Let's Express

The Irish Water debate, (or debacle perhaps?), just keeps on rolling.  

The authors of the whole ruse are off on holidays for a while now to frantically wrack their brains for some way to kid us into accepting Irish Water in some fashion or other before the election. It needs to be re-parceled as something else because the EU and the voting public has rejected it as currently designed.

But they've built a trap for themselves. They cannot back down now because that would almost guarantee that Labour and Fine Gael will be wiped out in the election. Phil Hogan has certainly dug them a monstrous hole, hasn't he? People silly enough to have paid the first bill must be now planning to ignore the next one that falls through their letterboxes too. And the bribes sent out to entice us to pay up are by now, yesterday's breakfast, unvouched for of course.

I'd feel sorry for the Government politicians if they weren't such a shower of unmitigated pricks. They really are clueless liars drifting aimlessly in their own pomp and bullshit. They can never tell us the truth that we have been paying all along and Irish Water was set up to get us to pay on the double. They could never admit to us that all we were ever going to get was a metering and billing company because that's what I.W. actually is. The water is still being provided to us by the local authorities and their staff and it always will be. They couldn't possibly come clean now and say it was a ruse to fleece us. That could hurt their re-election prospects, the single thing they all went into to politics for in the first place.

So they have an urgent need to trick us again and they know they must get it right this time. They must be looking more closely at how Fianna Fail tricked us so successfully into voting a second time for the Lisbon Treaty after we had emphatically rejected it the first time. The 'soldiers of destiny' really do know how to cheat and get away with it, they must be thinking. 

But what are the alternatives now, they are most surely be wondering. "We have tried the conservation angle and that was seen for the nonsense it always was. We're spreading dark rumors that Dublin could suffer huge water shortages and no-one seems to give a shit about that. The damned electorate didn't swallow the crap about creaking infrastructure problems in our Victorian piping. Nobody believes the line we spun about water being a precious commodity 'cause it's pissed down on their heads free of charge all summer. So just what big lie can we come up with to fool the voters when we get back from holidays?"

I'd love to be a fly on the wall at some of these think-tanks. I am imagining eager your candidates putting their hands up urgently to speak. "Why don't we re-name it Irish Water (Diluted) Ltd sir?" one will cry. "We could turn the whole thing off for a month and see how they like that sir?" another more militant voice could say. "Can't we make non-payment an automatic custodial sentence sir?" a legal type might offer. "How about trebling the motor tax sir?" the village idiot then suggests. "Or we could send in the army sir, that always works?" A seasoned player might then stand up and offer, "I suggest that we defer any decisions until we get five more years under our belts from them, then we'll make them pay for this embarrassment," to cries of here, here!

One way or another, it isn't over yet and believe me, it is us versus them now, make no mistake.

Caught off-balance

My Mother used to say, "Your lies will always catch up with you." Given the amount of lies and bullshit this coalition Government have tried to shovel our way regarding Irish Water, the only mystery is that it took so long to catch up with them.

This afternoon, as widely predicted, the Eurostat Agency was the one to expose the lies. In an effort to make themselves look good, the Government pulled a vulgar accountancy trick by pushing the set-up and running costs of Irish Water off the State's balance sheet. They crudely attempted to disguise it as a healthy independent company that mysteriously had access to nearly nine hundred  million euros to spend instead of it being a billion a year liability which was never necessary.  

But the bluff has been called. Eurostat has found that, there was considerable Government control over Irish Water, in particular over board appointments and operations including broad pricing parameters such as price caps for non-domestic users. In the local parlance that would read, "The imprint of big Phil Hogan's hobnail boot was discovered on the seat of the pants of anyone who was in receipt of a bung from the new company."

But there was more from Eurostat. They discovered, "The fact that Irish Water merely reorganizes previously non-market activity carried out by Local Government with Local Government assets being transferred to Irish Water and a large majority of Irish Water staff remaining Local Government employees." This is an example of yet more creative accounting from Enda's mandarins. Who owns what and who's employed by who became a game of 'pass the parcel.' The giggling lads are now discovering that serious Eurocrats don't play pass the parcel.

Eurostat went on to cite, "Significant and continuous Government funding for Irish Water mainly in the form of operational grants and capital funding," as another reason to call the bluff. One can only surmise that those euro-laddies over there must have asked any of our dogs in the street over here for them to come up with that well-known fact. Taxpayers were already paying for water here and always had been and the money to set-up Irish Water came from our Motor Tax, nearly ninety per cent of last year in fact. Like Anglo Irish, Noonan was "pulling figures out of his arse" and blustering his way forward with bullying and hectoring, much like Big Phil in fact.

Of course, Eurostat also points out the defects in the pricing policy, the fact that sales must cover at least fifty per cent of the production costs over a sustained period and the fact that the majority of households simply refuse to pay. In plain english our European masters are saying it didn't work, it is unsustainable and don't pull that trick ever again, (Paddy). You must be thinking the Government lads and lassies are red-faced today? They surely have their heads down in mortal embarrassment? Well, not a bit of it.

Brazen as you like, Noonan dismissed it all on the radio just now. In his infinite wisdom apparently, he had anticipated all of this Euro nonsense and had put the full cost of Irish Water back on the Government balance sheet previous to Eurostat. Well, that's what he said of course and the reason he said it was to assure us all that this calamity would not impact the goodies he plans to give us all at the forthcoming pre-election budget. 

I don't believe a word of it though. The whole farce has been put off for the summer while they frantically scramble around for some half-believable story they can tell us in the autumn as to why the give-away budget has to cancelled. They'll probably blame Fianna Fail or the Shinners for it all.

Meanwhile though, the Government has most definitely been caught off-balance.