Hold the fort, comrades — I'll be back when the farce/fight is all over

I'VE had enough. If our myopic Government can't see the logic in postponing our fiscal treaty referendum, then at least I can make a unilateral decision to opt out of it all for a couple of weeks. I'm off on holidays. Please have this mess sorted out before I get back. I know, I know, I'm an ideological coward and should stay and engage in the fray to the bitter end. Sad though it is to admit, however, for an old ideological warrior such as myself, but it feels now like we're living in a post-ideology era. I'm a dinosaur. One of the most pleasurable and relaxing holidays I ever had was in Umbria in Italy. The landscape and villages were enchanting, the food and wine intoxicating and the people delightful. The fact that Italy was undergoing one of its periodic crises and the political system was in meltdown, escaped me entirely.[private] I don't speak Italian. Newspapers, TV, debates in cafés, they all passed over my head. As far as I was concerned, everything was rosy in the Italian garden and I went about my merry way oblivious to the turmoil around me. La dolce vita. Since then I've often fantasised about migrating to some idyll where I can remain outside the fray and live in blissful ignorance of the folly of my fellow man. I'd pass my days in the luxury of neither knowing nor caring about what's going on in the world. On Walden Pond, you could say, but with running hot water, room service and a mini-bar. I like to spend my breaks in blessed oblivion. Let the world turn without me for a while. Experience has proved that it somehow manages without my contribution and that news always catches up with you eventually â€â€ no matter how hard you try, you can never outrun it. So, I'll soon be spending my days walking between one delightful village and another somewhere in Majorca. Nothing too strenuous. A gentle meander towards a leisurely lunch, back to base for a siesta, and the day completed with a Bacchanalian orgy at the dinner table. I'm a simple creature at heart. Oh, and definitely no news. No Yes, No, Maybe for me. I wish I could get as excited about politics as I once did, but I can't, and I don't think I'm alone in this. The world of politics appears to have flattened out; it has morphed into a stage-managed blandness masquerading as consensus. Despite all the recent rhetoric of Europe moving to the Left, I'd bet it's only the banners, not the policies, which will change. Austerity is slipping out of fashion for now â€â€ brace yourselves for fiscal responsibility with a human face. This is going to hurt. The puppets are changed with slick regularity but the puppet master remains in place. In some ways Ireland has been ahead of the game in this regard. When Europe had genuine Left and Right blocs competing for the allegiance of their electorates, we had a fairly stable consensus centred on conservative social democracy. Labour could safely posture, comfortable in the knowledge that they'd never get a chance to convert their rhetoric into action. Fianna Fáil courted populism by robbing Labour's clothes when it was expedient, and Fine Gael with its Just Society charade killed the extremes of Left and Right with kindness. All three parties seem to have concluded early on that the only place where they could survive and thrive, in their own ways, was firmly in the centre ground. Sinn Féin is now making all the right Left noises but in truth this is merely an initiation process. Once they've gained admittance to the centrist club, they'll see the error of their ways and conform. The other three will make room in the bed for the Shinners once they've accepted the rules of the club, know which cutlery to use and agree to wipe their feet on the mat on the way in. The  radical  sideshows will continue. In fact, they'll be encouraged and fostered as they present the illusion of choice in a system where choice has all but been ironed out. Eamon Gilmore's 'Labour's way or Frankfurt's way' was just an embarrassing slip from this script. It's all Frankfurt's way now. Emperors in Rome's heyday knew if they wanted to stay in power they needed to provide the plebs with bread and circuses. Today, both Left and Right have accepted that the bread and circuses revolve around some form of welfare state. The Left may argue that the State should run the show to ensure the welfare system is funded. The Right says the free market must rule, but accepts it must work well enough to fund the same welfare system. Same difference basically, especially for those dependent on the system. The debate between Left and Right is now simply a smokescreen to disguise the fact that the only game in town is capturing the control of the centre by one political tribe or other. Ideology is dead. Long live ideology. Economist Kenneth Galbraith once summed it up thus: 'Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.' Does anyone actually believe that President Obama is a leftie and the US Tea Party is on the Right? Compare their policies and they gel snugly. Would London have been transformed into a socialist utopia if  Ken Livingstone had ousted Boris Johnson? Is Europe going to unite under the red banner of the Left now that Hollande is in the Elysée Palace? No. And that's basically because the old conflict between the two rival ideologies was based on control of economies â€â€ free-market capitalism versus state control. While both were squaring up to each other as rivals for her affection, the feckless economy neatly stepped out of the room and went global. She no longer cares which side wins because she calls the shots either way. The two ideologies can continue to spar with each other but the big players now know it's a phony war. They're pulling their punches because they know at heart they're all essentially redundant, but to maintain the facade, they need one another. Wait and see â€â€ the politics of the future will boil down to pressure groups on social issues. Different camps will lobby for concessions on populist issues and in order to keep the masses docile and in line, what we collectively term 'the markets' will grant the odd concession.   I think we'd better think it out again AS AN old ideological warrior, I'm nostalgic for the halcyon days when the Left was the Left and the Right was the Right and never the twain would meet. Today, like rutting dogs, a bucket of cold water couldn't separate them. Like so many others I long for a messiah. I thought for a while there that Richard 'Rich Boy' Barrett was the man for the job. I loved the stuff about telling our paymasters where to stuff their loans and collecting an extra €10 billion a year in taxes. As an old-school leftie I prefer soundbite to tedious logic any day. All the boring detail can be sorted out after the revolution when the convents are nationalised. I even went along with his proposal for an across-the-board wealth tax of 5% a year. Then I did something out of character. I thought about it. Believe me, I come from the 'property is theft' school and anything that smacks of stiffing the rich gets my vote. But this 5% thing sent alarm bells ringing in the recesses of my mind, where, I suspect, a Tory subconscious resides. By my crude calculations, Rich Boy's proposal means I spend 20 years paying off my house at roughly 5% a year, and then the comrades take it back off me over the next 20 years at 5% a year. As the old song goes, I think we'd better think it out again. It reminded me of the old tale of the Russian peasant who applies to join the Communist party. The local Commissar decides to give him a test. 'Comrade,' he asks, 'if you had two houses and your neighbour was homeless, what would you do?' The canny peasant says he'd keep one for his own family and hand the other over to his neighbour in the spirit of fraternal socialism. Spot on. 'If you had two tractors and your neighbour had to plough his fields by hand, what would you do?' he was then asked. The applicant stated that he was no capitalist hoarder of scarce resources and would naturally hand over his spare tractor to his comrade neighbour. The Commissar was delighted. The message was obviously getting through. The clincher was what would the peasant do if he had two pigs and his neighbour had none. To his dismay, the applicant replied 'Nothing.' 'But why?' demanded the outraged Commissar. 'Because I have two pigs,' the peasant replied. So People Before Profit will have to do without my support if it comes to handing back my property in dribs and drabs to their utopian state. My helicopter, yes, my villa on Capri, yes, but my house, no. Maybe Maggie Thatcher was right. Left or Right, property ownership makes conservatives of us all. And with that appalling thought for the day, I'm signing out. â€Â¢ â€Â¢ â€Â¢   Quote of the Week   'You can't starve your way out of a famine' â€â€ Dr Sheila Killian, Kemmy Business School, UL[/private]