Scrooge!!!

I’ll wager there haven’t been many, if any, sightings of the holly and
ivy brigade where you are.
Just a few short years ago, by the end of November you couldn’t find a
quiet watering hole on the way home from work that was wasn’t mobbed.
When the good ship Ireland was being steered through calm waters by
Bertie Ahern – remember him? – the Yuletide festivities were well
under way by now.
Who cared that the best venues were booked out in December when the
office boss could chance a drunken grope with trainee Trish from
reception even as the Halloween bonfires were still smouldering.
Well, while the party’s well and truly over in post Celtic Tiger
times, it’s not all bah humbug.
Christmas arrived early in, of all places, Leinster House, and even
more extraordinarily, courtesy of that Scrooge-like figure…Joe
Higgins.
Like the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come he had the Dail chamber
ringing with echoes of ‘Ho, ho, ho’ when he cast Enda Kenny in the
role of Santa Claus.
(He dropped out of his studies for the priesthood before going on to
become a fully fledged atheist so he was hardly likely to adopt the
role of Fr Christmas himself, was he?)
Joe’s seasonal cheer was however lost on the absent Eamon Gilmore’s
‘little helpers’ when he tried to drive a sleigh between the Coalition
partners.
He urged the Taoiseach to “make honest little elves of the Labour
party backbenchers”, taunting them for repeating broken pledges from
the pre-election campaign.
Enda seemed to be enjoying it all a bit too much as he matched his foe
across the floor with some catchy retorts of his own.
But it must have been the heady thoughts of mulled wine by a log fire
that seduced the chuckling Government leader into a careless remark.
After putting his tormentor down as a “benign parliamentary
terrorist”, he took up Joe’s challenge and vowed to “make an honest
leader of Deputy Gilmore”.
The elves were hopping mad and the deer dung was flying when they
caught up with their leader at a parliamentary party meeting and
moaned that they were being publicly humiliated by the Fine Gael
overlord.
It all seemed a bit over the top to be honest, as it was nothing more
that a bit of banter between a pair of adversaries trying to get one
over on the other.
What makes it all the more curious is that precious Government TDs
were more exercised by what many of their colleagues clearly
understood was in no way an intended sleight.
Surely it would at least look better in the eyes of the public if they
were stamping their feet in rage at some of the cruel decisions that
they will inevitably have to take.
Joe’s jocular remarks were only the dressing on a caustic attack on
Government posturing ahead of the Budget.
The bombardment was launched by Micheal Martin, who brushed aside the
usual brickbats about his role as a Fianna Fail economy wrecker to
accuse the Government of scaring the living daylights out of people,
And it is little surprise that kite-flying is a word that crops up
quite a bit in and around the chamber recently.
Between official reform plans, leaks and speculation, the biggest
surprises when Michael Noonan gets to his feet tomorrow week will be
what’s not in the Budget.
We know for sure that VAT is going up, but also on the table are
children’s allowance, social welfare, medical cards, student fees,
household charges, motor and carbon tax, DIRT, pensions, nursing
homes, booze, smokes, etc, etc.
As a wag in the Dail bar put it the other day: “If you add it all up
there should be over €6 billion and when they only take the €3.8
billion needed, we’ll feel like they’re giving us something.”
Anyone fooled by that must surely believe Enda Kenny really is Santa Claus.
ENDS