This is the New Politics: talk a lot and do nothing

FRIDAY’S transport strike came 10 days after the Central Statistics Office confirmed that employees in public services earn more than workers in the private sector. But then taxes from private sector wages have always subsidised the same public service employees who brought chaos and despair to our streets.

Children facing crucial exams could not get to school, and their retired grandparents, who paid taxes for generations, were marooned at home.

The wildcat action was a declaration of war by public service workers, a pre-emptive strike designed to cause maximum disruption to their hapless fellow citizens.

But then, wage-slaves are always targeted by ruthless trade unions – then routinely abandoned by handwringing politicians.

Statements will come gushing from a previously silent Government, and opposition parties will urge ministers to do something – but nothing too specific, because that would involve taking a stand.

Nobody will say that Bus Éireann is not fit for purpose and that no one, neither the Government nor the opposition, has a coherent transport policy.

This is New Politics: everybody will have their say, but nobody will do anything.

There will be messages of solidarity for the striking workers, but only weasel words for those whose lives they have profoundly disrupted.

Once again a yawning chasm opens up where there should be a leader – someone to seize the moment and do the right thing.

We have a Taoiseach who needs occupational therapy to keep him looking busy; an invisible Tánaiste spooked by her past misjudgements; a Government on suicide watch.

Meanwhile, the other Fine Gael ministers appear to measure every decision they take against its consequences for the leadership contest, while the Independents in government hope their new-found status goes on and on.

And the opposition waits for the Government to pass on in its sleep from natural causes…

When the unions shouted stop on Friday morning, our major cities seized up like a clapped-out Ford Fiesta in a motor sport rally. And that was a dry run for the unelected czars responsible for traffic in Dublin city.

Yet not a word from them or the metropolitan elite seeking to drive family cars off our city streets and make motoring in the city impossible.

Those unelected, unaccountable, salaried managers appear hell-bent on the destruction of Dublin, according to City Councillor Mannix Flynn. But the cycling lobby has unelected but ultra-powerful friends in Dublin City – and so have the wildcat strikers who brought our cities to a halt on Friday. RUGBY pundit Brent Pope strode down Baggot Street like Johnnie Walker on the logo of a whiskey bottle. It was last week, before the Wales match, when a group of lads passing him shouted: ‘There he is…’

‘Yes it’s me,’ the New Zealander replied, ‘Johnny Logan.’ And the lads appeared very pleased with their evening’s star-spotting. constructed narrative, yet many admired the apparently sincere presentation of her contrition. And, yes, it showed professional skill worthy of an awardwinning actress – not a talent that we expect from our chief of police.

It was also an affront to those men and women of the gardaí who were traduced on her watch as leader – and an insult to the intelligence of the rest of us.

It beggars belief that the collective experience and talents of An Garda Síochána could not solve the riddle of nearly one million fake breath tests or explain 14,700 wrongful convictions. How can courts believe the testimony of members of a police service that supplied data so demonstrably wrong for so long? Please Commissioner, do not debase yourself any further and stop insulting our intelligence. NEWS from the Four Courts of a distinguished barrister’s latest spoof elegy for the departed faithful: he gave an eloquently disingenuous account of Northern Ireland’s late Deputy First Minister’s many achievements, finishing with: ‘And, of course, who can forget McGuinness’s masterful management of U2?’ Meryl Streep’s first appearance in a Dublin theatre.

The consensus was that none of the politicians questioning the Garda Commissioner had managed to dent her disingenuous defence.

Whether that was a tribute to the media professionals who coached her or an indication of the skills she used to become leader of An Garda Síochána was not clear. No one commented to me about the fact that two-thirds of TDs elected to the Dáil have no confidence in her leadership yet quite a few were impressed by her ‘performance’.

No one believed her artfully NÓIRÍN O’Sullivan’s performance at Leinster House on Thursday was critiqued as if it was Oscarwinner