Where Does the Buck Stop?

Remember Ivor Callely? Ivor Callely was the Government Junior Minister who had to resign last December because he got a painter to paint his holiday home as a nixer, at a cost of a grand and a half. The Irish Times editorialised on December 8th last that “The public will not tolerate any whiff of impropriety from their politicians,” and Ivor was summarily dispatched.

Today, instead of the mild whiff of a fifteen hundred Euro nixer, we are faced with the poisonous and desperate situation of the gates of such meagre prisons as we have yawning open and the most vile and base of criminality and perversity slinking out with a song in their hearts and what An Spailpín Fánach wants to know is: whose damned head is going to roll for this?

An Spailpín Fánach has long been an admirer of Michael McDowell. McDowell is a, clever, and b, not in it for the money, with separates him from the majority of our elected representatives. But the harsh truth of the matter is that after the Supreme Court child abuse judgement Ireland has become a perverts’ paradise, a place where ghouls and monsters will come from Bangkok to holiday here, rather than the other way around, and it’s happened on McDowell’s watch. He has to go, and in a properly functioning democracy, or some strange Shangri-la where honour meant something, he would have gone already, in shame if nothing else.

It’s no time for McDowell’s many enemies to gloat either. McDowell is a man who chose to serve his country rather than get fat and rich at the bar, and for that he deserves praise. Anyone that feels like taking a cheap shot or demanding the current government to call an early election should ask themselves: who is the current spokesperson on Justice for Fine Gael? For the Labour Party? For the Greens? An Spailpín has no idea, and I suspect I’m not alone in that.

The Independent is reporting today that Irish private sector borrowing rose by 30% last year. The entire country is in hock, the prisons are discharging monsters like something out of an apocalyptic horror movie, and the so-called opposition are utterly anonymous after being gifted the biggest stick anyone could hope for with which to batter a sitting government. There was a program on TV last night where John Waters opined that there was a fear in the county at large that the bubble would burst and we’d end up back in the ‘eighties, back on the dole, back in the chain gang. An Spailpín advises the entrepreneurially inclined to start printing those Kajagoogoo t-shirts now, and get in ahead of the rush. God help us all.

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