All's Well That Is Ending Well

Si, is the Social Partners: Is Totally Unnatural!

Is a photo of ICTU leader David Begg and fat-lipped Irish Taoiseach Biff O'Cowen engaged in one of their lurid dances around one another that is only educational in a negative way and children should not be allow to watch.

My soul has receive a sick note from God this week. Not because I am any sicker and disgust with the state of this world than usual, but because I am come out in a sarcastic show of solidarity with Irish public sector workers, who will now be working 10 percent less hard than they already were not because the government has made the unilateral and bold decision to impose a levy on their pension. Is a big disgrace! If there was any justice in this world, no worker would live long enough to be able to draw a pension. Is a typical sign of the lax management practices that go on in the public sector. You can bet that it is not allow in the private sector, where union leaders are reviled by honest decent ordinary unemployed workers, who take the lead in following what their priest and boss tell them.

Biff O'Cowen was very smart in making his unilateral decision, though. He was deliberately provocating the unions with his last-minute demands in the knowing that they would refuse, so that he would be "forced" to impose the levy. This now make him look like a strong and decisive leader willing to make the tough decisions about hurting other people after having being lamb-basted in the medias for being indecisive for months and not having a clue what he is doing. He is much smarter than that: he have at least half an idea.

There is one bit of Biff's argument which nobody is buying, however. Biff is saying to everyone that it is important that the pain of the knacked economy is shared by everyone equally. The burden must be shared around and the misery universal. Nobody is falling for this persiflage for one second. Is clearly a big difference between the public sector and the private sector in terms of the suffering. Telling someone that they have to pay a pension levy is much much less painful than having to tell someone that they are out of a job, and in Ireland, I know for a fact, many bosses are in the estremely painful position of having to tell their own wives, sons, daughters, mistresses, grandmothers, and so on, that they will have to take a pay cut or even stop working altogether outside of the home. That must make mealtimes totally unbearable!

Biff doesn't really know what he is talking about in this regard. Some of the CEOs and bankers and bosses in the financial services sector are sacking thousands of people. Think how painful it must be for Michael Dell to have to tell 4,000 people that they are fired. For each one of those minions, of course, for them is only one job, and in any case they are ignorant plebs and their senses will no doubt be dulled by years of beer and television and chips. But for Michael, is like death by 4,000 cuts. 4,000 job cuts. It must be an esquisite agony for him every time he has to personally endure the responsibility of telling someone their job can be done more profitably in Poland. THIS is why CEOs deserve to be paid so much money, by the way; they take on the heavy burden of doing the horrible jobs in society that nobody else want to do.

Telling civil servants they must pay some money to their pensions is a stream of piss by comparison, so Biff is kidding nobody when he say that the pain he feel is equal to that suffered by the likes of Michael Dell or Peter Conlon at Xsil or John Hennessy at Ericsson or the poor bosses at IBM, Boston Scientific, Celestic, GlaxoSmithKline and cetera, and cetera, and cetera. THEY know what pain is, Biff, so stop pouting!

Bring back Bertie the Herne. At least he make us laugh!