Oh hey, you know, the Recession in the EU?....over. Austerity in the .... oh yeah.. peripheral, the peripheral countries....um.. not so much. The Taoiseach he is adopting a you know CAUTIOUS Approach, he has like International Markets and all to reassure. BUT, you know, Consumer Confidence has improved, there's a um like Slight Increase in GDP AND the actual European Central Bank has allowed they won't be hiking interest rates for an entire year or so. Oh and also, for the Coming Budget the government is thinking really hard about Not Cutting Again Deeper OR Investing in Jobs ... either/or. For the people. And....so... our cup is full, the wheel has turned, the cavalry has arrived. And...and... with one bound, our hero politicians jump free!" "What? what?"My husband is abstracted this evening. A problem with slugs in his tomatoes. But I persist. I have questions for the elected ones, on the six o'clock radio news.
The thing is folks, you're late. Your shrinking qualified recovery is late, way late for some lost souls. Take a look at our thrashed economy, our crumbling infrastructure, our emptied country. Just this once, open up your eyes and look. Before you carry on up the recovery.
See those blind and vacant shop fronts lining every street in Ireland, see the hunch-shouldered shabby folk standing in the weather, in the slowmoving snaking queues feeding in through the peeling door of the social welfare office. Flick a sideways glance at quiet barely populated restaurants, desultory solitaries in pubs. See the threadbare look on cars, buildings, the people. Hear the silence, the hush of absence of those already gone, and those others who have exited on the end of a rope or other desperate means, overwhelmed by debt, ruin, disappointment.
Still looking? See the others who stay to struggle with depleted social supports, to care for the sick, the incapacitated, the disabled. Those ones who could not leave. Watch the young loiter useless and redundant on the streets, only the web welcomes them, our Education System being slowly dismantled, stripped back to a preserve for an elite again. That's Our Health system over there, tossed after Education, deconstructed, taken incrementally, assisted by the people's reluctant pained surrender of exorbitant insurance cover. I SAID ARE YOU STILL LOOKING..
Enda Kenny's party animals. Yeah they acquired the roof over their heads, cars to get about in, vitamin D boosting holiday sun, a second house even for a pension fund. How they aspired. The authors surely of their own misfortune. Now how they rue the day, and how they revert to the proper level of want, reclaim the historic birthright. Only forty years after all since the austere eighties. They can tap in to living memory can't they.They can learn to be poor again can't they?
And now go back to your recovery safe in the knowledge that, although so much has been dismantled, the political classes and an old old system has preserved itself, has managed even through the long recession to pay you and your buddies way above European, American standards even. Close your eyes and smile. Go on! You know you know the cavalry comes for you.
"The thing is these are not regular worms baby, you gotta see 'em, they are monsters, they have teeth! Know what I mean? Snarly teeth! Tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers; gone, gone and gone! And the thing is Angel Face YOU CAN"T SEE THEM IN THE LIGHT! You only see 'em in the blackest night They take the colour of the plant they're feeding off. I mean your mother's garlic and lemon in water remedy isn't in the ball park here honey. Know what I mean?" "Yep, yes, do, know exactly" and I pass the dear abstracted one a cup of strong sweet tea.
Later on we fail to find the Perseids in an unyieldingly clouded night sky. He and his sister came here in a shower of shooting stars and now it is his birthday, she having returned to the stuff they came from many many star showers ago.
The thing is folks, you're late. Your shrinking qualified recovery is late, way late for some lost souls. Take a look at our thrashed economy, our crumbling infrastructure, our emptied country. Just this once, open up your eyes and look. Before you carry on up the recovery.
See those blind and vacant shop fronts lining every street in Ireland, see the hunch-shouldered shabby folk standing in the weather, in the slowmoving snaking queues feeding in through the peeling door of the social welfare office. Flick a sideways glance at quiet barely populated restaurants, desultory solitaries in pubs. See the threadbare look on cars, buildings, the people. Hear the silence, the hush of absence of those already gone, and those others who have exited on the end of a rope or other desperate means, overwhelmed by debt, ruin, disappointment.
Still looking? See the others who stay to struggle with depleted social supports, to care for the sick, the incapacitated, the disabled. Those ones who could not leave. Watch the young loiter useless and redundant on the streets, only the web welcomes them, our Education System being slowly dismantled, stripped back to a preserve for an elite again. That's Our Health system over there, tossed after Education, deconstructed, taken incrementally, assisted by the people's reluctant pained surrender of exorbitant insurance cover. I SAID ARE YOU STILL LOOKING..
Enda Kenny's party animals. Yeah they acquired the roof over their heads, cars to get about in, vitamin D boosting holiday sun, a second house even for a pension fund. How they aspired. The authors surely of their own misfortune. Now how they rue the day, and how they revert to the proper level of want, reclaim the historic birthright. Only forty years after all since the austere eighties. They can tap in to living memory can't they.They can learn to be poor again can't they?
And now go back to your recovery safe in the knowledge that, although so much has been dismantled, the political classes and an old old system has preserved itself, has managed even through the long recession to pay you and your buddies way above European, American standards even. Close your eyes and smile. Go on! You know you know the cavalry comes for you.
"The thing is these are not regular worms baby, you gotta see 'em, they are monsters, they have teeth! Know what I mean? Snarly teeth! Tomatoes, lettuce, cucumbers; gone, gone and gone! And the thing is Angel Face YOU CAN"T SEE THEM IN THE LIGHT! You only see 'em in the blackest night They take the colour of the plant they're feeding off. I mean your mother's garlic and lemon in water remedy isn't in the ball park here honey. Know what I mean?" "Yep, yes, do, know exactly" and I pass the dear abstracted one a cup of strong sweet tea.
Later on we fail to find the Perseids in an unyieldingly clouded night sky. He and his sister came here in a shower of shooting stars and now it is his birthday, she having returned to the stuff they came from many many star showers ago.
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