Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Police in Victoria have given the name of the man whom they suspect of involvement in causing some of the fires which have led to the deaths of at least two hundred people. His name is Brendan Skotoluk. The police and courts have been anxious to prevent the man’s family being targeted. This is reasonable; he may be a nutter but his family are as devastated as anyone else no doubt. He will, if found guilty, probably face incarceration in some psychiatric facility, maybe for the rest of his natural life. Now had he been in Cavan he would, after a decade or so, have been feted as a great fellow. He could have joined “the party” and landed a nice high-sounding job. What’s more he could have joined a prominent Catholic lay group. While he would be able to turn his back on his pyrotechnical past, his present would have enabled him to steal material at will, while all the time being viewed as a really nice guy.

I have a pity for anyone whose first name is Brendan. I know some who are ok but others are, just well wankers.

Championing a Protestant environment

The cockles of all true God-Fearing and worthy Christians were no doubt warmed by the strong stand taken by Northern Ireland environment minister Sammy Wilson in refusing to allow the airing of an admittedly twee advertisement recommending that humans stop contributing to climate change. Now Sammy knows that we are not responsible for the mess the world’s climate is in and has refused to be brow-beaten by New Labour political correctness.

Were I to meet Sammy I would have to say this to him: “How’s Rhonda these days?” Now just because yowere plugging the big man’s daughter and you ddidn’t get her into the club does not mean all men are  incapable of changing the world for the worst, though with a face like hers you were probably nipping in the back.

Sammy is well known for standing up for his beliefs. When he was a teacher he would not let a globe into his classroom or any other symbol 0f the abomination that the earth was round. On many occasions he took globes from their stands and dashed them into the consistency of pancakes to make his point.

But even Sammy has gone soft. All true believers who are loyal to Her Majesty know that greenhouse gasses are caused by those Fenian bastards in

Sinn Fein IRA.. These are to be distinguisdhed from good honest-to-God Protestant Orange house gases which are used to ensure that Ulster’s pantries grown under the weight of good wholesome produce. These are particularly noteworthy from bonfres of used tyres illuminating July evenings which fill the air with fumes that may cause cancer to those not in God’s elect.

Sammy is forgetting who the real enemy is at the gate. It’s all very well giving it to homosexuals, Chinkies, Poles and blacks, but Ulster has retained its British identity by saying no to the whore of Bablylon and his special agents.

The fires that have wrought such havoc in Victoria are truly horrific. History has been peppered by such blazes, such as the Great Fire of London of 1666. It seems incredible that with all our sophistication and technical wizardry humans can still be consumed by a force of nature.

But perhaps the most galling aspect is the knowledge that in Australia, that most destructive of media, fire, did not burst out by itself. Bush fires have been a phenomenon in Australia for thousands of years – from before the continent was inhabited. They erupted spontaneously, often spurred by a chance bolt of lightning. They had a role in the regeneration of forestry. Man understands the positive role that controlled fires have in ecology. When they are caused maliciously their impact can only be destructive, as witnessed by the devastation in Victoria. We do have to ask what type of people would do such a thing?

As we see in Australia arson is one of the most frightfully murderous of activities. The numbers who are killed and maimed can be enormous. It would be hard for someone to carry out such mass murder with conventional fire-arms. Apart from the difficulties occasioned by re-loading they might have to hear the screams and wails of their victims. The arsonist is more like the person who plants a bomb, but then that’s a risky business. It may go off in your hands. Some arsonists like to fool themselves that they are not insidious lunatics and claim that their pyrotechnics are motivated by a cause. They say that their objects are inanimate objects like buildings, but they cannot wash their hands of responsibility, as fire can spread, and then what about fire-crews who risk their lives in extinguishing fires?

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd had equated arsonists with mass murderers, and anyone who deliberately sets anything alight shows no regard for human life. They may often have deeper-seated psychological issues and so they need psychiatric intervention. However, if there is such a thing as society, they should be shunned by it, or at least made to feel in no uncertain terms that society wishes to respond in the most negative terms to their actions. They should not be brought to society’s (even local society’s) bosom; they ought not be given titles which may further exacerbate their sense of self-importance; they shouldn’t be allowed to ingratiate themselves with local elites who in any case should be able to see through the base flattery they use towards this end; and what is more, no right-thinking person should give any heed to anything they say, especially when it involves character assassination of blameless people.

I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging for a while. In truth, I’m too exhausted to write much; even an e-mail seems to take it out of me. Anyway I’ve got the feeling that nothing I say matters much. The world continues turning, war and distress multiply and I seem to earn nothing but the smirks of Cavan’s corner-boys.

In Somalia the ship MV Fain that was taken hostage by pirates is being released by its captors, no doubt after the payment of a huge ransom. Anyway what were the pirates going to do with the cargo? You can’t really get rid of dozens of tanks on the “black market”. A new president has been elected but whether he can make a reality of the Somali state, ruled by anarchy for nearly two decades, is anyone’s guess.

In Guinea Dadis Camara seems to be pursuing a policy of questioning the way in which the country’s wealth has been siphoned off, usually into the pockets of multinational mining companies who throw some baksheesh to local officials who ferret the sums away in foreign bank accounts.

And in Zimbabwe a national unity government has finally been agreed between the autumnal patriarch Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. The country is fucked, there’s 90 per cent unemployment and a major cholera outbreak. What’s more inflation has rendered the national currency into a joke. The perpetrators of political violence still walk tall and their directors are sitting down at last with their victims. The decision by Mugabe to grant Tsvangirai the job of Prime Minister is a little like an offer of a lift in someone’s broken down car.

There are so many wars and conflicts. We all know of the genocide in Gaza, but other wars go unrecorded, such as that in Sri Lanka, which sees the civilian population often made into unwilling human shields by either the Sri Lankan government or the ever more desperate Tamil Tigers.

In the borderlands of Uganda and the Not-So-Democratic Republic of Congo (NDRSC), the grim antics of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has spread from its original nursery bed in the north of Uganda the northeast of the NSDRC. This leaves in its wake burned villages and massacres of church-goers. The LRA has a “no-frills” approach to recruiting soldiers; no one can accuse them of ageism – the younger the better. Indeed their approach to winning friends and influencing people is basic – after seeing your loved ones raped and chopped into pieces, you’ve got two choices – join us or join them.

And as for events closer to home all I can say is that they’re just like a demented pantomime. But then everyone knows this. I don’t know whether anyone else has noticed how incredibly well-fed the pantomime managers are. Our Minister for Finance, for example, who may well tell everyone else to tighten their belts, but can he without giving himself a hernia? The same is true of our prime minister. None of them are showing any signs of the financial squeeze – far from it. A few weeks’ ago there was an edition of RTE’s rural programme Ear to the Ground, in which it was mentioned that the present financial straits affecting many people had led to greater demand from Irish butchers for cheaper cuts of meat. I was glad to see a restaurant critic who said that many of these cuts have a far better taste than the more expensive joints. But something tells me that none of our senior politicians or civil servants are tucking in to oxtail stew. And as for our minister for health! Look, no more nudge-nudge, wink-win, sexist jokes about fatsoes. But the fact is she is obese. Obesity is a medical condition which can be alleviated, but what’s she doing about it? And then there’s her husband, the man who was for so long implicated in the exorbitantly costly mix of Hi-De-Hi and Absolutely Fabulous which was FAS. They were supposed to be finding jobs and training opportunities for the unemployed, but I feel that if Mr Harney had ever been told that he might meet an unemployed youth, maybe from “the wrong side of the tracks”, his response would have been “Heaven forbid.”

Our rulers try to look statesman-like, but they always come across as at best incompetent idiots, at worse as three-card cheats. There was a particularly heart-wrenching interview with a senior banker today in which he revealed that due to the economic downturn his “disclosed” renumeration package would probably be less than 2 million euro this year. Think of it – less than 50 thousand euro a week, ten thousand a day. How can anyone survive on that? Picture his poor children, his desperate spouse no doubt tearing her false blond hair from its roots as all of them have to wrestle with the indignity of approaching the local Vincent de Paul. And with everybody in a bind there is no possibility of picking up some week-end work mowing grass, while the little chizzlers will look in vain for any paper rounds.