High priests of Mammon

Questions and Answers has been quite interesting lately.

Fine Gael's leap onto the band wagon of anti-traveller prejudice was discussed a week or two ago and Jim Higgins managed to represent his party well, even getting in the old "sure aren't they all driving 4x4's" horseshite.

Last Monday the Irish Ferries dispute was discussed, amongst other issues. It was really quite amazing to hear the manner in which Eamon Delaney, deputy editor of Magil magazine, and Dr. Dan McLaughlin, chief economist with the Bank of Ireland talked about Irish workers. Sadly, their realtionship with humanity is indeed very distant. Delaney's arrogant Thatcherite assertions went so far as to imply that trade unions were no longer needed in modern Ireland, and indeed have been obsolete for decades. Patricia Casey, regional secretary of SIPTU, defended the trade union movement well, and spun Delaney's own argument back on him, arguing that it was he that was "peddling retro", and that the Irish Trade union movement was in fact more vibrant than ever.

All over the world workers are persecuted for trying to organize themselves and form unions. Globalized trade has made the right to organize more and more vital all the time and trade unions are one of the institutions of a democratic nation that we should be most proud of. One only has to look at the Irish Ferries dispute and the bold moves taken by Irish Ferries staff over the last week to see that workers should and must organize to protect their livlihoods.

Delaney's comments on George Best were equally repulsive. When asked what kind of monument should be erected to the legendary football player he said none, and that he should be remebered only as a wife-abusing alcaholic.

It was nice to see that I was not the only one who dispproved of these pontificating high priests of Mammon. A listener rang in to ask how much does the president of Bank of Ireland earn, while expecting us to work for nothing, and, towards the end of the show, a well-spoken elderly gentleman sitting at the back of the audience said that he was absolutely shocked at the lack of humanity in the lanuguage used by both McLaughlin and Delaney. "All I hear is Economy, economy, economy!", he said. " For God's sake, we live in a nation!"

Hear hear