayes not even having finished his sentence Smith had another suggestion:
Aosdana.
For those who don’t know Aosdana was set up in 1981 by the Arts Council and has only 250 members at a time. The organisation looks to honour Irish people within the arts…I think…in all truth I have no idea what it does. But at any one time no more then 7 living members may hold the title ‘Saoi’, which is its highest honour and is conferred on them by the President of Ireland. It doesn’t really mean anything but you get a stick, probably to beat stupid people with. People who have or do still hold the title of Saoi have included Samuel Beckett, Louis le Brocquy, Sean O’Faolain, Francis Stuart, Seamus Heaney, Anthony Cronin and Brian Friel. Ahern would want to write the next flipping Ulysses to be included in a group with people like that. Hayes remarked with a simple if not exasperated ’no’ when Aherns membership was suggested. Perhaps a position on the Nobel Prize Committee Sam?
There are only 2 reasons I can think of that a person writes a book for. Either they have belive they have something worthwhile to say or their desperate for money. I tried writing a book once. It was for reason the latter.
It’s a well known fact that Bertie has never had anything worthwhile to say. Willie Kealy has a lovely article on page 6 of today’s Sunday Independent entitled ‘Bertie’s pension hit by pay hike freeze‘.
Yes, after the horror of dropping from €271,822 as Taoiseach to a measly €97,747 as a back bencher we now expect Bertie to get by on an annual pension of just €207, 584. This would have gone up by €22,800 had Brian Blubber not put on hold the pay hike which would have added €38,178 to his own pay as Taoiseach. Bertie has so far gotten a once off of €130,567 when he handed over the hot potato…sorry, reigns of power to Brian Blubber and will get another once off of €146,620 on his permanent and much awaited retirement from politics AND has had an office done up for his use at the cost of €250k. Oh ya, he also gets a free mobile phone for life.
With money that tight no wonder he’s trying to scrap together a few pennies to stay alive. Maybe I was a bit too harsh. Admittance to Aosdana would bring his cash strapped pockets another 14k a year. Good thinking Sam.
But there is some good news on the horizon. It looks like the current tribunal has cost about €1bn, twice what the Minister for Finance was trying to cut this year. Letters have been sent, party members urged to use their influence with the officials involved. Conclusion or not, it looks like an attempt might be made shortly to bring the tribunal to an end.
So is that the state of affairs we find ourselves in now? Where officials, guilty or not, can not be investigated for corruption because it’s too expensive? Just another reason to be disgruntled in this fair nation of ours.

DisgruntledNation.com will have Bertie Aherns forthcoming autobiography available for pre-order. Please send a self addressed envelope and payment of 4 shillings to the editor to avail of this offer.

I have yet to get my hands on one of the day’s periodicals but I’m sure it will do nothing more then franticly assure me the state is going bankrupt while a selection of nicely compiled graphs will show the continued freefall in value of my AIB shares. This week the government announced a series of ’cost-saving measures’ which amounted to no more then cutting foreign aid and postponing projects. Fianna Fail in living standards Frankenbrian, Minister for Financial Collapse, came out and told us that he would be looking at ways in which departments could amalgamate or get rid of sections within departments to save money. This means that for the past few years departments have operated with sections that a) do nothing and b) do the same thing as some other section. John Gormley put an optimistic spin on things when he announced that the vote rigging machines purchased some years earlier are only costing us €500k to store per year now, down from €750k. Wow, that’s something to be proud of. Ah, but what little point is there of talking about the money that’s gone? It’s gone and we have to move forward. The government has only announced cuts, no mention so far of how it’s going to resurrect the economy. Surly their not expecting a resurgence in the housing industry? What we need now is to come up with new ways of financing the states coffins…sorry, coffers.
Aside from selling the vote rigging machines to our good friend Robert Mugabe, I’d say he’d be able to find use for them, we could follow the route of Poland and the Czech Republic by signing up for the American proposal and allow them to build an anti-missile shield in O’Connell St. where the Spire is. I’ve never liked that thing. Other then the money we’d recoup by knocking it and selling it to the Chinese for scrap it reminds me too much of one of the earlier chapters of that shite ‘The Da Vinci Code‘. Our man Robert Langdon has been picked up by the French Gardai and are flying away of the place with the pictures when they pass the Eifel Tower. The Garda (they have Gardai in France don’t they?) asks our man what he thinks of the Tower and he goes off into his head thinking about how the big tall monster of a yoke is a symbol of ‘French manhood‘. I trust I speak for many of my fellow fellows when I say that that thin, lanky, scrawny thing with a light bulb on top of it in the nations capital is a poor reflection of Irish manhood.
Anyway, like I was saying, we knock the God damn thing and stick up the 10 or so interceptor missiles that are being offered to Poland and the Czech Republic. At the moment a deal hasn’t been signed by Poland and the US as Poland is looking for more money to revamp it’s army and air force, more then the US is willing to part with. Today’s Tehran Times however says the Prime Minister has managed to get the Presidents support for the venture and if Ireland doesn’t want to miss out we’ll have to move fast.
I can hear you drawing in breath and I advise you not to waste your time. The Americans are carrying out rendition flights through Shannon airport. Neutrality went out the door years ago and just because we can’t see that happening but we’ll be able to see the missile shield makes no difference.
As well as the money that we’ll get there’ll be added benefits. A certain pazazz will be added to future 1916 parades as the dignitaries look out from the shadows of the GPO onto the Defence Forces marching past 10 missiles. And of course should some country like Iran have, which is unlikely, an intercontinental ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead we can shot it down over Britain, evening out all that ‘800 years’ stuff with about 12,000 years of nuclear fallout.
Now if you excuse me I’m going to go pen a letter to the government putting forward my brilliant plan.

That’s madness! We need to be backing up the regime! Further sanctions will only do more damage to the counties economy and with ours the way it is we can’t afford to lose the €578m that we’ve invested there.

What’s that? You didn’t know we were propping up corrupt human rights abusing semi dictatorships?

‘Propping up’ might be going a bit too far, but it seems that the National Pensions Reserve Fund has invested 3% of said reserve funds €20bn into companies operating within Zimbabwe. The NPRF has rejected this claim saying that “its investments included shares in multinational companies with a presence in Zimbabwe, such as Barclays, BP and Nestlé. But the fund said it was wrong to treat its investment in such companies as having been entirely invested in Zimbabwe“ according to RTÉ. And that’s perfectly true. Companies like Barclays operate in many different countries and it would be silly to withdraw investment from them, as Advocacy is suggesting, just because they also have a branch in Zimbabwe. But they’re only 3 of the 14 companies mentioned and for some reason I don’t think Anglo American Corporation Zimbabwe ltd qualifies under the same criteria. The company is preparing to invest €250m into a platinum mine in the region, €6.5m of which has been provided by our good selves as reported in The Tribune. BAE Systems, a British weapons manufacturer received €14.5m from the NPRF. As well as providing fighter jet parts to Zimbabwe it has been investigated by the Serious Fraud Office in its home country and is indirectly engaged in the production of nuclear weapons for France and is the only manufacturer of nuclear submarines for the UK.

And those smart investments are surly to have attributed, in their own small but meaningful way, to the 10% drop in the value of the pensions fund at the end of the first quarter of this year. The government of Zimbabwe’s insistence that the rate of inflation in the country is at ’only’ 150,000% has been greeted as ’optimistic’ with many claiming the official figure could be 1,000,000%.

Surely a free and democratic government in Zimbabwe would have little use for fighter jet parts. They’d look for investment in stupid things like health care and agriculture, the types of companies we don’t have money in. So if we’re going to protect our investment we should back Russia in calling for a halt to sanctions and maybe even send in the Irish Defence Forces to help out. It’s our pension fund we’ll be defending!

As the hunt for Mrs. Tayto, to share in his trials and tribulations, continues Mr. Tayto can’t stop to pick a prospective match. Instead he’s jetting off to save the Irish economy and setting up shop in the I’m-Making-Up-My-Own-Brand-Of-Islamic-Communism Republic of Libya.

In May Largo, the company that produces Tayto crisps, announced that it was establishing a small manufacturing site in the North African country so as to avoid the 25c tariff on crisp imports.

But while Libya had been hit by trade sanctions for decades until recent years this isn’t the first trade that’s occurred between our two nations. During the early 70s and late 80s the IRA shipped hundreds of tons of weapons from the country and even had its own embassy there. Former IRA and Sinn Fein luminary Joe Cahill was arrested on board the Claudia in 1973 which contained over 500 rifles, anti-tank mines and the IRAs favourite, Semtex. In the 1980s they became a bit more creative with their requests and began shipping Rocket propelled grenades, Surface to Air missiles and even American military flamethrowers for the campaign in the North. While 120 tons of weapons were captured by Irish and French authorities in 1987 with the interception of the Eksund, Ed Moloney in his book Secret History of the IRA claims this only made up 1/3 of what had been sent in the late 80s.

The IRA and Colonel Gadafy would fall out shortly afterwards and bring to an end a chapter in Irish trade closed until now when Ireland finally upholds its end of the “Guns-for-Crisps” plan. And who knows but Mr. Tayto might even find true love under the sultry Libyan sun.

There’s more political thought, theory and opinion in Ireland then there is rain and to compound the problem even further DisgruntledNation.com arises to answer the call of this most disgruntled of disgruntled nations for yet more political, social and psychiatric mishmash and blather. As the nation sinks ever further into the depths of economic recession and as it grows wearier by the day with the overfed and undereducated morons we’ve appointed to public office in our less sober moments, DisgruntledNation.com will be there to record it all for the present and further generations. So sit back, read on and watch the collapse of the country unfold before you.