When I was in Primary school we had a teacher called Skigger
Hamill. Even by the standards of the 1970s, he was a throwback to the old days
when teachers were teachers and boys were scared. We got him towards the end of
his career when his reputation was fiercer than his bite. He smelled of chalk
dust and stale tobacco and used to leave us with a tricky maths question to
solve four or five times a day while he disappeared. Nobody ever questioned
where he was going. In hindsight it was probably for a sneaky fag behind the
bike shed, although he may also have been whacking his head against a wall
while ruminating on his career choice. It can’t have been much fun teaching a
class load of boys who would have sat all day in the clothes they came to school in through the rain that
seemed to be constant in my childhood.
While I have largely fond memories of Skigger (certainly in
comparison to some of the other psychopaths I had the misfortune to be educated
by), he wasn’t adverse to the occasional bout of violence. Corporal Punishment
was a given when I was in Primary School and violent acts were visited on small
kids on a daily basis, at levels that the UN would condemn you for if you carried
them out on terrorist prisoners.
Skigger had a particular technique however, which has
haunted me all these years. When he chose you for punishment, he would first
decide on the number of slaps he would inflict on your open palm. This could
range from one for a small indiscretion, such as coughing during the rosary, to
six for a major offence, such as being dyslexic or innumerate and failing at a
reading or maths test.
He would then offer you two sticks. A short stubby one,
which would not hurt too much on impact but would bring with it a long, dull
pain often rising in intensity. The alternative was a more traditional cane,
beloved of “Just William” books and certain participants in S&M activities.
This would come down at speed on your trembling open hand and inflict a sharp
stinging torment. But the pain would be over in minutes after vigorous hand
rubbing and strained facial expressions back at your desk.
Leaving aside the morality of a grown man taking pleasure
from the pained expression of ten year olds while they laboured over the
decision of which type of pain to endure, this process did at least provide me
with an important life lesson. Quite often, life throws you two options,
neither of which is particularly palatable. And the key is to choose the least
shit.
I was reminded of Skigger this week, as the Greek Debt
crisis unfolds. They are having a referendum this weekend which is basically a
choice between two types of pain. A quick loan from the IMF to dull the initial
pain, followed by twenty years of slow austerity, unemployment and general
misery. The alternative is to reject the troika and throw themselves into two
years of madness when money will possibly run out and barter will be
reintroduced. And then in the nature of things, order will be restored and the
Greek economy will take off.
Like many people outside Greece, I’d encourage them to vote
No on Sunday and take the quick sharp pain. I know it’s easy to lecture other
people on what they should do in times like this. I don’t have to live with the
consequences after all. But it seems to me that it’s the only way to end the
madness of the ECB. I was a big fan of Ireland joining the Euro. But now I
think it’s a crazy concept. It means that private German Banks could lend money
to private Irish and Greek banks who would then lend it to developers,
industrialists and various other criminals. When things go sour, as they tend
to do in the crazy world of international capitalism and the developers and
industrialists can’t repay their loans, it’s the ordinary people of Greece and
Ireland who have to pay back the debt. Pensioners, single mothers and
handicapped people didn’t borrow the money in the first place. But the nature
of the Euro is that they have to repay it through cuts in social welfare.
It’s so patently unfair that it hardly needs to be
articulated. The system is corrupt and evil and is promoted by a right wing
European media that seeks to portray the Greeks as lazy tax avoiders and
reckless borrowers. Nobody ever mentions reckless lenders. When I was studying
Accountancy we learned that lenders earned interest because of the risk that
the other side may default. And lenders have a responsibility to know the
people they are lending to.
It turns out that they earn interest because they are greedy
bastards and if they are a German bank then they don’t have to worry about the
other side not paying the money back because if that happens the German
Government will insist that some kid in a wheelchair in Greece will bear the
burden.
We live in a world where the rich are allowed to avoid tax,
pay bribes and destroy the environment. Those of us in the normal world pay our
taxes in the hope that the money will go to help the less fortunate in society.
It is the great unspoken civil contract. But that contract is being broken in
Portugal, Spain, Ireland and Greece. The Greeks at least have the chance to
throw a spoke in the wheel of this madness this weekend.
I hope they vote no, take the sharp pain and then get on with
running their own economy and currency. Short, sharp pain was always the option
I took with Skigger. Two years later I was in Secondary school and corporal
punishment was banned. We look back now and think that hitting kids is madness.
Hopefully in a few years we’ll think the same about the Euro.
