Max McGuinness on another "tumbrel remark".
I've just heard Beverley "Brassneck" Flynn on Radio 1 defending her €40,000 a year allowance for being an independent TD (erm...even though she's not an independent anymore):
"It might not be equitable but I am entitled to it under the legislation."
This is another classic "tumbrel remark" -- which I originally wrote about here in connection with "Fásgate". (A "tumbrel remark", as defined by Joyce Cary, is “an unguarded comment by an uncontrollably rich person, of such crass insensitivity that it makes the workers and peasants think of lampposts and guillotines.") I argued that Rody Molloy's declaration that "I am entitled to travel first-class" was vintage tumbrel material and sure enough he was out of a job within hours of uttering it.
But Bev Flynn has long shown herself to be absolutely un-embarrassable so I have little doubt that she'll go on clinging to her self-confessed "inequitable entitlements".
How many more tumbrel remarks will it take to get the plain people of Ireland to storm Leinster House and stick the cabinet in stocks outside Buswell's Hotel? Better yet, maybe we'll be invaded by some benign superpower who will dispatch the entire Fianna Fáil parliamentary party to Antarctica.
BEVERLEY IS SO BRASSNECKED SHE REALLY SHOULD RUN AS MINISTER FOR HEALTH.HER ENTIRE QUALIFICATION FOR THE JOB IS THE FACT THAT SHE IS TOTALLY UNAFRAID OF BEING UNPOPULAR.
Posted by: SUSAN | January 24, 2009 at 20:45