It’s official, the barrage of PR and spin referred to by Stephen Kinsella below has finally, and quite brilliantly morphed what was a crisis caused by establishment greed and corruption into a crisis of public service expenditure.

The banking boogiemen have slinked off into the shadows, the developers are negotiating the terms of their departure from public life and the politicians who oversaw it are now mixing business with pleasure in Honduras.

And all this despite journalists ogling the publicly subsidised enormous dangling bonuses of Goldman Sachs employees.

The Irish Times, always ahead of the curve sums up the extent of our new ‘challenge‘:

“SO NOW we know the real extent of the problem and the gravity of the steps required to remedy it. It is overwhelming.”

The publication of the McCarthy report represents a turning point in the discussion, as others have already pointed out. The debate has been unalterably changed, cuts are on the menu. Sorry, savings are on the menu.

“any realistic menu of savings has to include some cuts in social welfare” Noel Whelan

“The report’s focus on health, education and social welfare makes it easy to portray McCarthy and his colleagues as hardliners, but his opponents must make it clear where savings can be made.” Mark Hennessy

For way too long now I’ve been under the misimpression that ‘saving’ meant something like:

[n]  an act of economizing; reduction in cost; “it was a small economy to walk to work every day”; “there was a saving of 50 cents”

Apparently though, ‘saving’ means getting rid of things you need, and then pretending you never needed them in the first place.

“‘Bord Snip’ reveals €5.3bn savings plan” RTE

“Body tasked with finding €4bn savings to target social welfare and public sector” Shane Coleman

Stephen Kinsella, lecturer in economics, Kemmy Business School, University of Limerick, explains to wide eyed Irish Times readers the powerlessness of the Government to implement these much needed savings. Limited by means of only PR and “sustained spin”, due to the current unpopularity of “physical coercion” (except in the north west), the Government “is likely to refuse to implement many of the McCarthy Reports’ more radical suggestions, leaving the decision at budget time between some combination of increased taxes and increased borrowing, rather than really deep cuts in public expenditure.”

The audience for this kind of ‘analysis’ is dwindling day by day.

From the album…