Remember me telling you about the nasty old threatening letter I got recently?  Well… by recently I mean that it arrived on January 20^th and came (just to make me feel special) from the imposingly-named Central Arrears section of the Allied Irish Bank group.

It warned me that my account was overdrawn and needed immediate attention; it pointed out that I had better come up post haste with a suitable plan for repaying the vast sum; and then it went on to warn with sinister overtones of ‘items returned unpaid attracting a fee of €10’; and ‘excess balances attracting a surcharge rate of interest at 12% per annum.’

There was a lot of that.

I did rather wonder if all this fuss was strictly necessary just because I was overdrawn by – remember? – FIVE EUROS AND FIFTEEN CENTS.

Yet who was I to question the wisdom of the kind of enormous intellects that were responsible for sailing the country down a river of shit only a few years ago, the tributaries of which we’re still wading through today – no matter what bare-faced lies that Fianna Gael or Labour toady currently knocking on your door is telling you.

Then I made my big mistake.  I thought, ah well, they’re not going to keep hounding me for the sake of a fiver.  I’ll get around to it when I have a chance.

Seanie Fitzpatrick Led Me Astray.

You see, I was inspired in my criminal activity by the clear success of the likes of pint-sized crook, Seanie Fitzpatrick.

Do you remember Seanie of the late and unlamented criminal bank, Anglo-Irish, still wandering the land as free as a bird?

I studied Seanie with a kind of awe and wondered how he stretched the €188 – per week that he is allegedly living on.   I guess that it’s by way of his brilliant business acumen that he makes it cover trips and holidays in Europe as well as weekly golfing jaunts to Druid’s Glen.  What a guy.

Nah, I thought; with Seanie having cost the country billions, never mind millions, I’ll be safe enough from the Law’s piercing, all-seeing eyes.  Heck, the auditors of Seanie’s time no more noticed what he was up to than they did what David (“I picked the figures out of my arse”) Drumm was doing.

[Just by the way, isn’t it funny how much squealing and whinging good old double-D is doing now that he’s had a small taste of prison – well, an American one; you didn’t think it was in Ireland, did you? 

I wonder if some big hairy biker called Bubba has been shoving that bald head of his down a toilet; because having fought to stay Stateside he’s now fighting even harder to return to the Green, Green Grass of Home that he seems to have discovered a new-found love for.]

As it turns out, those wonderful and diligent people at AIB didn’t even give me the month.

This morning of the 10^th of February they done hunted me down and delivered yet another letter – another day, another threat; and this time, just to teach me to be lax, they’ve penalized me by increasing what I owe them to SEVEN EUROS AND FIFTY-FIVE CENTS.

OK; I give in.  I’ll be in to pay it tomorrow; and as soon as I’m over this rough patch and have deposited a substantial sum then I’ll be in to transfer it to another bank. Not that anyone cares and not that it will make a difference to a soul.  It’s just something I want to do.

Having been through more than thirty-five years of banking with the AIB and used them in the buying of two houses over those years, I’d have thought that they might have shown a bit of cop on at my owing them a fiver – you know, a quiet phone call—but that’s not the times we live in.

The Political Enablers

And these swinish banks were facilitated by the swinish politicians who are chasing your vote right now, promising you the sun and the moon – until they’re in.

The truth is that politicians and bankers (and Big Business Corporate Ireland in general) are far too close in this country, no matter what gloss they try to put on it.  And I’m not just talking about a Finance Minister like Michael Noonan who holds German bonds and has share funds in India, China and the U.S.  He’s legally entitled to invest where he wants.  Even though to me it seems like a conflict of interest.

I mean, you’re hardly going to be burning the bondholders when you are one.

And looking at Noonan makes me think of that service the arrogant Alan Kelly accidentally did for us when he announced that he finds power to be a drug.

Yes; power is a drug for these scumbags and let’s not forget it.  They are NOT in this to help us or their country.  They are in it for what they can get out of it.

At 75, Michael Noonan – after admitting that he’s forgetful of details when it comes to small things like child abuse, and being out in his figures by the odd billion or two – should have been forced out into grass, forced to retire.  Jeez, he should be bloody glad to be putting his feet up at home and sitting down with a copy of the Lives of the Saints before he falls off the twig.

But, no.  Power is a drug.  And these white-collar junkies always want more.

By bailing out the banks ( I almost slipped and wrote ‘our banks’ –ha!) and letting them return to their bullying ways with more strength than ever; and by facilitating them once again as they go about with their repossessions and evictions, our politicians have been responsible for the deaths of a great many people.

We’ll probably never know just how many.  Between suicides and old or vulnerable people getting…well, the likes of the letters that I’ve been getting…I suspect that we would be horrified if we did know.

We would be.  Our leaders… I don’t really believe they give much of a damn at all.  I really don’t think they care how many dead bodies pile up as the collateral damage of their policies.

As long as they can keep getting their fix and feeding their power habit, as Mr. Kelly so kindly informed us, they’ll just keep handing out the lies to us.

And that’s what I’ll be remembering every time I answer the door to one of them.