2011 Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Year

First off, thanks to WBS, who ensured there was a post on every edition of the Sindo this year. We’re making no promises for 2012 though. Secondly, bit depressing to be able measure out your year in Sindo-sized chunks, but there you go. I suppose this year there were several topics guaranteed to provoke stupidity – the continuing economic crisis and the troika, the southern election, the queen’s visit, plus the inherent inanity of the Sindo’s outlook. My personal favourite theme in the Sindo this year, though, was the slipping of the mask of cosmpolitan pluralism and the repeated emergence of what can be best described as the Sindo’s version of the Little Englander mentality. Now, for some nostalgia, in broadly chronological order.

Eilis O’Hanlon made an early – and possibly successful – bid for this year’s title on January 23rd, with this cri de coeur from the bourgeoisie.

As it happens, Joe Higgins was wrong as well — and not simply because of his fetishistic obsession with the woes of the working class at a time when any fair-minded analysis would have to concede it is already struggling middle class homeowners who are bearing the brunt of this recession, and whose children, educated at great personal expense and sacrifice, are now emigrating, according to the ESRI, at the rate of 1,000 per week.

Marc Coleman, though, made a bold claim for the same territory on May 15th.

Once again the politically weakest constituency in the country — Middle Ireland — has been made to carry the can for the mistakes and selfishness of others.

The election produced probably the statement I enjoyed pointing out the most all year. But before that, Shane Ross on March 6th, addressing the loss of economic independence.

Angela, the European Union and the IMF have filled the vacuum vacated by David Begg, Jack O’Connor and Ictu.

The Sindo likes to present itself as a bastion of democracy. Shame its people don’t seem to grasp how elections actually work, and what the word “most” means then. And so to my personal favourite from Jody Corcoran on March 6th, after which it became totally impossible not to laugh anytime the Sindo started on about democracy.

Another certainty is that the people voted for Fine Gael, but they did not vote for it in sufficient numbers that it would win an overall majority, it having fallen seven seats short of a majority — just seven. It is beyond doubt, then, that most voters wanted a single-party, right-of-centre government, but that they were looking for something else too, something small but perceptible.

By June 5th, he had changed his mind about most people wanting a single party government. Not sure that he had gotten what the votes meant yet though.

I am, perhaps, alone in holding to a theory that the electorate did not vote for a Fine Gael/Labour Government. It voted for Fine Gael with a few like-minded Independents, and for Labour to lead the Opposition — an important role.

There was also a statement from someone else during the year who seemed to think that UK voters had flocked to the Tories in an election they hadn’t actually won. Maybe this will be the year that they grasp basic arithmetic.

The queen’s visit offered a potential feast of stuff, but Louis Jacob on April 3rd can stand in for the rest of it.

It should be an historic event, that brings to a close years of problems.

Let’s not forget the public sector. Marc Coleman on July 19th had this to say.

Last Tuesday night, Brendan Keenan and I paid tribute to Brian Lenihan on Newstalk. In the course of the discussion, we touched on the bank bailout. Both of us agreed that despite the awfulness of its cost, it is a one-off cost when compared to the ongoing crisis in our public finances.

Interesting use of the word one-off. And interesting use of numbers too when you think about this argument. Brendan O’Connor on July 24th showed us he has no grasp whatsoever of what actually makes up the public sector that haunts him so.

So the public sector is sorted. Its workers will maintain the 47 per cent premium they enjoy over their colleagues in the private sector, and they have total job security. So however horrific the upcoming budget, they can all rest easy. The public sector will not be downsized unless it wants to be. So while we cut services to the old, the sick and the disabled; while we compromise our education system, the major thing we should be investing in now in order to capitalise on the next boom; while the Government has taken to stealing people’s pensions in order to balance the books, the public sector has been ring-fenced.

That man is a buffoon.

And so to the Sindo’s Colonels Blimp. James Fitzsimmons on December 18th.

Bowing to the superiority of its EU paymasters, Ireland has been relegated to the status of little more than a concentration camp

Now for an appearance by Harris. Anne Harris on May 29th.

For your information, Eamon, the French small and medium businesses do not give a fig for us or our corporation tax. Nor does their government. Just as during the Second World War when all they cared about was the coffee in their cup and the sugar in their coffee, now all they care about is corporation tax and the quality of their life.
The French don’t care about anybody but the French. And the only people they kowtow to are the Germans. They always did and they always will. And when it all falls down (like it did with Vichy) they will say they (the Germans) made us do it.

Jody Corcoran, November 13th (Remembrance Sunday, as us good poppy-wearing Sindo-reading, cosmpolitan-types know)

Germany will soon have the Europe it has always wanted.

A Sunday, apparently, to remember that petty-minded, petty-bourgeois nationalism isn’t backwards and bad when it sounds like the UK Independence Party rather than an Irish independence party.

But this year’s winner, from a crowded field, is Ruth Dudley Edwards on September 4th, who wins for the mixture of right-wing authoritarianism, complete disregard for democratic and human rights, class snobbery, paranoia, and self-loathing inferiority complex that typifies the Sindo at its finest.

Vanessa Redgrave is a fine actress and a notorious idiot who for years supported the Workers’ Revolutionary Party. Among those threatening violent opposition to the evictions are international anarchists spoiling for a fight. If any Traveller gets hurt, the victim card will be played and concerned Irish and UN voices will chide the authorities for their repressive actions.
Sometimes I wonder how the English can stand us.

Better luck to the other contestants next year.