RADIO REVIEW:WITH SPECULATION in the media that the government may hike its property "tax" on second homes to as much as €600 from €200 per year, Joe Duffy had little to do on Monday's Liveline (RTÉ Radio One, weekdays) except wait for the phone to ring. The calls were either from people salivating that "greedy" property investors were getting their just desserts or, more commonly, Poor Mouths who didn't deserve a tax after everything they've been through.
Since the inspirational March of the Elderly on Leinster House, everyone is playing the OAP card. Really, leave them out of it. They’ve been through so much already. Martin told the Duffster that his own house wasn’t big enough for taking care of his elderly relative at weekends. “The reason I have that holiday home is that my mother-in-law, now in her 90s, needs some looking after.”
I don’t doubt he loves his mother-in-law dearly, but was that really the only reason he bought it? Irene also has a second home, which she doesn’t rent. She and her husband paid tax all their lives, she said. “We did well in the good years, but the only thing was the pension, we hadn’t got a pension . . . Why is he still hitting us? We are near retirement now. Why, Joe? Why is he hitting the vulnerable?” Because the public finances are in the crapper, Irene, and we all have to pitch in now . . . even those of us who didn’t buy our first home 30 years ago.
On Tuesday’s Today (RTÉ Radio One, weekdays), Pat Kenny kicked ass. The derriere in question belonged to Fianna Fáil Chief Whip Pat Carey. Kenny asked, “Since when has property become a dirty word with Fianna Fáil?” Carey replied, “It seems that Fianna Fáil has become a dirty word with RTÉ as well.” But Kenny had had about enough of the guff: “I just can’t take the hypocrisy of people who are hand-in-glove with developers . . .”
If the government was dipping its toe in the water with a tax hike on second homes, Carey appeared to be pulling it out again, referring to it as a registration fee to monitor unoccupied houses. “At least call it a tax if it’s a tax,” Kenny shot back and read a text saying citizens were being used to pay for the banks. “The government hasn’t even begun to examine the issue of tax on second homes,” Carey added. Business as usual there, so.
Kenny was proportionate and fair. Liveline callers were anything but. Beware of theatrical Irish victimhood. This kind of scripted moral outrage usually masks deeper personal wounds and is rarely on-message. Great Irish Hurt is often a smokescreen for something else entirely, other scores to settle, and/or an inability to grow up. I wonder would the callers react differently to Thursday’s suggestion of a blanket property tax . . . only this time by the Central Bank?
The pixie-like musings of Tom Dunne (Newstalk 106-108, weekdays) are an exception. He is neither self-righteous nor disingenuous. But he has other issues: "Day slippage is when you mentally slip ahead the days in your head. Wednesday seems like Thursday, the day you might risk a glass of wine. There's still a small part of me that thinks Top of the Popsis still on. Every fibre of my body thinks it's Thursday. It's very hard to recover from." Dunne said Pink Floyd probably suffers from year – or decade – slippage. He played Wish You Were Here. "So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain? Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail? A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts? Hot ashes for trees? Hot air for a cool breeze?"
All good questions. Were we ever happy? Will we, can we ever be? Ask the people of Telford in England. In The Most Godless Town In Britain (BBC Radio 4, Wednesday) Jolyon Jenkins followed Mark Berry, a missionary sent by the Church of England to save (or “redeem”) the residents of this Shropshire town, which has the lowest per capita church attendance in the UK. Telford is one of those New Towns built around a massive shopping centre, so the missionary had his work cut out for him.
Berry hosts a weekly “Post-Church Christian Community” in his home in a modern housing estate in Telford. Jenkins said there was a tablecloth, fairy lights and – most importantly – pasta in vegetable sauce. If we get fed and watered, as all missionaries know, it’s half the battle. But Jenkins soon discovered that most of those in the group were already Christians or committed Church-goers, so Berry was feeding the converted.
A Christian chill-out zone was set up outside a nightclub. “Christians have great intentions,” Jenkins said, “but they’re a bit shy.” It’s nothing a Red Bull and a spin around the dance floor wouldn’t sort out. But maybe they were wise to stay outside. As Noel Coward sang about the South Sea Isle missionary “Uncle Harry”, who drank vintage coconut wine, “the taste of which was filthy but the aftereffects divine”, he was soon a missionary no more.
qfottrell@irishtimes.com