Dear Michael Noonan: about your rather splendid idea to give tax relief to the 480,000 Eircom investors on their losses. They were all adults, and so had the choice to invest as they wanted. I respect that choice, but I don't expect to subsidise it. Yet the wheeze you've just come up with places the subsidy firmly on my shoulders writes Kevin Myers.
Now let me tell you Michael, I didn't like the sound of the Telecom share offer, because it was put together by politicians, and politicians - as we all know - are a mad bunch of deviants who understand as much about the stock market as they do about the movement of sub-atomic particles.
To be sure, they know about arranging planning permissions and securing medical cards for farmers whose BMWs are parked on the double yellow lines outside. They know about attending umpteen committee meetings a day, at which busybodies with bad breath and a hive for headwear pin them against a wall and unleash a few maddened mental bees on them. They know about getting to bed at 2 a.m. and getting up at 5 a.m. to get to the Dáil from the West. They know how to jovially gladhand people they despise and to appear to agree wholeheartedly with gibbering fools.
Quantum mechanics
These qualities qualify them for assembling a stock market launch as much as they do a professorship in quantum mathematics at MIT. Only a fool would think otherwise, and the Eircom sale merely proved that there were 480,000 fools in Ireland.
Which leaves us with the 2.5 million electors who did not buy Eircom shares, who by the normal, non-Noonanesque, commercial rules of the marketplace are the ones who should be smiling broadly all over our prudent faces. Because Eircom was ours through the State. We were offered the chance to invest in it, and we said, no thanks very much, not at that price; we'll just let the State - i.e. us - pocket the proceeds from the mad purchasers of the company, thereby cutting our own tax bill, while we invest our savings in something else.
This doesn't mean we don't feel sorry for those who lost money in this insanity. For we too have made foolish investments: I particularly remember backing a horse called Blue Danish, chosen because of its name. It did not lope into the parade wing so much as waddle. In almost every regard, it resembled an estuarine crocodile, but one with ears.
At the starting line it entertained itself by biting the other horses, and when the flag finally went down, it decided to experiment with a bit of vegetarianism and began to eat the grass. The beast is out there to this day, the mournful, famished hoots from its jockey ringing out through the Kildare night.
Revenue Commissioners
This is what is called a bad investment, Michael, and I didn't go the Revenue Commissioners with a heart-rending tale about the 3.15 at the Curragh, for them to listen to me in thoughtful sympathy before agreeing to allow my each-way bet on Blue Danish to be discounted against tax. So why should the investors in Eircom be treated differently from me and my little flutter on a long-bellied carnivorous reptile fraudulently and in violation of the Trades Description Act representing itself as a horse?
It's called life, Michael; and it's not just me saying that. Look at the figures. Some 480,000 people invested in the Blue Danish of stocks, and over 2.5 million - actually, some 2,514,144, give or take - didn't. Michael, you're a decent man, and I like you, and so I don't want to test you publicly on the mathematical implications of what happens when a charmed quark bangs into a strong antiquark, or the cosmic consequences of a pion meeting lepton. So let's try something easier: which is the larger number, under half-a-million or over 2.5 million? Yes, Michael, calculators are allowed; and take your time on this, because we don't want to get it wrong, now, do we? After all, the entire future of the country could hinge on your reply.
What? You think that 2.5 million exceeds 0.48 million, do you? Very good. Have you ever thought of going on Who Wants to be a Millionaire? You certainly have the right intellectual credentials. And since you've worked this much out, maybe you can tell me the answer to the following question, and you may phone a friend if you want: who is more likely to win the general election - the politician who thinks the majority of prudent electors should subsidise the financial imprudence of the minority, or the politician who doesn't? So do you finally understand the electoral consequences of your utterly insane suggestion that imprudent investments should be tax deductible?
Future flotations
Moreover, contrary to what you say, the future flotation of State assets will not be made easier by such compensation of folly. What would then result is the Argentinian economic model, in which people expect the state to protect their investments, while they unburden themselves of their worries to their shrinks, shop for exotic imported goods and feed sweetmeats to their poodles.
What do most of the electors want, Michael? Well, we want clear, decisive government, one which is not in thrall to risible, yet faintly sinister, independents such as Tom Gildea and Jackie Healy-Rae. And we want rules we understand. You are proposing to change the rules to benefit fools, Michael, and you will of course get their half-million votes: which leaves 2.5 million still to go, including mine.