Poor Little Rich Kids

It isn't the wealthy we should be concerned about, but the people who have lost their jobs and their homes.

Eamonn McCann, 22 Jul 2009

In a special treat for Irish fans, U2’s Croke Park stint will open with a minute’s hushed silence followed by an inspirational incantation from Bono: “Blessed are the rich, for they shall enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Followed by, we can exclusively reveal, a guest appearance by Sir Bob Geldof with his new raggle-taggle novelty number: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Yep. It’s all arsy-versy with the musical wing of global capitalism these days.

Larry Mullen has been dismayed to observe “a new resentment of rich people in this country... We have experienced [a situation] where coming in and out of the country at certain times is made more difficult than it should be – not only for us, but for a lot of wealthy people... The better-off (are) being sort of humiliated.”

There you go. It isn’t the people who have to queue out the doors of the dole offices again to establish their entitlement to a pittance nor those who lie distressed on hospital trolleys because wards have been closed on account of the economy and there’s nobody available to take them to the toilet, these aren’t the folk being humiliated in Ireland but... the better off.

As my favourite Cockney comeallye has it: “It’s the same the whole world over, Ain’t it all a bloody shame, It’s the poor wot gets the gravy, The rich wot gets the blame.”

The little drummer boy may not yet know it, but choice cuts from his Sunday Indo interview a couple of weeks back are being declaimed verbatim at stand-up gigs in the cultural hot-spots where I tend to hang out and, goodness me, how we laugh!

Larry told of seeing billionaire tax-exile property developer Dermot Desmond being treated at Dublin airport with less than the respect Larry thinks he deserves. Dreadful behaviour altogether towards to a man who has “brought huge amounts of money into the country.”

Maybe Larry was angry that peasants arriving on Ryanair hadn’t formed a human carpet on the tarmac for people like himself and Dermot Desmond to walk over.

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