From time to time the DoBlog allows honoured guests to write posts (well I would if anyone asked). When I’m stuck for honoured guests, sometimes I invite family, and I even let them get a byline on the piece. No cuttypasty-and-claim-as-my-own here thanky much.
This post is penned by the brother. If he would actually get off his backside and do a proper blog hisself (he lives over at “Another Crying Shame“) I’m sure the O Brien clan would soon be festooned with Obsessive Blogger badges from Fergal Crehan.
So… here’s the brother’s take on the Great Big Bertie Bye Bye:
While it’s certainly good news in a visceral ‘Death to my Enemies’ kind of way I think it will in the long run mean very little or even be a bad thing for the Irish body politic
On the 7th of May we won’t wake up to find the benefits of the boom miraculously not squandered, nor will the Banks take heed of our plight and generously forgive us the highest level of personal indebtedness in Western Europe. Too many of our generation will still find themselves stuck in a poorly built, badly managed estate with few amenities and a joke of a public transport system paying a 90-100% mortgage from here to their retirement. Unless Bertie retires to private life, gets a FETAC Childcare Diploma and sets up a crèche his resignation is unlikely to in any way improve things for working parents.
The Church will still have touched all those kids, the State will still have covered most of the tab and those solicitors will still have stolen from the victims with near impunity.
On that magical Wednesday 5 weeks from now Bertie will not leave the Dail and start healing the victims of his health-care system. Those kids with cystic fibrosis are still going to live tragically short and unnecessarily unpleasant lives while Bertie claims his numerous pensions. One resignation will not clarify whether Mary in Louth has Cancer or let Peter in Galway make his son a Ribena with tap water.
On that glorious Wednesday we won’t find our primary schools growing new roofs or self-exterminating their rat infestations nor will teachers spontaneously be able to care for the needs of our autistic children. Our vast collection of illiterates will not develop an appreciation for Tolstoy. Our children will still be drunk, high or self harming
We are still going to wake up in one of the most unequal societies in Europe, disillusioned and looking down the barrel of a global recession which has the potential to eviscerate the gains our economy has made in the past 10 years and facing social and infrastructural nightmares which will blight our children’s (to whom Ahern will be as distant a historical figure as Jack Lynch was to us) and potentially our grandchildren’s lives.
What’s worse is that there will probably be a backlash in the electorate about how he was ‘hounded’ from office and the party that has led us into this quagmire will probably do quite handsomely in the local elections.
And the whole thing will start all over again.
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I’ve added a link into Turlough’s text to a FETAC Childcare course that just so happens to be in Bertie’s constituency, a brisk walk up the road from St. Lukes. Just in case he decides to be influenced by obsessive bloggers.