The Curious Case of B & B

So Brian Lenihan didn’t read the entire report into Anglo Irish Bank. Brian Cowen didn’t read the entire Lisbon Treaty. There’s a pattern emerging here, B & B are dossers. They’re trying to pull off the oldest trick in the book: not reading the book.

Back in the Leaving Cert days nobody wanted to submit themselves to such an unpleasant experience as actually reading “Persuasion” so one Saturday afternoon we all headed up to Reads of Nassau Street on the bus and bought the “notes”. The notes were a little handbook, no more than forty pages long, summarizing what, if anything, actually took place in the novel and providing you with a few indispensable nuggets of analysis to trot out on your exam paper thereby guaranteeing that you would convey a full understanding of the nuances of Austen’s masterpiece. Job done.

This is not what you would call pulling out all the stops but it is what’s called making an effort. However half arsed, it is an effort nonetheless. Guess what, B&B aren’t even reading the bloody notes; they’re not making any effort. They’re not even bringing a few cogs into the hall with them. These lads are complete amateurs. They have gone for the all or nothing approach – I won’t bother my arse reading it and if called to account on it I will throw my hands up, mea culpa and fair cop guv. There’s no middle ground with these lads, they are determined to be either heroes or villains.

Now I heard a startling statistic the other day to the effect that there are two hundred people employed by the office of the Taoiseach. And neither of the Bs could delegate the reading and summarizing of either of these cumbersome tomes to one of them. Every one of these individuals were so saturated with other duties pertaining to Armageddon that no one was available to throw an eye over these documents and give the Bs the heads up.

Now when the fundamental component of your job is arming yourself with information relevant to what is going on in the jurisdiction you purport to be governing, it strikes me as somewhat on the negligent side not to bother making any attempt whatsoever to procure that information. That, gentlemen, is what’s called taking the piss.

You go in for a root canal procedure, the nurse shows you in to the surgery, she gives you a gown to put on and invites you to make yourself comfortable. A minute later the dentist arrives, reassures you that everything is going to be ok, picks up a drill and looks at it for a second, turns it around and looks at it from the other direction for a minute, scratches his head, hands it to you and asks “Hey, have you any idea how to use this yoke?” What would you do? You’d run a mile and on the way you’d ring the Medical Council and report him. Or would you have second thoughts because he at least had the sensitivity to explain to you that everything was going to be ok? B&B are displaying similar ineptitude when it comes to tooling themselves up to perform the fundamental aspects of their jobs.

But who can we report them to? The Financial Regulator, the Ombudsman, the National Consumer Agency? “ Hi I want to report a case of overcharging in Liffey Valley yesterday and one hundred and sixty six cases of professional negligence in Dawson Street every day” “Please stay on the line your call is important to us” Can we ring Joe Duffy, or request a meeting with Mary out in the Park. Is there anything Eamon Dunphy can do for us, or the no nonsense Graeme Souness?

If your car breaks down in the middle of the night somewhere on the bog road between Walsh Island and Rhode, you wouldn’t tolerate one of your passengers first of all throwing the manual into a boghole and secondly doing sod all to help because it is his contention that the fundamentals of the engine are sound and, besides, you are perfectly positioned to avail of a lift if and when one emerges from the infinite gloom. No you wouldn’t tolerate it; you’d probably have a fairly decent crack at killing the bugger. Yet every day we are subjected to the sight of B&B doing the equivalent.

But what can we do about it? What do you do when you need someone taken out of circulation for the greater good? When you need to prune out a bit of deadwood so the whole tree can regain it’s vitality and go on to prosper again. Well anyone who watches Discovery Max on a Tuesday morning (i.e. anyone who has, like, a clue) knows that there is only one place you can go, one man you can turn to and that’s Dog the Bounty Hunter. When a situation descends to a low such as ours he’s the only man who is equipped to retrieve it. When all other options have been exhausted, Dog is waiting in the wings, poised. Dog, being a man of such principle, would I’m sure consider it an honour to serve our national interest by fabricating a few Hawaii parole violations and file extradition orders to get B&B over there for a hearing. Dog and his entourage arriving down at Leinster House to serve the papers on the lads, what a sight that would be. If staged in the proper way it could be a showcase for the country right up there with the Special Olympics or the Eucharistic Congress. By the time the legal technicalities have been unraveled and the lads have been repatriated Joan Burton would have everything sorted. What about planting a bit of weed on them, is that constitutional? I’m not sure, I’ll have to get a lawyer to review the intricacies of it, or maybe I’ll adopt the B&B approach and not bother my arse.

Anything that could be grounds for an election and a fresh start will do. Could we derail the Offaly B with the technicality that nobody actually voted for him to be in charge, he just happened to be mooching around in the corridor long enough to get the job? He tells us repeatedly that the fundamentals are strong and that everything will be cool, but we know it won’t. The country is turning to custard and they couldn’t be bothered to read the fecking instructions. The pair of clowns are going to destroy every viable business this side of Achill Island. This is one B&B that’s definitely not Bord Failte approved.

Say nothing; I’ll give Dog a call. You didn’t hear it from me.