Unconfirmed reports suggest the Green Party has offered the services of its Cabinet ministers to the government of Australia as it struggles to cope with severe flooding.

“We have a simple, cost-effective flood management strategy,” a source said. “We will teach people in Queensland to walk on water.”

“As luck would have it our politicians have no long term commitments here and are pretty much immediately available,” the source continued.

“Smug is highly desireable,” a Green source said. “Especially to people with nothing to be Smug about.”

“We are generating more Smug than we need,” he added.

Green Party Smug does, unfortunately,  generate contempt in the wider population but the Greens insist they use that contempt to generate even more Smug which is entirely carbon neutral.

The move, suggested by the Green Party in an effort to shore up its support,  will allow the sludge to flourish  in its natural habitat accompanied by toxic loans and toxic assets.

“If you’re toxic come into the parlour,” Taoiseach Brian Cowen sang.

It is with a heavy heart that I accuse you of making a mockery of mockery.

You have broken the hearts of a generation of humourists. Cartoonists are sticking pencils in their eyes, sketch writers are taking hammers to their hands. Gentlemen, these are people with families.

If satirists believed in lawyers they would be suing you – there is nothing so offensive to them, to all right-thinking people, as the self-satirising politician.

And you have made your point. Truly, you are sultans of slapstick, fakirs of farce. You are Chaplins. You are chumps.

But have you thought about the consequences? Look at what you have done to our poor Taoiseach. Brian Cowen is crying with laughter and trying to govern at the same time.

It was a challenge for him to appear statesmanlike at the best of times. Now it is simply unseemly.

And you must surely know there is more to comedy than making people cry.

Gentlemen, you have upset the natural order of things. You have made Green Party Cabinet Ministers laugh out loud without a second’s thought for the attendant emissions.

You have made Eamon Gilmore so popular he can no longer be a politician.

For the sake of comedy, for the sake of your country, for the sake of Brian Cowen stop. Stop now.

And please, please, stop talking about governing the country. It is too funny. It hurts too much.

Yours etc

“This is a great honour for Mr Gormley,” a Green source said. “In our world it doesn’t get any better than being a plant.”

It is understood that Mr Gormley will remain in his role as leader of the Green Party.

Meanwhile, Taoiseach Brian Cowen is believed to be considering giving the Greens another junior ministry position to keep the coalition on course.

“He’s considering a rotating junior ministry,” a source said. “Nothing important – they can make the title up themselves – but they could swap it around so they’d all get a ministerial pension. The Taoiseach likes to keep everyone happy.”

A spokesman for the Department of Finance was quick to pour scorn on the suggestion saying that the Cabinet had not considered the idea.

Fine Gael, Labour Fianna Fail and Green Party TDs were also quick to distance themselves from the suggestion. “What is he playing at? Is he trying to bring politics into repute? The public will never buy it,” one TD said.

However, seasoned observers of Leinster House said the issue was a storm in a tea cup. “It’s just talk,” one observer said. “There won’t be any real help for homeowners. No one is going to bring politics into repute.”

The impasse was broken early this morning when it was apparently agreed that witnesses giving evidence in public would be encouraged to use the “mental reservation” system made popular by the catholic church.

“Bankers, regulators and politicians are all cunning fellows,” a source said. “Once they know they can use mental reservation we don’t think any of them will inadvertently tell the truth.”

Mental reservation, more commonly known to the layman as lying, is a system whereby people state the harsh truth in their heads and bland platitudes out loud. Practitioners of mental reservation believe they lead their lives bathed in God’s light.

Vote for The Mire as Best Humour and Best Newcomer in the 2010 Irish Blog Awards.

Taoiseach in waiting Enda Kenny has called on pretend Taoiseach Brian Cowen and real Taoiseach Brian Lenihan to ask President Mary McAleese to convene a Council of State to deal with the crisis.

One option is that Mary Harney be given the title in perpetuity irrespective of whether she runs for election. “We are also asking the President whether Mary Harney could be forced to be Minister for Health or face imprisonment,” a source said.

It is understood that the leaders of the three main parties are in complete agreement that the position of Minister for Health should be discontinued if Ms Harney cannot be persuaded to stay on in the role.

However, sources in the Green Party have suggested that Paul Gogarty TD has the attitude and language skills necessary for the job. “The way he said ‘Fuck you’ to Emmett Stagg in the Dail shows real promise. We could imagine him dealing with patients and their loved ones in a similar fashion,” a source said.

Vote for The Mire as Best Humour and Best Newcomer in the 2010 Irish Blog Awards.

Then there was the shocking news that the Celtic Tiger was caused by inappropriate alcoholism.

There was good news when the HSE announced that Ryanair would take over the running of the health service. Sadly, the deal fell through as the airline didn’t like dealing with “bloody invalids”.

NAMA was delightful for the usual suspects until they found that Pat Kenny had already squatted all the good properties.

Taoiseach Brian Cowen feared a very Mirish coup until he decided to bank on a tree stump to save the economy.

A suggestion from French President Nicolas Sarkozy that getting Enda Kenny to say no to Lisbon would guarantee the referendum’s success won cross-party support.

A report by food safety experts found food and packaging was completely interchangeable although the packaging tended to be more appetising.

In September the HSE said children with swine flu should be kept in sheds. It also launched WellBeing perfume to replace traditional health care. Sadly we were allergic to WellBeing.

Former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced he would step down from politics to focus on Mehole, his anti-social networking site.

The Dublin bikes scheme turned out to be flawed as obese cyclists abandoned the bikes when they came to a hill. Obesity was in the news again when it was linked to appalling injuries during sex.

Sources in Taoiseach Brian Cowen’s head announced that he was not drinking nearly enough. Meanwhile, the voices in Enda Kenny’s head escaped. Finally, Brian Cowen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown sang a duet of Man in the Mirror to the voices in Mr Brown’s head.

It was a rollercoaster year for the Greens. There was euphoria when Trevor Sargent launched waterproof Jesus sandals so organic farmers could walk on water without getting wet feet. Dismay followed when it emerged our Carbon Arseprint was entirely responsible for global warming. And there was defiance when the entire Green Party leadership was arrested for urinating in their neighbours’ compost bins.

Few were surprised when performance evaluation monitors found that 37 per cent of public servants were “probably dead”. And no one was surprised that a third of new roads go nowhere while others are completely lost.

In perhaps the most sinister development of the recession the very existence of the lesser spotted rural drinker was threatened until UNESCO intervened.

Stephen Ireland refused the FAI’s reasonable request that he change his name. A churlish John Delaney turned down the opportunity to be Sepp Blatter’s official gimp and strongly denied trying to burn down the Guinness brewery because it is French-owned.

Green TD Paul Gogarty crossed a line when he used the word “sincerity” in Dail Eireann.

The wider community said it lived in fear of bored, bitter ex-bishops while the bishops said the Murphy report was quite innocuous when read with mental reservation.

Finally, sexperts everywhere fear that quitting golf could destroy Tiger’s “game”.

It was a pig’s mickey of a year, a twisted, crooked thing. The Mire looks forward to more of the same in 2010.

“It appears people thought Mr Gogarty was criticised for using the words ‘fuck you’ in addressing Deputy Emmet Stagg. This is clearly nonsense. Mr Gogarty was rightly criticised for using the words ‘respect’ and ‘sincerity’,” a spokesman said.

“To suggest that fuck you is inappropriate language for parliament is utter bollocks but there is definitely no place for sincerity in the houses of the oireachtas,” he added.

The guidelines on inappropriate language are to be updated to include respect and sincerity as well as accountability, responsibility and democracy. “We will not tolerate the use of such inflammatory language in the Dail,” the spokesman said.