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| Minister Shatter in better times |
I've never been sure about Alan Shatter. Despite my love of national politicians
dealing with national politics, which he has done, often with great aplomb, when he lost his seat in the bloodbath of 2002,
I felt a wry smile creep across my 23 year old face, as another blowhard blueshirt
failed to a land a single punch on a FF government begging to be kicked in the
swingometers. Shatter found himself back to trading in his beloved two letters for the less desirable four:
CLLR - it sounds like a local radio station, or an acronym for a highly unpleasant
yet thoroughly unlifethreatening disease.
A similarly unpleasant feeling can be sensed eleven years
later, when looking for an appropriate analogy for Alan Shatter’s career as a minister
in this current crop of Dad’s Army rejects – all wanting to be as youthful as Ian
Lavender, all actually as old as Arthur Lowe, all as capable as Clive Dunne.
Shatter’s approach to his
highly sensitive (and I would argue highly contentious) double portfolio has appeared to be thus: never answer a question or complete a pressing task when you can
attempt to take the moral high ground on something. And recently, this desire to
prove his superiority to the opposition rabble has been to be at the very least
woefully indiscreet. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, bloody awful at his job.
Whatever about Mick Wallace or his cringe inducing sidekick
Ming Flanagan (I remember by the way when he had street cred, and that was
when John Bruton was Taoiseach) being in the headlines over traffic
offenses, Alan Shatter has displayed an alarming inability to disengage from parliamentary sideshows that present themselves in the course of daily politics.
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| Robert Plant about to beat that annoying antique dealing kid from the 80's in a game of rock paper scissors |
Of all the things offensive about this period of non-news is
the traffic of thoroughly irrelevant, prurient and tedious tit-for-tat leaks
and tale telling that has hallmarked a time when abortion (another retro 80's
distraction) education, the state’s finances, though higher on the playlist
of the government iPod, constantly get lost in the shuffle, like the
rogue Richie Kavanagh tune on an otherwise Indie-only music collection.
Worse still is that Shatter, rather than accept that
Flanagan and Wallace are political lightweights, engages
them. When he screwed up this week on TV, which he did, his subsequent apology was anything but gracious. Then
again, can you be gracious when you make a balls of something, despite knowing
you are so smart, so potentially able and have fallen so low. Can you possibly have humility, when your ego
screams for you to prove you’re the smartest at all times, despite evidence that your ability is not matched by wisdom?
The answer, Alan, is no.
I’ve been there, frequently and even
as recently as this afternoon - and I feel for him. Some reticence, however, can go a long way. For a man
who possesses his razor sharp intellect, surely his judgement should usher him towards dealing with crime and state security in a sober and
sensible way.
But no. Not Al. If Real Madrid decided to prove their greatness by choosing to play Finn Harps of a Saturday, then there's only one team gaining in stature: Minister, welcome to Ballybofey!
