Leo must have booby-trapped the office on the way out
YOU wouldn’t blame Micheal Martin for feeling the previous incumbent had basically booby-trapped the Taoiseach’s office before he handed it over to him.
Leo’s carefully laid traps included “Saving the summer”. Just as he headed off insouciantly on his gap year, Leo smilingly reopened the country, not once, but twice. He got both a Friday out of it and then the following Thursday, when, in his final public act as Taoiseach, he set us free.
He even told us all we would be going on foreign holidays on July 7. The summer saved, his job done, a tousle-haired Taoiseach ambled off, laughing and joking and probably quoting teen movies.
And then poor old Fianna Fail had to take over and almost immediately start to undo all Leo’s good work. For people who weren’t paying too much attention, you’d vaguely get the impression Fianna Fail brought the virus back.
Sun holidays, it seems, won’t be happening on July 7, July 20, or any other time this year, unless you want to slink in shame-faced through Belfast, though Belfast people will be free to brazenly fly in and out of Dublin on their cheap package deals — if they can socially distance their way through all the Texans arriving in.
For the rest of us, while a staycation may have seemed like an attractive notion a few weeks back, the weather gods have not been kind to Fianna Fail either. When we look back on
Leo’s final weeks in power, we remember it as a time of eternal sunshine, when we all tested the limits of our broadband in the back garden as we “worked” from home.
Since poor old Fianna
Fail got in, it’s been like Angela’s Ashes, and now a staycation essentially means two weeks in the rain.
Fianna Fail have spent the last 10 years trying to rebrand themselves as the responsible party, and now their wish has finally come true. While the latter days of Fine Gael were all about gradually offering more freedoms with each Freaky Friday, Fianna Fail now face the prospect of having to take back those freedoms.
The most exciting prospect Fianna Fail can offer is that they are trying to get the schools open. Which is hugely important to lots of us, but just doesn’t have the same fun factor of saying: “Yay. You can all go to the pub, and out for a meal, and on holidays.” Indeed, Fianna Fail could find themselves in the very un-Fianna Fail position of keeping the pubs closed next week.
Having been the ones who egged on the reopening of the country when they had the glorious irresponsibility of opposition, Fianna Fail are now the killjoys. They have even had to turn on the young people.
Young people are now being shamed and demonised for catching Covid-19. Which is odd given we never blamed all the old people when they were catching it.
To top all that, all of
Fine Gael’s other problems or failings completely disappeared over the course of their final three months in office. No one cared. Not just eternal sunshine, but a spotless mind too.
In the last two weeks, though, we have finally had the bandwidth for other political stories, and none of them is especially flattering to Fianna Fail.
It’s not their fault, but since Fianna Fail got into power, it’s felt a bit like the grey olden days around here.
And admit it, this weekend, you’re afraid of the virus again. Aren’t you?