What do you do when the people making the right arguments are manipulative idiots who have so alienated people that opening their mouths amounts to emptying a full magazine into their feet? I started this blog having just come from an Occupy Dame Street assembly. There I witnessed a car crash in glorious slow motion. I felt that deep sort of frustration, where you can see just what is coming, but remain unable to tear your eyes off the disaster as it wrecks all around.

The issue on the face of it is simple. The Dublin Council of Trade Unions has called a pre-budget demonstration and would like Occupy Dame Street to co-organise it. Straightforward enough you'd imagine. Well it's a bit more complex. Occupy Dame Street is a little prone to an anti-union line that is about the 8/10's Sunday Independent’s 'The unions are running the country' and 2/10's the left communist’s 'The unions are running the country.' [Ian, please note that the 2/10's comprises both people who might be called 'autonomists' with some degree of accuracy: Everyone else, there are two in-jokes there, only one of which most of you have a hope of working out].