Occupy Dame Street

RTE news tonight carried a piece about the various ‘Occupy’ protests that are currently happening around the globe. They had footage of London, and particularly, New York, yet they didn’t even mention the Cork or Dublin tent-ins. They told of how the authorities in the UK and US have issued eviction notices and moved protestors on. They never even showed a shot of our Dame Street mini-Butlins. This is a damning, yet fair summary of the success of the Occupy Dame Street movement. It has been a tragic failure and total embarrassment.

In my opinion, protest begins at home. You march against things that affect you. You raise an objection to something that impacts your way of life, your continued existence or that of those closest to you. And in this respect, I’m all for protesting. If the Government banned outright ‘instant noodles’ or ‘Tyskie beer’, I’d be pitch-forking my way down Kildare Street first thing tomorrow. But they haven’t. They have however given loads of cash to the banks, and cut a lot of people’s income to fund it. Nasty, in fairness - I’d nearly get out and walk for that, but then again, my income hasn’t actually been cut. It’s the same as it was before all this started.

And you know, the majority of the Occupy Dame St gang haven’t been affected either. Last time I checked the price of tobacco and second hand knitwear hadn’t exactly risen to record levels. Sure, news of massive hand-outs to bankers and huge pensions to those responsible occasionally has me pulling a disapproving face, but that’s only because some of that money is mine. It’s totally selfish. If it was yours alone, I’d urge them to demand more. And take your house too. But that’s me. 

ODS are fighting for an end to ECB control over the country, which is admirable. But like I always say, when I’m on a bus I prefer a trained bus driver to be behind the wheel, no matter how much of a prick he is. It’s simply a case of tough luck. We voted some people in, they weren’t very good, things went shit and they fumbled around. It happens. We then voted someone else in, things stayed shit and they literally keep slipping in it. Tough luck again. It certainly doesn’t help when our happy camper protesters are shitting into buckets and then drunkenly trying to deposit them into drains along Dame Street. They’re literally just adding to it. 

Of course, they real problem with our Hi-De-Hi Central Bank tourists is that they haven’t lost anything in the first place. Most of them (and I have been observing from the window of Sweeney’s pub btw) haven’t lost jobs, got bogged down by insane mortgages or had to sell off the decking in the first place. They are simply professional hippies. They hug trees, read Russian literature and make love to each other dressed as druids in full moonlight, before nipping off to the nearest Centra to stock up on Cider and Guinness. Then they get the last bus home, leaving their tents unoccupied.  Yeah, they return the following morning full of intent and they bang pots, make banners and masturbate into their beards, but we’d all do too that if it was easy.

Like all this ‘he had to go to Australia, sniffle’ rubbish that we hear all the time, when it’s a well known rites of passage for Irish school leavers to head down under anyway. It means nothing. This is why RTE haven’t been bothered to cover them. They’re not real. They don’t live in our world.

If they did they’d put down their yogurt, cut their hair and go looking for a fucking job.