SLICING THROUGH THE SPIN EVERY MONDAY Vow can FF and FG sleep at night?

LEADERS’ EMPTY PROMISES WHILE NATION IN CRISIS

POLITICAL promises aren’t worth the paper they’re not written on.

We all know that.

But every year, at their annual hootenanny — or Ard Fheis — Fianna Fail and Fine Gael trot out the usual promises, false hopes and damned lies.

It’s got harder in recent times of course because since they’re joined at the hip now, they can’t attack each other anymore with the same fury that Charlie Haughey and Garret FitzGerald did in the good old days.

So their promises are practically mirror images now.

Increase the pension — yeah, yeah, we’ve heard it all before.

Envy

Build an abundant supply of houses — that’ll be the day.

Deliver a public health service that’ll be the envy of the world — don’t insult our intelligence.

Hike social welfare — ask the carers of loved ones and the struggling parents of babies and youngsters about that one.

And on and on they go in their shameless efforts to soften us up for the election and buy our votes.

But why should we vote for either of these parties which have a proven record in failure, breaking promises, not delivering the goods, impoverishing the country and inflicting austerity on us resulting in unprecedented misery from which the country’s still trying to recover?

Fianna Fail, including its current leader Micheal Martin, destroyed the economy — despite numerous warnings in advance.

We ended up so penniless that the Troika — IMF, ECB and EU — could come marching in panzer-style, dictating hairshirt terms in exchange for a €64 billion bailout.

And Fine Gael — and Labour — increased the misery with severe austerity measures.

And we’ve FG to thank for obeying their EU masters and introducing a penal property tax on the family home.

And they then invited in the vulture funds who’ve made billions buying up properties and renting them out to tenants at extortionate rents.

And then the Blueshirts tried to bring in water charges with the establishment of Irish Water.

Luckily Minister Phil Hogan was so bloody-minded — threatening to cut families’ water supply to a ‘trickle’ if they didn’t pay — that the people finally told him where to stick his meters.

Yet here they are now gently trying to draw a veil over their sins as if in denial that they ever had anything to do with the upheaval and misery that plagued this country just a few short years ago.

And from which we’re still recovering.

The current housing crisis can be traced right back to the so-called boom times of the Galway Tent, the era of reckless 100 per cent mortgages, building entire estates on flood planes, light regulation of the banks, encouraging people to buy a holiday home — in Bulgaria, for Christ sake!

BID FOR VOTES: Fine Gael leader and Taoiseach Simon Harris

Era

Yet yesterday we saw FF leader

Micheal Martin assuring his party faithful that they were the party of action on housing and that a “new era of home building is underway”. Get up the yard, Tanaiste.

And the roots of the health crisis can be found in Fine Gael’s pennypinching of the public health service in the austerity years where it’s lingered ever since.

But Simon Harris has completely ignored health in two major speeches recently — maybe as a former failed Health Minister himself, his conscience is getting to him.

Let’s remember exactly what FF and FG did to us — and then dismiss their overtures as they bombard us with their auction politics.

Lest we forget.