Thursday, January 14, 2016

The Art of Political Rhetoric

The Art of Political Rhetoric


I am glad you asked me that question

(and not the other one). Absolutely.

Under no circumstances,

except those that will definitely arise.

We need to have a conversation;

and offer the public big solutions

to problems they didn’t know they had.

We must build an economy based

on real people going

backwards up the escalator

towards a future in which

they can all equally

disbelieve. The inquiry into these

matters must have teeth,

or at least, dentures.

We will make this country a hub

for inward upvestment from

the Apples, the Googles,

the Redtubes. It’s a zero-sum

game between Limerick

and Drogheda United in which

neither team will turn up,

if they know what’s good for them.

Hardly anyone will die

because of what we propose. We will provide

the twenty first century hospitals

the squeezed muddle have been roaring

and shouting for. We are committed,

absolutely, to exclusivity in the arts.

Ballet dancing for big people. That sort of thing.

We will fill the country

with so many green-house gasses,

it will float off, of its own volition,

into the sky.

I was privileged to attend yesterday

the least important meeting

in the history of the world.

This is not a time for soundbites,

but I can feel

what I sincerely hope

is the hand of posterity

up my derriere

and think it might be stuck there.
.

KEVIN HIGGINS is the Bogman’s Cannon satirist-in-residence.

*Most readers I am sure, are aware of the tax rate in Ireland that lures many US tech companies to that country and set up headquarters there. The practice is called  Corporate Inversions. It is not considered tax evasion. The recent $160 billion merger of Allergan and Pfizer is also a strategy for Pfizer to move its headquarters or domicile as they call it as if a corporation lives somewhere, to Ireland. The move will reduce Pfizer's tax rate from around 25% to 7.5%, "one of the lowest effective tax rates of any company on the planet,”

No comments: