I am Tiger Hear me Roar
So here we have it, the butt end of the Celtic Tiger, personified in the corpulent body of Fianna Fáil and their final gasp. What was is i hear you ask? The easiest way to describe it is as the longest and most pointless exhalation in history. Normally when one exhales it is to get rid of the of the waste materials that the body no longer needs and then to replenish itself with fresh nutrients. However the long and well documented death of the Fianna Fáil party has done nothing but infect an already decrepit environment with a miasma of wasted words. We must however remember Brian Lenihan's inspiring words, 'the worst is over'. We laughed then at his idiocy the vacuous nature of his words. Little did we know what internal machinations had been taking place.
Way back when in September of 2008 in what we are supposed to believe was a benevolent game of golf between then Minister for finance Brian Cowen, the issues of the slight slump in the Tiger's performance came up in a post golf dinner. Expensive wines were quaffed, decadent meals devoured and the tax payer eaten whole. Several days later the bank guarantee was put in place, to supposedly safe guard our financial sovereignty. I am sure the irony of this is not lost on anyone now.
Cough ...
So the Tiger was sick and needed 100000000000cc's of Euro to lead it to a full recovery. The extent of the cost of this ambiguous guarantee was debated and thrown around the media for weeks. Those who opposed the guarantee were accused of 'talking the economy into recession', those in the media who spoke sense and analysed the sick body of the Tiger and offered a diagnosis of it's afflictions were deemed crooks and knaves that were engaging in nothing short of economic treason. The latter accusation has now done a full circle and returned on the accusers, but to amount to nothing but farce.
This week in the Dáil has seemed like a busy hive activity, but on closer inspection the activity has consisted of inane rhetoric as opposed to putting through essential bills that have been used as a reason to prolong the life support of the sitting government. The embodiment of Fianna Fáil marginally won a vote of confidence from his increasingly frail minions. The green tinge to his complexion blushed at the proceedings, one of them no doubt tweeted and six of his closest resigned in receipt of immodest pensions that only serve as a relic of times past. The odour that this corpse has exhaled has seeped down into the very fabric of the Irish nation and will unfortunately linger.
Then we must look to the future ...
When a new government sits down after March 11th what willl they do? Well first of all they will inhale the acrid and torpid fumes that have been exhaled by the end of the Fianna Fáil reign. What advice can i offer them? Hold your breath ...
