YOUR COUNTRY, YOUR CALL
Feb 26th, 2010 by Conor McCabe
Hugh Green has posted an idea Your Country, Your Call which deserves to be that competition’s Killing in the Name.
As outlined on his blog, the idea is:
Mandatory Clown Suits For Social Welfare Recipients
A brief scan of the ideas submitted hitherto reveals, somewhat regrettably, downright hostility to social welfare recipients. Yet many people receive social welfare because they need it, and not because they are sloth-riddled ne’er-do-wells.If we want to get people back to work in this country and create a caring society, we need to remove the stigma attached to social welfare recipients.
At the same time we need to ensure that the burden of looking for a job is as light as possible, so that people do not spend one moment longer on the dole than they need to.
These challenges would be best addressed by supplying each recipient of unemployment benefit with a brightly-coloured clown suit, curly wig and face paint. They would wear this for the entire duration of their time on the dole, and the cost of producing the uniform would be borne by their first dole payment.
The key benefits of this proposal would be as follows:
- Resentment toward welfare recipients would diminish, since everyone loves looking at clowns. This would create a more harmonious society in which true creativity and collaboration can flourish, laying the basis for a lasting prosperity, rather than the stagnant, imagination-free atmosphere from which we are now emerging;
-Benefit recipients would feel positive about themselves, knowing that even as they walk the streets looking for work, they are providing a service to society by cheering up others.
-Local textile enterprises, long dwindling, could receive a lifeline from the extra demand for their products. They would benefit from the additional expertise brought to bear from people who have deep experience of wearing clown suits. Ireland could become a world leader in the design of clown suits. We could get the likes of John Rocha and Louise Kennedy to put their expertise to work in the national interest.
-The process of delivering clown suits, and ensuring that benefit recipients wear them while they are receiving benefits, could be industrialised for export beyond these shores to governments faced with similar unemployment crises, to the benefit of all humanity. This fits in with the government’s ‘Smart Economy’ strategy.
-Tourism would receive a massive boost from people around the world who long to visit such a happy, vibrant place.
In sum, this is a quick-win solution to alleviating the general gloom benighting the country. We could call upon our captains of industry like Michael O’Leary and Bill Cullen and the fellow from the Frontline a couple of weeks back who was offering sales jobs in his call centre to lend their support, taking clowns on placement to work alongside normal people. Worker productivity would be raised through the general happiness radiated by the man or woman, whether in the cabin crew or the car showroom, who greets colleagues with a big smile and the odd squirt of water from a plastic flower.
In order to vote you have to register, but I’d urge people to take the few minutes to do so and vote for Hugh’s proposal, the link to which is here: Mandatory Clown Suits for Social Welfare Recipients.
To register: follow this link.
I thank you for the support, but I fear the proposal will founder now that our business heroes appear to be at each other’s throats:
Millionaires row as Cullen slates ‘cynical’ O’Leary in verbal volley - National News, Frontpage - Independent.ie
Hopefully humble Bill Cullen can rein in raging egomaniac O’Leary so we can get all this country back on track else we shall all cry tears of a clown.
I noticed the Sunday Independent headline on the front page while browsing in a newsagent yesterday: “My mother has more balls that Michael O’Leary”. At first I couldn’t believe that the two titans of straight ahead no-nonsense business entrepreneurship were at logger heads, and that Mr Cullen was employing such robust language. But then I thought about it for a bit and realised that the interviewer obviously misheard what Bill was saying, as can so easily happen when even the most competent reporter is talking one-on-one with someone as intimating as the boss in the Apprentice.
So, what Cullen actually said was: “My mother has more shawls that Michael O’Leary”, which I think is probably true.
I saw that headline too, and it reminded me of this:
Phallic Mother: International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis
In reality, O’Leary -with all his talk of cutting and slashing- produces castration anxiety in Cullen, who mobilises the phallic mother to fight his corner. Or maybe he was just talking bollocks.
Well, he could have been talking bollocks, and attempting to mobilise his phallic mother at the same time (although I say that particularly because I like the idea of him trying to deploy his “phallic mother”). But just look at his description of O’Leary.
So either he sees O’Leary as an abattoir worker on his tea break, or rather than a coffee cup, he actually sees a samurai sword or a pirate’s cutlass. The sever criticism that Tony Blair got for invading Iraq was based on the same phenomenon, I’d say.
Or I could be talking bollocks.
So Bill Cullen is the proud offspring of a Summerhill lady-boy.
With a background like that, he’s on the wrong reality show.
[…] Hat tip to Conor and Hugh Green… […]
With this kind of negativity, you guys are not taking us anywhere except to socialism-ville. Why can’t you just give these guys a break and let them get on with running their wonderful businesses?! MOL should be running the health service and Bill the apple-distribution service. Then we’d see what kind of people these union leaders are!!
It’s this kind of attitude that our president’s husband wants to quash with his wonderful corporately-driven initiative.
Come on Ireland! We need you now!