99 reasons to kick Klaus Schwab out of your home.

A weekend stroll down memory lane

I woke up this morning and stumbled outside for a smoke. I was startled to observe rain-clouds forming in the sky above and that the world was still spinning. Now, when I skipped out for a walk last Sunday into the warm embrace of the beautiful sunshine, I was much less certain of human survival let me tell you. My usual walking route involves dipping into the holy grounds of St Jarlath’s college and doing a few laps of the football pitches on the tarmac pavement that surrounds them.

On this occasion, and enjoying the good weather, eh sorry.. I mean…. world ending cataclysmic heat-wave, I fastened onto the absurd notion of extending my ramble. Ever the mindful sort of chap, I worriedly reminded myself, that I might just drop dead of climate change without 5 liters of aqua refreshment and a slathering of sunscreen. Alas, a quick rattle of the coins in my pocket told me I had not the price of both. As dear old Klaus Schwab frequently scolds us, every individual decision has global consequences nowadays, so I was forced to make a choice for all of mankind half-way down Bishop Street. Eventually, I plumped for the perfect Schwabian solution, and more importantly, a liquid and cream combination that fit my budget.

A 99.

The ideal product & colour to reflect away the dastardly but perfectly acceptable levels of Tuam heat while also turning to rivulets of milky goodness in my mouth, and yes, half of my face too. I don’t mind admitting, in the fierce urgency and hysteria of the recent four-day climate Olympics - I might just be the Usain Bolt of global-warming. Just saying.

Sometimes, a long leisurely stroll is the perfect antidote to the mountain-river of foolishness rushing through my brain. At least that’s what I tell myself as Tuam’s Lycra painted power-walkers stick on their indicator lights and zoom by me. I’m not sure why men wear Lycra exactly but on women it might well be the most glorious invention in human history. Ah, exactly the type of daftness I do need to stroll out of myself from time to time. Let’s shuffle along shall we?

The objective at these times is to get my mind walking at the same pace as my legs. Down to a gentle and lazy meandering. This effect usually takes at least three kilometres to start kicking in and Sunday was no different. I think, maybe, that at a slow gait the mind can easier absorb the particulars of its immediate environment. And so too then - begin to see the bigger picture in the local details. As I consumed my ice-cream I couldn’t help but notice at how small it had become. And not just from the horsing of it down my throat. Let me expand a little.

There was an ice-cream queue in the shop ahead of me when I arrived into purchase my own factor 99. I briefly thought about skipping the queue on the grounds that I was here for climate change purposes but the heathens ahead had the look of hunger and thirst in their eyes. I elected not to disturb them and hoped that the world-at-large would survive this grievous delay. As the guy ahead of me turned away from the counter he gave me and his purchase a funny look. Not at all impressed with his cone. Of course, I didn’t fully empathize with his problem until I inherited it myself a couple of minutes later. Shorter and thinner. And yet the same price. As prisms go, it’s not a bad one to use for reflection on how Ireland is dealing with our new friend mega inflation. Or in this case, 99 deflation, at the present time.

As a country we are kinda giving it a funny look. Not quite sure whether to be outraged or amused by the new novelty of dealing with it. Trying to convince ourselves that this is a temporary glitch. Like the poor old 99, things look almost right but deep down we know something just isn’t the same as before. I suspect that we will never again see 1.30 a litre diesel. Soon, if we make even that observation someone will try to make us feel guilty for asking the question. The supposed temporary is followed not with an apology anymore but guilt for not thinking about Klaus Schwab’s version of the common good. A person who is neither common nor good.

Around three months ago I wrote an article on the Ukraine refugee crisis. Just as the first people were entering our country. In a nutshell, my question was a simple one.

Where’s the plan?

Where’s the strategy?

As I suspected then there wasn’t one. An ice-cream cone pumped up with hot hair bubbles and rapidly melting. The latest CSO figures show that there are roughly 45,000 Ukrainians in Ireland as of last week. The incoming flow still running at 1,500 a week. In short order hotel and accommodation prices have sky-rocketed. A self-inflicted inflation harm in a casualty already suffering multiple global gunshot wounds. Today, you can pamper yourself in the luxury of a - 12 beds to a room - Dublin hostel for about 70 euro a night. Hopefully you won’t get robbed or stabbed. I won’t even go into the mortgage required for a family of four to stay in our capital city for a weekend break. This is not a rant against refugees. It is a rant about the lack of a plan. The situation in which we find ourselves was entirely predictable. So much so you’d half-wonder was that the plan along.

Ask yourself a question. How incentivized will the hotel and B&B sector be to complain about any government policy for the remainder of this year? - Are they now just another sector of our economy temporarily bribed by our government’s free access to the printing press of EU central bank money. I mean if this sector aren’t already coining in loads of - full occupancy - cash due to the Irish government having no long-term strategy for housing of our new friends, then they are benefiting from a steep rise in accommodation prices due to the shortage of supply. Can we rely on the stewards of this sector to say no to masks, passports or indeed whatever other mandates the future holds? - I think we are all long enough in the tooth to know the answer to that question by now.

And the farmers are next in line.

There was a quote from Minister Eamon Ryan in one of the papers recently. He spoke of incentivizing farmers with alternative streams of income. Income not related to cattle and sheep one can only suppose. Back in my Godfather watching years when a guy strolled into your highly profitable and in-demand business and offered to solve your non-existent business model problems - there was a name for that. And it wasn’t too neighbourly of a title.

Obviously, Eamon and Klaus can’t abide by these thoughts, questions or aromas. Consumed as they are by the EU butter mountains and wine-lakes of cow-farting science emanating out of Brussels. Not cognizant at all, of course, of their own stench that wreaks havoc in all of our personal atmospheres. So, I guess the native bovine community will pay the price initially and find themselves taken from the fields soon to queue in the line behind young Irish families and Ukrainian refugees for hotel accommodation some winter soon as slatted-houses get carpet-bombed by the Goodfellas. There won’t be any apologies for this nonsense but like the inflation bubble, smatherings and lashings of guilt about the evils of eating meat. I know many believe that farmers in Ireland might magically turn into the Dutch super-hero version we currently see on our screens. I have my doubts about that though.

Farming has long been led by the tail of heroin addiction that is European grant-aided funding. I remember growing up on a farm when the Rural Expansion Scheme was launched. Reps we used to call it. I’ve mentioned it before I think. It was sold as free money to tidy up Ireland’s badly tended farms and farm-yards. Free money with just a few minor details. One of those details was the introduction of a class of agrarian worker we never saw sight nor light of before in this country. The agricultural consultant. These shiny new Reps guys would just help you cross the t’s and dot the i’s on those pesky farm plans and promises you were signed up to by Europe - for all that eh…free money. No doubt plans are being hatched in some darkened alcove of Europe, at the moment, to unleash a new type of farmyard intellectual with a PHD onto the Irish landscape, to aide farmers access some more free European money and find “ alternative income streams “

If any class of worker will fall for “ free not free money “, if there is enough of it, unfortunately, it’s traditional Irish farmers. They have a long history of doing so. I might add that is not entirely a situation of their own making. When Ireland joined the old EEC in 1973, it had a similiar effect on the farming community that an orphan might experience being adopted into a family where your parents are both drug-dealers and quite comfortable with the idea of the all the foster kids becoming junkies.

As I was thinking about farmers I started to muse about derelict sites and private property rights. On the stretch of path by the River Nanny on my Sunday walking journey I stopped to observe one in the middle of a field maybe a hundred years old or more. In fairness, more ruin than house now though. A costly enterprise to restore I would suppose. Private property is yet another term and concept under not so subtle attack. In need of Orwellian and Schwabian redefinition for the new-age masses in the world according to the World Economic Forum brigade. Here now, I wonder, is there a subject, that might get the farming community angry enough to rise up in arms. Or will they see its threat in the proposed Right to Housing bill?

The farming sector are one community that have both lots of land and second & third generation derelict property on that same land. They are under threat whether the fully understand it or not. There is common cause to be found with farmers on this particular subject I feel. If we can wake them up to the proposed attacks.

As I brought my Sunday amble and thinking to a leisurely close I glanced across the street to three vacant buildings. They’ve been large vacant homes for close on fifteen years. Funny enough, the houses are owned by the same group of gentlemen that provided the scenery and land for the earliest part of my walk and conversation.

The Catholic Church.

Probably, the biggest landowners and vacant property owners in the whole damn country. Gosh, they’re awfully quiet. I guess they must be praying for solutions to the housing crisis.

Subject matter for another day and another 99.

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