Not a banking inquiry as we know it Captain!

I remember an old cartoon I saw once of a guy in the dock with a tenacious lawyer grilling him. The guy turns a pleading look at the judge and the caption reads, "You ask me to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and then he asks me THAT!"

It sprang to mind yesterday when I read some of the media stories on the banking inquiry that is finally up and running, seven years late. When the bastards were finally shamed into setting it up, their first priority was what they called its, "Terms of Reference." This took ages to draft because they had to carefully avoid allowing anything that could embarrass or damn any of them. They had to ensure to forbid any questioning of activities that took place between certain dates, essentially pulling the teeth of anything the inquiry could usefully do.

To refine the terms of reference further, they then chose an agenda. This stroke prevented anything they didn't want discussed or revealed from even coming up (because it wasn't on the agenda). Items on the agenda were all that could be dealt with. Only then could the charade begin. A procession of still wealthy has-beens were wheeled in to allow them to recite their own scripts. No hard questions could be asked and no real facts presented. It's been a con-job so far. Everyone said sorry but no accountability could possibly be apportioned and none of them were to blame for anything. It turned into an old-boy's club of back-slappers scoring points off each other. It was a case of politicians asking politicians questions.

Then an exasperated whistle blower revealed corrupt practices in the whole process and we had a storm in a teacup. Now they propose to hold an inquiry into the inquiry. The whole edifice is turning into as farce, as reported here. But you and I are not getting this farce for nothing. It is costing us fifty grand a day!!! That's a cool quarter of a million a week, every week.

Speculation abounds that we will end up needing an inquiry into the inquiry into the original inquiry. And the biggest insult is, that no inquiry can convict or sentence anybody. This is no court of law with consequences for the guilty. Indeed, Enda and his buddies have blatantly used it for electioneering.

Is it any wonder we have lost respect for any of those bastards?

Comments

Not a banking inquiry as we know it Captain! — 2 Comments

nisakiman on August 4, 2015 at 9:09 am said:
I always find myself wondering why these things cost so much. What does it actually get spent on? I know the lawyers involved charge eye-watering fees, but €50k a day? That's really taking the piss.
It's the same with these government IT projects costing millions upon millions. What the fuck do they spend all that money on? Surely it's just a question of creating the necessary software (which can't be that difficult for a team of talented programmers), and then getting an office full of techy types to input the data. But no, it costs mega-bucks and then as often as not it gets binned because it doesn't work.
The bloody NHS in UK spent ELEVEN BILLION POUNDS on a database, and then fucking scrapped it!
And was anybody publicly hanged for this monumental waste of taxpayer's money? Not a bit of it.
And how the hell do you spend £11 billion on a database? Whose pocket(s) does that money end up in?

Reply ↓
- John Mallon on August 4, 2015 at 10:48 am said:
  Exactly Nisakiman!
  Over here in 2004 our Government decided to buy electronic voting machines for a massive €55M. A few were used once in a by-election, found to have security problems and finally scrapped in 2012. Then it emerged that most of them had been stored all along at an army barracks because nobody took the decision to smash them up earlier. Here though, it got interesting. Four election officials used their own premises to store some of the controversial electronic voting machines, getting more than €400,000 from the State. One or two even bought a new premises just to store these small machines. A close relation of a fifth returning officer in Cavan/Monaghan was also given a lucrative 25-year contract to store the machines, despite them only having a 20-year lifespan. This guy is still getting paid This is how our political masters reward their friends and backers. A letter from the department to the Dail Public Accounts Committee in 2005 stated: “The guidance issued by the department to returning officers in January 2003 on the arrangements for storage of the electronic equipment did not provide for a formal approval system.”
  It is any wonder they keep telling us that the country is broke, no matter how many new taxes they invent.
  Reply ↓

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Not a banking inquiry as we know it Captain!

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Not a banking inquiry as we know it Captain! — 2 Comments

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