The train to Sligo. I was excited at the prospect of seeing Connolly Station as I hadn't used it in the 21st century. Big mistake. Station good.

Train? Absolutely outrageous. It was full. I stood by a toilet for three hours.

It was a blue and yellow version of a Dart, replete with sliding doors that "lled the compartments with freezing air as it stopped in each station for "ve minutes. The Hypothermia Express. My father he said he'd jumped up a little to get his bag on the rack, put his foot through the "oor and spent the rest of the journey stuf"ng newspapers into the inexplicable hole. "Privatise this baby!" I roared. Celtic Tiger? Baltic Russia, more like.

Typical, right? And yet my journey from 'ex-worker's paradise' Budapest to 'ex-commie-loving' Prague last spring had been a pleasure. The People's train (yes, still the people's) was old but comfortable and clean. I had one of the best meals of my life on it. Then it struck me. In '89, we threw the baby (socialism) out with the bathwater (communism). We laughed over the end of the old regimes and congratulated their people on their lucky entrance into our suburban 'Naas World' (you know, everywhere but nowhere). We laughed at all forms of National Service, while supporting new nationalisms. Within a few years Russia had seen how oil can really go from being owned by one man tof being owned by two men. Germans lost everything, had to sell off the Hoff records and start backing our economy up to the hilt (unfair, as all they ever did to us was "atten North Strand). And Budapest is rioting on the 50 th anniversary of the uprising, because their leader is a corrupt liar?

Where did it all go Irish?

Well, it's like this. The desire to privatise is based on the fact that a national service is so messed up that private individuals need to come in and rescue it. Take Iarnrod Eireann, that long-suffered institution. We already know what was inherited from the Brits in terms of rolling stock . . . it was magni"cent (even if the motivation was to be able to get British soldiers to rebellious areas andf ehf help the local people get around). Supposedly the lines around Donegal, out into Connemara and Dingle or connecting Cork to Derry weren't viable in the '50s (neither were Georgian houses . . . demolished . . .

now valued at 5m) so they were closed. But they weren't just closed.

They were ripped up, sold off and the land was returned to bog. This would be like taking the M50 and returning it to Mother Earth so we could 'grow' it again in the future at a cost of billions. "Screw cars . . . statistics say it's hovercraft are de tings of the de future, " Minister O'Laden will say in the Dail of 2056. The lying swine.

Build it now then, you *******.

It's called the Long Game, and we Irish are the best at it. Destroy the thing so it has to be rebuilt. Take Mutton Island in Galway. 'The Lads' (for it is always they) know you need a sewage plant, and someone with cash to make on it says it has to be out in the bay and not some anonymous inland pit. Of course, there are protests. But 'The Lads' know if they wait long enough people will get sick of the sewage and start blaming the protesters for the delay.

It's a beautiful tactic. Eventually the situation becomes so desperate that the original intention gets the goahead. It's the politics of inertia. Why would you build everything we need at once? Sure if you do it all now you'll have nothing left to boast about for the next election. With Eircom we bought our own company back at a loss! Our tolls are owned by, oh I don't know, God or someone. It's "ne for the few Big Boys (and I know this is a business article but I'm a socialist capitalist . . . we should all be millionaires). And our admiration for the Big Boys (he's a great fella) and the Long Game (Jaysus, it's about time) shouldn't take over from logic.

I will quote, "nally, from the Washington Post's 2002 analysis of another country that went down the road we are going, and lost. Who does this sound like? "Many blamed the collapse on the government on runaway spending and systematic corruption . . . also the sell-off of staterun industries and the collapse of local companies "ooded by cheap imports." Give up? Argentina! Yes. It takes two to tango. But never with monopolies.

Paddy Cullivan will be performing Family Silver: the Musical, at the Leviathan political debate hosted by David McWilliams at Crawdaddy, ublin at 8pm, next Thursday.