Free-Spending Harney And The Government Of Cruelty

"If the dead could speak, they'd call all cynics realists."
- John Connolly, "Every Dead Thing"

By Charley Brady

Do you get it? That slightly over-sweet, over-ripe smell that permeates this country of Ireland? It's always there, in the background, but we don't always notice it any more.

Visitors sometimes do, once they've taken off the rose-tinted glasses; but we've lived with it for decades now so it barely registers unless we come across a particular hot spot; and even then we don't pay it much heed any more. Sometimes it's really bad, like in the Charles J. Haughey era for example; at other times it's just plain bad, as in the Bertie Ahern era.

I am, of course, talking about the sweet-sour smell of corruption that blights so much that could be good about this country. Now it's been underlain with another tang: the smell of despair; the smell that is given off when people feel that they have no hope; when everything that they have worked for is being drained from them; when the government is running out of new ways to tax them; when they have no money and no hope of getting any; when they are made to feel small because they have been forced by politicians who care nothing for them to sign on for unemployment.

No future, no money, no dignity, no hope. What a shining legacy this Government of Cruelty has left. It's only a few years ago that the amount of young people committing suicide was a truly worrying modern phenomenon; now you are more likely to see it among men in their forties, who have just reached the point of utter despair.

How ironic that it is only a couple of years ago that "man of the people" Bertie Ahern wondered why people who moaned about the economy didn't "just commit suicide". Well, Ahern, you called that one right, at least. Are you happy now?

Not that you need to worry, as you rake in more than you made as Taoiseach. To add insult to injury, with so many journalists looking for work here, you take a column as a sports pundit for the Irish version of the "News of the World". The mind boggles.

Then, with your memoirs due out shortly, you quietly contact one of your cronies asking if he can hold back on the tightening of the Artist's Tax Exemption (which never really helped those it should have anyway). We weren't supposed to find out about that, were we? Why would that be, I wonder?

Over the last weeks we have been treated to details of how, as Arts Minister of the time, John O'Donoghue wracked up some pretty impressive junkets at our expense. I'm talking about trips to France, Venice, Berlin, Turin, New York and others. Trust me, he made sure he was pampered and had first- class treatment all the way.

On the now-infamous Cannes Film Festival trip to France in 2006 he - meaning we - splashed out €9,619 on car-hire, stayed in a hotel at almost a grand a night and enjoyed the use of the government's (supposedly our) Gulfstream Jet at a cost of €7,700 per hour.

This was also the year that he borrowed the jet for six days at the bargain price of €32,450.

A few months' later it was off to London for the St. Patrick's Day parade, always a good excuse for a splash- out: €1,755 for his hotel, €8,843 on the ever-reliable car-hire bill; and since we were having a few canopies and a glass of champers in the VIP lounge at Heathrow let's throw in another grand. That's the way to do it, boys.

Mind you, as much as I detest Paddy's Day, I perversely look forward to it since you know that none of the chancers will be in the country for the week and therefore it's likely to be run better.

Then up pops his party pal Junior Minister Dick Roche. Now the first thing to learn about old cock Roche is that he has one of those smirking, hail-fellow-well-met faces that one would never tire of punching.

Never.

Anyway, Roche ploughed in on his colleagues' behalf - not that he needed any back up since O'Donoghue wasn't in the mood for doing any apologising anyway - to tell the little people that: "I feel very sorry for John O'Donoghue and I'll tell you why. [Tell us, Dick. Tell us.] Because John is actually a very modest man and...[what about the €1,400 a day for his personal driver at Cheltenham Horseracing?]... he is in a terrible dilemma because there is a difficulty if the Ceanne Comhairle (Chairman of the Dail) gets himself embroiled in this kind of debate."

[Uh, didn't he embroil himself, as you so delicately put it, Dick, by living off other people's money in the first place? Just a thought.]

I felt tears come to my eyes at the thought of John's troubles and indeed was about to hit The Thatch and Glynn's Bar to see if I could organise some sort of whip-around for him when some of old cock Roche's spending came to light. When I say his spending you know by now of course that I mean the taxpayers'.

There are, needless to say, the old dependable St. Patrick's Day celebrations. In 2007 he and the missus hit Canada to tell them what a great, friendly bunch of folks we are. We paid €25,000 for the privilege of watching himself and Eleanor swanning around like royalty.

Yes, Haughey and his delusions of grandeur have a lot to answer for.

Then last year it was off to China where he completely forgot to bring up their miserable human rights record in Tibet.

Facing criticism when he got back to the country that he spends the odd month in when it's quiet in the junket season, he smirked: "I think the appropriate way is to do it at home."

Well, Roche, why didn't you just bloody well do that instead of spending money sucking up to the Chinese? Of course, we all know the answer to that and it's not one that portrays you as having anything resembling a backbone unless it comes to patronising out-of-work, struggling-with-debt Irish. They're a much easier target for lecturing, aren't they, you smug creep?

These are the same kind of guys that will show up at mass every Sunday, making sure that they are the most conspicuous in attendance, just on the off chance that it impresses another few gullible constituents. They'll be ostentatiously putting a few euros into the collection basket and making damned sure that everyone sees them doing it, while all the while the God that they worship is of a different stamp altogether. Isn't he called Mammon?

I've always thought that the Americans were a bit more honest in this kind of thing. After all, they have "In God we Trust" on their dollar bills. That's what we should have here because that's the only kind of God that our politicians believe in. They're certainly not filled with compassion or have their cups overfloweth, that's for certain.

If you doubt that, take a look into the cold dead eyes of "Health" Minister Mary Harney. Not much to see there that you wouldn't get from looking into a bottomless pit. I swear the only time that woman's eyes light up is when she sees a giant steak planked in front of her. Even at that, several waiters who have had to deal with her tell me that she never makes eye contact with them, which I consider to be just plain rude.

Too personal? So what? Harney has made it personal: she has issued cut back after cut back until the point now where, like a true Death's Head, she presides over a service where pain, suffering and death has become the norm; and that's not the fault of the doctors and nurses who just want the space to get on with what they trained for.

These are good people. You, Ms. Harney, have forgotten what it was like to struggle, unless you are cosseted by the bought for, sold out fellow travellers that you deal with.

Being personal about you? I no more give a damn about your feelings than you do about ours.

You have no mandate anymore: the party that you belonged to is long gone and so now you feel that you have to keep credibility by hanging onto the coat tails of a party that, equally to your own extinct party of the Progressive Democrats, has no real meaning for the ordinary people in Ireland, except to screw them.

Above egomaniacs like Haughey, above self-serving "men of the people" like Ahern, you are the worst because you actually set out with some principles. I have known so many women that said that you should have been the next leader.

Those same women, who placed such high hopes in you to have just a little bit of integrity, are amongst your most disappointed voters.

I knew what you were from the start; and heaven knows you could teach the lads a thing or two when it comes to expenses.

The taxpayer pays up

That's just the beginning of it: you must surely have some sort of record now for taking a total of 81 trips by Learjet, Beechcraft and Air Corp, despite the fact that many of them were internal while at the same time you had a 24-hour limousine service that it would be beneath you to use.

I can understand your logic there, mind you. A whole two-and-a-half hours to drive from Dublin to Galway without a bite to eat? Oh dear.

Look at when you commandeered an Air Corp helicopter, and not for the first time, to take you from Dublin to Manorhamilton in Leitrim just so that you could open the off-license of a personal friend of yours, for crying out loud.

Have you no shame?

People are lying on hospital trolleys while you and your well-fed face continue on with, just as an example: Flying Gulfstream from Baldonnel to Milan to the tune of €17,753; Learjet to Kerry, EUR2,950; in Beechcraft to Galway by way of Waterford, €3,983; Learjet from Baldonnel to Kerry, a forty minute run that cost us €1,967. I'm sure that figures must get tedious for readers after a while so I'll just add Helsinki, Luxembourg, Lyjubljani (€15,243) by Learjet.

There are so many others that she makes O'Donoghue and Roche look like the learners that they are.

I'd like to meet my career guidance officer of 35 years ago (unlikely, since he's dead) because I have a few bones to pick with him.

"Become a journalist and you'll see the world", I believe his advice was. He neglected to tell me that I could have been a politician. After all, I had all the right qualities: a burning ambition to do nothing for the rest of my life while amassing a fortune in dodgy money; a feeling of entitlement without doing a damned thing to justify it; a chance to laze around on the beach at someone else's expense. Ah, life could have been so different for the 15-year-old Brady.

I had one thing against me though: a sense of morals and ethics and thus it was never to be.

Ah well, so it goes. These things are just one of life's little mysteries, akin to: Why do grown men feel the need to sport important- looking little moustaches?

Why are the sales of baseball bats in Northern Ireland so consistently through the roof despite the fact that nobody plays baseball up there?

Why do we feel the need to be followers when we have it within us to change the world on our own?

You won't get the answers to these questions or indeed any others next week; yet I still hope to see you...

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net