Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves

We've another double-helping of Charley Brady this week for your reading pleasure...

Years ago, the great Gore Vidal put it better and more succinctly than I ever could: "This is the moment when you think that you have gone completely insane."

Good old Sean FitzPatrick is back from his holidays and looks great. He is fit, tanned and grinning like some horror show cat that has escaped from the confines of a Lewis Carroll novel.

May I be so bold as to offer a suggestion to Johnny Depp, who I hear is to play the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland"? Johnny, you could do worse than to model your portrayal on this guy. He's no more crazy than the Mad Hatter was; he is just playing the system and winning.

This is the moment when you think you have gone insane.

Normally I would say that beating the system is a good thing, but this particular smirking piece of flotsam has absolutely no shame when it comes to the small shareholders that he has ruined and left with nothing.

This is the creature who 'borrowed' €87 million from the Anglo Irish Bank of which he was chief executive. He was responsible, along with some of his equally worthless co-conspirators, for the bank being nationalised by what we laughingly call the government.

Not only is he not in jail and sharing a cell with a big hairy biker with unpleasant tendencies but he is walking around free in this great little Republic and saying that if he discovers that he does owe the money he will repay it.

IF?

This man is getting away with screwing people because we have a Government of eunuchs, led by a blustering, ineffectual loudmouth called Brian Cowen who is the weakest and most useless 'leader' to ever have been undemocratically put in charge of the party of - let me be gentle here, frauds - that is Fianna Fail.

Anyone looking for leadership from this windbag surely by now must realise that he doesn't even have the guts to stand up to the unions. He'd rather go after the small people than chase the big chancers who are running rings around him

It's so much easier to send a mother of six to jail because she owes just under €1,000 on her credit card than it is to send swindling corporate millionaires to where they ought to be.

That's right. Sharing a cell with... you get the picture.

But FitzPatrick is not in jail. He is, despite having had to boot himself out of his cushy position, instead looking at a pension of €533,000 a year.

Why stop with FitzPatrick? Why not go on to talk about Patrick Neary, the Financial Regulator, the "watchdog" over the banks.

Watchdog? My pet poodle would do a better job and yeah, I know: I don't have a poodle (shudder) but even that non- existent little creature would do a better job.

For being useless at his job he was rewarded with €260,000 a year, €390,000 on his retirement and a yearly pension of €130,000.

On a recent visit to Britain I came across THIS wonderful character. So wonderful that I thought at first he must be a part of the Irish mob:

Fred Goodwin, better known as Fred the Shred - I'll let you work that one out yourselves - was chief executive of the parent company to Ulster Bank.

He presided over the biggest losses in British corporate history - €30 billion, a trifling sum for these dudes. Oh, his pension? €630,000 a year.

Back to home and we have that smarmy yoke Rody Malloy of the FAS agency who also had to boot himself out of the system - while of course staying within it because, as you now know, we don't jail white collars here - because of his corruption while still availing of the system and pocketing a pension of €100,000 a year in the bargain.

Look, I could go on and on. But what's the point? We know that we have been taken for fools and fools are what we are.

These reprehensible low- lives are untouchable. They will never go to jail.

We are the ones that let them get this far. To the point where Brian Cowen can now throw a big boy's fit in the Dáil and scream that he will run this government the way that he sees fit.

And you wonder why FitzPatrick is grinning with that creepy Joker smile that never seems to touch his eyes? Why wouldn't he be? Why wouldn't he hold we suckers in such contempt?

By the way, is this arrogance turning into a world-wide epidemic?

Months ago in this column I said that Napoleon Sarkozy of France had lost the run of himself. Now he's sacking the people who are supposed to guard him.

Now I always thought that the bloody awful job these fellas had to do was bad enough but now he's sacking them if they allow him to hear the boos and jeers of the French demonstrators who can't bear him.

Even a cynic like me could barely comprehend that one.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: these are my views. They may not represent the views of this newspaper, so go ahead and sue ME.

I'll back up everything that I have said about you, Cowen; your microscopic pal Sarkozy who has ordered you to run another vote on Lisbon; and all who are like you.

And by the way, Cowen, you're not tiny enough to get that Napoleonic air about you.

I see that you're upset at the way in which the satirical programme Nob Nation is portraying you: i.e. as a hungover, grumpy, bullying lump of lard who is incapable of doing his job and thus takes it out on others.

Well, the show's writer has sent an open letter to you saying those same things and the best that your advisors can come back with is that you're suffering from sleep deprivation because you're so worried about the economy?

I laughed so hard that I thought my head would fall off and land with a resounding splat next to your pint.

Isn't it about time you just went, while you still have some tatters of dignity?

Six senior ministers have told journalists to get stuffed (I'm paraphrasing as this is a family newspaper) when asked if they had received loans from the Anglo Irish bank that has been now paid for by the taxpaying public.

The mind boggles. You are all tied into this together and yet you think that you are answerable to nobody.

With the current sit-in at Waterford Crystal, the distress that your budget has caused to the elderly and now your "to Hell with you" attitude to the people that elected you, you are a bloody disgrace.

These are the moments when we feel we have gone completely insane.

As we can see from France, though, there is a change coming throughout Europe.

The people are mad and won't take it anymore. The French in particular have become very good at bringing their country to a standstill.

Sure, it may be because they feel a bit bad that World War Two had only been started for ten minutes when they were all running around with their hands in the air, but they're certainly making up for it now.

And I bet Napoleon short-ass Sarkozy is regretting the dismissive attitude he took towards the people he was elected by.

We could learn from them as we try to deal with our own would-be demigods. It's time for my medication now but I'll be mulling over this in the bat-cave shortly.

Until then, always remember, as a wiser man than me once said: Beatings will continue until morale improves!