I have not personally taken kindly to television but heretofore decent citizens who have forked out the £5 licence fee have had to endure the interruption of programmes by silly, shoddy advertising matter. For several coming weeks they will also have to face shabby all-too-familiar politicians letting out of them spiels about agriculture, tourism, the cost of living, the warble-fly menace, the Irish language, the Border, Ireland’s destiny as a world force, the right price for malting barley, the suffering poor – stuff that everybody has heard and read hundreds of times before.
I suggest that the main parties should be classified as illegal organisations.
My own policy
The reader must try to be forbearing and tolerant if I am seen to move with the times, and present this week a deluge of electioneering. True I am not standing (as the commercial traveller said during a fleeting visit to a pub in Tullow) but is that any reason why I should not give out a lot of nonsense at the top of my voice? Have I not got the same constitutional right to talk rubbish publicly as (say) MacEntee? The fact is that anybody can play at this game, and indeed the game might be improved if everybody did.
Extravagance then might be kept within reasonable limits, and wild talk might perhaps be a little bit less wild. If a candidate swears that on election he will offer me £1,500 per acre for my 25 acre farm (– I haven’t got any farm) I can’t see why I must not myself offer everybody £3,000 an acre, even without being a candidate at all.
At times like this a few of us take a side-long, suspicious look at this thing we call democracy. Is it all a farce, a parlour game played for the benefit of those on the make? How many affirmations of eternal service, loyalty, sleepless days and nights of cruel work, would be forthcoming if a seat in the Dáil did not carry with it a fat salary? I believe that the POSITIONS VACANT column in newspapers would have to be used to fill any position in parliament, and that the utmost inducement a candidate would offer the elector would be a promise to do his best to keep the sheriff off for 14 days. The truth is that life overtakes people – even political people. In the bar in Leinster House it is possible to order a drink and pay for it yourself! (Honest! I’ve tried it.)
My Promises
Let us assume then, that I am not going up and that you are not going up but that we insist on exercising the Walter Mitty in us all to make silly promises to which nobody can hold us. What sort of a gaudy future would you paint? How glorious would the Ireland of tomorrow be? What costly baubles would you offer the lady next door? I am not sure that I would trust you, even in the matter of meaningless boasts. Probably you would undertake to have delivered to her a set of pots and pans made of solid gold, without stopping to consider that gold has a low melting point and would be useless for cooking a breakfast with.
Why not be BIG and offer a dwelling house made entirely of 18-carat gold (which contains a fair amount of strengthening copper), a stratoflight between Shannon and New York for two years non-stop, a knockdown to Danny Kaye and a ticket for two to the races at Leopardstown on New Year’s Day, 1986? Now that basketful should pull in a few votes, for there is nothing illegal about daydreaming.
Yet somehow I feel that human cravings have little to do with gold, parades of opulence or fairy godmothers. The things that people REALLY want vary from day to day. Yesterday I asked a friend (while I had this article in mind) what above all else he would like at that moment, both of us being seated in a bus.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘If you have a magic wand, prepare to wave it now. The shoe on my right foot has been cutting the life out of me since I left home this morning. I sent it to be repaired and this is what I’ve got. I’m sure my sock is full of blood. I’m in a desperate condition. Have you any whiskey in your pocket?’
You see? Gold was far from his mind. He wanted (foolishly) to get away from pain. That seems to show that the aspirations of humanity are modest and that they have little use for the sun, moon and stars. To reduce humanity’s yearnings to an ultimate low, I think it is adequate to say that humanity wants to be left alone, particularly by politicians. Since nobody takes their vapouring seriously, why have them?
All the Same
What I have written has been at the dictate of plain reason. But since when did plain reason get anybody elected to a job with a salary? If and when I run for office, I promise every elector who votes for me
a farm of not less that 500 acres, equally suited for tillage or pasture;
a sum of £25 a week for life, without deduction of income tax;
a Rolls-Royce car, and a Mini for the missus;
malt and fags ad lib;
top jobs in the civil service for all the children;
directorship of the Bank of Ireland;
no more wet, dirty, weather;
free copies of all banned books.
That should bring the votes in all right. But – heavens! – I nearly forgot something. I also offer the elector the editorial chair of this newspaper.
How do you rate?
A Minister of State made a pronouncement on this subject after a public dinner recently. (‘After a public dinner’ is good, for he took good care to have the dinner before he squawked.) He said: ‘This business of rates is under consideration by the Government. I don’t know what to make of it.’
Those who have any dealings with public departments will know what is meant by the phrase ‘under consideration’. It means that absolutely nothing whatsoever is being done about something that is acerbating the public temper to the point of open revolt. The hidden, petted, shrouded Minister does not have to worry. He pays no income tax on his salary as a TD. He knows nothing of petrol tax, for he is whisked from here to there in a Mercedes car owned by the State at absolutely no charge. Now and again in public address he lectures the citizen on the necessity for being austere, girding his loins, the necessity for stopping smoking (where an enormous chunk of State revenue resides) and what Patrick Pearse died for. The admonitions one gets from this class of politician-on-the-make make one sick. Therefore why not get sick? Me – I just don’t know how to do it on the printed page!
Back to Rates
Probably no reader of these notes is immune from the horrifying demand that arrives on the doorstep twice a year. PAY UP – Or Else. It has no relation to your income, your birth or origin, your commercial worth, the colour of your face … nothing. Pay up to the County Council, or the Urban Council, or you’ll be sold up. Your bed will be put to auction. The chair in which
By the Same Author
—
THE BEST OF MYLES
AT SWIM-TWO-BIRDS
THE HARD LIFE
THE DALKEY ARCHIVE
THE THIRD POLICEMAN
THE POOR MOUTH
STORIES AND PLAYS
KEATS AND CHAPMAN and THE BROTHER
THE HAIR OF THE DOGMA
FURTHER CUTTINGS FROM CRUISKEEN LAWN
Copyright
First e-book digital edition
published 2011 by
THE LILLIPUT PRESS
62–63 Sitric Road, Arbour Hill Dublin 7, Ireland
www.lilliputpress.ie
Copyright ©Brian O’Nolan Estate, 2011
ISBN 978 1 84351 212 7
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior permission of the publisher.
The Lilliput Press receives financial assistance from An Chomhairle Ealaíon / The Arts Council of Ireland.
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