We're all in this together

"We're all in this together"

The idea that we all have to share both the blame and the pain in the current economic crisis is one of the most fallacious assertions trotted out repeatedly by both politicians and journalists. Brian Lenihan said recently: "Let's be fair... we all partied". No, we didn't. It is clear that 'we' is the most abused pronoun in Irish political language. There is such a thing as society but there is no such thing as a 'we' which pretends in the name of collective interest to destroy those very things – health, education, equal opportunity – which hold a society together.