Archive for the ‘Gene Kerrigan’ Category
Gene Kerrigan Reports : FFFGGG coalition turns into a laughing stock – ministerial piglets swarm around stinking trough
Gene Kerrigan remains a pillar of good journalism in a very low quality newspaper, the Sunday Independent.
IT took months for Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Greens to cobble together a Government. It took days for them to turn it into a laughing stock.
When they haven’t been mugging one another, the politicians have been adding little extras to the goodies that these days go along with the job.
Hardly had the current Taoiseach appointed his Cabinet when the in-fighting began, and the backstabbing.
This went beyond the usual laments about which county, townland, village or street didn’t get its own minister.
It’s hard to believe that adults are involved — with some of them whinging openly about how the position they were given was not the one they wanted.
I’m almost convinced that these creeps see the jobs not as positions of public service but opportunities for career advancement.
Fianna Fáil seems to have entered one of its vicious periods, in which factions queue up to knife one another.
Since they have to share the goodies with Fine Gael and the Greens, there are fewer goodies for each party.
The Coronavirus Manifesto by Gene Kerrigan, 'Sunday Independent', 22nd March 2020.
“IMAGINE the chaos if the nurses went on strike right now, for higher pay and better conditions. They won’t do it, of course, but if they put their personal interests above all else, now would be the time to pull the plug.
Instantly, their every demand would be met.
Of course, in human and social terms, it would be disastrous — not to mention selfish and immoral.
Which is why the nurses won’t do it.
In fact, in the face of the Covid-19 assault on our lives, the opposite is happening. Retired medics are lining up by the tens of thousands to re-register and put their skills to use in the common good.
They and the existing workforce step without hesitation into the frontline.
And our gratitude is huge and transparently genuine.
This is the politics of community.
So, tell me this: why, in normal times, do we force medics and other essential workers to fight for every extra cent in pay, and every piddling improvement in conditions?
A range of other undervalued workers have kept us afloat in recent days.
The shop workers and transport workers, the pharmacists, the cleaners, the armies of those who produce and distribute. Read the rest of this entry »
Tomás Ó Flatharta 