Few will be all atwitter if RTE in Ireland is found to have the same political survival culture as News International, if not quite on a par with the Murdoch brand of such an activity. Those that might help with your cash flow would come top of the list for a free lunch, weekend in the Sauna, spot of shooting, to be followed by a positive or contrived story. The BBC are masters at this but then, given the nature of the business, so is everyone in it.
Irish politicians will need to be very careful about throwing feigned acrimony or denial around or they could find themselves on the wrong borrowed horse. God forbid that someone asks for a Judicial Inquiry or the plods get involved. Even worse RTE could start actually investigating the politicians' relationships with bankers, developers and, drum roll here, journalists! While the British have remained stalwartly wooden in the face of systemic corruption and illegality the Irish love a fight. Given the amount of money that went missing there is no doubt the place, along with many others, is rotten to the core.
The future of that island, both north and south, is in the hands of a political cadre that didn't evolve from socio-economic or democratic principles but from a populist nationalism that has permeated and substituted for what passes as governments' policy since the nation's inception. The Irish have done a remarkably good job in hiding the fact that they had their own Civil War by blaming everyone but themselves. The simplicity of getting elected on this basis hasn't filled the halls of democracy with capable, never mind great, thinkers. This doesn't bode well in the search for a political solution to their present economic problems. But at least they can follow ingrained tradition and blame the rest of Europe. Or, if they take my advice, bury fat Americans.
Fat Americans are an integral part of the global economic recovery. What would happen if they all stopped over-eating or paying more for their XXXXL clothes? Processed and fast food companies would go broke. Thousands in China would starve. Internationally when you get a large fizzy drink at a burger joint it is less than a pint - in the USA it is around a gallon. The same phenomena applies to coffins. So many Americans won't fit into a standard size coffin that super-sized ones are available, on display at funeral homes, which necessitate the purchase of a, likewise, super-sized plot in the cemetery - making the funeral industry very profitable and an ideal candidate for outsourcing.
The same Americans are too big to be cremated and, if you can get them in, burn so hot they can damage the incinerators. We're talking people that can weigh a quarter of a ton here. 6 of them weigh as much as a small truck, so ambulances can't carry them. The cure for rampant obesity - smoking. It has come to my attention that this explosion in girth has coincided with an equal and opposite implosion of cigarette smoking. Encourage, if not mandate, all fat people to smoke. Give anyone over 400 pounds free cigarettes and they'll die thinner and can be buried cheaper. Health care costs might rise a bit but think of the tax revenue. As 75% of Americans will be overweight by 2020 the US debt and budget deficit should be long gone.
No comments:
Post a Comment