Molloy Is An Honourable Man; So Are They All, All Honourable Men

"It's a campaign of fear and consumption. And that's what I think it's all based on: keeping everyone afraid." - Marilyn Manson

By Charley Brady

You know the outcome by now; but as I'm writing this it looks like a very intimidating defeat for those of us who voted "No" to Lisbon Treaty Number Two. Indeed, at the moment the "Yes" camp seem to be ahead by perhaps as much as two thirds. I think that even they are surprised.

I'll come back to the latest results at the end of this article but for now I have to reluctantly return to three money-gougers who I and the rest of the country are sick to the back teeth of but who insist on giving us yet another outrage each and every week. If you didn't know better you could be forgiven for thinking that, given the week that was in it, they were trying to sabotage their "Yes"-voting buddies. At least you would be if they hadn't made it perfectly obvious that they don't care about anybody or anything - and certainly not the country that they should have been serving - except keeping their big greedy snouts slurping from a trough that seems to be bottomless.

Kicking off with the disgraced FAS training scheme grasper Rody Molloy we had Tanaiste Mary Coughlan speaking on RTE radio last Monday (September 28th) on why she authorised a golden handshake for him of €1.1 million.

The most useless and gaff-prone woman in Irish politics at the moment said: "I knew in my experience as a politician [yawn-inducing] in meeting with the FAS chairman and the DG (Molloy) at the time that Mr. Molloy was going to be very reluctant to move aside...

"Equally I knew in my deliberations with him that he would not move unless he obtained an enhanced package with regard to his entitlements." [There's that word.]

So it was the usual Irish story: spend €643,000 in expenses swanning around the world while generally being incompetent as well as an embarrassment and you will still be allowed to bully this weak government out of vast sums of money.

Indeed, he was allowed to resign instead of being booted out very hard because as she said in an interview with the Sunday Independent, that if she had sacked him he probably "would have got a wee bit more".

Did you ever hear the like of it? Rather than reminding him who his employers were, telling him to sod off and to take them to court if he wished to, she just put her hands up to his outrageous demands. A poll in that same issue of the Independent showed that Mary Coughlan should herself be made to resign. I'm surprised it wasn't higher.

And what was the Taoiseach's response to this? Well, Brian Clown reckons that the "decision" to resign makes him an "honourable" man. Well, of course.

HONOURABLE? This guy wouldn't know what honour was if it jumped out of his toilet bowl and bit him on his overpaid ass.

Oh, and before I forget: naturally enough he gets keep the €23,000 car that he drives as part of the bargain.

I'm not a religious man myself but I'm seriously thinking of giving this prayer business a try out. Do you think that God would respond to something like: "Dear Lord, all I'm asking of you for Christmas is that you reward this red-faced balloon who looks as if he has dined on more (free, of course) rich food than Henry the Eighth a really severe and painful case of the gout. It would really make me believe in you. Amen."

It's worth a try, I suppose.

Where would Mutt be without Jeff or Laurel without Hardy? So we better bring on the latest adventures of good old Sean FitzPatrick, the - yes, you guessed it, disgraced - ex-Anglo Irish Bank chairman.

Many moons ago, before we lost our virginity and still believed in God, Santa Claus and that bankers actually went to jail in Ireland, we were under the impression that good old Seanie had only borrowed €84 million from his own failed bank. Now that we're older we realise that it was in fact well over €100 million that he was hiding from his own shareholders. When the bank went down the tubes these people were for some reason very angry.

Sure, some of them HAD lost everything, after all; but didn't it warm their hearts to think that Seanie was still able to enjoy the good life on behalf of all of them? In fact on resigning he took off on a very pleasant month-long sun holiday. No doubt it was to count the sins on his head and to ponder the fate of the shareholders that he had screwed. Still, he did manage to come back looking fit, healthy, relaxed and sporting an enviable tan.

In case you've forgotten, he was facilitated in hiding his loot by transferring it in to another bank every time the somewhat useless auditors came a-calling. This was Irish Nationwide, run by his old pal and fellow conspirator "Fingers" Fingleton who would then transfer the shekels back as soon as the clueless auditors had finished scratching their heads and thinking that there seemed to be a tiny discrepancy somewhere, but sure, it'll work itself out. It's probably something and nothing. Cosy arrangement, eh? And I still laugh when I think of people putting their trust in a banker called "Fingers".

Well, Seanie owes the State-owned bank €44,000 in interest payments per month but has he repaid a cent of it. Are you mad?

Those rules are only for the little people who, if they owed the bank a hundred euros would be hounded unmercifully into suicide because of it. Those rules don't apply to the Fitzpatrick's of this corrupt little country. It's a two and sometimes three-and-four tiered society here where guys like FitzPatrick will never see the inside of a cell, no matter what they've done.

It's months now since Minister for Finance Brian (the Wig) Lenihan confidently announced that "I can tell you that now we are in control of this bank, we will insist on all persons who were loaned money to repay their loans. That is the first duty of a banker."

Well, what happened to THAT promise, Mr.Lenihan? Not that I think that there was a single person in the country who bought into that steaming pile of bull. Not after looking at that weird and amazing revolving wig, they didn't.

As if that wasn't bad enough we then find out that he and others of the Golden Circle are entitled - entitled, if you don't mind [that word again] - to free first class flights on Aer Lingus, FitzPatrick because he was a former director.

In America you jail rogue bankers; here we give them enormous kiss-offs, luxury cars and free flights until 2012.

Deputy leader and finance spokesperson for the Labour Party Joan Burton said: "Minister Lenihan needs to stop hiding behind the lawyers and honour the commitments made last year that those responsible for the banking debacle are brought to account."

Wouldn't that be great? I'm not holding my breath, though. There's another Christmas prayer to Santa-sorry, I mean God: that the whole crooked bunch of them are in jail by the New Year.

There's another monkey that's just flown past the window.

And of course where would the week be without another revelation about Junket John O'Donoghue, Speaker in the Dail - vital job, no? - and his lavish spending at our expense.

We helped him (without being told about it, naturally) on freebie trips to represent us by having a rare old time in sixteen lavish trips that went from Cape Town to Paris to Savannah. I don't have the heart to go through them all again - if you want to cry with frustration I would refer you to previous articles - but my favourites were the Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia splurges at a cost of €15,229 and of course the freeloading politicians' favourite, that ever popular St. Patrick's Day junket, this time to Houston, New Orleans and Washington at a cost of €21,410.

Ah, the lives that some people get to lead at poorer people's expense! And of course, he had to bring along Kate Ann, his equally freeloading wife. Not to worry. The mugs paid for her too.

New records of his out-of-control spending were released last Friday. Perhaps they thought that everyone would be too busy with the Lisbon Referendum but a person would have to be blind, dumb, deaf and dead not to be rocked by this guy's expenses.

One of the most eye-catching details was the two weekends over 2007 and 2008 when Kate and the man himself went through €13,000 of our money at his favourite race meeting at the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

They had a great old time with one tiny little meeting per trip allowing them to put it down as "official business". A Dail spokesman explained that he wouldn't be there this year because he had no official duties on.

Decoded, that simply means that this disgrace of a man only pursues his favourite sport when the suckers shell out for it.

You'll recall his very belated and VERY half- hearted apology for squandering €550,000 during his tenure as Minister for the Arts, Sports and Tourism or as it's known here Minister for Fun, a title that he took a little too literally.

We didn't know about this extra €250,000 he had managed to work his way through. And the quiet word is that there is more to come out.

Ah well. No doubt it was for the good of the country. No doubt that when or more likely if he decides to resign it will be with a golden handshake for doing nothing; and no doubt Cowen will be on hand to say that he is an honourable man. Check out Anthony's speech in "Julius Caesar" on honourable men.

Meanwhile, in the same breath Batt O'Keefe says that the government will continue to deny compensation to the poor women who spent their lives in the Magdalene Laundries.

Has this country ever known a more venal, corrupt and disgusting government in its history?

I decided to leave these last comments until Sunday, when we could reflect on the overwhelming "Yes" vote that went through yesterday.

Going for the newspapers this afternoon and dropping into "The Thatch" to read them, I had been expecting a ribbing and maybe even some gloating from the pro- voters that I'd had friendly differences with over the past weeks.

Yet there wasn't the slightest sign of it, which tells me that I was right in thinking that the people voted out of the fear that had been pumped into them for months now.

As the interesting and highly articulate shock rocker Marilyn Manson indicates in the opening quote, if you keep people in a state of worry or fear then they are easily controlled. And the one thing that I heard consistently over the period of this campaign was the fear that we would be somehow left behind: "We're only a rock on the edge of Europe"; "We don't want to isolate ourselves", ""We'll be left out in the cold" and so on.

And with the amount of money being poured into this campaign from Brussels headquarters in order to print and distribute propaganda it was amusing to hear the source of Libertas's money being questioned.

Well, it's over now. After being forced to vote twice on the Nice Treaty because we got the wrong answer the first time and now being forced to vote twice on Lisbon for the same reasons I accept that I don't live in a democratic country. Nor would I ever suggest again to a young person that he should vote because that vote counts. It only counts if you vote the way that your masters tell you to.

I look forward to the whining from the Usual Suspects when it hits home that we are now being run by Brussels. Even better: can you imagine the gnashing of teeth that will go on in the very possible likelihood that we have President Tony Blair smirking that grin and telling us what to do.

We deserve all that we get.

Hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net