Still no-one is shouting Stop

IT WAS the white nylon shirt that first drew my attention; I could see the man wearing it through the windows of the cafe where I sat with my coffee. The blue suit and gleaming shoes, what remained of an Elvis quiff â€â€ oiled back and not a hair out of place â€â€ and the white nylon shirt straining to contain a paunch that took money to put there. He was home for the Races. He had a friendly, open face and as he scanned the passers-by it struck me that he was hoping to spot someone he knew, perhaps someone from the old days who would have a drink with him and maybe give him a lift into Ballybrit to kick-start another memorable session.[private] But the lads wouldn't be joining him that day â€â€ or any other. Those still above ground are grandfathers now and their days of heading off with the wild man home for the Races, pockets full of McAlpine's or Murphy's cash and a thirst you could photograph, are well over. Oh they had some great times back in the day, doing double shifts and the most dangerous jobs for three months before coming home. No sissy safety harnesses or health and safety twaddle for these boys. They took the risks; got cash in hand in the pub and what wasn't spent was stowed away for the annual trip home. There were friends a-plenty back then too. No problem finding company for a session. And what of it if he was paying, sure wasn't he doing well beyond and the least he could do was to flash a bit of cash. A man only lives once. But his days of flashing the cash are over now. The back isn't what it was. The Polish lads are setting the pace these days, earning whatever easy money is going. He's lucky to have the site security number and he can't see that lasting much longer. The agent's retiring; Polimiezki has his own people to look after. There's not much of a welcome for him any more in the home place. The brother got the land â€â€ was welcome to it â€â€ but his wife â€â€ he never liked her â€â€ moans about having to make up the bed and put an extra plate on the table for the week. There was no moaning when their kids were in school and he helped out as best he could. They're in Melbourne now, or is it Montréal? He hasn't heard from one of them in years. He never got around to marrying. A free agent, that's what he's always called himself. And for a long-distance man like him, ready to move at a day's notice to wherever the work took him and to where the craic was good, marriage could wait. There was one girl from Boyle he met in the Galtymore and was sweet on. She was keen but he couldn't make up his mind. That's the way. He's settled down now, a council flat in Hackney and the sessions are confined to a few pints in The George on a Saturday night. Some nights he even gets to knock a bit of chat out of someone. It's mainly Jamaicans in there now. Worked with lots of them in the tunnels. Horses of men; never had a problem with them. 'Tear it out, sure it isn't our country,' was a shared joke. But what was it the ballad singer in The White Hart used to sing? '... To work 'til you're dead for a room and a bed, it's not the reason I left Mullingar.' I watched him stand at that corner in Tuam, looking a little bemused, and I wondered if he wondered what it had all been for: the lonely cattle boat to Holyhead, the digs and the digging. Working every day that dawned but never really getting a purchase on life. The bookies and publicans doing a lot better from his labours than he himself did. But at least he got home for the Races. â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢ AND as I watched him I pondered the cruelty of fate, how I had been issued at birth with a protective shield â€â€ a pass into life â€â€- while the big man on the corner may as well have been stamped â€ËœFor Export Only'. That's how Ireland operated back then â€â€ and still does. I could have known him, have worked alongside him, shared a drink with him â€â€ or others just like him. They were the cast-offs of a society that closed in on itself. Institutional indifference and a harsh social conformity dictated that the insiders should not be inconvenienced by making room for him; better to export him on the hoof like a beast of burden lest his presence upset the cosy status quo. I too took the cattle boat at 16 â€â€ for me it was a great adventure. I was born into the cosseted class and no matter how far I strayed, how much I messed up, there was always the middle-class net to cushion my fall. I was a dilettante in concrete and cable, a jackhammer philosopher acting out my Donal MacAmhlaigh phase before returning to my place in establishment Ireland. There's always a place for the son of a professional man in Ireland â€â€ we look after our own. But for nylon-shirt man there was no prodigal's return. He was surplus to requirements and we were glad to see the back of him. As the late Brian Lenihan Snr once said, 'we can't all live on one little island'. Smugly untouched then â€â€ and now â€â€ nothing's really changed. The insiders dictate the terms; the outsiders pick up the pieces. The boom was an aberration, blurring the lines of demarcation, allowing some outsiders to think they actually belonged. The bust will put them back in their box or â€â€ better yet â€â€ on a plane out. Protected elites carry on regardless, jettisoning those outside the club to their fate. Why worry about a factory or a business closing if you're a politician, civil servant, lawyer, doctor, vet, developer, priest â€â€ or just rich? Circle the wagons and arrange it so those who are left with the least subsidise the rotten pyramid of self-interest. And don't neglect to get rid of those who might bring new blood and ideas to our self-serving system of governance. Though weakened by generations of inbreeding and sloth, that's the last thing our elite gene pool would want. So get rid of them -- we've been doing that for generations â€â€ we're doing it still. Job to job, or contract to contract AS I leave the café, I see nylon-shirt man step out of the way of a group of iPhone apps on legs. Oblivious to him, the teenagers are focused on their phones, alive with the exuberance and optimism of their age. He looks at them as if they belong to a different species. Brash, educated, confident that life will unfold in accordance with their desires, their present is a million miles away from his past. But what of their futures? We can kid ourselves with redundant soundbites on the â€Ëœknowledge economy' and speculate on the jobs that â€Ëœcloud technology' will bring, but no brave-new-world scenario can disguise the oxymoron constituted by a sentence containing 'mass employment' and 'new technology'. One contradicts the other. This industrial revolution is as much about shedding jobs as it is about innovation, it's about automating processes until the biggest cost of all â€â€ labour â€â€ is reduced to a minimum. Marching in step with the i-with-everything generation are innovations that will soon produce those coveted gizmos with little or no human input. Nylon-shirt man went from job to job; today's graduates will go from temporary contract to contract. When we hear the term 'multinational' alarm bells should be going off, but we sit back and view our visitors as part of the landscape, a kind of clean Bord na Móna, although the â€Ëœmulti' bit is the giveaway. Our elite will protect their young and perpetuate themselves, while opening the pressure valve sky-wide, to again export our surplus-to-requirement young. Our brightest and best may not be going this time to work on the shovel or as a skivvy, but they're going nonetheless. And nylon-shirt man might not be the dinosaur he felt himself to be. One or more of those bright young things with their iPhones might one day also stand at a corner in Tuam and wonder what it was all for. No one shouted stop 50 years ago â€â€ and there's no one shouting it now.[/private]