Yesterday I overheard a conversation while trying to shake off some stress at the gym. This conversation captured perfectly why this country is in such a mess. It started with a moan about how everyone has lied to us and then how it was time for them to be ousted from power. It culminated in pondering the general election and if Fianna Fail would turn up at the doorstep. Then almost instantaneously it turned to, “I wonder if the Greens will turn up? Oh yeah I’d love to give them a piece of my mind.”
The conversation went from acknowledging the catastrophic leadership of Fianna Fail to immediately seeking a scapegoat to blame more for the problems. Granted the Greens deserve a piece of any right thinking person’s mind, on any given day but to move to them as a worthy recipient for the blame deserving of Fianna Fail and their gross negligence in office at a time before the Greens even had a seat at the cabinet table! Is it any wonder that this country is in such a state? How do we ever expect to progress from the playground if we can’t allow ourselves to identify right and wrong when it comes to our favourite political team? When will we see politicians as employees to get a job done rather than somebody to support as a hobby? It sickens me to the core that we live this way.
Some years ago I was accused of attending the Robert Mugabe School of Economics by a die hard Fianna Fail supporter simply because I wanted to see more emphasis on regional development instead of centralised infrastructure and a focus on industrial and high end jobs to bolster the economy rather than building speculative retail centres and dubious ring roads whose real raison d’etre was always to open up land for rezoning to retail rather than traffic management. I think history will reflect well on my beliefs and hopefully his will be retained, embarrassingly at the back of his mind. Let us never forget that the self-centred, centralised policies of Fianna Fail caused this and those who subscribed to those policies because “they were alright Jack”, well you deserve special mention in the history books.