Missing Cowen
• In a way, I miss Brian Cowen, or more accurately, the Cowen years. You see, back then, in the days of wine and roses, we really thought we were something. Now, we are sobering up to the awful truth that we have lived with for centuries: we are servile also-rans hanging on to the rocky outcrop at the end of the garden of the house of Europe.
We are muck-savages with one purpose, to export our latter-day Trevelyan's corn so that the euro will see the dawn. I sometimes envy the Emmets and Tones, the Connollys and Collinses of our past; at least they could see their enemy and take a proper shot at them in the hope of levelling the playing field.
Austerity, the feudal, unquestionable creed of our age, is almost received wisdom in a people who simply don't have an alternative vision presented to them.
If we don't shake off the general anaesthetic being fed to us by our political establishment, both in Europe and their local representatives, along with the backroom billionaires they serve, we will slide into poverty -- the most insidious element of which is the inability to resist anymore, as we lose more and more people, confidence, bargaining power and national self-respect.
Declan Doyle
Lisdowney, Kilkenny
Irish Independent
