Richard Bruton

As we look ahead to 2009 there are two things we can be certain of. The global economy will continue to take a massive diarrhoea infused dump on Ireland Inc. Secondly, and not far off the theme of the first certainty, Fine Gael’s Richard Bruton will continue in his quest to have every lavatory in Leinster House fitted with a beday. So far he has been pretty successful – the graph in the picture above shows levels of usage on Kildare Street. (The drop in the middle part of the graph was as a result of Jackie Healy-Rae’s episode of constipation in July). So will RB be our economic knight in shining armour in 2009? Probably not, but he might be.

Managed to get my hands on a FG internal memo put together by Bruton’s economic team of ex-Palin staff. I picked this baby up under a Freedom of Information Act request. Instead of giving FG money for the FOI I bartered for it with my 1995/1996 Premiership season sticker book collection (complete with three Eric Cantona's). Its an impressive document - as is the FG memo. Below is the gist of the Bruton's plan of action.

(1.) Halt construction completely of Dublin Airport Terminal 2. On its site put an army of unemployed construction workers,engineers,IFSC trolls,nurses, more HSE admin staff into labour by building this. Bruton’s team carried out a study on ancient Egyptian policies of macroeconomics, public/private spending, dealing with downturns, slavery etc and came to the conclusion that it is financially feasible to build this giant coffin for the next four cycles of Irish economic boom and bust. The memo states that “after watching the last couple of Prime Time Investigates the wage bracket of low paid jobs in Ireland is not that far off Ancient Egypt in the period 2500 BC to 2420 BC. This can work". There are two problems forseen by Bruton's little team of nerds. Firstly, what to do when Ireland starts its fifth economic cycle somewhere mid century and secondly, that we may have to deal with the Burren being completely empty after we have fucking annihilated it for all its limestone consistently for three decades.

Construction would begin late 2009 and be complete by somewhere mid 2042.The FG analysts took into account significant loses in manpower through plague, cholera and starvation. "You know the usual problems associated with subjugating a decent majority of the population into 17 hour workdays - kind of what its currently like to work in Londis". At this stage it would be ready to hold the remains of Garrett FitzGerald. This section of the memo finishes off with the line, “how fucking slick would it be to fly into Dublin Airport and be greeted by the sight of a 150 storey tall pyramid. Bad ass doesn’t even cover it”.

Bad-ass....indeed Mr.Bruton.

(2.)The memo agrees with the current government plan to invest a bit of cash into the broad ranging field of ‘science and technology’. Seeing as ‘science and technology’ in Ireland covers everything from curing cancer to creating sweet robots which can morph their arms into sharp objects, the FG paper advises “that the area of investment become more specific, i.e. Ireland’s first nuclear weapons program”. It goes on to state that, “Ireland has lost its competitiveness due to various factors such as the devaluing of the Sterling. There is very little chance that this competitiveness will return in the medium/long term".

"Therefore, we need to show our neighbours we mean fucking business and sticking a few ICBM’s on Erins Isle will do just that. If they (I’m guessing by ‘they’ FG means everyone) don’t buy our pigs and computer chips we will just have to burn their cities to the ground and poison their land with radiation for the next 200 years. This initiative also has the added benefit of keeping numerous poindexters in Irish labs busy for the next decade”.

A rigorous analysis of Game Theory is subsequently provided and this section of the paper concludes with the statement that “if Iran can do it, so can we, look at how many concessions those lads have got out of the Yanks and the Red Coats – in fact, we would be idiots NOT to do this”.

Terrifying stuff from the Blueshirts.

(Note: All of the above is premised on Bruton's party actually fiddling around with their groin area, realising they have a pair of testicals and strolling out of Leinster house, therefore forcing an election. Followed by FG then winning said election.)