Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Recently a newspaper carried a list of the expenses of the members of our lower house. Some of the figures were eye opening, not least the 3000,000 plus euro sought by the speaker of the house John O’Donoghue, and the sum in excess of 200,000 received by Deputy Brendan Howlin, who lives in Wexford. Other figures were surprising. My local TD Caoimhghin O Caolain ran up a figure of 120,000 euro but he lives in Monaghan, a considerable distance from Dublin city, yet Dr Michael Woods clocked up  expenses in excess of 130,000 euro, even though he lives in Raheny, only a few stops up the DART – not that he would ever use such a plebeian means of transport.

Now we know that the majority of our parliamentarians – of ALL political stripes – are venal, spineless, and cowardly hypocrites, yet we still live in a sort of democracy which means that WE THE PEOPLE can give them the  elbow at the next election. Of course this seldom rids the country of their pestiferous presence, as they are able to crawl back into the legislature by means of the “scenic route” of election to Seanad Eireann.

But what of those senior decision makers in this country of whose expenses we know nothing? I refer here to the senior civil servants, first secretaries, secretary generals etc., as well as the county managers, county secretaries and other assorted nobodies at local government level. And let us not forget senior members of our judiciary. These people can and do run up gargantuan expenses, but the public seldom knows anything about them. Also hidden under a cloud of unknowing are their shareholdings and memberships of boards of various businesses, as well as the nature of their relationships with business figures, which often amount to serious conflicts of interests. The pubic is generally given the mushroom treatment about all this, and anyone who is so bold as to persist in asking can look forward to years of victimisation and, at local government level, being placed in a permanent position at the bottom of every waiting list around.

Our public service is certainly as hypocritical as our politicians; they are united in an unnatural marriage of convenience. Politicians are told not to ask and they will be told no lies, and if they should happen to join the ranks of the governmental senior hurling team better known as the Cabinet – even if they sit on the sub’s bench of the Ministers of State – they are assured that the officials in their department will be like dad and keep mum about any ministerial misdemeanours.

These mandarins speak of their professionalism and suggest sotto voce that it is only due to their skills that the country works at all. Senior civil servants love to amuse their friends with stories about the stupidity of their masters, about the way they have to write their speeches for them, which are then delivered so excruciatingly. Ministers come, ministers go, but they stay in place. Anyone who lives here is aware that the actions of our public service are dominated by the culture of botch. “It’s not working properly is it not? Ah sure fuck it. “ The public, in whose name they are supposed to act, is The Enemy. If you really want to annoy a public servant remind him or her of an unpleasant reality: they are public servants, you are a member of the public and they are your servants, not their masters; they are people who owe you a duty of service and courtesy.

But if they were just a pack of supercilious and bumbling layabouts it wouldn’t be so bad. When roused from their torpors to action they become vicious monsters, incapable of doing anything but harm, and getting a real buzz out of doing so.

They pretend they are motivated solely by the highest ethical standards; they don’t know what self interest is – mar dhea! However, they see fit to libel and slander members of the public who do not please them and attribute elements from their perverted fantasies to ordinary decent people. But if the public retaliates and tries to fight back they bristle with indignation.

And let us not forget the way the higher public service has long been infected by quasi-Masonic Catholic lay groups such as the Knights of St Columbanus. The evidence may be anecdotal but it is far from fantasy, that the progress (or lack of it) of university graduates in certain  prestigious government departments such as Finance or Foreign Affairs is still dependant on their membership during their student days of groups like Pax Christi. Members of Sinn Fein’s youth wing, or those who flirted (however fleetingly) with Marxism, have found that it is better to keep this quiet if they seek a glittering public service career, yet those who have been active in quasi fascist formations like Youth Defence can wear their past involvement as badges of honour.

So isn’t it a grand little country we have after all: we are ruled  by robbers. Patrick Pearse would be so proud of it, though St Patrick might be disappointed to find that the serpents he had driven from the island were back and very firmly in control.

Recently a newspaper carried a list of the expenses of the members of our lower house. Some of the figures were eye opening, not least the 3000,000 plus euro sought by the speaker of the house John O’Donoghue, and the sum in excess of 200,000 received by Deputy Brendan Howlin, who lives in Wexford. Other figures were surprising. My local TD Caoimhghin O Caolain ran up a figure of 120,000 euro but he lives in Monaghan, a considerable distance from Dublin city, yet Dr Michael Woods clocked up  expenses in excess of 130,000 euro, even though he lives in Raheny, only a few stops up the DART – not that he would ever use such a plebeian means of transport.

Now we know that the majority of our parliamentarians – of ALL political stripes – are venal, spineless, and cowardly hypocrites, yet we still live in a sort of democracy which means that WE THE PEOPLE can give them the  elbow at the next election. Of course this seldom rids the country of their pestiferous presence, as they are able to crawl back into the legislature by means of the “scenic route” of election to Seanad Eireann.

But what of those senior decision makers in this country of whose expenses we know nothing? I refer here to the senior civil servants, first secretaries, secretary generals etc., as well as the county managers, county secretaries and other assorted nobodies at local government level. And let us not forget senior members of our judiciary. These people can and do run up gargantuan expenses, but the public seldom knows anything about them. Also hidden under a cloud of unknowing are their shareholdings and memberships of boards of various businesses, as well as the nature of their relationships with business figures, which often amount to serious conflicts of interests. The pubic is generally given the mushroom treatment about all this, and anyone who is so bold as to persist in asking can look forward to years of victimisation and, at local government level, being placed in a permanent position at the bottom of every waiting list around.

Our public service is certainly as hypocritical as our politicians; they are united in an unnatural marriage of convenience. Politicians are told not to ask and they will be told no lies, and if they should happen to join the ranks of the governmental senior hurling team better known as the Cabinet – even if they sit on the sub’s bench of the Ministers of State – they are assured that the officials in their department will be like dad and keep mum about any ministerial misdemeanours.

These mandarins speak of their professionalism and suggest sotto voce that it is only due to their skills that the country works at all. Senior civil servants love to amuse their friends with stories about the stupidity of their masters, about the way they have to write their speeches for them, which are then delivered so excruciatingly. Ministers come, ministers go, but they stay in place. Anyone who lives here is aware that the actions of our public service are dominated by the culture of botch. “It’s not working properly is it not? Ah sure fuck it. “ The public, in whose name they are supposed to act, is The Enemy. If you really want to annoy a public servant remind him or her of an unpleasant reality: they are public servants, you are a member of the public and they are your servants, not their masters; they are people who owe you a duty of service and courtesy.

But if they were just a pack of supercilious and bumbling layabouts it wouldn’t be so bad. When roused from their torpors to action they become vicious monsters, incapable of doing anything but harm, and getting a real buzz out of doing so.

They pretend they are motivated solely by the highest ethical standards; they don’t know what self interest is – mar dhea! However, they see fit to libel and slander members of the public who do not please them and attribute elements from their perverted fantasies to ordinary decent people. But if the public retaliates and tries to fight back they bristle with indignation.

And let us not forget the way the higher public service has long been infected by quasi-Masonic Catholic lay groups such as the Knights of St Columbanus. The evidence may be anecdotal but it is far from fantasy, that the progress (or lack of it) of university graduates in certain  prestigious government departments such as Finance or Foreign Affairs is still dependant on their membership during their student days of groups like Pax Christi. Members of Sinn Fein’s youth wing, or those who flirted (however fleetingly) with Marxism, have found that it is better to keep this quiet if they seek a glittering public service career, yet those who have been active in quasi fascist formations like Youth Defence can wear their past involvement as badges of honour.

So isn’t it a grand little country we have after all: we are ruled  by robbers. Patrick Pearse would be so proud of it, though St Patrick might be disappointed to find that the serpents he had driven from the island were back and very firmly in control.

Cavan people must be tickled pink that the Blueshirts oops Fine Gael party decided to hold a meeting of its parliamentary coven in Co. Cavan, and in of all places the SAS Radisson hotel be God.

 Their choice of venue is significant. The building was formerly Farnham House, the headquarters of the largest, most tyrannical and possibly most bigoted family amongst Cavan’s landed gentry.

 The Farnhams were originally called Maxwell, and they were among the second wave of mongrel foxes to grab land in Ulster. It is hardly significant that the land surrounding Farnham House is still amongst the best in the county.

 Their tenants were forced to pay exorbitant rents. During the Great Famine inability to pay was never accepted as a valid excuse and usually resulted in immediate eviction. The Lord Farnham of the time, it is true, showed no religious favouritism towards Protestant or Catholic in such soulless dealings.

 But the money robbed from their tenants did not go on the gaming tables of London. Oh no, much of it went to build Farnham House, which, in spite of extensive renovations, is still a cold and forbidding place. The Farnhams were avid partisans of the “Second Reformation” in Co. Cavan – attempts by Protestant evangelical societies finances by people like the Farnhams and the gullible praying classes of England to bribe the Irish peasantry to forego the religion of Rome for that of Canterbury.

 While one of the Lords Farnham died a horrible death in the Abergele rail disaster of August, 1868 the spirit of religious intolerance continued at Farnham. In 1896 Lord Farnham’s agent T.R. Blackley recommended to the lord that the vacant posts of under-steward and gardener be filled by “English Protestants”. This would have precluded amongst others the historian Lord Acton and Edward Elgar, composer of that anthem of tub-thumping and nauseating imperialism “Land of Hope and Glory” from employment at Farnham. Both were members of English society par excellence but both sadly were Roman Catholics.

 It is in the bosom of such exclusivity that the latter-day Blueshirts have assembled. They could have staged a re-enactment of the frightful “human hunts” which took plaee at Farnham, and whose lurid details were told to me by Cavan-town publican Linus McDonal, as in many ways this epitomised the current traversty of a democratic system we have. Young girls were stripped naked and made to wander through Farnham’s grounds while  packs of savage, baying dogs were set upon them so that they were forced to climb into one of the ground’s many trees from where they were rescued by “gentlemen” on horseback – n return for sexual favours. These gentlemen were often descendants and close relatives of members of te Anglican clergy. The hapless girls might have been saved, but at the price of being fucked.

Sadly bad weather prevented a march past by Fine Gael volunteers who are setting off on their battle to assure Ireland of a place in a Christian Europe. However there was a special trooping and blessing of the colours – a yellow banner urging a “YES” vote in the forthcoming and completely undemocratic re-run of the Lisbon Treaty referendum.

 Now the Blueshirts / Fine Gael are very big on jobs, so Enda Kenny and senior Blueshirts then went on a tour of sites in the county employing relatives of Fine Gael councillors such as Cavan town’s courthouse, town hall and hospital. I have learned that Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny was forced, through pressure of time, to turn an invitation from Councillor John Scott of Belturbet to visit his son in Cavan County Museum.

A recently publicised report by the Northeastern chapter of the HSE has “found” that there has been no significant increase in the number of admissions to Cavan hospital since the withdrawal of almost all services from Moonaghan.

 Now there are a number of questions which need to be asked about this report.

 1.                  Who decided to close down Monaghan hospital? The HSE.

2.                  Who conducted the “research” upon which the report was based? The HSE.

3.                  In whose interest is it to play down any increase in demand for Cavan hospital’s already stretched resources as a result of Monaghan’s closure? That’s right -  The HSE

 Smell anything rodent like?

 When I was growing up I was taught that it was wrong to tell lies.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has announced the creation of a special Foreign Office team to assist IRA victims’ families in their search for compensation from the government of the Libyan Jamahuriyah. What about the victims of loyalist violence? The dogs in the street are aware of British intelligence involvement in the Talbot St. bombings in Dublin. Will Mr Brown give compensation to surviving vifctims of this atrocity I wonder?

It was with immense sadness that I learned of the closure of the Cavan Echo. This will be looked back upon by future generations as a brave and courageous venture in Cavan journalism. The Cavan Echo showed a new way in local journalism, one which demonstrated that “local” need not mean parochial or sub=standard when compared with journalism at a national level.

 I am eternally grateful to Declan Young for asking me to get involved, and through my contributions I had the joy of working with great editors like P.J., Michael and Ian, as well as making the friendship of Mairtin and Deborah in Belfast.

 Innumerable are the friends I have made through my column. It was as if I discovered a whole new reservoir of colleagues, of whose previous existence I could only dream. Many enjoyed my Echoes of the Past, and their joy was matched by mine in writing them. I felt that I was able to rescue history from the clutches of shortsighted and self-interested “historians” and give it back to its rightful owners, the ordinary people of Cavan whose ancestors had lived through it and made it in the first place.

 I am planning to bring out a book containing a selection of my Echo pieces. However, I have no intention of writing any more Echoes. The concept and format must die with the paper I feel.

 The Cavan Echo’s demise was due to the downturn in the economy. It is ironic in this country which pays such lip service to the principals of the free market that private-sector institutions have been allowed to go onto the rocks un-mourned, while certain others associated especially with local government continue to receive a seemingly inexhaustible supply of public funds which are in such short supply that even the widow’s mite is now under threat. I am thinking here especially of that bloated, superannuated white elephant in Ballyjamesduff, which remains open even though it has never made any money, and continues to resolutely haemorrhages it, while council staff members are let go because of a lack of funds to pay them.

 After I departed from the Echo I mentioned my plight to a friend who has good contacts with a much longer established local newspaper here. He made enquiries on my behalf as to whether they might like to benefit from my availability by employing me. While senior members of staff promised to contact us they never did. They passed over the possibility of explaining to me that they too were in financial straits and were thus prevented from taking me on. But it seemed as if they could not lower themselves to do this. Were they afraid that a hand would emerge from the telephone?  But even if they were cash rich, how could they employ me? What would their masters in Cavan County Council say? The knights would be appalled. It seemed as if my copy, freely given to them (if for a fee) was not as tasty as stealing my words and applying a staff member’s (though now thankfully retired) by-line to them.  A short ‘phone call would have helped to establish contact and trust. Instead I had to make do with a visit from the sniggering, bad-minded racist who informed me that I might think I was bad, but longer-established i.e. better columnists had been let go by the local newspaper. Needless to say he bellyached about how little the paper was paying him for photographs –something he no doubt put down to foreigners.

 The upshot of the above is: You had your chance Anglo-Celt, but the Echoes of the Past are dead like the Monty Python parrot.