('Bertie' is Bertie Ahern, our Taoiseach (Prime Minister), who recently admitted to receiving a 'loan' from friends in the early 90s when he was the Minister for Finance and in financial trouble. He also received 8000 pounds from a group of businessmen in Manchester, which was a 'goodwill gesture'. A 'cute hoor' is someone with a bit of cunning, someone who'll cunningly disguise their cunning behind words like 'cute' and 'hoor').

Fate and the future are lighter than air.
It's the weight of the past that we all have to bear.
There's only one thing we can certainly state
About the near-future and its good friend fate:

Their days are numbered. Neither will last.
They'll both climb the fence to be part of the past,
And add to the weight behind this present fence.
They could use the gate if they had any sense.

You can't live without the bad slips and the lapse,
The ill-advised steps and financial mis-haps.
Bertie's own past is collapsing his present,
Preventing pretense as the stout-drinking peasant.

And casting strong doubt on his future as leader.
The country's cute hoors know their all-purpose weeder
Could take out the Taoiseach and tell him to bike it,
And take out themselves if the public don't like it.

With hindsight we'd eliminate the blindspot that blots out
The light that illuminates the right path and ends doubt.
Embarrassments wouldn't be told in a fable
To warn about drinks with giant rats on the label.

I once wrote a song about people who diet,
Who eat fancy health food right after they fry it.
I sang that there's not much that's funnier than fat knees,
And compared many people to unreformed Nazis.

These uncensored lyrics and Nazi remarks
Were soon to be pounced on by cynics and sharks.
They played me a song that I wrote, and it stated
In high moral tones that I always have hated

Those people who laugh at the way people look,
And ridicule based on a mental rule book.
To laugh at the fat is to say you're a bore.
I said they were Nazis right down to the core.

But I got off the hook -- it's one of my talents.
I never said sorry but I did bring some balance.
I stood up with style and such grace when I fell.
I admitted to being a Nazi as well.

With hindsight I might not have written those songs.
Millions of people have musical wrongs.
They once pictured fortune and fame that was vast.
They got TV talent show weights in their past.

How many people regret that they did it?
Exposing their talent when they could have hid it,
Expressing a need to be known to a stranger,
As big as that kid who was born in a manger.

All politicians are now Simon Cowells.
The Sharons are harder to spot than barn owls.
Hide in the trees with your bird-watching gear,
And stay there for nine or ten months or a year.

You won't see a Sharon or Paula around,
And you might face arrest when you get to the ground.
The Simons are even more common than crows.
It's easy to see them on their TV shows.

They spend their time judging the other crow clowns,
Composing their moments of wit and put-downs.
Their past feels so light. It's full of themselves,
Making kids' toys with exuberant elves,

And not being a crow or a crook or a fool.
But this is all part of democracy's rule.
If they were all Hitlers we'd head for the door.
Though I've probably called them all Nazis before.