The Whirlygig

( 1 ) .It’s half seven on a week evening in a small country shop. The lone shop assistant looks up and greets the man,a stranger to her,who has just entered.It is that sort of shop,a place for locals where everybody knows nearly everybody and people talk to each other. The man is dressed in black. He has a black hoodie and she now notices that a scarf covers his face. She is apprehensive. He then produces a large carving knife and demands the till takings. She is scared shitless and gives it over without question. He takes it and rushes out  side. She is terrified of being on her own since.

It is doubtful that the robber will be caught ever. She has to get used to the idea of working on her own if she wants work there and she does.

(2).He is nearer seventy than sixty. He has a potentially fatal illness, is under medical instruction to remove all sources of stress from his life in order to enable him to live and recover.He is depressed. He has been a model citizen most of his life and is in dispute with a supplier over the quantum of a debt,most of which he has paid. The supplier know full well the precarious state of his health. They write to him demanding the debt, threatening him with legal costs and intimating that they will look to his family home for retribution, hoping to scare him into submission.

(3). She is a professional in her sixties. A scrupulously fair woman,as her profession demands. In her forty years in business she has given employment to a cohort of about six staff and paid them decent wages. She depends on a bank overdraft to survive. She has never stung the bank, ever. She has never been greedy and just charged her customers enough to cover her costs with a small surplus for herself. She has no nest egg. Due to the recession her business has dried up. The bank has incrementally cut back her business  overdraft. She is stuck in a lease that her landlord will not reduce. She cannot pay her staff. Nor has she the heart nor resources to make them redundant. Because she is self employed she has no welfare entitlements. She gets a grave illness. And is advised to quit work for the sake of her health.

Facts are she cannot. There is no safety net for her. She sometimes thinks that death might not be that bad if it does come.

(4) . He is in his late twenties. Ten years ago things were picking up in the construction sector and he went for it. He leased machinery, negotiated wage deals with those who wanted work and paid his taxes. He gave god employment. The banks were accommodating, vieing to trump each other with the credit cards they offered him. The government gorged on his taxes. He built a house on a mortgage.

Work dried up. The banks that once lined up to throw money at him cut off his credit. The finance companies repossessed his machinery, sold it off and are hassling him daily for the balance. He has no welfare entitlements and the relieving officer is paying just enough to feed himself and his family. His creditors are trying to pry this money from him and  grasp it  to satisfy their debts. He  cannot pay his mortgage nor his kid’s school fees. He is in negative equyity and has no assets. There is no one to turn to.To cap it all a State funded  industrial tribunal , instigates proceedings against him for breach of a registered employment agreement. He cannot afford to employ anyone to represent him.He wonders at the system whereby the state is funding a tribunal to adjudiacate a debt against him while he is being maintained by the State, in favour of a claimant who is being housed by the state and kept by the state, when all parties know he is destitute.. Had he been clever enough to rely on the State for housing and not built his own house, he would be long gone.

(5) They are loaded. Suspicions lingered that certain aspects of their behaviour were not kosher. The organs of State that can handle investigation of ordinary people are unable to get to the bottom of their behaviour. Tribunals are set up to enquire and report.These guys can afford the best money can buy and challenge the tribunal officers at every hands turn. They can run to the suprerior courts at the bat of an eyelid and do regularly.. They suffer collective amnesia and their media friends lie for them. The best money can buy. To their shame they feel free to disparage the integrity of the tribunal officers. Their money protects them.14 years it took, longer than the life of the girl murdered in the North.

(6) THE QUEEN OF OUR FORMER COLONISTS HAS CONDECENDED TO VISIT.A PUBLICAN,IN EXERCISE OF THE FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION WE ARE SUPPOSED TO ENJOY,ERECTS A BANNER SAYING SHE WONT BE SERVED IN HIS PUB. Within 24 hours the posse is assembled by the media and he is threatened with withdrawal of his afterhours  extensions and breach of planning laws. Will banners of such size welcoming her be treated similarly?

(7). After 30 years the Queens Government apologises for the actions of one of her soldiers who shot a 12 year old girl in the back, twice, while on her way to confessions, killing her stone dead.. He had been aquitted of manslaughter at the time.

And the  secular wing of our new government gets its retaliation in early. The dog’s tail  is  to decommission the Catholic ethos from our schools. The dog is getting worried. Already.

Catholics,ordinary people  and Irish speakers ,don’t apply.Get out.Sorry for speaking down to ye,You are way ahead of me. Ye are gone and queing up to go in your droves.

Expect more constitutional red herrings to keep you distracted. It worked before

Remember Irish = bad.Post colonial multiculturalism = good.

Until the ass roars again.

Slan go foill.