BLAGAROON

BLANK CHEQUES, BLARNEY AND....
WHEN IS STAMP DUTY NOT STAMP DUTY?



When it’s cash and when Bertie’s fancy woman has it in her handbag, you might say. After months of dithering and doodling, Blank-Cheque Bertie finally called the date of the Republic’s General Election for May 24th early on Sunday morning when he slithered up to the Áras to ask Mrs Mac to sign the dissolution papers for the 29th Dáil. He could have gone any day last week and even announced it in the Dáil, but he chose to wait until the last hour before Mrs Mac left the country for her official visit to the USA.

Is it pure coincidence that the Mahon Tribunal, set up to investigate corruption allegations and bribes to certain politicians, was due to resume its sittings on Monday, Aibreán/April 30th, and was obliged to adjourn because of the calling of the general election? If the election had been called for later, June, for instance, which would have been still within the legal term of the government, there would have been weeks of hearings some of which might have required Bertie’s attendance, not the best thing to be flashed on television during the height of an election campaign.

The skeletons in the Fianna Failure closet are being rattled and the bones of the corrupt Haughey regime of the 1980’s are being exposed to sunlight for the first time and none of it is to Bertie’s advantage. He attached himself to Haughey as little Corporal Bootlick and handed over(as FF Party Treaurer) the blank cheques whenever the Emperor requested. He managed to avoid, until now, any suspicion of other involvements on a personal basis but, the revelations last year of the “Manchester Digout” have burst that balloon and this week’s further revelation of a £30,000 Sterling payment to Celia Larkin, his live-in partner at the time, for house “re-furbishing” on their rented house has opened up a new can of worms concerning Blank-Cheque Bertie’s personal finances.

At today’s FF launch of their manifesto, RTÉ Radio’s Vincent Browne stopped Blank Cheque in his tracks with persistent questioning on the bags of money issue to the utter chagrin of the assembled FF candidates and their groupies. Nothing of substance was forthcoming from the one-time “Teflon” Taoiseach.

Bertie’s clapped-out government is now promising to do more things in the next five years than they promised to do in their previous ten years in office but failed to deliver; failed to improve the shambles in the health services, made it even more bureaucratic than before and are now embroiled in a serious dispute with the Nurses organisations; failed to deliver the promised affordable housing units to relieve the chronic shortage of accommodation in all major urban areas; failed to provide an integrated public transport system for the capital, mucked up the badly needed Luas tramway by deliberately preventing the link up between the two lines in the city centre which now requires to be done at much greater cost; failed to deliver the promised reduction in class sizes in schools and left many schools in shabby and deteriorating buildings all over the state; failed to deliver on promises to prioritise Community Development funding under the misnamed “Rapid” programme, about as rapid as a snail on prozac,

This miserable government, with its mouthy PD confederates, deserves only one response; a swift kick in the tóin and out of office on 24th Bealtaine/May.


FearFeasa Mac Léinn
Áth Cliath/Dublin, 03 Bealtaine/May 2007.