The famous “there are lies, damned lies and statistics” line could well be adapted to describe the antics of the official opposition of Fine Gael (and Labour) in Irish politics. Fine Gael’s finance spokesman Richard Bruton, quite correctly, pointed out publicly on radio today that it was the government’s responsibility to protect “hard pressed households” from rising prices. After listening to Bruton on the tea-time news on LMFM Radio, the well known Drogheda saying that “talk is cheap” immediately sprang to mind.
Sure wasn’t it Bruton’s Blueshirt party colleague Fergus O’Dowd TD, when he was a local authority member, who championed the idea of water (and bin charges) being levied on Drogheda’s hard-pressed households? Wasn’t it a Fine Gael -Labour government who legislated to allow local authorities to introduce water charges, in the first place? And didn’t a Labour Party Mayor of Drogheda, the late Peter Moore, infamously use his casting vote to ensure that water charges remained in Drogheda when the no-pay anti-charges campaign in the town forced a dead-locked vote on the issue in the council chamber?
Sure these Fine Gael/Labour “opposition” boys (and girls) must think that the voters in Drogheda are all total “eejits”, or maybe even, that I “only came up the Well Road this morning”!
So the next time you hear Labour’s Cllr. Paul Bell on the LMFM “Loose Talk” programme telling all in sundry how “Labour always opposed” local charges or the O’Dowd’s and Cllr. Anthony Donohue faking their concern for their constituents, maybe you’ll then realise that there are lies, damned lies and the politics of the official establishment Fine Gael-Labour “opposition”.
September 11, 2008 at 10:10 pm |
The only problem is they were right, we should have kept water charges. If we had then we would not have had to deal with the water crisis in Galway and other parts of the country over the last few years and we would not be dealing with fines from Europe and more importantly the health issues. Things we really need like a hole in the head during an economic down turn.
September 12, 2008 at 12:13 am |
Galway’s drinking water problems were caused by pollutants like pig slurry. silage “run-off” and local authority approved sceptic tanks. Ordinary households did not, and do not, pollute the system. Whilst people in Drogheda were being asked to pay water charges in the late 1980s, local anglers were reporting dead cattle being found in the reservoir at Kilineer. And right now Drogheda Borough Council are routinely using chemical weedkillers along the Glen stream at Newfoundwell.
The people I speak for (ordinary working individuals and famalies, young people, pensioners etc) did not cause the collapse of Ireland’s free-market capatilist economy or trigger hyper inflation. – you’ll have to take that one up with the auctioneering and residential property fraternity.
As regards fines from Europe, you’re not seriously suggesting that every citizen in the country will be thrown in jail if we don’t pay up? Even the old Unionist-dominated Stormont was more democratic than what’s now in Brussels and Strasbourg. You know, as well as I do, that if a referendum was held on the Lisbon Treaty in every EU state tomorrow that Cowen, Kenny and Gilmore (and their local mouthpieces) would be made a laughing stock by the citizens of Europe.
Systemic corporate and political corruption costs this country (and Europe) billions. The ordinary honest working public is, seemingly, always expected to pick up the tab for this social, political and economic malaise,