Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

The news that public money was spent on tickets to a Robbie Williams concert is just one more example of the grab culture that

Maybe Roddy fancied him

predominates here. Don’t ask “Is it right or wrong?” only “Can I?” The fact that minister Mary Coughlan defended it shows that she is just another rotting, yes rotting member of the cabinet. I used to think that Mary Coughlan was, well, not quite as bad as the rest of them. I think of the work she is supposed to have done with groups like Forfas and the National Competitiveness Council. Now she’s just as big a WHORE as the other people called Mary at cabinet level. Truth of the old Italian proverb: Chi va con lo zoppo impara zoppicare.” Who walks with the lame learns to limp, or, if you lie down with dogs you’ll get up scratching.

 There is another aspect of this affair that is reprehensible. Last time I looked Robbie Williams was a British pop star. If they had to squander money on a concert why couldn’t they have gone to an Irish gig? Daniel O’Donnell, Mary Black, Foster & Allen?  Oh no, Croppy Lies Down! If the tickets had been to an Irish act, like Daniel (who’s a constituent of hers), the minister would have been able to say that the artists were a credit to the country, who gave employment and paid their taxes sometimes, and that the visit was part of a worthwhile attempt to showcase Irish talent.  Now this would never have happened under Albert Reynolds’ watch. Oh no. I still recall how the late Joe Dolan described Albert as “one of the daysenest fellas in the rack … the business”.

 I view the present government as a bad dream. I wish they’d pack up and fuck off. Of course, I see visions of them all piling into the government jet, which because it would be overloaded with their loot, not to mention Mary Harney herself, would loose altitude and crash, maybe over the Bog of Allen but in the taoiseach’s own constituency.

I am conscious that I devote far too much of my blog to horrible, shitty things like lying cabinet ministers and corrupt officials. I want to make amends by informing my readers of the updated website of my dear friend, the talented artist Maria Ginala. It is truly beautiful and heart-warming. http://fainomenon.webs.com/

Few people can have been left unmoved by the pictures of grief coming from Haiti. As if life wasn’t unfair enough to its people to be visited by an earthquake that may have killed quarter of a million people is beyond the unjust. Something that is equally unjust is that Haiti owes a consortium of international banks over $1 billion, some of it left over what the Duvalier family dictatorship. This has not been cancelled, so while the international community have made great efforts to rush aid and relief workers to Haiti, that country has to continue to repay money to mega-rich financial institutions, to ensure their management echelons have enough money to spend on their private jets, their five-star resorts and their ten gran a night prostitutes.

 This unjust debt can and should be cancelled. A petition has been launched to bring pressure to bear on the finance ministers of the G7 to take such a move at the next G7 meeting scheduled for Canada next week. Details can be found at avaz,org

A spokesman for a group of victims of clerical abuse has urged taoiseach Brian two-face Cowen to spend the money the government intended to devote to a monument to survivors on disaster relief in Haiti. I am entirely in agreement.

 I am not a big fan of monuments, plaques, statues what have you. For me they are associated with authoritarian regimes that want

Someone to watch over me

to glorify themselves. One thinks of the way in which El Caudillo littered Spain with statues of himself, or of the gargantuan and hideous examples of bad taste associated with the bizarre personality cult of Saparmurad Niyazov in Turkmenistan, culminating in a larger-than-life statue of Niyazov which would turn in an orbit every twenty-four hours, topped with a strobe light to shine into different areas of Ashghabat, Turkmenistan’s capital.

 I think the government’s commitment to such a plan demonstrates their bad faith towards survivors. They don’t give a damn about them, but such a project would be a nice little money=spinner for the boys and girls. There would have to be a committee, with a token representation from survivors’ groups, but made up primarily by higher civil servants, politicians and their relatives, all of whom would get nice expenses. Room might be found for the Arts consultant who was the minister’s brother who was paid by the taxpayer to go around the country telling the local arts officers what they should be doing. And then there would be an “open and fair” competition for the design which, once again, would be awarded to the artist or sculptor of the moment. But finally, what about the wording? Cowen has insinuated that the monument is an act of supplication from the people of Ireland to abuse victims. The ordinary people of Ireland need not ask the forgiveness of survivors – they weren’t the ones doing the abusing or covering it up. The people who should be on their knees are the Catholic hierarchy and leaders of religious groups, as well as those members of the laity who helped them up in it, namely the higher civil servants, health board officials, members of the judiciary and police force and members of certain Catholic lay groups which monopolised the upper echelons of Irish society. And let us not forget certain right-wing politicians, some of whom were members of Brian Cowen’s own party and were fathers of serving ministers, upon whom the Catholic hierarchy could depend to parrot their opinions and on occasions embellish them. They had a stranglehold over Irish life, having erected an impenetrable monolith which is only now beginning to crack but which still retains its vigour in certain areas.  These were the antichrists, the devils disguised in soutanes and collars who should beg on their bellies for forgiveness and what’s more any resources they have (which one suspects are considerable) should be taken from them.

 Let me end by quoting the Roman poet Horace.

 Exegi monyumentum aere perennius

Regalique situ pyrammidum altius

Quod non imber edax, non Aquillo impotens

Posit dirvere …

That’s your actual Latin that is, and so lest Cowen or his goons read it, I should translate

I have built a monument longer lasting than bronze

And taller than the royal site of the pyramids

Which no hungry showers or impotent north wind

Can destroy…

I’d like this to be my epitaphs, though I don’t intend to have a ταφος on which it can be inscribed.

Northern Ireland which seemed for so long to be going somewhere, now seems on the verge of relapsing into the dark, though for some people comfortable days of the past. 

 Among the protagonists is the chief minister, a cuckold, a man who claimed to be unaware that his wife was having a relationship with a boy forty years’ her junior, for which she was paying handsomely – though with other people’s money. Amongst his cabinet colleagues are Sammy Wilson, living proof that sectarianism has transferred into racism, who also does not believe in man-made climate change. And then there is another minister who is a creationist, who rejects evolution. In most civilised nations such “colourful” souls would be left in Flat Earth Corner. And the whole power-sharing regime could be brought down by one side’s determination to perverse the rights of a religiously exclusive, male only clique to march through areas where they’re not wanted wearing bank manager outfits.

 The chances for a successful resolution have not been helped by the involvement of outsiders, especially the Irish taoiseach Brian monkeyman Cowen, an individual who cannot be trusted and who talks out of both sides of his mouth.

 So much also centres on policing and justice. The PSNI has made great strides to become a worthy professional police force, enjoying the respect of all. But the flat earthers aren’t happy with this. They want a return to the good old days of the B-Specials, with a proper police force who could be trusted to burn Catholics and undesirables out of their homes.

 And then there is the prospect of a “grand coalition” between the UUP and the flat earthers, and worse still of a tie-up at Westminster between Big Orange and the Tories. David Cameron’s attempts to lay to sleep the ghost of Thatcherism would seem mere spin if he were to ally himself with such intractable bigots.

The weather forecast for the weekend is giving snow showers. I want to be among the first that, no matter what comes out of the sky, it is NOT the fault of minister for Transport Noel Dempsey. He has probably heard the weather forecast. Now he doesn’t like the cold so I wonder has he anything planned like a trip to Australia to see the brother?

The National Council for the Blind of Ireland (NCBI) is the largest voluntary organisation working on behalf of the blind and partially-sighted in Ireland. It has helped, I am sure, thousands of blind and partially-sighted people over the years and is no doubt continuing to do so. However, because it relies on workers in various localities, whose experience of dealing with the blind varies considerably, I feel that its work has been patchy. It has, with difficulty, shaken off well-entrenched “Victorian” attitudes towards disability.

I beg leave of my readers to share my own experiences of the NCBI. Growing up in Cavan I must admit I felt that the NCBI treated me as something of a freak. My ambitions to better myself were tolerated as a fad which I would work myself out of, once I discovered that no matter how hard I worked I could never hope to aspire to be treated equally.

In 1988 I had a serious confrontation with the government when the Department of Social Welfare tried to throttle my attempts to study for a higher degree in Trinity College Dublin. I eventually won, but I had to make sure the NCBI took no part in my case, as it was manifest from early on that their support would have been given to the other side and against me. An NCBI official decried how unreasonable I was and then screamed at me that I was fighting “the law of the land.” I wanted to live independently in Dublin, something I achieved, though at a financial cost. The same NCBI person asked me why I’d never sought accommodation in a blind hostel.

When I came back to Cavan I was introduced to the NCBI’s then case worker in the area, Ms Bernie Rawls. We got on like a house on fire. For one thing Bernie treated me like an equal and never looked down on me. She was of huge assistance in getting me specialist software and computer hardware, as well as being a constant source of advice and friendship. Sadly, Bernie resigned from her post, and in her final letter to me she told me her NCBI replacement would be in touch with me. This was more than five years’ ago, and no one has contacted me since.

            … To be continued

On September 15^th 2009 I received a letter from the National Council of the Blind outlining the work of their very worthwhile EYE CAN program. The letter was accompanied with a request for a monthly payment towards it. It goes without saying that this was, in normal times, a worthy cause, but I felt that such a request was slightly inappropriate. Those in receipt of the non-contributory blind pension occupy a position astride the poverty line, and there are more than enough calls upon our limited income. What was more everyone knew that the aforementioned blind pension was facing a cut in line with the evil prescriptions of the McCarthy report.

 I was anxious to explain the position I was in and why I, and most other blind pension recipients, would have been unable to contribute to the EYE CAN program, no matter how much they wanted to.  I also wanted to find out what the NCBI was doing about the prospect of benefit cuts. Had it made a submission to the government? Could blind pension recipients help? Could they, for example, lobby their local politicians?

 The letter I received had been sent in the name of the NCBI’s director Des Kenny.  There were no contact details, such as an e-mail address. However, I eventually found a way of sending a letter to Des via e-mail. I did so in late September 2009 and I have never received a reply. 

 I subsequently found out that the National Council for the Blind had indeed made a pre budget submission, but without any involvement from those poor wretches whom it represents. This submission was, I feel, not quite as strident or rigorous as was necessary, and I take the liberty of reproducing a paragraph of it here.

      “The report by the Commission on Taxation recommended that the Blind Person’s
        Tax Credit be discontinued, in favour of a direct payment. NCBI broadly
       agrees with this recommendation as the Blind Person’s Tax Credit currently
       only benefits people in employment. However, NCBI would like to be involved
       in the consultation around what this direct payment should be before giving
       our full backing to this decision.”

 The NCBI’s Communications Officer, Ms. Fionnuala Murphy, added

        “These recommendations are drawn up in conjunction with our community-based staff, who have regular contact with people      who are blind or vision impaired and keep themselves up to date on the issues that people face in their daily lives.”

 Let me repeat, nobody from the NCBI has been in contact with me for years. Nobody can say I’m a shrinking violet when it comes to expressing how I feel.

 For one thing, I would have refused to even engage in a budget based on the recommendations of Colm McCarthy. This was an unoriginal and dishonest right-wing blue-print for rolling back government involvement in the economy. But such churlishness would have been pooh-poohed by some as outrageous behaviour towards people who pretend to no more about things than I do. And then people like government ministers, senior civil servants and economists might have been in a better position to make donations to things like the EYE CAN project, and their generosity should not be met with ingratitude.  But would a more strident, dare I say macho stance towards the McCarthy recommendations have mattered? They were followed almost to the letter.

 I haven’t heard of the response (if any) by the NCBI to the cut in the blind pension benefit. It may have occurred, but fell below the news radar. In any case, not everything that happens in this country gets reported, no matter how news worthy it is. Another name for it is censorship. I somehow doubt that there response has been as robust as mine, as when I call Minister Hanafin a liar, a name to which she is more than entitled. Maybe there are those who have been conned into believing that if they’re nice to Minister Mary she won’t cut the blind pension in the next budget, or indeed might augment it by a few euro – that is, if Mary Hanafin is still a minister at the next budget. Her involvement with blind charities in the past is well known, and she certainly publicised it in her attempts to gin election to, amongst other bodies, Fianna Fail’s so-called Committee of Fifteen.

 I noticed that the attempts of some blind and partially-sighted people to protest against the cutbacks were met with frowns of disapproval by those who said such protests would achieve nothing, that the government no matter how evil or corrupt it might be, is all powerful and that the blind and partially sighted are pretty much on society’s bottom rung. But the biggest elephant can be driven mad by the smallest flea. As Dolores Ibarruri (La Passionaria) once said, it’s better to die on your feet than live on your knees.

I have to admit that the cut in my Blind pension, compounded by the disgraceful way in which the minister for social affairs has lied about it, has left me reeling. My self confidence has taken a knock. I certainly feel far more uncertain about myself.

 I’m nearly forty-five, an age at which many people take stock of their lives. I’ve achieved much, and done a lot I can be proud of, but in purely financial and material terms I am no better off than I was when I was 18. My sight seems to be holding its own, but I have been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a disease of the nervous system which will get steadily worse (unless some miracle cure is discovered). My medication has succeeded in slowing down and ironing out the degree of relapse, but I am realistic enough to know that eventually I face complete paralysis maybe in the medium term. But the Irish government has so far responded to me not by giving me more but by taking away the little it gives, so that I anticipate in the coming years the prospects of being a penniless and helpless cripple, unable to work, indeed unable to do anything for myself. I will probably be housed, if I’m lucky, in a home where I’ll be the recipient of the mixture of care and indifference such places provide. Of course I will be looked down upon , and treated with condescension.

 This is not the life I had planned out for myself. I have never considered myself imbued with extraordinary intelligence, but I always worked hard at education. This was for a very simple reason. I didn’t want to live in the twilight world of a cripple. No, I wanted to contribute fully to the world around me and earn adequate amounts of money; I knew it would be tough with my sight problem, so I thought that if I have grades and qualifications of a higher level than other people it will force society and prospective employees to give me a chance and treat me as an equal. How naïve I was! In all my hard work in education I was only fashioning a rod with which others could beat me.

 In Ireland disabled people have very few rights in employment. All the cards are held by the employer. If he or she has the slightest hunch that a disabled person will not be able to do a job they are perfectly entitled to sack the disabled person, or, as happens fare more often, not give the disabled person a job at all. I was not considered for a job because I was “not a driver and able to get around,” even though the job was not that of a chauffeur. I was very well qualified for the job in question, and I was then intended to do much of the work the successful candidate couldn’t do, but for a far lower wage than he received.

 But those disabled people who are in employment are made to feel that they are lucky. Certainly they are in a minority. One of the reasons often put forward for the higher level of unemployment amongst disabled people is lack of skills. This may be true, but dare I say again look at me. I have a PhD, as well as diplomas in proofreading, copy editing and public relations. I have a knowledge of over a dozen European languages, as well as a keen interest in areas like management studies and world trade. Am I any better off? I know I should have paid more attention to scientific and technological subjects, but I honestly feel that I would be equally “unemployable” in the minds of many employers if I had a Masters degree in information technology. I have made mistakes in life, but none of them are so serious that they must be punished by a life sentence of poverty. And exclusion

 Many disabled people are confined to employment ghettoes, doing low=skilled and badly-paid work without prospects of promotion. This is especially true of the public service, and is a situation that has been allowed to continue with the connivance of the trades unions. These jobs are often entirely unsuitable for the particular disabled people who get them. In one local authority I know of a girl who is a university graduate who has a job in the motor tax department. She is partially sighted and finds the work tedious, as well as placing great strain and stress upon her eyes. In the local authority concerned there is only one disabled person employed in a higher, supervisory, role – and he is the son of a former TD and County Councillor (a man who, by the way, has worked tirelessly on behalf of his son, for which he deserves much praise).

 I like to see myself as standing up to evil but I’m no hero. Yest, I am afraid, because I see those in positions of power and influence as being very evil, wicked and cowardly people who cover their nefarious activities. They are as evil as the likes of Osama Bin Laden, but though evil they seldom have courage, certainly not the courage to do anything on their own bat. No, they much prefer to act in consort with others who are similarly stained by evil. In this they remind me of the phenomenon recognised by Hannah Arendt in the likes of Eichmann; an evil which is banal, not very spectacular, but which is nevertheless capable of causing great harm.

 I gain happiness from my marvellous partner, Rosie, our family of three dogs and five cats, my family and close friends. But I feel so vulnerable. The rulers of this country and their advisors are a group of cowardly, selfish, vicious and hypocritical thieves who are able to act with impunity. Nobody comments any more on how bad things have got, because they know they can’t change anything. The media seem to have gone into abeyance. An opinion poll hasn’t been published in months, and won’t be until it is favourable to the government. The country as a whole chugs along motivated by a culture of botch and mediocrity, which can be summed up in the phrase “Ah sure fuck it, it’s bollixed but it can’t be helped an’ anyway it’s not my job.” In many of our bigger towns and cities  there is an out-of-control crime wave, with tit-for-tat murders occurring nightly, while our police are scared shitless of any real crime because it would be a challenge to them to actually do something instead of riding around in their squad cars. Visits to my local hospital in Cavan are prohibited for the forseeable future, bceause of another outbreak of the “Winter VOmitting bug.”  This must make a stay in hospital more akin to a prison sentence for patients, whether they are on trolleys or are lucky enough to have a bed,  It’s a bit of a joke isn’t it; you go to a hospital to be cured, but in Ireland you may come out seriously ill.

For me personally the feeling of vulnerability is compounded by the knowledge that the various charities and voluntary organisations who supposedly campaign for the disabled have thrown in their lot with the powers that be and are far more interested in raising funds to keep their officials in employment.  Sometimes my fear at the situation leads to panic.

For as long as I can remember the non-contributory blind pension has been equivalent to the non-contributory old age pension. It

She's an ugly bitch - and that's no lie

has been governed by the same means test level. For blind pensioners to suffer a benefit cut, while old age pensioners were let unscathed, was not only unjust, but was discriminatory. Benefit recipients have suffered a cut because they are blind and partially sighted. It is also galling that blind pensioners should be included amongst others who have suffered similar cuts, such as unemployment benefit. Even at the height of the Celtic Tiger years, unemployment amongst the blind and partially sighted was much higher than amongst the “able-bodied.” But the ultimate insult came on the morning of December 23^rd, just before 8.39 am, when the minister for Social and Family affairs, Mary Hanafin, stated, not just once but twice on RTE’s Morning Ireland news program, that in the budge pensions had not been touched/ This was a clear, unambiguous lie and the minister is a liar. The interview was introduced with the painfully cringing pun that the minister was getting her teeth into Irish dentists – some teeth!! This stemmed from a shameful example of how the minister was being swayed by prejudice into believing that certain dentists were making claims to the dental health scheme for patients who had actually died – whether in the dentists’[s chairs was unclear. The minister could not back up this claim as it was based on anecdotal information –better known as prejudiced rumour, which had been fed to her by like-minded officials who knew how eagerly she would swallow it. It reminded me of Nikolai Gogol’s unfinished masterpiece Dead Souls.

Gogol

  But this does not take away from the fact that Mary Hanafin TD is a liar. I say this knowing that any action which shows up the minister to be a liar will no doubt be rewarded by me being investigate3d (routinely of course or perhaps as the result of an “anonymous” tip-off) for social welfare fraud. I have nothing to hide, but it would be demeaning to me to have to speak the truth, that I ham in receipt of no other source of income than the measly pittance of the non-contributory blind pension. Even though I have nothing to hide, and given the ambiguous attitude of the minister towards the truth (which must surely seep down through the department) it is probable that something might be manufactured against me, and that I would be found to be in receipt of wholly fictitious money. (The onus would be on me to prove my innocence, which I could do but do I need the hassle?)

 I might have been prepared to accept the benefit cut, but the realisation that it had been made by such a dishonest person as the minister who wished to lie rather own up to what she had done showed how morally and  ethically bankrupt she is. The decision was taken because Ms Hanafin, like her colleagues, believes herself so much more superior to the Irish people, especially those in receipt of social welfare benefits. They are hard workers, so they like people to believe, who are not dependant on handouts, but I never chose to be partially sighted, and I would always have preferred to have a proper job but none was ever offered to me. But I consider myself, and the vast majority of Irish people to be superior to her – we have something she obviously lacks: integrity. She likes to act in the persona of the schoolteacher, talking down to her class, but she has shown that she has far more in common with the playground bully.