Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

A recent edition of the BBC’s popular early evening quiz-show Eggheads saw the cranially surfeited quintet challenged by a group of

No match for Cavan's blue councillors

councillors, who, in spite of being able to overcome their political differences, were still unable to unseat the Eggheads from their triumphant perch and thus failed to come away with the money.

How very different, I thought, it might have been had they been challenged by a group of councillors from Cavan. No doubt the personnel would have to reflect political membership but winning would surely be dependant upon the Fine Gael members of the council, whose all-embracing knowledge is truly awesome and would knock the Eggheads for six, exposing them thereby to be the intellectual poseurs they are. Much would depend on luck, but they would be on  a home run if the category of “Food and Drink” came up. If questions on “History” were proposed, victory would be in the bag, especially if the Museum’s Dr Snott was able to impersonate his father. We would see Judith slink back to her pied-a-terre in Cantal quicker than you can say Chris Tarrant, CJ would return to male modelling, while Chris would swear that he’d never leave the train driver’s seat again.

 The only problem all councillors would have to overcome would be a tendency to seek answers on anything challenging from the county manager. I don’t think that’s in the Eggheads rules.  

A recent edition of the BBC’s popular early evening quiz-show Eggheads saw the cranially surfeited quintet challenged by a group of councillors, who, in spite of being able to overcome their political differences, were still unable to unseat the Eggheads from their triumphant perch and thus failed to come away with the money.

How very different, I thought, it might have been had they been challenged by a group of councillors from Cavan. No doubt the personnel would have to reflect political membership but winning would surely be dependant upon the Fine Gael members of the council, whose all-embracing knowledge is truly awesome and would knock the Eggheads for six, exposing them thereby to be the intellectual poseurs they are. Much would depend on luck, but they would be on  a home run if the category of “Food and Drink” came up. If questions on “History” were proposed, victory would be in the bag, especially if the Museum’s Dr Snott was able to impersonate his father. We would see Judith slink back to her pied-a-terre in Cantal quicker than you can say Chris Tarrant, CJ would return to male modelling, while Chris would swear that he’d never leave the train driver’s seat again.

The only problem all councillors would have to overcome would be a tendency to seek answers on anything challenging from the county manager. I don’t think that’s in the Eggheads rules. 

Mad uncle Frank

Francisco Macias Nguema, was Equatorial Guinea’s first president. In the eleven years he held the post he was responsible for the deaths of 50,000 people, as well as sending thousands of others into exile. Before his overthrow and murder by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema (who is still in power) the country had earned the unwelcome epithet of “the Dachau of Africa”. Amnesty International’s annual report were full of the heinous acts of human rights violations carried out by Macias, not t mention the crimes against humanity to be laid at his successor’s door. He oversaw one of the most bizarre personality cults in history – so bizarre because it was so unmerited. He adored bestowing grandiose titles on himself, yet he was barely literate. It is said he failed the colonial exams to become an office clerk three times and was only successful on the fourth because of some positive discrimination. He was given to violent swings of personality and received treatment in Spain and the United States for unspecified psychiatric problems; towards the latter years of his life he had acquired some unidentifiable disease

Not really like his uncle?

which may have been AIDS-related.

His hold on power was maintained through fear, not only of his loyal thugs but of Macias personally. He deliberately cultivated the belief that his father had been a witch doctor and sorcerer, and that he had inherited many of these gifts. He was rumoured to have drunk the blood of some of his political opponents, and he kept a large stockpile of human skulls at his presidential compound, alongside all of the country’s foreign currency reserves and medical supplies. Macias loved the dark and detested light; a Spanish airline pilot was arrested and tortured when he accidentally shone his ‘plane’s headlights on Macias’ jet as it sat on the airport tarmac one night. In 1977 a visiting researcher was told that “… you may be against Macias while the sun shines, but after dark you have to be for him,” Even when overthrown and sentenced to death, no locals could be found to man the firing squad, and the task had to be performed by Moroccan soldiers.

Macias  Nguema’s preference for the dark reminds me of the activities of a solicitor employed by the Irish health Service Executive, who is sadly well-known to her victims, and who seems to delight in working in the hours of night, well after “The Bard’’s witching hour. Does she feel that her victim are more cowed by the inky blackness, and less able to put up a defence to her machinations when they are awoken suddenly by the headlights of the garda cars ferrying her to the scene of her nocturnal sacrifices? or is there a yet more sinister reason for this, tied up perhaps with practice of the dark arts?

While the sun shines it is easy to be against Ms Helen (or is it Ellinor?) Stone, but after dark …

I wonder what she’s doing for Halloween?

The release of Irish aid worker Sharon Commins  after her ordeal in Darfur has been turned into a tawdry PR stunt by the government,

 Like the vast majority of Irish people I was overjoyed to learn on Sunday of her liberation, but it soon became apparent that there were those intent on using the story to add some kudos to their personas. The start was the news broadcast on RTE’s radio 2 at 11 a.m. The item on Ms Commins’ release was expanded into a “words of praise” piece, worthy of North Korea, about Minister for Foreign Affairs Micheal Martin, followed by an interview with the man himself,. Indeed the release was the only item on the news.

 And then there was the provision of the government jet to bring her home. Fair play to whoever in the government copped on that this would be a great way of deflecting criticism  about the abusive usage to which the ‘plane has been put recently by … a certain minister. I think the Irish people have a right to know just how much was spent on air fresheners to clean the aircraft of the lingering odour of body odour and flatulence left by Minister Harney. We can rest assured that Minister Gormless made sure they didn’t contain any CFCs.

It may be carping for me to comparer the manifest efforts by the Irish government to secure Ms Commins’ release with their utter ambivalence to find out anything about the children who have disappeared from care  in Ireland.

Yes please, bring it on baby, at least some of them.

 Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny’s proposal to scrap the Seanad if in government is nothing short of a piece of hypocritical populist

They've killed Kenny - the bastards

posturing., not so much a red herring as a blue herritng.

 Enda Kenny surely realises the importance of the Seanad in the Irish political system, where it acts as a rest and recuperation home for TDs of all the three political parties who have lost their seats in the lower house. It also operates as a testing ground where aspirant members of the lower house can gain exposure, not to mention an endless supply of postage-paid Oireachtas envelopes, which will hopefully translate into success at the next election. And then there is “The Taoiseach’s eleven”, an evergreen source of patronage. Many, many years’ ago, when I was involved with The Organisation, I had to write a letter to then taoiseach Charles Haughey extolling the virtues of a would-be Seanad appointee, the most important of which was that he was the father of eight children. There was no hint in the letter that the man’s off-springs were facing incarceration in the poorhouse unless their parent were elevated to the upper house. Indeed I know one of the man’s children; he has used his hands and feet to has attain great and well-deserved success.

 Now let’s be honest; Enda has no more intention of getting rid of the Seanad than he has of joining the Hare Krishnas. This is all about deflection. It seems to have caught hold as a topic of media discussion, which helps take the limelight away from the fact that the Fine Gael party support the viciously incompetent, scorched earth economic policies of the present government – and why wouldn’t they? They are good, honest-to-God Blueshirt policies.

 What’s more this Seanad red herring may take attention away from the alacrity with which Fine Gael councillors are grabbing jobs for their families at local government level – larceny as great as any Fianna Fail or Green party minister at national level.

 But let us give credit where credit is due. The intellectual and professional pre-eminence of  relatives of Fine Gael councillors is awe inspiring. They possess some unique piece of internal genetic engineering which may be revealed one day when the mapping of the genome is finally completed. The scope of their abilities is truly kaleidoscopic, spreading from ward assistants in hospitals, to social workers through to Research Officers in crummy local museums. Just what is it that puts them head and shoulders above the relatives of councillors from other parties, or those people not related to councillors at all?

The decision by Donal Og Cusack to admit to being gay is a tremendously courageous one. But his sexuality shouldn’t have

Doma; Og Cusack

anything to do with the fact that he is a great Gaelic games player. Hopefully it may provide an alternative role model for players at all levels of the game. They’ll now realise that it is possible to operate at the pinnacle of the sport while eschewing the long-accepted and too long tolerated stereotype of the GAA player i.e. a heavy-drinking, philandering, wife=beating thug who nevertheless sits beatifically through Mass, and who is willing to do anything his church tells him. Let’s hope more players are able to stand up to the hypocritical homophobes in the association, most of whom would shit themsel at the sight of a ball hurtling towards them.

The applause that greeted John O’Donoghue’s self-justificatory rant in the Dail last week shows up that the majority of our

Did ya hear the one about the Kerryman who ... ?

legislatures are suffering, in moral terms at least, from a bad dose of the clap.

The article by .Colum Kenny entitled “Green Boss on Planet All of His Own” in The Sunday Independent of October 18th in which he highlights yet one more example of official larceny mentions Joe Fennell who is confined to a motorised wheelchair and who has been reduced to living off food parcels distributed by the Capuchin Friars in Dublin. Colum Kenny compares the welfare benefit that Joe is expected to live on per week with the figure of Î200 he expects to pay a medical consultant for half an hour of the latter’s expertise. The benefit granted by the Department of Social and Family Affairs in its beneficent generosity is only Î15 higher.

 Colum Kenny fails to mention that as a result of Minister Hanafin’s viciousness and desire to appear tough, the amount that Joe (and many others) gets will probably be reduced at the next budget by Î10 or more.

 Let’s end this hypocritical shite once and for all; the cuts recommended by McCarthy and spoken of with such warmth by the types

No room for Robin at the cabinet table

 of ministers Lenihan, Hanafin and Harney have nothing to do with restoring the public finances. They are simply a means of insuring that in a time of economic hardship there is enough loot to pass around government ministers, their extended families as well as senior civil servants and their cronies. Government policies are an inversion of the spirit of Robin Hood: they’re all about stealing from the poor to give to the rich.

Hay-on-Wye! It summons up memories of groovy sorts who aren’t averse to a bit of gnage3, as well as hordes of flaky sorts who are,

Hay-on-Wye

to be honest, slightly past it. They may have been “with it” once but not any more; their clothes cry out not so much retro-chic as the layers of poverty with which some people become encrusted,who make their sad ways from one second-hand bookstore to another, looking for that first edition of How to be Rich and Happy for the Rest of Your Lives.

 So this is hardly the setting for some slick Irish officials, each one sporting a designer suit and a name tag, bursting with arrogance and what our American cousins call attitude.

 I was shocked to discover that our minister for the Environment, Gormless John, paid a visit to this town. I am hardly surprised to learn that his transport arrangements were paid for by the Irish taxpayer. Did anyone honestly believe that an Irish minister should travel by bus or by taxi, or that, God preserve us, that Irish civil servants should travel in anything but the height of comfort. You see Gormley gets the shit (as he deserves), but it wouldn’t matter who the minister was, or what his political allegiances were, Ireland’s civil servants have to be looked after. In return for their creature comforts being taken care of they make their “political masters” feel important, and give jobs to their relatives. This is an essential part of the Hoorocracy.

 PS. The author of the article pointed out that the taxi fares between Hay-on-Wye and Holyhead would have been much cheaper than hiring a “People Carrier”. This fails to take account of the possibility that most Welsh taxi firms would have refused to pick up such scum as Minister Gormley’s officials.

Professor Brendan Drumm, the man who was the third choice to head up the HSE on its foundation, is being rewarded for his

Conscience - a word that cowards use?

stewardship with a bonus of 70,000 euro, on top of his already handsome salary. He has been instrumental in the running down of the health service, to the extent that parts of it are almost at third-world levels. Worse is the fact that the HSE under his watch may ve been guilty of allowing acts of child abuse to be perpetrated against children in HSE care.

This bonus (which by the way is not unique in today’s Irish civil service), comes at a time of economic difficulties when the health service is facing ever greater cuts, and the Irish people ever greater suffering. And the response of the brothel madame? It’s nothing to do with me. And admittedly 70 thousand euro would be small change for her – she’d blow it in a weekend.

 Has this Drumm person no conscience? No, why do you think he has risen so high.

Yesterday RTE offered viewers the opportunity to watch the election of a Ceann Comhairle live on television. Why would I bother? If I wanted to see a group of pimps, prostitutes and serial masturbators attempting to persuade viewers that they weren’t impotent. It doesn’t matter how much viagra they take they still look and sound as if they’ve got no more cum left in their balls. Let’s be honest, there are less than a dozen men or women amongst them who have been tarnished by exposure to the gravy-train of politics. I could watch a porno DVD like Hard Mary Gets Fucked Up The Butt Again . What’s more the women would probably be far more alluring than any of the flabby, frumpy dogs in the Dail. What’s more the attempt to simulate cunnilingus might be more true-to-life than the flaccid verbal ejaculations to be heard from our legislators. You might be able to make a porno of what goes on there starring the Confederation of Irish Industry’s idea of crunpet Hairy Mary. This wouldn’t be like Rosey Dixon Nightnurse but would be real hard core featuring scenes where Hairy Mary gets fucked by a pianist on his piano or others with Hairy Mary doing it on athe government jet, and we all know that there are men who are prepared to pay a lot of money to see a hirsute bird getting rodgered.  It could be called with justification Hairy Mary Fucks The Country.

 But I have some pity for Jodie from Cahirciveen. He was given the bump for racking up ridiculous expenses. But why did he have to walk the plank while the cabinet slut was able to get away with as much? No one has yet found out that John O’Donoghue was entertained at taxpayers’ expense by a private bodhran player. The whole thing smacks of double standards. I doubt HJohn boy would disagree with the sentiment that we live in a hoorocracy.