Sir, – Your rich and powerful neighbour drops you a line to let you know that, without your permission, without even asking your permission, he has arranged with your bank for you to pay his massive mortgage on his stately home, the terms and rate set by him.
You protest, and a few years later he drops you another line to let you know that he is extending the term so that the burden on you is eased somewhat but now, after you retire, your kids and even your grandchildren can continue the mortgage payments, those payments still on his stately mansion.
This, in essence, is what happened with the promissory notes “deal” announced by Michael Noonan just a few weeks ago, a deal still being trumpeted as a triumph by the Government and its uncritical unquestioning major media cheerleaders. Not a cent of debt write-down, just extend and pretend.
It is a catastrophe for Ireland, our worst fears in the Ballyhea and Charleville protest confirmed. What had been a questionable and very arguable “promissory note” has been locked into sovereign debt. We are now in a race against time. While the Central Bank holds those new bonds (as it does at the moment) they can still be destroyed, no external bondholder burned; once issued, however, and that process begins in 2014, then it becomes a matter of sovereign default, a very different matter.
Last weekend we launched the “Ireland says NO!” campaign against the imposition of this bank debt, and already the slogan has been adopted in several new centres, all of whom are holding their own “says NO!” weekly protest march. Join our protest. Clapping us on the back is all well and good, lauding and applauding, but if you’re not actually marching and saying No! with us, by your silence you acquiesce, by your inactivity you are saying Yes to this debt enslavement.
We’re in Charleville this Sunday, the Library Plaza at 11.30am, week 106 of our protest, week 2 of “Ireland says NO!”. We would encourage those in the area to march with us. Those who are not could start their own protest in their own area and parish by parish, village by village, town by town, city by city, county by county, let’s let this Government know how we feel about this new “deal”. – Yours, etc,