All Politics is Corrupt

It's a bit scary. It's very sad.
But it is, unfortunately, a fact.
ALL politics is corrupt.
It has to be.
That's how they get elected.
Now, saying that all politics is corrupt, doesn't mean that all politicians are bad people, are immoral people.
Many of them firmly believe that the things they say and do are justified because they firmly believe they are the best people to do good for the masses.
But it rarely turns out so.

Is there a country on earth, for example, where politicians are paid a sum even vaguely close to the average wage in that country?
Is there a country on earth where politicians aren't chauffeured about the place like royalty?
Is there a country on earth where politicians don't look after themselves in relation to pay, expenses, perks, comfort and the trappings of their offices?
No. Not as far as I can tell.
Politicians promise what they know they can't deliver on the basis that a) everyone does it b )nobody expects delivery and c) sure that's how you get elected.
In power, they make decisions which are a)wrong but popular because it helps the re-election campaign - which begins the minute the last election is over.
In power, they cosy up to business because good business is good for the country. It's also good for forking out vast sums to political parties and brown envelopes to the most unscrupulous of the politicians.
And in power they attempt to do things they are utterly incapable of achieving and utterly unqualified to undertake.
The result is what we have now. Politicians worried about their economies - but as worried if not more worried about their own futures, worried about offending banks, worried about offending business.
Their world is a closed one, one in which nobody is more important than they, where nobody matters more than they.
One in which banks with bosses earning vast, unimaginable (for most) immoral sums are bailed out and the little man pays the price.
Who bails out those who were given loans irresponsibly by greedy banks? Nobody.
Why? Well, for the same reason nobody bails out the autistic, the elderly, the mentally ill, the drug addict, the homeless, the drink.
No votes in it,
So the corruption goes on.
And there's not a blessed thing, bar a revolution which isn't a good idea at all, than anyone can do about it.
Except maybe pray.

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NO. THESE ARE NOT APOCRYPHAL QUESTIONS

Where did it all go? Who has it? Where are they living? Where is it all stashed?
And how did they get away with it?
I'm talking about the money.
(May I just interrupt my self here for a second? Firstly, I'm still not dead. Just still recovering from a Bone Marrow Transplant and up to now most days, frankly, I hadn't the energy even to blog. But some things make the blood boil. Like this economic collapse. And boiling blood isn't good for those who have had Bone Marrow Transplants.

Secondly, I made a mistake on that blog below, the one that just says no Who Is Disabled? and nothing else. I can't get rid of it. I crash when I try. So I'll get off to the help centre when I'm finished with the economic situation.)
There is no doubt whatsoever that billions, trillions, zillions of euro, dollars, pounds, yen - whatever- were generated in recent decades.
Mostly, it was generated doing good things like building homes for people, providing infrastructure where it was needed and helping to improve those countries whose lot it is to be the poorest on earth.
Sometimes, it was generated by doing bad things, like invading other people's countries, wrecking them and then giving your mates billions of dollars to build them back up again.
And of course, propping up nasty but friendly regimes.
But now, the money appears to be gone. Vanished into thin air. Nobody knows where it is.
The banks are going down for billions, and nobody, in the banks or anywhere else, seems to have the faintest foggiest notion as to what to do next.
So it's governments - people that is - who have to cough up. We in Ireland are guaranteeing banks for €400 bn and climbing. The US has stumped up $700 bn and climbing. Britain has forked out hundreds of millions, Greece the same, The Dutch, Belgian and Luxembourg governments have had to dig deep too.
And what's in those deep pockets? Our money, that's what.
But wasn't it our money that was in the banks? Got it in one.
The banks took our money, used it, stuffed the profits in their pockets, went bust and now it's back to our pockets again to bail them out.
I mean, if it wasn't so damned sad, so damned hard for those who will suffer most (see above: those countries whose lot it is to be the poorest on earth) and so damned immoral it would be be funny.
Suckered.
We've been suckered by a few people - and in the context of the world's population it is VERY few people - who have played with our money, our families, our jobs, our countries, and made off with the lot.
And just to make sure, that a few years down the road it can all happen again, we're bailing them out.
Who will go to jail? (Not apocryphal)
Who will be punished? (Not apocryphal)
Who will have their ill-gotten gains removed from them? (Not apocryphal)
You know, we thought our world was run by sometimes inept, sometimes corrupt, sometimes immoral, sometimes greedy, sometimes plain stupid politicians.
But we were wrong.
It is and has been run by always inept, always corrupt, always immoral, always greedy but never, ever plain stupid bankers, hedge fund managers and economic whizz kids who profit from the doom for which they have long been harbingers.
God help us.

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Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) IV

YOU might get out on Monday, they said.
But I’m something of an old hand at this now.
And so I never believe the first date I’m given for my departure from hospital.
I reckoned on Tuesday.
But of course, I should have known.
My Tuesday is their Wednesday or Thursday.
It’s the way it is with doctors.
It’s like my nine o’clock in the morning is their midday.
It’s the way of things. Time is more or less meaningless for doctors. If it wasn’t, so busy are they in our over-administered health service, they’d go mad.
So I’m still in my hospital bed, and still on page 84 of The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I’m enjoying it. But I keep falling asleep every time I try to read any more of it.
It must be the drugs.
Sodium benzoate, sodium bisulphate, ascorbic acid - and that’s just the Lucozade.
Fortunately, my lunch today was not served by the lady who informed me as she placed yesterday’s offering in front of me, that she ‘felt dreadful.’
Today it was the lady who had the good grace to put my lunch in front of me before she turned to leave the room, coughing and sneezing.
Believe me, suggesting that we divert money into providing sterile pods for the sick, for at least the really sick, is not an idea borne from the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs.
Talking of which, isn’t it a really brave move by Ireland’s pharmacists to pick on heroin addicts in order to advance their campaign for more money.
Yes, I know they work hard. But so too do those who have dedicated their lives to helping our unfortunate addicts who have now been abandoned by pharmacists not noted for their moderation when it comes to pricing their products.
“We were left with no alternative,” the pharmacists said. Apart from being utter tosh, that’s just a lie.
No alternatives? Why don’t they go on hunger strike or something that might actually test whether or not they have any support from their customers, addicted or otherwise?
My bet is they wouldn’t be thrown a single pea, let alone a sandwich.
Dammit, hospital leaves too much time for thinking.
Right now, I’m thinking how Ireland really could have won this rugby world cup were it not for all the things that are wrong in the camp and with Irish rugby in general - like the fact that very few people are playing it anymore and that it is still, in the main, a middle class game which is fiercely protected from invasion by, well, the middle classes who run it.
I’m thinking how our government has become utterly corrupt, generating sinecures for its supporters at public expense.’
I’m thinking how we have a health service run by people who think it’s ok to shut down front line services while they still have highly paid people in charge of the purchase of staple clips. Let’s see the administrative jobs going, boys.
I’m thinking how those who run our national airline have managed to turn it from a much loved institution to an organisation which is tolerated by some and loathed by others by loved by none.
I’m thinking how the entire Celtic Tiger business was, in the heel of the hunt, the greatest exercise in spin ever foisted on a population, a hoodwinking more successful even than that attempted by Blair and Bush in relation to Iraq.
We know know, there were not Weapons of Mass Destruction.
And we know now that there was no great wealth in the Celtic Tiger.
If there was, why do we still have poor?|
Why do we still have homeless?
Why do we still have some dirty hospitals?|
Why is our healthcare system - brilliant when you’re in it - so badly run?
Why are so many of our ‘minor’ roads (they’re major for the people who have to use them every day) so lousy?
Why don’t we have enough schools?
Why don’t we have enough gardai?
Why are we selling so many of our assets?
Why are we selling the tolling of so many of our roads to private enterprise?
Why do we need Public Private Partnerships in the first place, if we’re so rich?
Because we’re not.
Only politicians, with their 22 pay rises and their sinecures are.
And, it seems, only those of us with time to think. realise it.

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Pride turns to shame

IT is increasingly difficult to be proud of Ireland, proud to be Irish.
Like most of my countrymen, I am patriotic if not nationalistic. And, when I travel abroad in particular, I like to tell people what a wonderful country this is.
No more.
Even when Ireland was poor, there were many reasons to be proud.
During the 1980s, when the country and its people were on their knees, we were proud.
(Of course, we didn’t know then, that our Prime Minister, Charles Haughey, was as corrupt as it is possible to be and that he would leave a legacy of corruption.)
We enjoyed Barry McGuigan winning his world boxing title, the success of Stephen Roche and Sean Kelly in the cycling world, the relative success of our rugby and soccer players. We loved Johnny Logan winning Eurovision, the embryonic careers of the boys in U2, Phil Lynott’s rocking hits and so on.

Now, our sports men and women are as successful as ever. Our rugby players had a fantastic season, things are looking up for our soccer players, our athletes are winning medals - even our cricketers are doing well.
U2 is still the biggest band in the world. But now we can add wonderful talents like Republic of Loose, Fionn Regan, Damien Rice and so many others.
Our actors are on the world stage. Our Irish dancers are earning millions all over the world. Our artists are sought after.
So much to be proud of.
But...
❏ Today, this country is deporting a Nigerian woman and her twins, one of whom suffers from autism.
There is no treatment, no special school, nothing for autistic children in Nigeria.
Despite our wealth, there's not much in Ireland.
But there's something. But now, little Great Agbonlahor won't even get than.
St Patrick, they say, brought Christianity to Ireland. This government is deporting it with little Great.
❏ We are a country of emigrants which frowns on immigrants. We turf them out if they come to Ireland as economic refugees, precisely the way millions of Irish arrived in countries all over the world.
❏ We spend millions on politicians’ vanity projects - gyms in the Dail, illegal car parks on Leinster Lawn - and yet refuse to meet our commitments to the poor of the world.
❏ We trample over our heritage at Tara for electoral gain and to satisfy the construction industry. Opening the rail line was the sensible option, the planet-friendly option. But of course, that wouldn’t have opened up land for development, for DIY stores, retail parks and hotels, the fate that awaits Tara, thanks to our feeble ‘Green’ heritage minister.
❏ Our politicians have given themselves 22 pay rises in the past ten years whilst the poor of our country have, in relative terms, received only crumbs.
❏ Corruption is still rife. If you don’t think so, just look around the country at over-development, at the places where builders have been given permission to build despite the infrastructure being utterly unable to cope.
❏ We have a government led by a party whose members feel far more comfortable in the company of wealthy builders than they do in the company of the disadvantaged, for whom they are supposed to care.
❏ We have wealth. But we spend it on construction while at the same time, fighting in the courts, the parents of autistic children who seek only what care they should be getting in a rich, civilised country.
❏ We kow-tow to the Americans caring not a whit what prisoners they bring through Shannon, what troops pass through on their way to kill or be killed.
❏ We have ministers constantly telling us what they can’t do, having spent an election campaign telling us all they were going to do.
❏ We have a Taoiseach who, to his utter shame, took handouts, massive handouts from friends and strangers and never offered to pay them back. Worse still, he keeps changing his story about amounts, currencies and dates.
And shamefully, most people seem to adopt the “I’m all right Jack” attitude to it all.
We now live in an Ireland where builders are more important than the poor, roads are more important than schools, construction is more important than the climate change and power and wealth are more important than almost anything.
Which is why pride has turned to shame.

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From riches to RAGS

IF there is one thing more depressing, in this world, than witnessing the suffering of the poor, the sick and the hungry, it is witnessing the growing greed and excess of the rich.
There is nothing wrong with rich. Rich can be good. Rich can be inspirational. Rich can lead by example.
But, increasingly, the wealthy of the world seem, not just to ignore the plight of the poor, but to trample on them in their quest for more and more money.
The fact is, there is enough food in the world to feed its population.
There is enough land in the world on which its people could live.
There is enough water in the world for us all to drink.
There is enough wealth in the world for everyone to share.
And there is still enough money in the world for the rich to remain rich.

There are those today who will tell you, with some degree of certainty, that there is no God.
But unfortunately, many have them have replaced belief in God with a belief in self. It is comforting to them, to believe that they will not have to account for themselves, that the accumulation of wealth, the pursuit of pleasure and the mistreatment of others have no consequences.
It is beyond the understanding of many, that there are people in the world who can look at suffering and poverty and disease, and not care.
It is beyond the understanding of many, that those who have been blessed with the power to change the world for the better, seek only to change it to better themselves at the expense of others.
It is beyond the understanding of many, that man, who believes himself to be God’s most intelligent creation, would spend more on weapons to kill his fellow man, than he would to spare his fellow man from suffering.
Sometimes, the behaviour of the rich betrays their shame at the things they do.
Take, for example, what they call ‘outsourcing.’
Outsourcing is a name industry and business dreamed up to disguise what it really is.
And that is, an effort to find, somewhere on earth, the people who will do a job, for the longest hours, in the worst conditions for the least return.
Of course industry must make profit.
But when profit is the one and only goal, the sole purpose of a business, then it is a failed entity.
Profit and decency can go hand in hand. Profit and generosity can live together. Profit at a belief and trust in God, are not mutually exclusive.
When loyal and valued employees are thrown away without a thought, when long serving workers are treated like something on the bottom of the managing director’s shoes, when those who worked for years to build up a company are discarded without any care for their well being or the well being of their families, profit is no justification.
We are going from riches to RAGS.
Rich can be good. Rich can help mankind.
But Rich Arrogant Greedy and Smug never will.

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