It was almost a riot as the grey ones crowded into a church and laid siege to the Ministers and TD's who came to talk about budget cuts. Clearly in shock they ducked for cover as the mikes were seized from their hands and they faced a barrage of banner waving angry senior citizens.
The banners said it all. 'Just shoot us, it would be quicker,' read one.' AA Budget to die for' read another.
'Maybe this is the revolution' exclaimed one ashen faced TD. And indeed Paddy Power's Bookie's, who were already taking bets on the first
City to experience credit crunch riots, thought he would be paying pay out in Dublin.
It was indeed a revolution of the grey ones in Dublin in Dublin last week. Many came from a generation of Irishmen and woman who had lived through the aftermath of 1916 and the birth of the republic.
They had lived through the hard times of partitioned Ireland struggling to free itself from hundreds of years of colonisation. They had clung to the vision in the 1916 Proclamation, that their own elected Dail would 'cherish all the children of the nation equally.' It had sustained them through the hunger of the thirties and forties, the mass emigration of the fifties, the sixties and the seventies. They had endured the hardships, worked and paid their taxes and eventually in the twilight of their lives, entered the promised land of the Celtic Tiger, secure in the knowledge that they would be cherished by their own Government.
Global collapse
That was before the global collapse of the banks and financial institutions, when Governments around the world watched with horror the financial meltdown and disintegration of the entire western financial system.
In the 26 Counties the Celtic Tiger was well and truly caught by its tail forcing the Dublin Government like its counterparts in Britain and the US to bail out the Banks to the tune of 500 billion euros.The removal of the automatic right to medical cards for the over 70's, first introduced by Fianna Fail in 2001 as part of a pre election voting incentive, was viewed by many as part of the rescue package of the banking fat cats.
The grey ones were having none of it. For an Irish Government to tell them in their senior years that they no longer had an automatic right to medical care when they needed it most, to save the Government 100 million Euros, was like a red flag to a bull.
They took to the streets in their thousands and in the subsequent debate in the Dail, a line up of grovelling Fianna Fail and Green PartyTD's, apologised for the hurt they had caused the seniors and backed down in the face of angry old women and men.
In the Guildhall in Derry last Wednesday, the grey ones with other citizens gathered to hear Eleanor Gill from the Consumer Council explain the hard times ahead for the people in the North, that part of Ireland excluded from the benefits of the Celtic Tiger and now facing into the most serious financial crisis since the First World War.
Those present at the Sinn Fein organised event wondered what could be done to address the huge increases in the price of oil, electricity, and food. It was clear that the choice facing the elderly, the single parent, and families on low incomes was either eating or heating.
The promotion of free enterprise and market greed and the failure of the regulator to take on board the concerns of the Consumer Council had left consumers in the North worse off than their counterparts in either the South or the UK as a whole. It was clear from the comments that people knew they were being taken for a ride by the British Government. Indeed the British Exchequer had netted an additional ten million of the rising energy costs from the Northern consumer.
The financial turmoil currently gripping the world is of such a magnitude that people are left wondering if cold and starvation will be their lot for the foreseeable future.
The fear and panic overshadowing the entire globe is not helped by the daily news bulletins about the fall in the DOW and the FTSE 100, financial jargon that means nothing to people struggling to live in a low wage economy or unemployment benefit. We are beat over the head with the financial jargon of billions and trillions, but no one has explained to us why we are being punished for a situation that is not of the making of the working class or those living well below the poverty line.
We pay tax to the British Exchequer for practically everything, food, clothes, cigarettes, alcohol, roads, cars, fuel.
Bail out
We are being faced with the prospect of paying taxes to bail out of the banks and building societies, the institutions that have ripped us off for years through bank charges, inflated interest fees, and who even after the big bail out still have the arrogance to repossess the homes of those, who are the victims of the past years of the boom and bust economy.
There will be no legislation to bring to account the villains of this dastardly situation, the Directors of the Banking Institutions and the politicians at Westminster who presided over the culture of greed and irresponsibility, the legacy left us of the Thatcher and Reagan era.
The Chief Executives of many of the banks involved in the 37 million Government rescue package will not be faced with the stark choice of either heating or eating.
The average annual salary of most of these fat cats is well in excess of four million; excluding the performance bonuses they awarded themselves for the dubious credit deals involving overtrading and the scandal of purchasing parcels of sub prime US mortgages.
Is it any wonder that the Lords and the Sirs and the old boy directors of the great banking establishments are literally laughing all the way to the bank, secure in the knowledge of the safe existence of their vast fortunes, now being supplemented to the June of £2000 from every tax payer in the UK, including ourselves.
The coat trailers of these elite citizens, the property speculators, the upwardly mobile share holders of the big privatised fuel and transport corporations, the football and fashion industries with their grossly inflated incomes are not entirely innocent of this financial mess, the aptly named credit crunch.
The problem is that those being crunched are those already at the bottom of the financial money pit.
Neither should the regulators and the Financial Services Authorities, the people paid to act as a watch dog to protect the rights of savers and small businesses, be exempt from their responsibility in this whole sordid financial mess.
In the US the FBI are investigating possible fraud involving the collapse of the largest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac , as well as the Lehman Brothers and AIG.
There is a deafening silence from the British Government and the Fraud Squads are too busy harassing the working class some of whom have to resort to doing the double to supplement the miserable pittance of unemployment benefit.
Why aren't we angry at having to bail out the filthy rich, the fat cats, the cheats, all driven by self interest? Neither they nor the British Government haven't even the decency to say sorry.
At least the grey ones in the South had the opportunity to vent their anger at such gross corruption. It time we did likewise. When is the next meeting of the shareholders of NIE or the oil companies?
