IPPN

Published: 07 December 2008

Source : Sunday Independent

Cutbacks? Start with the gravy train
By Gene Kerrighan
Sunday December 07 2008

Here are three things we need to worry about: (1) what the rest of the world is doing about the global economic meltdown, (2) what our government is doing about our own collapse, and (3) whether we'll be able to protect John Bruton's pension.

You young folk may wonder, who the hell is John Bruton? I remember him well. John was Taoiseach for a little while between the end of the Haughey era and the rise of Sir Bertie of the Sterling Lodgment. John came and went without much bother.

We could have chosen any number of esteemed elders as an example, but John Bruton's pension will do as a symbol. It represents the eternal question that's part of every economic meltdown -- who gets the gravy and who gets poked in the eye with a sharp stick?

As for the global economic crisis, everyone knows there are two problems -- frozen credit and a slump in the real economy. So, billions are pumped into the banks yet credit remains frozen. And interest rates are brought down, but unemployment grows at a startling rate. The usual tricks don't work.

There's an argument -- to which Barack Obama seems open -- that a massive public works stimulus is needed, the good old fashioned Keynesian solution. But it's been too long in coming, and anything suggested so far seems derisory (the French think €26bn will do it).

Prospects? Given that the dimmest layperson's guess is as good as the average economist's -- perhaps two or three years of real pain, followed by several years of slow recovery. And that's the upside. It's also possible there will be at least a dozen years of economic Armageddon before there's any international relief -- if ever.

Given that we can't count on the international cavalry riding to our rescue, what's our own government doing about our economic collapse? Eh, well, it's waiting for the international cavalry to ride to our rescue.

It seems we're a "small open economy" and we can't do anything. Forget all that tiger nonsense about entrepreneurial spirit -- we have to do what the banks want, guarantee their loans so they don't collapse. And wait for the EU or the Yanks or the Chinese to pull off a miracle.

The only ones offering a note of dissent are the trade unions -- on Friday, Siptu issued a stimulus plan. Nothing terribly radical, just bog standard emergency capitalism. And if the past is any guide, it will be ignored.

With nothing positive to offer, our politicians and their pet economists enjoy cutting public services, numbers and pay. It won't help the problem -- in fact, it will make it worse -- but it makes them feel good and they get good media. For some reason, it's popular to attack guards, nurses, soldiers, lab technicians and train drivers (Michael O'Leary on Friday's 'Late Late Show' made a gratuitous swipe at doctors and nurses and got a big laugh and a round of applause).

Suppose the international cavalry doesn't come? Instead of stimulating the economy, using the public sector as a tool for infrastructural investment, this government will have done the opposite.

Which is where John Bruton's pension comes in.

Things are so bad that last week we brought in legislation to whip away the medical card from thousands of pensioners. Not rich pensioners, just those not on the breadline. We've taken a cancer vaccine away from young girls. We've enlarged class sizes, we've cut social programmes that kept kids in school. Hospital beds will be cut, fewer vermin-ridden prefab classrooms will be replaced. In a thousand sneaky little ways, we're making life more difficult for those who have little to cut back.

All this, of course, is "absolutely necessary". These "tough decisions" have to be made to save the economy.

So, I'm reading some government statistics, 'Finance Accounts 2006', trying in my dim layperson way to make sense of how we got into this mess. And I spot a familiar name. John Bruton. Pension. And the figure €89,777. That's some pension, for a man who's currently working as EU ambassador to the USA, a job that I bet pays a nice salary. And, I'll warrant, a job that meets most of your accommodation, transport and food needs. The man is years from retirement, and his pension is twice the average industrial wage, says I.

And all around him, names familiar and otherwise. You wouldn't believe the amounts of money they're getting, as pensions -- and many of them still in gainful employment. At least two of these chaps have criminal convictions. There are politicians you've never heard of. Others you wish you'd never heard of. There are a number of lawyers, among the highest paid in the land, entitled to State pensions of 40 or 50 grand a year.

Last May, two junior ministers got the bum's rush (nothing wrong with them, but Brian Cowen needed to give someone else a go in their Mercs).

They got golden handshakes of €106,000 between them, even though they still draw TD wages of around a 100 grand a year.

In the week that we withdrew the cancer vaccine from the young girls, RTE News told us there was a small fire in Bertie Ahern's State car. Think of it. Lord Sterling of Lodgment still has a state car. Two of them, actually, so that there'll always be one available in case he has to rush to a bank to lodge or withdraw a suitcase full of cash.

They spent €220,000 fitting out his new office, and gave him a golden handshake of €68,000. And until the day he dies, he'll have leather seats under his arse, with highly trained gardai ferrying him wherever he needs to go.

Remember Mary Robinson? Pension of €136,000. The current occupant of the Aras, Mary McAleese, is on €277,000 a year. Ah, says you, she's got a lot of expenses. Lots of people visit, and she has to put out little dishes full of Pringles. No, that kind of thing comes out of the extra €317,000 in "allowances".

Now, Mary McAleese is a nice person. She's thrilled to be president. I know she isn't in it for the money. I bet she'd do it for the €77,000, so we could save €200,000.

Obviously, this wouldn't save the economy. Not even if we took all the cars away from all the ministers and made them travel to work like the rest of us. Not even if we insisted that no one gets a pension until they retire, same as the rest of us. Not even if we stopped subsidising private secondary education to the tune of €90m a year. Not even if we stopped spending tens of millions subsidising the private health sector. Not even if we used tax measures to cap the salaries of the private sector incompetents who got us into this mess.

None of this would stimulate the economy. But that's not going to happen anyway, until the international cavalry get their act together. In the meantime, all the State is doing is attempting to trim costs, to keep things ticking over at the expense of those who can least afford sacrifice. The fact that the State squanders so much money on gratuitous luxuries for "top people", while simultaneously calling for patriotic sacrifice, tells us what this is about.

It's about maintaining the quality of the wine at the Dublin 4 dinner party, at the cost of the future of the kids who fail in overcrowded classes. It's a highly class conscious effort to ensure the recession has minimal effect on those who matter.

- Gene Kerrighan