Cormac MacConnell: This farmer would welcome a subsidy
It is rarely written about in the media, except by wise observers like myself, and you accordingly never see its name in print.
That name is Bealbochtia, and it was earned cannily by the leaders of the province, because of their perennial adhesion to all the policies of the Beal Bocht... the Poor Mouth.
And that, most definitely, is the pure truth.
Bealbochtia is the unique province. It hit the headlines laterally last week, when its inhabitants and their spokesmen objected strongly to the publication of the CAP payments which slide through virtually every letterbox in Bealbochtia each year.
In about 230 instances, the payment to the farm family on the other side of the letter boxes is a six figure sum.
The total national figure for the published CAP payments to the citizens of Bealbochtia amounts to about €1.6 billions.
I truly cannot understand at all why the citizenry of Bealbochtia are so angry that the details of their annual financial windfall have been published.
They should be delighted that the residents of the four official Irish provinces are crestfallen and green with jealousy at their success.
The more closely I look at the situation, me not being a resident of Bealbochtia, the more envious I become.
I am aware, for example, that the Bealbochtians, the hardworking salt of the earth, in fairness, enjoy other advantages over the rest of us, right across the social and economic scale of modern living.
They mostly do not pay the mortgages which cripple the lifestyles of us PAYE peasants because, though they follow the Beal Bocht principles which have worked so well, they mostly inherit their homes and farms, together and separately worth millions of euros.
We non-farmers, sadly, have had to pay huge sums which we could ill-afford, even in boom times, for maybe a quarter-acre of scrubland, as a house site.
The postmen who deliver the farm subsidy envelopes, for example, will never get the opportunity to complain about the publication of a list of CAP or other Brussels payments to mailmen and women, because this will never happen.
In fact, like the Clerys workers in Dublin, there is the looming possibility that our postmen will shortly disappear altogether from Bealbochtia and the rest of the country, because of the impact of the digital media.
The British government is selling its stake in the Royal Mail these days, and what John Bull does today, Paddy the Irishman is likely to do tomorrow.
Neither will the construction workers’ unions nor Council workers nor teachers or bank clerks or suchlike be complaining anytime soon about the publication of the details of their handouts from Brussels. Because it won’t happen.
Only the people of Bealbochtia get this kind of truly golden handshake.
I have always earned my living farming the alphabet. The alphabet represents my few acres and, because I am not a top-class operator and cannot convert the words into best sellers, I have to ruefully confess to being akin to a subsistence farmer in my field.
At the best of times, I operate on the equivalent of about 40 mountainy acres facing north. The libel laws are similar to an SAC designation, in case I get bold and break the boundaries, and I get no subsidy of any kind at all from any source.
I would not object at all, any time in the future, to the publication of details similar to the CAP payments, if a brown envelope was pushed through my letterbox. That day will never come, either to me or to any other landless poor divil not fortunate enough to be a citizen of Bealbochtia.
Again, for what it is worth, if the unthinkable did ever occur, and the world could read in the local paper that the bureaucrats in Brussels had sent me a cheque, I swear that, rather than being angry, I would be absolutely thrilled at my good fortune, and would be out strutting around Bealbochtia and the other provinces for the rest of the month.
