Flags

If I remember correctly the last few April's have been belters when it comes to the weather. Maybe it's all the talk of water charges about the place, but its been downpours here for most of the week. Sporadic outbursts - like those from government quarters.
A new opinion poll out tomorrow has satisfaction with the government down 14 points to 23% percent. People will make varying arguments about it, but to the ordinary spectator it means just one thing. Bad news for Enda Kenny.
Alex Ferguson once called this time of the year 'squeaky bum time.' With the referendum debate about to get into full swing, Enda might be saying the same. The honeymoon for me was over the day they made the first payment of an unsecured bond. For others it would have been a bit longer. All will agree though, it is now firmly over.

Another poll out today has the 'Yes' camp ahead in the referendum debate by 7%. The surprise was the massive 39% of undecideds. I expected this 'treaty' to sail through in a fog. Maybe I jumped the gun a little. I'm not saying it won't pass - but there's a lot of hearts and minds to be won, and if popularity has anything to do with it, the government in the present moment look shaky. There will be plenty of the fear-mongering. It's that age. Talk of the inevitable second bailout will sound more. The repercussions of not being able to access that? What will government advisers and health service executives do?

From where I'm sitting, old loyalties to old friends might come back and haunt our current taoiseach. With so little power to wield, I'd have expected Enda to manage the bit that he does have to manage just a little bit better.
He's stood by as an air of arrogance set into his cabinet, and by doing little about it, he has opened that old accusations of weak leadership again.
If that arrogance is bedded now, and comes through during this treaty debate, then who knows what way the vote will swing.
Today's opinion poll suggests Enda has a little bit of work to do to get back to his 'Daddy' status amongst a disillusioned people, with little to sway them with, except the promise of further waves of austerity to come.

'What will be, will be...' as Doris Day once sang. That's my attitude to things now. I think I was at that disillusioned phase before. It's like a bad headache that doesn't go away. Like after a good Saturday night. Hard to shake. Where it weighs you down. Until it traps. Not the place to be.

With a bit of Irish luck, people will tune in more to what's going on, and demand a little more from their elected representatives. I'm sure quite a number of them are Trojan's when it comes to the work they do. Once under the snap of a whip however, there is no real influence. Just a cog in the wheel of a ride. No mechanism for shifts in thinking that might be worth an ear.
Very little unity and even less direction.
It's a poor state of affairs to watch it all slowly crumble into a country with more empty houses, than people who share a common-sense. It may be because of that failing that we end up eroding a democracy hard-fought for at the end of the day. These right-left alliances just don't work. Though it's hard to take Labour for the left anymore.
There's a few whipper-snappers in Dáil Eireann that could make themselves heard a bit more. Start speaking up and out for the country a little more. Has the lure of bailout money cost people their voices. It's not like keeping quiet has served us well as a nation. Sorting things out decades after the fact leaves a hole that just is not going to be filled again. Or have we learned nothing from our past mistakes as a young country?

I went for a ramble a number of weeks back. Came across some old ruins with three European flags swaying under a stiff breeze. No tricolour. I thought to myself that was strange. Ah, maybe it was away for a wash. But the following week it was the same. And the week after.
Now I know we're all Europeans and all, but it did still seem odd.
It was sad to see all the same. Be it a slip of the mind or the like. I hope we discover a bit more of our Irishness over the Summer with the European Championships. They were always the best of times. 'Twould be a shame to lose all that. Especially here. On the island itself!

Back to Seattle.