Over the next weeks, inevitably, you’ll get another chance to watch the John Landis satire Trading Places. There’s much to enjoy, like Louis Winthorpe III, played by Dan Aykroyd, as a malevolent Santa. Intent on vengeance, he crashes the company party in full regalia, hogs out on grub and grog, gets obnoxicated (to quote Louis Jordan), steals a side of smoked salmon and guzzles it on the bus. Feeling increasingly drunk and shitty, he lurches off the bus. It’s pissing rain. He attempts to shoot himself in the head. The pistol doesn’t work. A dog pisses on his leg.

The poor bastard. But, watching him squirm, it’s impossible to avoid the realisation: he’s us! Sod’s law has come into effect here: what can go wrong will go wrong… and it just has! In spades!! Fuggit. Right now, we probably couldn’t shoot our collective selves successfully and for sure the dogs are pissing on our feet.
Jasus, Christmas is coming, but we’re not getting fat. We haven’t got a ha’penny for the poor man’s hat, nor a brass farthing if truth be told. Right now the most goosed thing around here is us. We’re going to get stuffed and screwed. Or screwed and stuffed. And it’s freezing.
Well, what really annoys the most of us is that we didn’t even have the pleasure of hogging out and getting obnoxicated beforehand.
Oh sure, some people did. That’s what the Fianna Fáil tent at the Galway Races was all about. That’s what the late Celtic Tiger builder banker frenzy was all about. And presumably that’s what Brian Lenihan was talking about last week when he said “let’s be fair about this – we all partied.”
But he’s wrong. Most of us didn’t party through the boom. We just tried to keep pace with the madness in the housing market, the explosion in rental costs and the gross inflation in the cost of every conceivable good or service.
Those who partied most ostentatiously were screwing the rest of us when they weren’t screwing each other. And you can add members of the legal profession to the list. And a few fawning journos too.
Maybe the Minister believes the fatuities of celebrity and money-obsessed media. And why not? They’re about as reliable as statements from the former Governor of the Central Bank and the former Financial Services Regulator proved to be – and he seems to have believed them too!
(And in partial mitigation for the Minister, ‘experts’ are supposed to be… well… expert, aren’t they?)
Oh, the wurtld is in a state of chassis and no mistake.
In the maelstrom through which we’re swirling, the contribution of the media can’t be overlooked. A number of fine investigative journalists have done us all great service by rooting around and exposing the lies, evasions and doublespeak endlessly emitted with a view to protecting those who should be nailed.
But there has been some pretty lazy stuff too, masquerading as objective fact. Take, for example, the comparisons between old age pensions in the Republic and those ‘a few miles down the road’ in Northern Ireland.
They are higher in the Republic, as journos have reported. But is this the whole story? No it isn’t. For a start, pensioners in Northern Ireland have access to a functional free public health service, whereas those ‘in the soith’ do not, at least as regards functionality. Of the many who raised the issue, only Pat Kenny saw fit to mention this.
And so on.
By the same token, the meeja also can’t deny its responsibility for the hysteria that is now so pervasive it seems to be clouding everyone’s capacity to think and act rationally.
The level of rudeness and aggression towards politicians in radio interviews is astonishing. For better or worse, an elected politician has been voted in by the citizens. Unlike those who self-proclaim to be voices of the people, elected representatives – even if there’s shysters, chancers and clowns among them – are constitutionally mandated to represent the citizens. Journalists aren’t.
And here and there, other baleful influences are starting to be heard, like the German-baiting on a recent ‘humorous’ Liveline. What’s that all about?
What needs emphasis is this: those who knowingly took risks should share the grief, including the bond holders. That’s a simple, clear moral position. They don’t want to. They will kick and scream and gouge. But it’s where we should point all this, while there is still time and opportunity…
Unopposed, these greedy motherforgetters will bankrupt each and every one of us and walk away laughing, ready to buy up the remnants for nothing. We’ll be the bastards’ indentured servants. Like the London poor in A Christmas Carol, we’ll shiver outside while they gorge themselves.
It’s not good enough. It’s time that those who were only too happy to exploit the follies of the speculators share the pain. It won’t be easy to make them. As Louis says to Billy Ray, “You make no friends in the pits and you take no prisoners”. But it must be done. Gloves off? Too right. Fight fire with fire.
In the bleak midwinter, we all deserve our fair share of happiness and merriness… I wish you that and more.