Taxing the source of life

Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink ...

De Facto

Liamy MacNally

2007 is limping towards the finishing line. Soon all that will remain will be memories and guilt. The good and the bad will battle for attention as they always do. The winner might determine more than the present. Personal battles will fight for supremacy on the stage on life with community issues and global responsibilities. The myriad of choices leave many people cold and inactive, afraid to tackle anything outside the realm of the four corners of mortgaged minds. Yet, life is a single ticket lived in community with global consequences. John Donne was right – no man is an island. Jesus was right when He prayed ‘Our Father’ rather than ‘my Father.’ John Wesley was right when he said: “I look upon all the world as my parish.” We are here as three-dimensional beings.

WATER IS LIFE

MOST people accept that water is the basis of life. We do not think too deeply about water because we have so much rain. This New Year will tell a different story when the mandarins of power in every government in the EU will point to Brussels as the problem because of the latest stealth tax, water rates. There is no point in blaming Brussels for much. Brussels is little more than the maternity ward for all the couplings – illicit and otherwise – that have occurred under the European banner by member states in the guise of their respective ministers. The law depends on the matter being discussed and its corresponding department and minister. The strange reality is that European law, regardless of how daft we might view it at times, can be sourced to the minister of the respective department.

John Gormley might throw his hands up and claim that it was a ministerial predecessor who originally signed up to the directive that now spews out the water charges. He will find little sympathy. Should he be in a position to disagree fundamentally with the law then he has a duty to say so. Lying back and thinking of Ireland is a 1970s form of escapism. There are now plans to tax the source of life, water. This cursed Celtic Tiger, or perhaps his footprints, will be the cause of the death of this country. People are being lulled into silence. Many people are accepting what is being offered as the elixir of life, be it from Brussels or from the tainted halls of Leinster House. There is too much silence, too many people accepting what is on offer without saying no, no and no again. Before we know it we will be nothing more than a collection of people under the rule of a gang of idiots masquerading as saviours. Their word is accepted as gospel and they feed their deceitful actions being re-enacted in tribunals as entertainment fodder for the masses.

WATER TAX

THIS is the crew that wants to tax us for water. Many will remember bringing the sod of turf to school for the fire to keep a dim glow and melt the heart of a teacher. Labour’s Jan O’Sullivan is now recommending that children bring a bottle of water to schools to use when they flush the toilets! What kind of Bongo Bongo Land are we creating, or rather are we allowing to be created for us?

We are letting Government dictate that there is a price on water. We curse water most of the year. We are surrounded by it and yet we are now going to be charged for it. Are we going soft? Our bodies are seven-tenths water, as is the earth – yet we are now allowing ourselves to be charged for it! What’s more, those who will be tasked with providing us with water will be corporations. Some will be more than that. They will be trans-national companies. What kind of mentality are we adopting that we allow such outfits to take over our natural resources? With Shell taking over our gas and a French trans-national on the cusp of the water business in the west, what next?

The first shot across the bow of our willingness to lie back and think of Ireland came with the realisation that schools were to be taxed for their water. Farmers have been highlighting the issue for the past while. Unfortunately for us and for them, a few former ‘cries of wolf’ from the farmers has hardened our hearts to many of their pronouncements. In the wake of the water charges crisis and the Brazilian beef travesty, perhaps we should sit up and listen more to the farmers.

Sligo farmers are taking a stand following their pilot project for water charges and water metering. It has emerged that, no matter what way the Government wants to dress it up by blaming Europe or otherwise, water charges are just another tax. They are like their first cousins, the ‘development charges.’ The Irish Government was ‘glic’ enough to stay stage left of the poll tax fiasco suffered across the water. Since then it has been most successful in extracting more indirect taxes from the populace than any poll tax could ever hope for. This is just another example of an Irish solution to an Irish problem. At the same time they have been successful in managing huge pay hikes for themselves, with more to come.

2008 – NEW RESOLUTIONS

IF, at the end of 2008, we do nothing more than realise how much we have actually allowed ourselves to be sold down the swanee, it will have been a good year. With each passing day we are becoming more likes pawns in the political games of those in power. The New Year could invigorate us to be more resistant than resilient, to be more questioning than questioned and to be more forthright than accepting. The New Year affords an opportunity to reclaim lost ground and make amends for allowing the rug of life to be pulled out from under us by those whose ways are not our ways and whose interests are not our interests.                 

The chipping away at the block of humanity as we know it will continue until we shout stop. Another year does not have to mean another year closer to the wills and wiles of corporate mind blocks that run the country and Europe. ‘No’ is a simple but effective word. The European Constitution, dressed in a new Lisbon Treaty suit is still a Eurocon. National and European efforts to paint it as anything else are a lie. Our future is only ours if we claim it. It cannot be dictated by others. Society is man writ large.   

TS Eliot’s The Rock comes to mind:

O perpetual revolution of configured stars,

O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,

O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!

The endless cycle of idea and action,

Endless invention, endless experiment,

Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;

Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;

Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.

All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,

All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,

But nearness to death no nearer to God.