I had the misfortune to see one of those topical debate programmes last night.

The only thing that piqued my interest was that they had Eamon Ryan pitched against Michael Healy-Rae.

For those not familiar with either of these I had better explain?

Eamon Ryan is the illustrious leader of the Green Party here, which mercifully only has two seats in parliament. He is fanatic of the highest order and makes Tree Huggers look like a bunch of heavy industrialists. He is a fucking idiot.

Michael Healy-Rae is another fucking idiot and is another member of parliament. I actually agree with a lot of what he says [when I can understand him] but am somewhat put off by his insistence on wearing a flat cap all the time, and I swear he wears it in the shower and in bed. Also he speaks with a Kerry accent so thick that he virtually needs sub-titles and/or an interpreter anywhere outside that county.

The main topic of conversation seemed to be about a proposal to raise carbon taxes. Someone somewhere has calculated the we need to raise our current carbon tax by a factor of about twenty if we are to “meet our targets”. MHR quite rightly pointed out that we are taxed far too much and that this carbon tax is hitting rural Ireland the hardest.

ER countered this with one of the strangest arguments I have ever heard [Did I mention that he was a fucking idiot?]. He stated that the idea was that we would all be paid in compensation for the tax. Yes – to counter the tax everyone in the country would receive a cheque from the gubmint to make up for the tax [Did I mention that he was a fucking idiot?].

Strangely no one pointed out that if the gubmint was taking a tax and then paying it back again that it would be a lot easier to just not apply the tax?

He gave a long speech extolling the virtues of a carbon-free Ireland where we would all be driving electric cars and all our power would come from wind farms and solar cells. He positively wet himself describing this Utopia where farting cows would be replaced with solar farms and we would all live happily ever after, living on cheques sent to us by out grateful gubmint. I swear he had a couple of orgasms during his little speech.

MHR countered this with a long speech, most of which I couldn’t understand but I did manage to translate bits where he mentioned that ER hadn’t a fucking clue about rural life, or indeed any life outside his imaginary Green bubble. He was bang on target there.

This morning I came across a piece in the Irish Times –

Implementing climate change agreement would boost jobs, EU report finds.

*sigh*

Do any of these people live in the real world?