The summer takes shape. This evening was warm and balmy, and the scents of charcoal and grilling beef and lamb wafted through the trees. It’ll never be the south of France, but on a day like today, it’ll do. Meanwhile, cars and planes and ferries fill with raucous red-faced (and often shitfaced) bottle blondes and hesitant himbos, not to mention extended family matriarchs and children and other relations of any and all connectivity. Ah, summer!

Except of course, that suddenly, just like that, the trickle of redundancies and closures that we had been hearing about has become a steady stream and looks like it could soon enough rise to a flood. A summer of discontent looms, one that will without question expose the conceits with which the governing classes have amused themselves and bemused the voters over the last seven or eight years.

Many people and groups claimed credit for the Celtic Tiger when it was fit and fat and in its prime. Bejasus, even the teachers did. Certainly, a number of representatives from ASTI argued that the grand education of our young flexible well qualified workforce that was so lauded by foreign businesspeople was their doing and they should now get a slice of the cake.