Nitpickers annoying poor Mini-Minister

By Archon

HERE’S some advice for Mr Dara Murphy, the embattled Fine Gael Mini-Minister for something or other.

It’s this: Dear Mr Mini-Minister, please ignore the swarm of nitpickers currently annoying you on account of your borrowing two Garda drivers, plus car, to take you to Dublin after your state vehicle broke down in Fermoy.

We humbly acknowledge (and we wish others would do the same) that you are an outstanding legislator whose qualities are too rarely appreciated by the body politic. You were perfectly entitled to obtain on loan a police car, plus drivers. Why? Because you belong to a superior category of men, namely the Great Race of Borrowers, and because this group is totally different to the miserable class of gits, known as the Lenders, of which we (the common people) are members. 

Lenders are characterised by meanness, suspicion, mistrust, grudging resentment, spite, and painful craving of the success and advantages of people like your good self.  So said Charles Lamb, who invented the concept that society is divided into Borrowers and Lenders in his essay ‘The Two Races of Men’.

Indeed, to invite policemen involved in important activities at the dead of night to drop everything and take you straight to Dublin was an expression of the special powers that Nature conferred on you  – a sort of Corkonian version of the Divine Right of Kings. And there’s nothing wrong with that so long as we, the Lenders, know our place in the scheme of things and don’t demand similar favours.

A race apart

According to Lamb, the Borrower is discernible by a certain instinctive sovereignty… a careless (in the sense of effortless) deportment … rosy gills and contempt for money – yours, and mine especially! Putting it another way, Borrowers are a race apart, and on that basis we utterly condemn the accusation levelled at you of having wasted Garda time.   

How uplifting, then, when we compare the generosity of the Boys in Blue to the endless bad-mouthing you’ve been getting from sections of the Lender class: those repulsive begrudgers (particularly among the reptilian meeja) that belittle the achievements of illustrious Borrowers with coarse descriptions, such as ‘having the neck of a jockey’s bo*!%x” etc, etc! 

The metaphorical representation relating to a jockey, we hasten to add, does not in any form or fashion include you, Mr Mini-Minister, and to imply that you and a jockey might have something in common, however remote, would be wrong, and contrary to natural justice.

Indeed, the sum of money that you and the missus (oops, sorry, secretary) saved in expenses by securing the free ride to Dublin, courtesy of the Boys in Blue, was a not inconsiderable €300 (the cost of a taxi from Fermoy – a mode of transport which, we understand, you declined).

Careful forethought 

Your foresight was admirable. You left Cork in the early hours of Sunday morning, ensuring you had plenty of time to catch a flight for a meeting in Brussels on the following day. 

Your careful forethought displayed great presence of mind in the sense that you were able to anticipate any vicissitude that might be lying-in-wait, such as your government car giving up the ghost or, for that matter, a hypothetical encounter with a giant crab; Gawd forbid!  

What’s more, in no way do we entertain the vile rumour doing the rounds up in Knocka –a dreadful place although part of your constituency – that you chose to drive to Dublin (504km round trip) for the mileage expenses when you could have flown from Cork to Paris or Amsterdam and taken a 70-min high-speed train into the centre of Brussels!

As to the criticism that you diverted the fuzz from their duties and left rural communities to the mercy of marauding bands of thieves, well, that’s neither here nor there.  According to reports, it was a quiet night!

In other words, Mr Mini-Minister, you did nothing wrong and we commend you for your wisdom. Oh, and also for endorsing Charles Lamb’s whimsical classification of mankind!

Very best friends

Blueshirts will be mightily pleased at the €25million worth of contracts that our Taoiseach secured for Irish companies during his official visit to Saudi Arabia last year. On the same occasion Mr Kenny expressed his satisfaction at Saudi Arabia’s election to the United Nation’s Human Rights Council.

But now, in the wake of last week’s announcement that the UN has appointed the Saudi envoy, Faisal Bin Hassan Trad, to head (oops, should that be ‘behead’?) an influential human rights panel, Mr Kenny will be leppin’ with joy.

You see Mr Trad will have the power to select applicants from around the world for more than seventy positions in countries where the UN has a mandate to deal with human rights violations.  And in light of that bestowed honour, we hope Mr Kenny will compliment him with the type of emotional arousement that he demonstrated when showering praise on Crown Prince Salman, the Saudi bossman, for ‘leadership in terms of moderation.’

Extra executioners

And, we sincerely expect Mr Kenny not to remind Mr Trad of the advert posted recently on the website of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of the Civil Service.  Crown Prince Salman (now King Salman) seeks eight extra executioners to carry out public beheadings and the occasional amputation.  Considering that by June 15th of this year, Saudi executions reached one hundred –more than ISIS is credited with- head chopping is clearly a growth industry in Mr Kenny’s favourite Kingdom. 

Nor should Mr Kenny mention the case of blogger Raif Badawi. Having written about free speech in Saudi Arabia, he was sentenced to a thousand lashes – fifty lashes a week after Friday prayers – and ten years in prison.   

Or the case of twenty one year old Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, who is waiting beheading and for his headless body ‘to be mounted on a crucifix for public viewing’!  His crime was that of participating in anti-government protests when seventeen years old!

We certainly do not want our leader to embarrass Mr Trad by reminding him that Saudi Arabia funds Sunni terrorist groups worldwide and that senior members of the House of Saud are known as the bankers, recruiters and weapons-providers of al-Qaeda, since rebranded as ISIS. Or that Saudi Wahhabi ideology is responsible for the most gruesome atrocities committed against Sunni, Shia and Christian civilians!  

Mum’s the word!

And under no circumstances should Mr Kenny complain to Mr Trad about the torture and jailing of doctors from the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland who tended to the injuries suffered by the protesters after Saudi Arabia sent troops to repress a democracy movement in Bahrain! 

Indeed, we are lucky to have a Blueshirt Taoiseach who always knows the right thing to do, such as flying the national flag at half-mast when the monster, King Abdullah, croaked in January! Well done!