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Joan Burton T.D. contracts deadly ISME virus

4th February 2016,

Politicians normally keep their distance from ISME members because of the possibility of catching ISME fever. The ISME condition makes those infected want to set up businesses and take economic control of their own lives. However, it’s well known in SME circles that most politicians are keen to avoid any chance of picking up this kind of infectious thinking and preferring to peddle State interference and clientelist handouts.

This morning doctors expressed shock that Tánaiste Joan Burton appears to have succumbed to ISME fever. Doctors have been studying Oireachtas TV footage to see when and how the disease could have infected Ms. Burton as she appeared to be perfectly fine some days ago. However this morning observers were horrified by a sometimes rambling speech by Ms. Burton during which she claimed, without irony, that, ‘Labour will deliver a job for everyone who wants one by 2018’.

ISME fever can cause confusion and delusion amongst those who don’t understand business. Burton, a trained accountant, is thought to have lost her immunity to the disease having spent too long in the rarefied atmosphere of Leinster House, rather than building up her resistance to such thoughts by spending time in businesses that actually create work (not jobs – this subtle difference is lost on those infected by early stage electioneering).

It’s understood that to fully recover from such mistaken notions such as her belief that a political party creates jobs that Ms. Burton will have to be isolated and kept away from all microphones and TV cameras for at least three weeks. Part of the rehab involves reading and re-reading graphs that show that there are just under 200,000 people without work in the State. The accompanying caption will explain that creating work for that number (plus further anticipated immigrants) between now and 2018 is ridiculously implausible given the constraints imposed on the nation’s entrepreneurs.

From an electoral ward the Tánaiste was heard to claim she would;

  • Create 50,000 apprenticeships and traineeships. (Frighteningly, there was no explanation as to who would provide and pay for these apprenticeships.)
  • Increase the minimum wage to a ‘living wage’ of €11.30 per hour. (Again, there was no explanation as to which SMEs can afford to pay for this – a move more like to destroy, not create work).
  • Help companies access the funding they need to grow. (In her hallucinations it seems she has forgotten her government failed to do this over the past five years).

The highly contagious nature of this fever (also known as Election Fever) was witnessed when junior minister Ged Nash T.D., a former PR to trade unionists, said at the same news conference that he would , ‘…increase the minimum wage until it is pegged at 60pc of median earnings. We have also embraced the Living Wage initiative. We will ensure that all State bodies become Living Wage employers.’

Doctors are confident a cure can be found by the end of the month.