Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

Like any Irish person I was dismayed by the events in the Stade de France. Pride in the land of my birth made me want to see the Boys in Green qualify for the world cup. It is dreadful to see hard work and talent and commitment rewarded with failure.

 I know that if the Irish team had qualified for South Africa, every scumbag government minister would fly out at public expense to cheer on the lads on our behalf, though they’d never asked us beforehand. What’s more, unlike most Irish fans, they would stay in the plushest accommodation. Neither would I be surprised if delegations of county councillors did not escape to the sun, maybe because of some tenuous links between one of the players and their county. They would justify their junkets as “supporting a local lad” or some other trite shite, and those who would look askance at their larceny would be denounced as party-pooping begrudgers.

 I believe that the goal scored by Thierry Henry, in spite of handling the ball, should be looked at in an Irish context. Here was the committed, talented team who had played their hearts out for ages, and who were much better than their opponents one of whom scored a decisive goal even though this violated the rules. These ought to have been observed and enforced by the referee – that’s what he’s there for, but instead he didn’t notice the fault because he was looking the other way, or had his head up his arse, or because he was related to the wrong-doer, or maybe because he was at mass… Whatever the reason, the result stands in defiance of the rules and the spirit of fair play and justice which inspired them. In this regard I see the events of last night as a metaphor for so much of what goes on in contemporary Ireland.

Hey Bobby, what's the French for 'cute hoor'?

Last Sunday, November 15^th, we attended a get-together for that maligned and permanent element in Co. Cavan, the blow-in, organised in the Railway Station in Belturbet. This gave various organisations and clubs in the town an opportunity to alert people to their existence. The atmosphere throughout was pleasant, relaxed and enjoyable and tea, coffee, sandwiches and the ubiquitous buns were served in copious and delicious quantities. There was even a cake. Music was provided by the stunningly talented but modest Cormac McCann, as well as by a group of young musicians and choristers.

 Amongst those to speak was my good friend George Morrissey. What George does not know about the history of Belturbet would fit into the far corner of the cheapest denomination of postage stamp. In his usual, engaging way he told of the act of phoenix-like resurrection which saw the present Railway Station complex rise from dereliction and decay. He mentioned how the funding for the vital FAS scheme which had done so much work there, had been ended. I couldn’t help wondering whether this had been to help pay for Roddy Molloy’s First-Class tickets. John Scott introduced those attending to the Bowls Club of whose existence I’m delighted to hear. Crown Green bowls is one of those games for gentlemen (which does not exclude ladies) which seems to breathe a spirit of decency and fair play, combined with consummate skill. It is a game with a long and distinguished history; we all know about Francis Drake’s fondness for it. Early eighteenth-century Dublin had many bowling greens, some of which were laid out by the unfortunate man who took on the thankless task of remodelling St Stephen’s Green in Dublin in 1708. The Reverend Stephen Clarke, the recently-appointed Church of Ireland incumbent also spoke, as did people from groups representing Active Age and the scouts.

 On my arrival I was delighted to meet my good friend Canon Corrigan. We exchanged how we were both blow-ins of a sort in Belturbet, and he made the very important point that it is often the outsider who is able to realise a location’s possibilities and assets, which local people, maybe through that contempt-generating quality of familiarity, all too easily overlook. I think the capacity of welcoming and embracing people from outside has been one of Belturbet’s greatest strengths throughout its history.

A network of local branch libraries is a sine qua non of any democratic society, including Ireland. In areas where distances are long, library services cannot be concentrated in central locations without running the risk of turning areas in the littoral into emotional deserts. These branch libraries can be adjuncts of the central county libraries, providing the usual lending services and browsing facilities, while also being catalysts of activity in areas like local history and the arts. To this end the role of branch libraries, such as that in Belturbet, ought to be expanded, not curtailed.  What’s more branch libraries are used on a daily basis. They do not occupy inaccessible perches.

Education is a life-long process; it ought never to be left solely to schools, and indeed it is often only after the pupil leaves school that he or she starts to learn effectively. Local libraries offer a venue for people of all age groups to acquire knowledge and confidence. Increasingly, libraries have collections of language-learning facilities as well as films on DVD available for loan. In this way people recognise that libraries can be fun places, as closely bound up with recreation as with education. Running costs can be defrayed through a small annual subscription.

We must never forget that knowledge is power, no matter how it is acquired. It is also seen by some as dangerous – no more so than when it is acquired informally, outside of conventional channels of education. The present government talks much about “the smart economy”, but in reality this is mere froth and it would be scared shitless of a smart populace. In fact those who hold power seek to disempower people and so the acquisition of knowledge is curtailed and made more difficult. It is within this context that the closure of branch libraries must be viewed. Of course they pursue their policies through their storm-=troopers in local government who loyally pursue their agendas. They are always avidly assisted by local, democratically-elected councillors. In the 1950s a local politician in Cavan (whose identity I have diplomatically forgotten) once supported a cut in library funding on the grounds that the “the people know too much already.”

The staff of Cavan County Council are my dear friends. I think it is a backhanded compliment to their skills and professionalism, and to the fact that they hold their jobs on merit, that the library services are being threatened. If the library staff had been colonised by the sons, daughters, relatives and well-wishers of councillors and council employees, it would be far better protected against cutbacks in its staff and would be able to waste money like confetti, contemptuous of any need to provide a service to the public                        

I am conscious that my defence of Belturbet library may actually damage the campaign being pursued by those wishing to maintain it.  I’m not paranoid, I assure my readers, but there are a small handful of people at one time or another employed by Cavan County Council (whom I’ve never met) who have a propensity to lie about me, circulate vile rumours about me, undermine my activities and air brush me out of areas of Cavan life as if I had never existed. It is a reflection of the society we inhabit that such people, alas, have the ears of powerful people.  I am also too sadly aware that some of the above may be deliberated and mischievously misquoted, or quoted out of context, or otherwise distorted by some in the pursuit of their nasty ends.

I seldom listen to the radio these days – certainly not RTE. BBC Radio Four are running a series whereby they look back, day-by-day, on the events of that monumental year 1989. This week the fall of the3 Berlin Wall was covered. When I was reminded of that night, the tears that ran down my face then coursed over my cheeks once more. I remember feeling like Wordsworth: Bliss was it that night to be alive, and when I saw the people from Ost Berlin flooding through Checkpoint Chatlie, that symbol of repression with which I had grown up, the bars of Beethoven’s Fidelio flowed through my ears. This WAS history, and I longed to be in Berlin, not in this accursed place working on a doctorate on a subject which only interested me sometimes, but which I thought would be my passport out of misery. That night I was filled with so much hope, both for the world and for myself…

 Twenty years’ on, and I am still in misery and want, even though I got the doctorate. So many of the hopes of that night were short-changed. I look around me here in this accursed country and I see a government made up of cowards, crooks, mediocrities and liars. What’s more they’re ugly; they seem like the front-men and front-women for a criminal organisation.  My dear mother was with me that night in 1989, while my darling sister Anita was still alive too. What’s more I could still walk with ease. So, please don’t hate me if I express a wish to be back in November 1989: at least I still had my dreams.

As a recipient of a means-tested benefit I am looking forward to having the miserable pittance on which I survive cut still further. And now I learn that the minister for Health plans to introduce a per item prescription charge for medical cards. Since my diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis I have been prescribed a Beta-Inferon preparation which so far has regulated, though not eliminated, relapses. But I am going to be penalised. This government, not content with spitting in my face by reducing my blind pension, seeks to harass me and many others. Does the minister think that I am misusing the medicines I receive? In that it improves my quality of life and keeps me alive, I suppose I am misusing them according to her perverted lights. The bitch really has a brass neck to pontificate on such a subject. The really frustrating thing is that thyi9s prescription charge will help to pay for the minister’s five-star champagne lifestyle as well as pay the salaries of some HSE employees so that they can continue their criminal activities.

 Where might I ask are the Unions? Are they so selfishly myopic? Are they only interested in the lot of their members? And as for the Party of Slime who sit at the cabinet table with these bastards they have shown themselves up for what they are.

 This criminal government should be – must be – overthrown BY ANY MEANS – before it can do any more harm to the Irish people.

 I suppose I can expect a visit from the Gardai for the above statement – maybe at 1,30 in the morning.

 On Monday November 8^th, I was listening to RTE’s “Drive Time” show, where a list of the various benefits to which people in the public services were entitled was broadcast. During a break the presenter read out some text messages. One was from a social welfare employee called Kay. She expressed her displeasure at facing a pay cut, and felt that resources should be given to her department, especially in the area of countering that great evil Social Welfare Fraud. “Kay” was perturbed about the way in which many claims for the dole were being fast-tracked. To her mind, this was allowing no end of fraudulent claims to get through. (Listening between the lines “Kay” was probably irate at payments to “fuckingforeigners”, “black bastars”” and other children of a lesser god.) She ended by describing the injustice of having to take a pay cut while giving out money to people who don’t deserve it.

 Does “Kay” not read the papers or listen to the news? We are living through an economic slump. Businesses and factories are closing on a daily basis, throwing thousands of people onto the dole. These people have worked in the private sector, and have had to face the ups and downs of the free enterprise system, unlike “Kay” and her colleagues in the public service, with their lifetime-guaranteed jobs. In short the days of the lad doing a nixer with the labour are gone. There are no jobs, not even part time. The same is true in Northern Ireland and the UK. I image that “Kay” is “no chicken”; she is obviously stuck in a 1980s time-warp dominated by Thatcherite-Tebbittite notions of the “work shy” who should “get on their bike” In fact, here ideas are motivated by prejudice; pity any poor bastard whose payments have to be processed by such a person. Most of those who find themselves unemployed need money in a hurry, to pay the bills. They may have families to support. It is bad enough that they lose their jobs without having to face needless penury because the department of Social Welfare can’t organise payments quickly. If it were left to them they mightn’t get any payments for at least a year, and even then they would lose the information,

 The department of Social Welfare is one of the biggest spending parts of government, but perhaps uniquely is spends such a large

Come back Paddy Reilly to the Taj Mahal

proportion of its budget on trying to find excuses for clawing back the money it has already spent. It does this in pursuit of supposedly fraudulent recipients. No other department as far as I know, goes to such lengths to uncover fraud, even though the amounts are much larger. But then the main reason is that people who defraud say the department of the Environment are not poor people. Indeed they are usually very much a part of the establishment, at both local and national level. That’s how they’re able to get away with it.

 “Kay” is a very sad specimen of humanity, though my experience with the department of Social Welfare leads me to believe she is far from unique. Now if the government really wanted to do something about the public finances or curb public spending, they should, at the very least, shear “Kay”’s pay and allowance. They ought really to sack her and her ilk, but this government, made up of crooked cowards, hasn’t the balls to do that. If they were feeling generous they could send her on a long course of counselling that might help her deal with her paranoia and the clear issues she obviously entertains about her fellow human beings.

 But I think “Kay” should be applauded for her honesty. She has shown that all the hipe from her department about providing a service, and looking humanely on benefit recipients as clients worthy of common respect, is nothing but spin. Benefit recipients are still all “on the make” until such time as the department of Social Welfare’s inspectorate declares otherwise.   Such people are “living it up” at public expense, though I think they’d have to pursue multiple claims to come close to the pay and allowances of even the most junior clerical officer.

 Minister Hanafin must take responsibility for the snarling attitude of her employees, which seems to be so general that it must but the result of training. It’s bad enough being poor, without having to put up with the prejudice of pen-pushers.

 On Monday November 8^th, I was listening to RTE’s “Drive Time” show, where a list of the various benefits to which people in the public services were entitled was broadcast. During a break the presenter read out some text messages. One was from a social welfare employee called Kay. She expressed her displeasure at facing a pay cut, and felt that resources should be given to her department, especially in the area of countering that great evil Social Welfare Fraud. “Kay” was perturbed about the way in which many claims for the dole were being fast-tracked. To her mind, this was allowing no end of fraudulent claims to get through. (Listening between the lines “Kay” was probably irate at payments to “fuckingforeigners”, “black bastars”” and other children of a lesser god.) She ended by describing the injustice of having to take a pay cut while giving out money to people who don’t deserve it.

 Does “Kay” not read the papers or listen to the news? We are living through an economic slump. Businesses and factories are closing on a daily basis, throwing thousands of people onto the dole. These people have worked in the private sector, and have had to face the ups and downs of the free enterprise system, unlike “Kay” and her colleagues in the public service, with their lifetime-guaranteed jobs. In short the days of the lad doing a nixer with the labour are gone. There are no jobs, not even part time. The same is true in Northern Ireland and the UK. I image that “Kay” is “no chicken”; she is obviously stuck in a 1980s time-warp dominated by Thatcherite-Tebbittite notions of the “work shy” who should “get on their bike” In fact, here ideas are motivated by prejudice; pity any poor bastard whose payments have to be processed by such a person. Most of those who find themselves unemployed need money in a hurry, to pay the bills. They may have families to support. It is bad enough that they lose their jobs without having to face needless penury because the department of Social Welfare can’t organise payments quickly. If it were left to them they mightn’t get any payments for at least a year, and even then they would lose the information,

 The department of Social Welfare is one of the biggest spending parts of government, but perhaps uniquely is spends such a large proportion of its budget on trying to find excuses for clawing back the money it has already spent. It does this in pursuit of supposedly fraudulent recipients. No other department as far as I know, goes to such lengths to uncover fraud, even though the amounts are much larger. But then the main reason is that people who defraud say the department of the Environment are not poor people. Indeed they are usually very much a part of the establishment, at both local and national level. That’s how they’re able to get away with it.

 “Kay” is a very sad specimen of humanity, though my experience with the department of Social Welfare leads me to believe she is far from unique. Now if the government really wanted to do something about the public finances or curb public spending, they should, at the very least, shear “Kay”’s pay and allowance. They ought really to sack her and her ilk, but this government, made up of crooked cowards, hasn’t the balls to do that. If they were feeling generous they could send her on a long course of counselling that might help her deal with her paranoia and the clear issues she obviously entertains about her fellow human beings.

 But I think “Kay” should be applauded for her honesty. She has shown that all the hipe from her department about providing a service, and looking humanely on benefit recipients as clients worthy of common respect, is nothing but spin. Benefit recipients are still all “on the make” until such time as the department of Social Welfare’s inspectorate declares otherwise.   Such people are “living it up” at public expense, though I think they’d have to pursue multiple claims to come close to the pay and allowances of even the most junior clerical officer.

 Minister Hanafin must take responsibility for the snarling attitude of her employees, which seems to be so general that it must but

Two-faced

 the result of training. It’s bad enough being poor, without having to put up with the prejudice of pen-pushers.

The decision to withhold the Christmas bonus, combined with Cowen’s arrogant defence of this shameful act, is not just a slap in the face to Ireland’s pensioners; it is a veritable spit in the face from a group of criminal reprobates.

 This bonus was not much, but for hundreds and thousands of people who had worked hard all their lives it was “a little something” at Christmas, allowing them to enjoy some small luxury. Maybe they were able to spoil a grandchild etc. Whatever it was, it was in many ways more valuable than the cash mount. It was truly the thought that counts.

 So it is hardly surprising that its suspension should have found favour with economists who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

 Most pensioners Christmases will be a little bleaker and blacker without the bonus, in contrast to Ireland’s government, its ministers and employees. The Christmas Party has long been the highlight of the year from every branch of the public service at both local and national level, from the local Health Service Executive branch right up to the minister’s office. No member of the public may have the cheek to look for any public servant while they are preening themselves, and it goes without saying that members of the public will look for many of those attending in vain in the days following. This is a time of conspicuous consumption and equally conspicuous bad taste, when no expense is spared on the booze. At local government level the local Gardai know that it is more than their jobs are worth to haul anyone returning from such parties for drink driving offences.

 Most of these bacchanalian excesses are picked up by that smelly, amorphous group whom public servants hate – The Public. The Christmas Party is therefore a cracker!

Monkeyman Cowen has once again shown himself to be the miserable pathetic Scrooge. His reply to Gilmore’s question was the

Better looking than An Taoisech = and more decent

long-winded and rambling equivalent of “Baah Humbug|”

 What a pity there isn’t a general election in the offing. I remember the time when Charlie McCreevy paid the Christmas bonus early in a vain attempt to win votes. I was in Dublin at the time and I remember you couldn’t get into a pub.

 We are being ruled by a pack of dishonest, lying criminals. Worse, they seem to be acting like hostages to a group of unseen eminences grises in the Department of Finance and the international finance community. In fact, they are showing advanced signs of suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome, where captives become partisans of the aims and objectives of their captors. The aims of those holding our government hostage are simply to excavate yet deeper the chasm between the haves and have-nots, and to consolidate the super-rich in possession of their wealth. It has nothing to do with economics and any attempt to say it has is purely mendacious. Cowen and his cronies continue to spin this lie about a drop in the price of consumer goods. This is based on data provided by the Central Statistics Office, a group in need of a long-overdue reality check. A basket of basic items deemed just satisfactory for nutrition and human health is aggregated. This may be going down, but the items in the basket do not correspond to many people’s ideal of a worthwhile and meaningful lifestyle. The choice of a more realistic basket would indicate that prices are going up. But what Cowen and his cronies are saying is that poorer people must be forced to choose the most basic items – they, as poor people, have no right to any other aspiration.  This has been termed the “collard greens” syndrome, because traditionally it was believed that the aforementioned brassicas were a prominent part of Negro diet in the US. Consequently, as many poor people in the US are black, collard greens were part of the basket of items on which consumer prices were based, even though many poor people wouldn’t touch them, preferring other more flavoursome vegetables.

 It is unjust that the fates of hundreds and thousands of people should be based on the ill-informed decisions of a group of statisticians.

Readers of the above restaurant review will see the high esteem in which I hold the restaurant and staff of the Radison – SAS hotel

A place where the ordinary people of Ireland are still unwelcome

at Farnham – but that’s as far as my admiration goes.

 It seems to me absurd that motorists cannot drive their vehicles to within a comfortable distance of the hotel. Instead they must hand over the keys of their vehicle to valets who will park them out of sight and at some considerable distance away. When they wish to leave the hotel, their keys must then be handed to another valet who will fetch their car. The employment of a small army of valets must add considerably to the running costs of the hotel – costs which are then passed on to guests. But then I suppose such a luxury hotel caters for people who aren’t worried about such trivia as exorbitant prices.

 The main foyer is huge; dominated by classical columns, a polished floor and a rather incongruous table that could do duty for a Séance or some attempt to get in touch with “the other side”. It is ringed by a number of seats and smaller tables, set back in little alcoves. Indeed were they concealed by curtains they would make excellent confessionals. But it does nothing to take away from the brooding and chilly atmosphere of this foyer. This is fine when filled with milling crowds, but when filled even with a few people the general atmosphere is of the ticket hall of a large continental railway station after the last train has left. The only people you expect to see are badly dressed, cigarette-touting scavengers and sweepers, yet even they are absent from the SAS Radisson hotel.

 The hotel contains a number of truly ridiculous trinkets, one being a Steinway Grand Piano. As someone who loves Chopin I would never call a piano useless, except when it carries a sign forbidding anyone to play it or touch its keys. In Florencecourt House they have a beautiful original fortepiano, dating from the look of it to c. 1800. It would be outrageous for anyone to attempt to play such an instrument, but a Steinway Grand Piano, which looks quite modern and in generally good shape, to be thus left outside of the possibility of use, is bizarre. What would our Minister for Health, Mary Hernia, who is known for her gargantuan appetites for food, five-star hotels and piano players make of this?

 I an assured by guests that they find the hotel comfortable, and I have no reason to doubt this. On my admittedly few visits there I have found the hotel to have a very cold and somewhat austere atmosphere. In the fine Botanical Restaurant one’s attention is grabbed by the excellence of the food, which is just as well as there is little to look at. In the evenings one sees through the windows a line of bright, regularly spaced bright lights which, for some reason, put me in mind of the illuminations around a high security prison.

 As most people know I am confined to a wheelchair. In order to gain access to the second floor of the hotel I must use a lift – nothing strange about that. In the Radisson Hotel the lift is concealed by a length of full-length curtain down a rather dimly-lit, and dare I say creepy corridor. It’s a bit like one of those self-service ‘photo boots. The lift is quite small and you don’t operate it by merely pressing the number of your desired floor but by continuously holding some button or dead-man’s-handle device. Not surprisingly I have re-christened the lift as The TARDIS. And then when you eventually arrive at your floor there is no smooth egress from the lift, as you have to pass over a rather annoying lip. It seems obvious to me that the provision of access for the disabled in the hotel was an embarrassing after-thought, a strange situation considering that one of its operators is the Scandinavian Airline System, but then they’re operating in Ireland where is has long been accepted by the Powers-That-Be that the disabled could never afford to go near a five-star hotel.

 My most recent visit there was as a guest of my dear and most generous friend, Joseph Donohoe of California. Joe is a really gifted man and an engaging conversationalist. He said, on one occasion, “I’m sure you could do something for the hotel”, knowing of course that my gifts extend far beyond that of the mere historian. I thus told him how, it must be ten years’ ago, I had received a telephone call from the then owner, Mr Roy McCabe, whom I found to be a most accessible individual. He invited me to go out to Farnham to see what they were doing there, and he undertook to be my guide. We finished are most amiable conversation with the undertaking that he would contact me shortly to firm up a date and a time for my visit… I have never heard from him since, and knowing him to be a busy man of business I did not contact him. I found the manner in which I was apparently dropped, and deemed unworthy of any further communication puzzling, though sadly far from unprecedented. Had someone, somewhere poured poison into Mr McCabe’s ears about me? I do hope not, but I would not be surprised if this had happened, though people should be given an opportunity to defend themselves against calumny and calumniators. You know, just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not all out to get you.

 Like most people in Co. Cavan I have nothing but hatred and contempt for the Maxwells, the previous owners of Farnham House, who were a group of grasping hypocritical tyrants. They were descendants of mongrel foxes from south of Glasgow who unceremoniously grabbed land from not only the native Irish but from their fellow settlers.

 The Maxwells, upon their elevation to the Irish peerage inn 1756, adopted the title “Barons Farnham” supposedly after their place of residence in Co. Cavan. Farnham sounded ever so genteel – far better than the place-name Fernan or Farnan, shown on the original early Seventeenth century Plantation maps, signifying a pave where alders grew. (This was first pointed out by the late Oliver Davies in the 1940s, and he may not have been the first to know it.)

 Their involvement with the Anglican Church certainly did the latter institution no favours. They took a leading role in the so-called Second Reformation of the 1820s, when many gullible people in England were fleeced into providing large sums of money to promote evangelical movements in Ireland to win the Irish peasantry from the “darkness of Popish obscurantism”. Apart from a few converts, this campaign was a fiasco. One of the means used to win converts was the provision of food to the starving and malnourished, most of whom gladly took the offered provisions in return for a very brief conversion to Protestantism, but once they had consumed enough food they returned to the religious practices of their birth. Their preference for Protestants, to fill jobs in the house and on their estate, attained almost farcical proportions. I have noted before how the Lord Farnham of the late nineteenth century was urged to fill posts on his estate with “English Protestants”. A policy of employing only Protestants might have been defensible to a certain extent; so too might have been the opinion that the best people to employ for certain tasks were Englishmen, as they had greater knowledge and experience in the performance of some tasks; but to seek only “English Protestants” was absurd. Not only would it have excluded the composer of “Land of Hope and Glory” – sir Edward Elgar, a close friend of King Edward VII, and an English Catholic – but it showed that the Farnhams’ anti-Catholic bigotry would have left them with no qualms whatsoever about employing the greatest English jailbirds, many of whom had been baptised and brought up in the Church of England.

 But their religiosity did not extend to all areas of human activity. Folklore still current, though not recorded by the Irish Folklore Commission, tells the tale of the “Human Hunts” enacted at Farnham. Local girls were stripped and hounds set upon them. They were pursued through the Farnham House demesne grounds and some managed to gain sanctuary in the grounds’ many trees. They were only liberated from their sylvan refuges by some of the young “gentlemen” staying at the house who would carry them away from the fangs of the baying hounds on horseback – though in return for unspecified favours. Perhaps the management of the hotel might seek to stage a re-enactment of the Human Hunt one of these days, while the management of Cavan County Museum might care to dwell that the perpetrators and participants in such activities are probably among the portraits of the Farnhams they hold, so gladly donated to them by a former Lady Farnham. (It might be interesting for some of the ordinary inhabitants of the Farnham area to look at these portraits, and see how frequently the features reproduced could be discerned amongst their ordinary neighbours.)