The beatings will continue until moral improves

The Sinn Féin spokesperson on the fiscal treaty in County Wexford has criticised the framework of the treaty suggesting that the best analogy to describe it is the black joke from the gulags, the beatings will continue until moral improves. Economist Oisin O’ Connell said the treaties prime directive of balancing budgets during the worst recession Ireland as known won’t help us and will increase our economic problems.

Speaking at a public meeting on the Austerity Treaty in Wexford town this evening Mr O’ Connell said;

“It’s not rational to argue that when your country is in recession, you increase the pain and you increase the recession essentially by taking more money out of the economy, not just by money taken out of government spending but also the money taken out by taxes. That is what this treaty sets out to institutionalise. It won’t help us, it will increase the problem and to use the old black joke from the gulags as an analogy, the beatings will continue until moral improves.”

“The arguments that we should take a little hurt now in order to emerge from this recession stronger is completely false. In order for medicine to be effective it has to cure the cause of your illness. What’s happening now is that we’re chasing symptoms. This government was voted in on the promise of change but instead they continue to blame individuals for what was actually a systemic failure. Blaming individuals for what has happened to us is chasing symptoms while ignoring the root cause of our illness.”

“The problem is the economic crisis that is inflicting itself on Europe now, our fundamental illness, was a one size fits Germany monetary problem and now what we are being offered as a cure by the Germanic influenced EU is a one size fits Germany austerity solution. We are not Germany. Only Germany is Germany and this so called austerity solution will only send Ireland tumbling further into economic ruin and the Irish people into deeper, prolonged poverty.”

“I think the majority of people at the top of the financial and political hierarchies across the EU realised that it wasn’t individuals that had caused the economic crisis but a complete systemic failure. They may not have known exactly what was causing it or what kind of solution was needed but they knew something was rotten in the system. As they couldn’t articulate what had happened you got a lot of what I would call ‘snake oil salesmen’ coming in to positions of power and telling the public that we basically need to whip you until things improve. That’s where the fiscal compact treaty is coming from. Of course such irrational behaviour cannot, and will not, gets us out of this mess.”