“Long ago, since we stopped selling our votes, the people have cast off their cares. For once they bestowed military command, high office, legions—everything; now they restrain themselves and anxiously wish only for two things: bread and circuses.”
Juvenal
With pubs shutting their doors more often than for a Traveller’s funeral and the sacred cows of silver voters needing constant bribing at the cost of the “first generation since the foundation of the state to be financially worse off than their parents,” the government have decided to extend indefinitely the lucrative fuel allowance to the generation who worshipped “moving statues.” To appease the younger “Generations Shafted”, the Fine in Failure coalition has spun this shameless vote-buying exercise as an “Intergenerational initiative designed to shatter the barriers that exist between the toothless, whether that be from old age or smoking gear. Henceforth, the scheme will be known as ‘Fiacail.’”
“Sure don’t I deserve everything I get after working hard all me life in a heavily unionised, pensionable, no-skilled, ‘how’s your father’ interview for a factory job now existing only in the Global South — that funded a long-since-paid mortgage, 12 kids, a battered housewife and raging alcohol and tobacco addiction,” stated an unrepentant Jimmy Kinsella through eight John Player Blues in his mouth.
“I almost didn’t make it last Winter when I had already blown the allowance on de horses in the first week, and the cold snap almost got the better of me, but I hung on in there till Jan for me top-up as I rolled to the Post Office wrapped in all the layers of my entire wardrobe like the Michelin Man. I suppose I should choose the installment option next time, but where is the fun in dat? Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die, as the Good Book says!”
Your humble narrator suggests that for all the never-ending gravy train auction politics the government stuff in dentured, decrepid mouths, somewhere in Van Diemen’s Land, the sacrificial lambs, the sons and daughters of “Generation Emigration”, shed a tear knowing Jimmy’s high life is being robbed from their future prospects of ever returning to these shores to live.
“Ah fuck them bastards, sure, emigration is nothing new, once I’m alright Jack,” cackled an indignant Jimmy.
Emigration has been a safety valve for the Irish political establishment for generations. It has been willing to accept the social devastation of parts of the population — generations-long emigration[…]in order to keep the privileged interests in place and the system ticking along. We can trace it back to the colonised days, when a section of middle- and upper-class Irish professionals worked as administrators for the Empire. They had to turn away and ignore the suffering they were colluding with.
Gaffs : Why No One Can Buy a House, and What We Can Do About it, Rory Hearne
On the “disadvantaged” side of the spectrum, Oranges Thompson stated he was “driven to the drugs” after he realised he had just wasted two hours of his risible existence unwittingly painting a Côte d’Ivoire tricolour on the front of his council house, and, to compound his misery, ChatGPT told him that the white in the Irish flag actually “fuckin symbolises peace and harmony between disparate communities for fuck sake!”
“Once I got de beautiful lump sum, it all went straight into drug dealers’ pockets in a vain effort to finally settle up that ‘Never, Never’ on tick book, representing 500 million Euro a year in lost revenue to the government. De money is gone as soon as I get it, but sure I used to have it down to a tee when I would apply for another council gaff in Gorey and get a fresh lump sum all over again. Then once the next top-up landed in January, I would boomerang back to Arklow again and claim for me old council gaff, it was class boi! Between all of the shenanigans, I could buy enough coal to power the fuckin Titanic boi! At least with de Fiacail scheme I wont ever have to travel to travel to that fuckin shithole Gorey again! Yahoo, get da bag out!
Speaking of dodgy fuel allowances, sure it’s not like the cunts running the dole are any better, sure the district manager was caught claimin massive petrol money for his big luxury Mercedes S-Class 4-litre guzzler whilst he was really driving around in a little 1-litre runaround riceburner instead, haha. Sure, we all have to swim in the same water, like!” proclaimed Oranges.
“Irish governments and the Irish State historically, and still today, have a deeply disturbing ability[…]to sacrifice younger generations in order to retain the status quo. There is a culture among the top echelons of Irish society that considers it acceptable to sacrifice certain groups to keep the status quo in place. And that culture was encouraged amongst the wider population. It is there in attitudes you sometimes hear.”
Gaffs : Why No One Can Buy a House, and What We Can Do About it, Rory Hearne
