Colm O'Regan: Don’t take away the disease-dole for doing a bit on the side
I know nothing about anything, so this is probably all wrong. But here goes anyway. Think of it like I’m on a swap site giving away something for free. Say ‘A Box Of Leads and Shite’ and for every three chargers for a 1999 Mitsubishi Trium phone, there might be one small external hard drive you could use.
We need a craic-credit. (Sorry to anyone who hates that spelling of the word craic, but the alternative one is too confusing. Albeit intriguing.)
Whatever the ‘Level’, one area that will always get it in the stones is anything involving crowds. Especially entertainment. Either venues can’t open at all or it isn’t viable. And the winter’s coming.
At the same time, there is money there. This is a weird recession. About two million people still have jobs. Some of the jobs don’t pay well. Some do. Loads of people in the entertainment business have had incomes wiped out, but there’s a load of other people whose salary is the same and often they haven’t spent a bob because there was no opportunity for city breaks, GAA weekends -“HOW MUCH FOR A PINT IN TEMPLE BAR?”-, mad rager nights -“we were grand till Lampy bought shots”-, Holy Communion IPOs. There must be money there burning a hole in some pockets.
And the public are fed up. Even if you’ve avoided physical or mental illness, the cumulative effect of a few months of having NOTHING ELSE to talk about is so draining. Nothing to remember. Not even knowing what to look forward to. Or when ‘forward’ is.
So let’s give people lots of small, imperfect, better than nothing, within the regulations, things to look forward to. There must be a way of getting some of the fun money out of negative interest accounts into something.
The PUP was alright. At 350 euro with no questions asked, it reminded me a bit of a 1980s wedding where you saw your father pull out a 50 pound note for the first time because he didn’t anyone thinking ye were hard up. But they’ve woken up now, looked in the trouser pocket hanging over the back of the door of the B&B and wondered where it’s all gone. And started asking for it back.
Most people don’t want to be paid to do nothing. Let’s get comedy, theatre, music, opera, puppetry, dressage… a fecking dressage opera, anything at all out to the people. Online yes but not just online. Not everyone works online. Put stuff on in work car parks in the morning or at lunch break or on the pavement outside.
Small loss-making events where the punters pay a bit, the government pays a bit and the players play a bit. Don’t take away the disease-dole for doing a bit on the side. Just get a bit of energy going. And not just the genres with everyman appeal.
Let's have mime acts going to forklift factories, Vagina Monologues on the Luas, the pub-keyboards man who used to sing about lobbies needing to be washed down playing online to a load of Disrupters at a tech company called Enerbiscuit. Thrash-metal band Satan’s Hoors doing a bit of death-trad outside a nursing home.
Do it through companies or not. Get a rebate off your property tax if you’ve a fella with a theremin waving in the front yard. Subsidised up to the hilt. Pure socialised, non-optimised, not efficient.
Just something to talk about. A shared experience. You know, the craic.
