It’s time FF backbenchers revolted to get rid of this played-out bunch of super-losers

HAVING a lash at the unions, or indeed any scapegoat, is very enjoyable (Editorial, November 4). But it does not sort out the crisis – it will merely exacerbate it.

What we need to be doing now is getting everybody together on a basis of mutual trust – and then all of us facing up to the facts which are grim and will be grimmer.

By definition, every sectional group is “wrong” precisely because it is sectional.

It is not a matter of blaming a convenient “them”.

We will all have to make concessions and take pain – in proportion to our objective capacity so to do. The sooner we have a fresh Government which can bring us all together and hold that ring, the better.

The bizarre irony is that the best technician that we will ever see in the field of “moderating” such a roundtable was Bertie Ahern. But his agenda turned out to be not only to look after his old Drumcondra pals (he said so), but to cosset the golden circle with whom he created and presided over our current mess. And not only did our current Taoiseach defend and protect him to the very last, but not a single member of the current cabinet, including the Greens, has ever distanced themselves from Bertie Ahern. Or Ahernism.

A year’s mindless dither and the grotesque saga of NAMA merely confirm the perception that they are not now, and never were, “at the races”.

Except, of course, in Galway.

They have to go.

Jim Power (November 4), one of the economists who saw this coming, says we Irish are a bunch of losers.

Why, we can’t eve organise a change of government without the IMF to beat it into us. It would be nice to prove Mr Power wrong before Christmas ... before another botched Laurel and Hardy budget and before NAMA locks our grandchildren into decade-long shackles.

But that depends on your readers – not “somebody else” – convincing a dozen Fianna Fáil TDs to do their duty. Sack Cowen and his coven of played-out super-losers.

But maybe those TDs are all losers too – as they certainly will be at the general election in three years, during which we will be doing the heavy lifting while they draw their salaries for playing croquet on Leinster Lawn.

Maurice O’Connell

Fenit Without

Fenit

Tralee

Co Kerry