Government is efficient, but at taking from the poor and giving to the rich

This might sound a little harsh, but I recently heard an individual compare our government to the Germans — for their efficiency.

I was taken aback, but, as the person expanded, they made me think. Our government might well be very efficient.

They tell us we are in recovery mode, and they might very well be right. But the recovery isn’t for the people and neither is our Government’s German-like efficiency.

The recovery and the efficiency are for business, for profiteering, for our government’s masters in the Troika — the EU, the IMF, the ECB, and, lest I forget, Germany too.

The Government has been so efficient, demanding, and clever in its tactics as to extract money from its employees (4.5m of us), and give it to its masters (the ones we never knew it had until 2008).

The Government has been so very clever in taking money from the young, the homeless, the disabled, the middle-aged, the workers, the elderly, the unemployed, and even the sick, and I am probably missing some.

So, you see, leading and being in government are not all about courage and integrity — that’s just being naive.

Leading, and being in government, it appears, are all about efficiency — taking from the poor and giving to the wealthy, efficiently and effectively.

The truth is, the Government will pretend, as it has been doing, that it is all about equality, yet all we have to do is look around us — look at the empty houses, look at all the old cars on the road, look at all the shops and pubs closing down, look at how many people are out eating, and drinking — all we need to do is look.

If they really believed in equality, they would let us ‘pay off our own loans, in our own time, at low interest rates’, but, no, they don’t.

Yes, it’s German-like efficiency at its best.

Cáit O’Beirne

Cnoc Na Si

Tubbercurry

Co. Sligo