August. Slow of news. Fast of foreign ring tones. Weather subprime. Economics the last thing on anyone’s mind.

It’s eerie on Merrion Street. Hardly anyone remains in Government Building and the Cabinet crew have nothing to do.

Not a memorandum to rewrite, nor a barbed ministerial question to dodge, nor a policy to dream up in a dash. After months of endless toil, time finally presents for reflection.

Thoughts turn first to the future, which has suddenly assumed an obscure hue.

From the security of his recess bunker somewhere on the Wild Atlantic Way, the ever-benevolent Taoiseach has seemingly resolved that he will rule forever. Mirabile dictu. The chief whip said so. He said it twice, actually. It must be true.

So that’s that then? Well, there’s an election to fight. No escaping that. Autumn or spring? Timing is everything so take your pick. 2015 or 2016?

Upsides to each apparent. Downsides, too, are apparent. Get it over with? Yes, sound call. Or better to wait? You can see the argument.

Budget goodies not on payslips in November. But budget goodies in February may not be good enough.

This year or next? A finely balanced decision looms. Another finely balanced decision.

Been looking at those polls again. Fluctuation station. Sometimes you’re on the up and all’s well out there. Happy days. Then you’re down.

In the dead of night, the quislings of Eurostat strike. Water on balance sheet! Water on balance sheet! Terrible stuff.

They said off-balance sheet was important. Now they say this is not important at all. So which is it? Don’t answer. Please. Ring Cork. Get the CSO to send more flowers to Eurostat.

Better still, get Alan Kelly to write them a staunch letter. That will show them.

He’s quite a strident fellow when he gets going. His admirers call him AK47. The statistician’s calculator is no match for Al. Do whatever it takes. Just don’t send Big Phil into them.

Back to those polls. Good news scarce there. Dissent widespread. Anti-establishment sentiment rising. No surprise really: all that austerity. Cutbacks for all, tax hikes for everyone.

Comfort for the comfortable

Ordinary folk besieged but bailouts aplenty for banks and juicy pensions for ex-bankers. You know the argument. Comfort for the comfortable, affliction for the afflicted. Mass appeal for this, mass appeal.

Trotskyites lapping it up on the left. Field day central for Ross of the Right. Independents on the prowl everywhere. They’re literally everywhere.

True, they always say the only poll that counts is the actual poll. Yet this could get messy. No one really knows how the numbers will stack up. But deals – potentially unclean deals – might be needed with some of the crowd in the technical group and the upstart parties.

Every single one of them will want a pound of flesh and special access to the man from Mayo – and everyone else will be jealous.

Local vs national

Nervy backbenchers, ignored because they’re no longer number one in town, will be on to the papers all the time. Not quite a recipe for stability this. How to run the country if the local keeps trumping the national? They’ll need a double-ring of steel around the Department of Finance.

What’s the lesson? They took billions from the people and now they give back millions.

Always tricky. They gave them nothing but parsimony for years, but the people actually wanted parsnips.

You know that old line. Ireland grows fastest in Europe but will it butter parsnips?

The deficit is in sustained decline, yet the very same question arises. The State was saved, the troika banished, confidence restored, all the rest of it. Yet any dividends are decidedly modest.

Thus will the angry battle-cry be confronted with earnest promises to do only the right thing.

Rambo versus Mr Bland. Fight fire with, well, argument. They must be working on their manifestos, but they’ll have to avoid outlandish promises. No return to auction politics, they’ve said it often enough.

Still, everyone needs priorities: link those Luas lines; build a few roads, a few houses, a few crèches; distribute "free" medical care to the masses; sell off the banks; save Iarnród Éireann from the grubby maw of Brussels; repeat ad nauseam that Syriza's Irish bedfellows would bring ruin on the land. The script is clear enough.

Quiet enough out there today. Won’t last.