Budget

Spending too much time this morning thinking about modelling prisoner's dilemma on children's robots to really take the time to write what I had intended to write.

Another budget and another confused set of tools will emerge. Bertie had his supposed 'road to damascus' when he discovered the ordinary people had begun to blame him for the neoliberal ruin that was emerging and the huge disparity in income that is developing and so claimed he was 'the last socialist in Ireland'. This budget will be another set of giveaways; institutional giveaways to the very rich and corporate greed that will see the bifurcation in Irish society entrenched; and handouts to the poor to buy votes - increases in social welfare for groups (like the elderly) that his electoral machine is afraid of losing. The cynicism of this clientelle politics is really sickening. It's also deeply infuriating as their hypocrisy is damaging for the country. In reality the key economic policy of this government is croneyism rather than the neoliberalism of Charlie McCreevy (though of course he was guilty of cronyism as his tax breaks for billionaire horse pimps shows). They rub shoulders and create a corrupt business environment for their billionaires they worship in the Galway Races hospitality tents and up a few shillings (bread and circuses again) for the excluded's dole rather than seeking an economy where the rising tide raises all boats. Many of the boats have holes in them and handing out life jackets isn't the best use of public money.

Not that the best use of public money is something this government has shown the slightest understanding of.

Thailand

You see, the problem with Thailand isn't their politicians: they're as corrupt as you let them be. Which is quite a lot. Thailand is a seriously corrupt place both internally and internationally. It's the bunch of chancer arrivistes calling themselves the Thai royal family. They deal with every corruption, every manifestation of the sickness in Thai politics and Thai people pretend to themselves that their are hands clean. They are the cancerous heart of Thailand's body politic. While they are 'the voice of the people' like the tzar was father of the peasants democracy can never work in Thailand. Look what happened to Cambodia for a chilling endgame to the relentless politicking of a royal family removed from any consequences.

We were in Thailand nearly three years ago when the government decided to admit there was a war on. It had been waging for years but they'd just sent ten policemen or something to the axis of the unwilling, coerced, or were caught in when they were pretending to be out behind the sofa and couldn't avoid sending in some token unarmed nobodies to Iraq. But anyway, they thought this was an opportunity to pretend that their little problems with predominately muslim ethnic minorities (they don't look like Thai people either: but then Thailand is a mixture of many different looking people) was part of a global war on 'terror' rather than yet another example of Thailand's centrifugal force. I remember being in Pai in Northern Thailand (lovely place up around there) and somebody was talking of going on a trek to see the hill tribes and I said 'why not just go to the shop?' Almost nobody around there is ethnically Thai: but it's better being there than across the border in Burma. I'd love to visit Burma. The people are even nicer than Thais if that's possible and the massages are even better. I digress.

Royal families everywhere are chancers and arrivistes. Two generations out of the saddle living in yurts on yaks yoghurt and the Chinese royal family lived in the forbidden city surrounded by castrated guards and a cult of personality unrivalled by the current US mysticism surrounding the job of president. Our history is as full of the madness and sickness of kowtowing to royalty as it is of deferring to religious fantasy. Ancient Egypt is particularly interesting in the relationship between the two.

Are we inherently infantile? Can we not just take responsibility for ourselves?

He serviced some state

So he's dead then. And why should we speak ill of the dead? Because we can. Because his censorship of dissent by threat and writ is over. His control over a craven media is finished and the backlash is audible today. Because I can honestly think of nothing positive to say of him. I'm a dog in the streets from North Dublin in a town the size of the whole of Longford with a wee country road and no buses. His corruption polluted the whole of the country. I'm not saying the country was great before him, but it was much, much worse with him. There is no legacy. When people try to convince me of his 'presidential' qualities they usually mention the tax exempt status for artists that allows the multimillionaire Bono to lecture at me about helping the poor. It strikes me as symptomatic of his seigneurial contempt for the plain people of Ireland. We should be indebted to the great and the good and be glad to fund their lifestyle.