How They Pulled the Irish Scam

It’s class war at Blather HQ, as we lay off more staff and servants in order to pay the interest on our massive loans from that blasted bank in Zurich, Odessa-Bormann-Eichmann-Mengele or whatever it’s called.
Or so the desperate lawyers are telling me on my answering machine. I am nowhere to be found at Blather HQ – I am comfortably ensconced in a tower of solid ivory at an undisclosed Arctic location, sitting at the roaring fire in my slippers, with a glass of port in my hand, poured to me lovingly by my Japanese-manufactured chrome robot slave, now gliding out of the room on its elegantly silent wheels. Try to get anywhere near me, peasants, and my sonic weapons will disintegrate your ears.


While I sit here in bliss, I muse to myself, why am I so brilliant? How was it that as a teenager I knew there was no point getting a job in Ireland, to get a 40-year mortgage to pay an enormous sum of money for some overpriced cardboard box? How was it that I was more intelligent than every single other Irish person? How is it that I am so clever, while they allowed themselves to be scammed?
Yes, scammed I says! For my thoughts keep returning to a Dublin Opinion blog entry I read back in June, which showed that Irish housing has been overpriced for 33 years! Housing should cost 2.5 to 4 times the average gross industrial wage, and in the graphs published in that blog, one can see how this has been completely out of kilter in Ireland for the last generation, the ratio reaching 5 times in 1979, and 11 times by 2007. The banks, the property developers and the politicians scammed the Irish out of their wages, plain and simple. Have a gander.

barry
Barry Kavanagh writes fiction, and has made music, formerly with Dacianos.

Contact him here.