Bailed-Out Banks & A Vacuous Vatican

"Our masters have not heard the people's voice for generations... and it is much, much louder than they care to remember."
- Alan Moore's "V for Vendetta"

By Charley Brady

Well, it's been a week in which even the most cock-eyed optimistic or happy little people must have had to discard once and for all those rose-tinted glasses that they have been stubbornly wearing. Where even the most trenchant defenders of the Soldiers of Destiny must have wondered to themselves how they could have wasted so much energy and so many years in supporting a totally corrupt and discredited political party as that of the Fianna Failures. Or indeed that other power-driven party, the Holy Catholic Church.

But we'll get back to one of the darkest weeks in Irish political history in a moment. For now let's give thanks to the Void that Easter, yet one more of our ancient rites is out of the way for another year.

Yes! Christmas - that great season beloved of the worshippers of Mammon; that time of the year when the merchants rub their paws together and think of new and ever more expensive ways to gouge money from the pockets of hapless parents, long unskilled by now in how to say No to spoiled offspring who see it as their Right to have five, six, seven hundred euros spent on them whether their soft parents can afford it or not.

Let's dress it up and pretend it's got something to do with religion, even though it's clear from a reading of the Gospels that the birth of the Christ couldn't possibly have taken place at this time of the year. What the hell, the suckers won't realise that it's just yet another pagan festival that was hijacked years ago. Pass around that collection plate again, like a good man.

Also over is the drunken orgy that is "seeing in the New Year"; and the celebration of bugger all that is St. Patrick's Day has been hosed down, sedated and put to sleep for another twelve months.

And now we have survived Easter, that week that celebrates something that is so deeply rooted in the Celtic psyche: the hideousness of the blood sacrifice.

The Irish have always bought into the supposed romance of "dying for their country" so little wonder that they go ape at the thought of a man dying for, well, everybody.

For myself, a concept and a tradition that says a man was tortured, mutilated and put to death for sins that I had not yet committed - not having been born - is evil beyond belief.

"Jesus died for you two thousand years ago." Really?

I enjoy a good science-fiction story as much as the next man but I just can't get my head around that one.

And once again those who believe (if they think of it at all) celebrate this momentous event by once again dragging commerce into it and stuffing their faces with chocolate eggs and little bunny rabbits in order to celebrate a man's death. This year we undoubtedly spent many thousands on them once again. Weird, or what?

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense all right.

I do like one of Easter's themes though and it is that of resurrection. In a symbolic sense (ooh, get him!) I like to think of this period as one where I try to sort out the mistakes of last year and make a better fist of things this year. Of course every year I seem to mess up even more than ever but we can but try!

As I write this the Pope has just given his Easter message and I hope that the innocents amongst you weren't waiting for an apology over his organisation's decades of child abuse. It'll be - ahem! - a cold day in Hell before you get that. What you DID get is told to stop spreading "petty gossip".

Complete reports and admissions to child rape are "petty gossip"? My, what a strange world our cross-dressing friends inhabit. The Vatican has also compared the ongoing criticism of rapist priests and those who covered for them with anti- Semitism.

What planet are these people living on at all? How can a group of perverts bringing unwanted attention on their masters be compared with an entire race-group that were the victims of history? Does the Vatican set out to insult people or are they just plain divorced from ordinary human society?

Here's more Easter Sunday symbolism. When Archbishop Diarmud Martin turned up for the yearly ritual at St. Mary's Pro Cathedral in Dublin he was greeted by survivors of clerical rape and child abuse who had tied 1,000 tiny shoes to the railings in a protest against the continued dismissal of them by the Vatican.

As one man held aloft a sign saying HYPOCRITES FOR JESUS others called out:

"This was the largest paedophile ring in Ireland" and "Out and out hypocrisy to claim to be Christian. A whole country abused and still in denial."

Some protestors carried the shoes as far as the altar. That must have made a change from blessing chocolate eggs, eh Archbishop?

Let's not forget the wise words of Monsignor Maurice Dooley some weeks ago:

"I would not tell anyone [if they told me that they were an abuser]. That is his responsibility. My response is to maintain the confidentiality. There must be somebody else who is aware of what he is up to and he could be stopped.

"That is not my function. I would tell him to stop abusing children. But I am not going to the police or social services in order to betray the trust in me."

I do love priorities; and this wasn't the attitude thirty years ago or even five. It was last month.

It makes you proud to be human.

And so, reluctantly, to this week's episode of "Meet the Bankers". I say reluctantly because I first started writing of these scoundrels seriously at the start of last year and yet it goes on and on, getting more outrageous with every new development and just making me want to fire my laptop out of the window in sheer bloody frustration at how weak we are as a people.

I'm sure that at this stage you are aware of what has been going on these past days and so will just touch on the latest events. Anyway, it does no harm to keep our sense of rage bubbling. Who knows, perhaps the Irish peasants will one day grow a pair and do something about these swine. I'd like to see what happens when that pot finally boils over.

The Big Brain Brian Lenihan's capitulation to the banks last week was preceded by our hilarious party reshuffle of March 23. Eagerly looked forward to as it gave Brian Clown the chance to make us fractionally happy by booting out some of the prime choices he had, it was instead less of a reshuffle than a sort of sideways crablike scuttle as he tries to hide from enemies.

Cowardly Clown took this opportunity to cover his ample ass as much as possible by doing the absolute minimum to upset his incompetent team of toadies. Sure, there were a couple of demotions but over-all no harm done, eh lads? Incredibly, the one that we had all been waiting for - the outright sacking of Death's Head Mary Harney of Health - never took place and there she remains, moaning that she only gets ONE free junket to New Zealand A YEAR and how wicked it is for the press to continually call for Her Arrogance to receive the Royal Order of the Boot to her equally ample backside. It wouldn't happen in any other country, she moaned last week. No, Morticia, in any other country you would be an ancient and reviled memory by now. Mary Coughlan raised a few cheap laughs when she was put in charge of Education.

This is the lady who gets mixed up between Einstein and Darwin, so let's give her Education, boom boom! It kind of reminded me of the joke that went around when Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness took over Education in the North: The ex- IRA beauty goes into a classroom and asks the students a question. He then says: "If you know the answer put up your hand and if you don't know the answer put up both hands!" You gotta laugh.

So overall the Clown made sweeping changes that changed bugger all and Fianna Fail and the rest of the shiftless sods that pass here as politicians could look forward to their annual two-week Easter break just as soon as the Wig got the whole NAMA inconvenience out of the way.

"We Won't Get Fooled Again" sang The Who, but being fooled and lied to and treated with contempt have become national past times here. I don't ever again want to hear anyone whinging on about 800 years of persecution under the Brits. Give the Irish a bit of power and they will trample their fellow countrymen into the muck faster than you can say "Queen's greasy shilling".

We were prepared for Finance Minister Brian Lenihan's statement about what we had to cough up to be bad but nobody - and I mean nobody - could have predicted just how bad it was going to be.

The State will have to take over both Irish Nationwide and the Educational Building Society. But for the real shocker we have to go back to disgraced but wonderfully rewarded Sean FitzPatrick and the bank that he ran in to the ground, Anglo Irish Bank. Having ploughed vast sums of our money into the bank already it is now to receive another €40 billion. That's just for Anglo. The Big Brain added that it's "probable" that Allied Irish Bank will be taken over by the state at a roughly equivalent cost to that of Anglo.

Both AIB and Bank of Ireland will be given a breathing space to see what they can come up with but AIB will still need to produce €7.4 billion.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said: "It's another example of having bottled it in front of the banks... You are strangling the next generation. You are tying the hands of future Governments. You are forcing the taxpayer to have a levy imposed on every Irish family of €27,000."

At the same time that we were struggling to absorb just what it means even for our grandchildren we were given the bonus news that Anglo Irish had revealed a €12.7 billion loss, making for the worst disaster area in Irish corporate history. Yet the new chairman, Alan Dukes, shamelessly and quite casually mentioned that a hell of a lot more funding would still be needed.

Just to make even bigger eejits of us than they already have, as the news was being delivered Sean FitzPatrick was jetting off on Aer Lingus business class for a sun holiday in Spain. Now take into account that Seanie still has assets of €52.5 million, but since he owes €93.5 million does that tell you if he ever intends to repay it?

In any sane society (which obviously rules Ireland out) this gouger would be slopping out in jail instead of sunning himself in Marbella; but - of course - it gets better. Because of his deal with Aer Lingus he is entitled to travel business class for FREE for LIFE. So the flights didn't cost him a damned penny.

Then on Wednesday we were treated to his fellow Anglo Irish chancer David Drumm being photographed without a care in the word in the Cape Cod sunshine, where he has dug into his bolthole while putting the middle finger up to Paddy and Brigid Q. Sucker. Unbelievably the State will have to write off his loans - you know, just the way that they would do with you if you were behind on your mortgage. Then to add insult to injury he is also SUING his old employers for €670,000 in back pay. A hard neck doesn't come into it.

Why the hell do we put up with this? Why aren't we storming the Dail and damned well taking it over until we get some real answers, not platitudes? Not the drip-feed of information but a solid guarantee that these toxic wasters will have to sort out their problems themselves? And if we don't get answers then why aren't we demolishing this discredited dump brick by bloody brick, tearing up the much amended Constitution and starting from scratch.

Oh, sacrilege! Well, why is it sacrilage?

In Galway one man, obviously at the end of his tether, had abandoned his cement mixer outside of the Anglo Irish Bank with signs saying "Bankrupt" left beside it. The mixer had been left rolling and the words "Toxic Bank" had been scrawled across it.

It's impossible not to sympathise with his frustration but all it really achieved was the complete disruption of traffic for the ordinary guy. What we need is not just one person but every thinking citizen of this republic to join together and SHOW these bastards that we've had enough.

No, we just sit and moan about it. That's the Irish way. But let's see if we still feel like taking it when they start repossessing our homes - and you can be damned sure that these pigs will do that without a shred of embarrassment.

The front page of last Wednesday's "Irish Daily Star" carried large photographs of Sean FitzPatrick and his fellow sleaze, Irish Nationwide ex Chief Michael "Fingers" Fingleton. Accompanying the photos was the rather eye catching headline:

THEY DESERVE TO BE SHOT

These two bastards have cost us €25 billion

I waited for the Usual Suspects to flip their liberal lids and clog up the airwaves with righteous indignation at this intemperate use of language. The airwaves were clogged all right but it was with people agreeing with the editor's decision to run with a headline that perfectly encapsulated the mood of the nation.

Irish people may be a little slow to fight back against these creeps but they aren't stupid: they knew this wasn't meant to be taken literally but to reflect what was being said around the country. If I had a fiver for every time I've heard someone on the street, shop or pub in the last few weeks saying "The bastards should be shot" I would be able to join Seanie on the beach, soaking up some rays.

Or perhaps not. I'm kind of fussy about hanging out with low lives.

Hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net