It's time for someone other than the coping
classes to contribute to funds and put their
hand in their wallet,
says Cathal MacCarthy in the Sunday Independent
Sunday March 22 2009
THE maitre d' is on his way over with the bill. And, one by one, the others move their chairs backwards over the (completely) shagged pile carpet and noiselessly slip away on some urgent business or other. You can see them feverishly calculating whether they have time for one last taste of the gravy before the bill arrives, or whether they should just disappear to the rest rooms till that whole unseemly business about "settling up" is done. At which point, they'll reappear, feign outrage that you've paid for their dinner, and promise that the next time it'll be on them.
In the time-honoured tradition, you airily dismiss their pretend embarrassment and insist that it's your pleasure. They're not to let it bother them for a second.
Sure, if a man can't buy his friends a bit of dinner and a bottle or 19 of grog, what's it all about, eh?
Now, let's see. Who is that whose chair we see moving smoothly backwards over there? That's the bankers. And, just there on your left, who's that walking away without a backward glance? That'd be the elastically defined "disadvantaged and most vulnerable" (©Robinson and Lonergan Mount Anville, Mountjoy, Mount-a-Podium Productions), they're always on a complimentary ticket for these shindigs as well. Up there on the extreme right, a waiter just told the super-wealthy that their Bentley is out front and the seat heating is on, so they're on their way as well. The developers got a call on their Blackberry; they went outside to take it. But that was 15 minutes ago. I wonder are they coming back?
Just then the maitre d' arrives and discreetly places the little velvet-covered booklet containing the bill on the table, but noticeably closest to you. He knows the score as well. F***in' Nora, €4.5bn! Who had the Celtic Tiger prawns?
It doesn't really matter who had what at this stage. There's no-one else to split the bill with. We'll cope. We always do. That's why they call us the 'coping class' on those radio programs, when they pretend to give a stuff.
What's that? How do you know if you're one of the coping classes? Well, see if this sounds like anyone you know.
You'll be one of those people who pay for everything. Domestic rubbish collection (even though the streets outside your front door are covered by a low tide of litter), commercial rates, income tax, car tax, doctor's bills, dentist's bills, private health insurance, kids' grinds, car insurance, home insurance. It actually never stops.
In fact, the handiest way of knowing whether you're one of the coping classes is by answering "yes" to the following question: do you pay three bills per week?
You'll certainly feel that you pay a lot to the State and its various minion agencies. And, occasionally, you'll have asked yourself what you've received by way of return. The answer, which it's no longer possible to ignore, is that you've received sweet bugger all. You keep on "just" missing all those lovely comfortable thresholds. The ones for the Bentley boys that mean they can avail of the tax shelters, and the ones for the "disadvantaged and most vulnerable" that mean the State coughs up for house, medical expenses, school books, the whole kit and caboodle.
A long time ago, you mentally resigned yourself to your lot. Your job was to pay up and shut up. In that order. It's what your mammy and daddy did back in 1987 and the early Nineties, and now it's your turn. So get ready and have your wallet open for nice Minister Lenihan on April 7. Don't bother putting it away, either; might as well leave it where he can get what he needs.
Instead, have a think about this. Why doesn't anyone seem to speak up for you? Why isn't there a single group or body with the sheer front and honesty to stand up and risk the scorn that would accompany a public declaration that they speak for the Irish coping classes -- most specifically, the middle-class element of that sector?
The fact that no-one unashamedly speaks for the Irish middle class -- in the manner, say, of the Conservatives in Britain -- is a very serious matter in a state where greasing the squeakiest wheel has been elevated to the core operating principle of policy. What it means -- certainly what it appears to mean -- is that you have an enormous and completely docile blob in the middle who seem utterly without voice, shovelling money upwards and downwards at the bellowed instruction of a permanent ruling caste and without any appreciable benefit to the recipients. Certainly without any benefit to those doing the shovelling.
We inherited that very English sense of being embarrassed about being middle class. Yet, there are formidable virtues that seem to go with that class. Virtues that, God only knows, are very much what's required now. The middle classes are famously pragmatic -- and we need to be pragmatic and not romantic, cool and not hysterical. We need to rediscover the middle class distrust of the baubles, bling and yachts that hid the fact that we didn't do a hand's turn for the last five years except sell each other overpriced houses. We need to cultivate a more narrow-eyed, middle-class view of what constitutes the proper disbursement of social welfare.
I'd better explain that before someone due to appear on this morning's Marian Finucane Show chokes on their Danish.
The tens of thousands who've just lost their jobs have got to be paid. They kicked in. The genuinely sick and mentally ill, the aged and the helpless, have got to be paid because it's our duty to pay. But, really, what are we still doing paying a 26 or 27-year-old able- bodied man the bit of a wedge that enables him to sit around in his rental supplement (that's your cough-up again, by the way) apartment smoking a fat one and watching Judge Judy? He couldn't find a job five years ago when 50,000 Poles were getting one 10 minutes after they walked away from the baggage carousel.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has just noted that Ireland's social welfare rates are higher than those of most other countries, but sanctions for refusal to work or to take a training place are among the lowest in the world. Time, maybe, for Minister Hanafin to get a little middle class about that humongous end of the €20bn social welfare budget.
Of course, I don't really know what constitutes "middle class", but I'd be pretty certain of one thing: the Ireland that's going to emerge blinking into the sunlight in 2012 is going to be a radically different country to the one that's just entered the tunnel.
I have a vaguely optimistic feeling that a movement has already begun that is going to gain strength over the next few years. This movement is going to demand that, henceforth, the relationship between the citizenry and the State moves to a much more "you get out what you kick in" basis.
This movement is going to demand that everyone -- everyone -- starts contributing to the communal funds and that no party, whether tax exile or dole barnacle, is ever again allowed to pull up to the table, eat and drink with the rest of us, and then walk away from the bill.
