The old system is dead: we must start anew

BLACK Thursday was indeed a worryingly historic day. Selling our souls to the black hole for an indeterminate span leaves us all in the don’t-know zone.

Things have changed, and changed utterly. Everything is up for rethinking. Political governance, fiscal templates, modes of remuneration, value for money, civic developmental health

There is so obviously a distorted calibration of people’s worth in the economy. Some professions cream it while most hard-working folk at the bottom are struggling to keep their jobs – even by volunteering a reduced wage from an existing low base.

The shameful financial avoidance schemes for the rich are a bizarre anachronism.

They give the lie to the notion that keeping the rich financiers, investors, consultants, etc, onside offers some tangible benefit to the masses.

Absolutely not.

Ireland has punched way above its economic weight and now has to swallow the reality of its folly. The abusive usury practices that flourished in the Celtic Tiger days have come home to roost, yet the political architects of the chaos remain.

The solution must be fundamental reorientation, not a renewal of old usury vows and developer/investor-led financial shenanigans. There is no innate imperative to presume or blithely accept that the stock exchange mentality should rule the roost.

The open-market free rein has simply spawned a self-grab, short-term gain for the few to the ruin of the many.

Encouraging people to spend their way out of the mess so as to ‘kick-start’ the economy merely feeds into a reignited clawing our way slowly back to the sins of the past.

Grotesque property pricing and greed-fed ‘me-féinism’ will thus be a recurring inevitability in time.

Why don’t we take this challenging opportunity really to care for the good of all.

Thus can the people at the top of the professional pile generously imitate the example of those less well off who are doing everything they can to survive: share, care and be fair. This is not communism, more like communalism.

There is little, if any, authentic choice as people need more ‘things’ like a hole in the head.

There are many other ways to thrive. Community wellbeing is rooted in shared care and generosity of spirit. Let’s go for it and lead the charge – not dwindle and dawdle in the mire.

Patrick J Cosgrove

Chapel Street

Lismore

Co Waterford