News
Whatever about Brian Lenihan we’re so lucky to have the Biff!
THE Financial Times considers Lenihan to be the worst Finance Minister in Europe, so where does that leave Biffo? A hard question, because whatever about Lenihan’s ineptitude, we’re lucky to have such a wise leader as the Biff.
You see, in a government where everybody is offside, our Taoiseach is an exception. He’s an astute commentator on the yob ethics of professional football. That’s very important in a country whose politics go hand in hand (a la Thierry Henry) with sport.
No sane person would compare Biffo to Thierry Henry, but with a small stretch of the imagination, Biffo might be described as the Jedward of Irish soccer – thanks to the way he danced into last week’s hand ball controversy with all the abandon of someone who doesn’t care which side wins so long as it is his.
On the other hand (there’s that hand again!), Biffo’s useless sidekick, Dermot Ahern, the Minister for Justice and Equality for Irish footballers, also pirouetted onto the pitch and attempted to turn the France-Ireland soccer match into an international incident. He too was deeply concerned with Mr. Henry’s singular instrument and the minister, as if he’d thought out the matter with both hands, attempted to change the result of the contest.
The rest of the world laughed uproariously. They wondered what kind of lulas ran the nation of saints and scholars and if the two politicos were suffering from an advanced case of St. Vitus Dance, or were they just headbangers?
TRIED AND TRUSTED
Of course they weren’t. Despite the ‘we wuz robbed’ whine, they were in fact putting into practice a tried and trusted Fianna Fail principle: namely that politics are nothing more than a football kicked about by those in power. In simple terms, they were making a political football out of a game of football.
From the Fianna Fail perspective, our two heroes were doing nothing unusual, particularly if there was a chance of scoring some kudos or winning public approval. The game plan was to put the Frogs under pressure at the highest level and to give that fella Sarkozy a nifty dig in the ribs and get him thinkin’ about a rematch.
So, before the eyes of the world, Biffo make his solo run at a crucial EU summit. ‘What about a replay?’ he whispered into the elegant ear of President Sarkozy. Unfortunately, the long-suffering Frenchman, who already endured Biffo’s pleas to slot Mrs. Geoghegan-Quinn into this job and Eoin Ryan into that job, had enough.
He wanted no more FF guff even if a crocked, unfit and out of his league Biffo tried desperately to cling on by teeth and toenails. Sadly, the leader of La Belle France saw Biffo as an ingrate who was biting the hand that lays the golden egg (as the Frenchman might have translated the famous saying).
AN OWN GOAL
His response was a classic (RTE broadcasted it on the six o’clock news). The great man stared in exasperation at the mad Paddy before commenting with a condescending sneer: "Mon Dieu, let me get on with my job." The Voltairean dismissal was nothing more than what Biffo deserved.
Why? Because his shameless jump onto the populist bandwagon smacked only of one thing: that his involvement in the controversy engendered by Thierry Henry’s interpretation of the rules of soccer would give the Irish public someone else to kick beside the government!
However, Sarkozy saw through the ruse, as did many of the Irish people, including Roy Keane. And we all cringed.
A local commentator, Shaun Connolly of the Irish Examiner, drew attention to the dysfunctional nature of Irish politics in his reference to the Dail debate on the match. Incredibly, Thierry Henry relegated to second place the debate on the Ryan Report into the abuse of children in state institutions.
Mr. Connolly acerbically wrote: "Despite the fact the parliament sits for barely 90 days a year (compared to 160 for Westminster), and with unemployment soon to hit 500,000 people, it could surely have found something worthier to occupy its time (than a football match).”
The man was on the ball!
GIVEN EASY MONEY
Sometimes one wonders if our political elite belongs to this planet at all, or are they cushioned from reality, thanks to the huge wealth that we generously bestow on them?
For instance, Lenihan (‘the worst finance minister in Europe’), having pumped €3,500 million of our money into the bankrupt AIB casino, demanded the bank appoint a boss from outside the ranks of the geezers who ran the place into the ground.
AIB gave him the two fingers. They appointed one of their own as managing director and, as well, breached the capped half a million euro salary by another €133,000.
They argued the bank was unable to attract an outsider at any price. A public outcry forced AIB to revisit the €500,000 salary – which was still an obscene amount of money for an outfit whose survival depended on State money.
Interestingly, former Labour leader, Dick ‘Groucho’ Spring is a State appointee to the bank’s board. As far as he was concerned, it was impossible to locate any young dynamic banker from outside the AIB family to sort out the mess. Only a person versed in the AIB culture of making (and losing) money could remedy the bank’s dire financial situation!
We pay Spring a basic fee of €27,375 plus a whopping €3,000 for each committee meeting – in total close on a hundred grand to protect the national interest. Was he up to scratch during the recent AIB antics and, if not, why doesn’t Lenihan sack him?
Joe Walsh is our ‘watchdog’ on the board of Bank of Ireland for which he gets a handy €78,000. What actually does he do as a national protector?
Then, there’s Alan Dukes, the former Blueshirt leader. He sits on the board of the totally walloped Anglo Irish Bank. We pay him close on €100,000 for his exalted activities so let’s hear about how he’s protecting our money, particularly since four billion was poured into Anglo Irish’s insatiable paw. The enormous sum is exactly the same amount that the well-cushioned political elite now wants to collect from health, welfare and education in order to ‘save the country.’
The so-called watchdogs appointed to dodgy financial institutions frequently warn of the ‘pain’ we all must suffer if the country is to ‘pull through.’ Question is: with the spondoolix those lads are trousering ‘in the national interest,’ who do they think they’re codding?
If they are real patriots, why don’t they do the job for nothing?