Whatever your opinion on it, you have to admit that NAMA has gotten the political juices flowing again. The threat of a government collapse, a snap general election, and an issue of massive national importance which has cleft the republic in twain. What has surprised me is how engaged many people are in it, and in a rational way. Sure, you’ve the usual Richard Boyd Barrett “No to Everything!” crowd, but they’d be against orbitting the sun if they could (“It’s an imperialist sun! Forcing the rest of the solar system to take its rays whether they like it or not! It’s the George W. Bush of gassy masses!”) but there is a lot of genuine debate about what is the best way to fix this mess, from both right and left.
Of course, the sad thing is that even if we have a NAMA election, at least 40% of the voters will still vote on the basis that Mickey Joe O’Murphy is magic with the hurlin’ and isn’t he from the parish? Sure, don’t be mindin’ the droolin’ and the fact that he smells of his own wee. We don’t want to send a fella up there to Dublin whose too schmart for his own good, now, do we? NAMA, isn’t that the song from The Muppets?
I really have to stop reading these posts with a cup of coffee. Much too messy. As for NAMA, we’ve a government that if it went off to buy a pig in a poke would come back telling us about the poke it had at a pig. We can’t even do large scale state intervention properly, we talk up this massive nanny state act of taking over a €100 billion in loan in public ownership and then we outsource the blooming thing to some grouping so secretive that the Illuminanti will be nodding in its direction saying “they’re up something, they are”