Let’s end the rip-off by shopping around for better politicians

NOBODY wants to accept responsibility for his or her own actions anymore.

If somebody walks into a pothole, it is not that person's fault for not looking, but the local council's fault for not fixing it.

Ultimately, everybody else pays for the stupidity of the individual. There are places where whole families have walked into the same pothole on different days and they all got money. If children get hurt on a playground, it is no longer part of growing up. The local council is blamed instead.

Michael McDowell has promised legislation to tackle fraudulent claims. This is most welcome. But will he take any action again the shyster lawyers who have disgraced their profession by turning such claims into a form of legalised extortion? He promised the legislation months ago and now we hear that he hopes to bring it in during December. Of course, the politicians need three months holidays; after all they're working a one-and-a-half-day week this year!

When inflation goes up, who is responsible? Everybody, according to the Tánaiste. She is right. We are all responsible, because we have allowed it to happen without reacting. We should be "more demanding", she said, and we should "shop around".

Richard Bruton, the Fine Gael spokesman, says that Irish consumers are being ripped off annually by 1,000 per household, but Mary Harney says that figure needs to be scrutinised. In other words, she doesn't know the true state of affairs. We are a democracy and we elect our leaders. But she obviously thinks we should be leading ourselves. What the hell are we paying her for? She thinks it's our own fault. Yeah, we should have told her where we are going so that she could get up front and lead us.

People have been moaning about the great euro rip-off for months. But the Government is not listening. They said that they were going to come down heavy on those who would try to exploit the currency changeover, but has anyone heard of any prosecutions? If not, there is one branch of the civil service that is obviously redundant and should be scrapped.

We elect politicians to provide leadership and here is an issue on which the various parties could show initiative. It is not enough for Richard Bruton to complain. Let him and his colleagues provide some real leadership in targeting the rip-off merchants. The politicians could get together and target certain items, calling on people not to purchase at more than a specific price.

In the United States in the early 1970s some consumer advocates decided to target beef prices. They called for a beef boycott for a week. Many people showed their support by not buying beef that week and then some bright sparks in the beef industry decided to show their muscle by calling on producers to withhold beef for two weeks. As a result, people who previously ate beef most days of the week suddenly realised that they enjoyed a whole range of other food just as much fish, chicken, pasta, as well as other meats. The end result was that the demand for beef dropped and prices went down accordingly.

The consumer advocates also targeted coffee prices. The producers did not make the same mistake as the beef people, but they did bring their prices down.

While in the United States in February, I paid for dinner for four on two nights in a restaurant of the best hotel in a town of about 100,000 people near Chicago. On both occasions there was change left over out of $50, even after adding on a 15% tip and remember the dollar is not worth as much as the euro.

You would not feed yourself, much less three other people, for 50 in a comparatively similar hotel or restaurant in Kerry, which is reputedly our premier tourist county.

A party of four had dinner in an Irish hotel recently. With a 26 bottle of wine, their dinner costed 390. A caller to Joe Duffy's Liveline programme during the week mentioned that he was charged 7.50 for a bottle of still water at a pub/restaurant on the Naas Road. Of course, he only learned the price when he got the bill. Maybe everybody gets caught for something like that once in a lifetime, but most people don't get caught a second time.

IT was only after the advent of Seán Lemass in 1959 that this country began to realise the importance of tourism to our economy. It played a significant part in nurturing the Celtic Tiger. At the rate things are going, however, we could soon be more likely to see snow in July than tourists.

The trade that we built up over 40 years could be destroyed in a couple of years. This is not because there is an attitude of 'fleece the foreigners'. The attitude is to screw everybody.

It is cheaper for an Irish person to take his whole family and fly to Turkey and stay for two weeks in a hotel there than to spend a week in a comparative hotel in this country.

The euro has not only alerted foreigners to what is happening here, but it has also allowed Irish people to realise what is happening abroad. People know that Paris is expensive. They splurge on a meal as a once-off occasion, expecting to pay through the nose. When they get the bill they are shocked, not because it costs so much, but because it cost so little in comparison with what they would pay in a similar place here.

If somebody buys a pub, restaurant or hotel now, they are going to have to charge rip-off prices just to meet the rip-off price they paid for the place and with the average house now costing around a quarter of million they will soon have to pay their staff enough so that they can live and pay their mortgages.

It only takes common sense to realise that things simply can't continue at this rate and the remedy is going to be all the harder, the longer we take to tackle the problem.

The Government is promising low cost housing, but who is going to pay for it? Is the taxpayer going to subsidise the new houses at the inflated prices, so that the property developers will still be getting the same kind of prices? Do you think Fianna Fáil will take on the property developers who have been funding them? Dream on!

It is more likely that this much-vaunted initiative will only further inflate house prices and we will be subsidising this madness.

The rip-off culture is not just the bars, restaurants, hotels, supermarkets and corner shops, it also involves insurance and property prices, and the grab-what-you-can mentality. They are all ripping the Celtic Tiger apart.

There is a massive vacancy in the political arena for proper leadership. Having been so shamelessly misled in the last general election, we should take up Mary Harney on her suggestion to shop around, by looking for new leadership. Now is the time for the alternatives to show that they can lead, or they should get off the platform.