How (and when) to bury a new road

Now this is what I’d call a very good day for burying a road. The day after yesterday, sort of thing. When you’ve cancelled all those fancy  Fianna Fail plans for digging tunnels and sending fast-speed trains through them and all round Dublin, there couldn’t be a better time  to follow up with the cancellation – oops, sorry, follow up with the postponement of that damned A5 linking Derry and Aughnacloy. Well yeah sure, there’ll be a bit of yelling, but  we’ll hardly hear it with yelps still coming out of north Dublin getting their stuff cancelled. Yes, yes, yes, I know I promised half the money, and yes yes yes, I know the A5 would   have shown cross-border co-operation working for everyone,  I know it would have created jobs, I KNOW it would have injected mobility into that part of the country. Oh, and right, it would have saved a fair number of car-crash fatalities as well.  But hey, you have to take the rough with the smooth,  there’s people are dying all the time. Besides,  the unionists will be delighted with us – there are no votes worth talking about for them west of the Bann anyway. We keep our money in our pocket and at the same time we show we’re sensitive to unionist political sensitivities.. A win-win situation, really.

Donegal, did you say?  Ah yes,  Donegal. Time was when they’d have returned a decent Fine Gael TD but look what they went and did last time out – elected a pair of bloody Shinners, that big gink Doherty and his friend MacLochlainn. Well maybe this will soften their cough for them. Sometimes, what's more,  you have to be firm with a section of the electorate. Show them that actions have consequences.  “We’re too far away from Dublin!” – God, if I heard them whining that once I heard them fifty times. “We’re cut aff up here!” In that damned annoying accent of theirs. Well,  they’ll stay cut aff,  they’ll stay the same distance from Dublin and everywhere else for the next ten years minimum. Let them keep that in mind the next time they go to the polls. Thing is, lads, next time out, you play ball with us and whaddyaknow, we might, we just might  play ball with you. Meanwhile , pull the plug there, Leo, would you? And for feck’s sake remember to say ‘postponed’, not the c –word. And if you can say something about ‘up there’ as well it’d be appreciated. Good man.