Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

A view of the world from an Irish hole

Month: September, 2010

Featured

The meaning of life

I once was pretty

I abhor the taking of human life; it is so wonderful, so marvellous, so unique, so miraculous. Life must have a qualitative aspect though; it must always be more than a heart beat.

Consequently I see wars as evil, along with acts of terrorism and military rebellions. I think that there are only two occasions when the taking of a human life may, just may be excusable. One of them is self defence. The other is suicide. When somebody feels that they can no longer carry the burden of living, when they feel that their life has been consistently devalued, or if they believe that there is no one with whom they can confide, they ought not to be castigated for thinking of suicide. They should, nevertheless, be given every opportunity to see that there are positive alternatives and to help them appreciate their own self value.

Our obese and hypocritical minister for Health, Harney, is hosting a conference or some media circus about suicide. This is about as sincere as holding a symposium on over-eating. The hypocrisy towards suicide shown by this and previous governments is appalling. People with potential suicidal tendencies are told by means of cinema advertising that help is available is they ask for it, but if they do they discover that because so much was spent on the cinema advertisements cutbacks have had to be made, and they have to wait maybe six months for a referral. But this government sees people with suicidal tendencies as losers. They’re not valuable like the over-paid and greedy bankers in whose interests this government formulates policies. What’s more they’re obviously not “real men” who respond to life’s problems in traditional, time-honoured fashion by having a skin-full and going home and beating the sh*($ out of the wife. So it is any wonder that the provision of adequate mental health services holds a pretty low priority.

I know of one man with suicidal tendencies who was placed on a waiting list to see a psychotherapist. Some might say he was impatient or a would-be queue-jumper. Anyway while on the waiting list he hanged himself. The HSE no doubt catalogued him as among the “DNAs” or those who Do Not Appear for their appointments, and who are, like sick people in general, the cause of our health system’s problems – at least that what Harney probably thinks. The problem isn’t just one of lack of funds. The HSE has lost quite a number of very valuable and hard-working psychotherapists, some of who have taken early retirement, citing their frustration at being bullied by HSE “littler Hitlers” who are worried that they might be squandering too many resources that are in truth only theirs to squander. managers and officials.

I'm not married to Mary Harney

Even though I can’t stand Harney I wouldn’t encourage her to take her own life – though she should resign. First, she should lost a bit of weight – in fact quite a lot of weight. She’ll have to have any chance of making it through the second part of the treatment: attempting to pursue a decent lifestyle using only the pittance paid to a single person by the Department of Social Protection. I’d grant her that, even though technically her husband’s inflated income must be taken into consideration for assessment purposes, especially as he probably earns in a fortnight what most people on Social Welfare are expected to live on for a year. She would have to separate from Mr Harney (Brian isn’t it?) temporarily and live apart from him and any cash advances he might make to her would have to be assessed as “cash on hands” and therefore deducted from her benefits. The treatment should not be permanent and might last only a year: this should act as a wake-up call so that Mary Harney can taste the reality faced by many Irish people. She might very well say that she found the quality of life available perfectly adequate. The treatment would not have been a waste, as she would therefore see that she didn’t need the expensive crap like the five-star hotel suites, the first-class air travel or the en suite pianist. I would certainly class this as a result – if it’s adequate for her, it’s adequate for all her colleagues as well, plus al the senior honchos in the civil service and parastatal organisations. The savings could be considerable.

Leave a comment
Featured

9/11

We all know what happened on September 11th, 2001. But for the people of Chile the date has a different, though related resonance. It is the anniversary of the seizure of power by the military, working hand-in-glove with the American Central Intelligence Agency. This led to the unleashing of the Chilean military’s blood lust upon the country people, whom they were supposed to protect. 

President Salvador Allende

Riddle me this: surely the overthrow of a sovereign nation’s democratically elected government by that of another, using disaffected internal thugs simply because it didn’t like its economic and social policy; the murder of that country’s president (also democratically elected), as well as the killing, disappearance and torture of thousand of people, surely all these were acts of terrorism as heinous as the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York? George Bush St was a senior CIA operative at the time, though as for George W. Bush he was probably sizzled somewhere, and he probably didn’t know where Chile was anyway.

 The events of 9/11 were carried out by a small terrorist group, yet the events I have just outlined above were perpetrated on Chile in 1973 by the government of the United States. Chile’s greatest enemy was the then US president, “Tricky Dick” Nixon, a liar and a cheat – “there’ll be no whitewash at the White House.” !

 I sometimes think the US government’s attitude towards Al Qaeda stems not from moral revulsion or righteous outrage, but from plain jealousy. They are both, more or less in the same line of business, but Al Qaaeda  does it far more efficiently and cheaply, using fewer men and resources. If we ever find out how much Al Qaeda spent on the logistics and planning of 9/11, I think it will be shown that it was less than the cost of one day of George W. Bush’s “war on terrorism.

 Let us remember all the innocent victims of 9/11, both of 1973 and 2001.

Leave a comment
Featured

The poetry of Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda’s Cien Sonetos de Amor rank among other sonnets as those of Petrarch or Shakespeare. They are pillars of a literature

Matilde and Pablo

 of the world, timeless in their humanity. The breathless beauty with which they describe the changing aspects of Neruda’s love for his wife Matilde make each one a veritable kaleidoscope, a miniature in painted with words.

Poor Neruda died as the socialist experiments in Chile were being brutally snuffed out by the CIA-backed military. These events not only witnessed the murder of his hopes, but the physical murder of so many of his friends, such as President Salvador Allende and the musician and song writer Victotr Jara, not to mention the torture and imprisonment of many others/ Although he had not long to live the fascist military conducted a search of his home at Isla Negra, to which Neruda responded “You will find nothing here but poetry”. He died eleven days after the putsch led by the blood-stained monster Pinochet, a personification of wickedness with whom Mrs Thatcher sipped tea. Of course she yearned of being to deal with “lefties” with the same dispatch as Augusto Pinochet, but she was able to do it through manipulation of the media, the brainwashing of the British public and their transformation into senseless materialist morons, a process continued so adeptly by her spiritual heir Tony Blair.

Neruda’s One hundred Sonnets of Love are divided into the four parts of the day: manana, mediadia, tarde and noche. I translate here Sonnet XXIV.

Love, love, the clouds to the tower of the sky
climbed like triumphant washerwomen
And everything glowed in blue, all was a star:
The sea, the boat, the day were exiled together.

Come and sea the cherries of the water in constellation,
And the round kea of the fast universe.
Come and touch the fire of the instantaneous blue
Come before its petals are consumed.

There is no water but light, quantities, cluster,
Space opened by the virtues of the wind
Until liberating the last secrets of the foam. 

And between so many blues- heavenly, submerged
Our eyes are lost, divining with difficulty
The powers of the air, the keys under the sea.

 

Leave a comment
Featured

Homenaje a Alfonsina Storni, poeta de Argentina

Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938) is probably one of the finest Argentinean poers of the 20th century. Her verses moved through a variety of styles and themes. Towards the end of her all-too-short life she was rent by despair. Her dear friend, the Uruguayan writer Horacio Quiroga Fonteza killed himself ain February 1927 and then she was diagnosed with breast cancer. One October morning she left her home in Mar del Plata and went to a nearby beach where it is believed she walked into the waves until the all-encompassing sea overwhelmed her body. Some hours later her body was recovered.

 Her poem Squares and Angles is typical of her more modernist poetry. It is true to its title in being angular if not jagged. I give here my free translation of the original Spanish whose soft and tender beauty no translation can fully do justice to. On a less elevated note. I feel that it captured the spirit of the now defunct Celtic tiger” in Ireland, as well as its despair.

Squares and angles

Houses in rows, houses in rows, houses in rows,
Square, square, square.
Houses in rows
People already have square souls.
Ideas in rows.
And angles on their backs..
I myself shed a tear yesterday,
Good heavens, a square one.

Here is one of her last poems, maybe the last (apologies for the translation).

 I’m going to sleep

Teeth of flowers, cap of dew,
Hands of herbs, you slender wet nurse,
Hold ready for me the earthly sheets,
And the quilt of weeded moss.

I’m going to sleep my mother, put me to bed.
Put a light for me at the headboard,
A constellation, the one you like,
They are all good. Lower it a little.

Leave me alone. You listen to the buds bursting,,
A heavenly foot rocks you from above,
And a bird traces some bars of music for you

So that you may forget…Thank you. Ah a request:
If he calls again by telephone,
Tell him he ought not insist she has left.

Alfonsina Storni

Leave a comment
Featured

Broadband in Ireland – it’s great to live in the third world

 A recent report quoted by the UN has highlighted the growth of a divide between rich and poor countries when it comes to broadband access. It highlights, in particular, how the price of a fixed-line broadband line in the Central African Republic amounts to something like forty times the country’s average monthly wage. This is compared with most western countries where broadband access, as well as being more readily available, is much cheaper.

 But we in the “developed” world, especially Ireland, need not feel too smug about this. There are certain broadband blackspots in Irelanmd, such as the area aroundf Miltown and Baker’s Bridge Co. Cavan. Residents here cannot get a broadband link “for love or money”. Instead they are told to be satisified with dial-up connections, using telephone lines which are antiquated and which carry an annoying beat making them useless for voice communicationn let alone high-speed data. There is the possibility of gaining broadband access by mobile ‘phone, but this is prohibitively expensive, and it would no doubt work out at way above forty times the amount I’m expected to live in by this corrupt government.

 One other costly alternative is to buy broadband access via satellite from a company like ABB Telecom based in Kinnegad. The only problem is that, after getting the money for the service and equipment up front, these are never delivered. I know – I swallowed the saccharine balderdash of their web page last February, and no satellite dish was delivered,. Instead ABB Telecom attempted (unsuccessfuly) to extract a monthly fee from my bank account for a service which wasn’t being delivered. It’s now September and I’m still trying to get my money back. I’ve been left out of pocket forsix months for a service which is not being delivered and which probably was never going to be delivered in the first place.

Leave a comment
Featured

Adult education classes in Cavan

This month sees the re-launch of Cavan Adult Education’s range of evening classes, and to the fore will be the usually over-subscribed “Basic Potty training for Adults”. Last year there was anger when it emerged that employees of the County Council had been secretly awarded places ahead of the general Public, and that they were not expected to pay the full fees.

 In an attempt to provide appropriate courses fitted to people’s needs, a special course is to be offered for senior managers who have problems who lack basic numeracy skills. The problem was highlighted by the recent budget overruns associated with the fleadh, and then by a recent survey which showed that the problem was widespread. amongst senior highly-paid management, and not confined, as had previously been thought, to janitors. The course will start with an introduction to the numbers, followed by simple arithmetic using the fingers. Course participants will then migrate to learning tables. Those who pass the course successfully will then be able to start working with calculators

 It is hoped that this course will be more successful than previous ones which aimed to help senior executives in local government with low literacy and letter writing skills. It transpires that even after completing previous courses many participants were not able to type even simple salutations on keyboards. Instead they were only able to scratch simple words like “cat” and “shit” in chalk or crayon on toilet and lift walls in the County Council offices. What’s more, when presented with a letter they fell back into old behavioural types, preferring to play “Spot the Ball”. Alternatively they would seek to gain the identity of the person who had written to them and who deserved a reply, and spread vile and unsubstantiated rumours about them. It is said that the walls of their offices (which reek of the nauseating odour of Preparation H)are festooned with photocopies of press photographs showing football players looking blankly into space, upon which lines in red and black ink have been drawn.

Leave a comment
Featured

Bridge over troubled waters

Yesterday marked the opening of a new bridge in Mullingar, named in honour of the town’s greatest son Joe Dolan.

Joe Dolan

 I met Joe a couple of times in my youth, and I know his brother Ben. While I wasn’t into his music I recognise talent (more than Simon Cowell and weepy Cheryl) and Joe had it in spades. Through his artistry over many decades he brought joy to hundreds of thousands of people. Success breeds success, and everyone knows that among those who caddied for Joe was a young Michael O’Leary who even then was probably dreaming of ruling the skies. 

 I do feel, however, that Joe would be appalled at a bridge being named after him. There was the really sickening display of the official opening, carried out by Noeleen Dempsey, who took the opportunity to remind people that it was fast approaching that time of the year when he’d be off on the piste again. “From Aspen we’ll probably go to some nice Caribbean island, from where I can control Ireland’s transport better than if I was really there, an’ once again there can come blizzards and snow storms and yez will have to be diggin’ yourselves out a ten foot snowdrifts, an’ I won’t give an earwig’s fart”. I suppose the event was also attended by examples of pond life from the local Destiny’s Mercenaries, including Camillus “Rocky” Glinn and Wiggy, while the local blueshirts were no doubt there in force along with the requisite panoply of over-paid, over-fed, bureaucratic filth. Where were all the political puppets when, an indecently short time after Joe’s death, hundreds of thousands of euro was being clawed back in allegedly underpaid tax, to pay Senator Callely’s travel expenses?

 I so recall Joe’s participation in a tribute show hosted by BB Baskin for former taoiseach Albert Reynolds. Joe’s comment about Albert will stay with me forever. “Albert Reynolds is probably the daysentest fella in the racket oops I mean the business.”

 As for the title of this post, I’m sure I heard Joe sing the song./

Leave a comment
Featured

A very brief message to Cavan’s self important nobodies

There will be some of you who will seek to excuse your shabby and inexcusable behaviour of me by saying that I have been, to use a cliché, the architect of my own misfortunes, I’d just like to say in reply. “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?”

Leave a comment
Featured

What’s in a name?

The Director General of FAS, O’Toole,  has hinted that the name of the bloated organisation at whose head he sits may change its name. This response shows just how rotten the organisation is.

 For a start, the title “Directo0r General”. It is, to paraphrase The Bard, full of Strength and fury, but it signifies fu7ck all, except that its holder is an over-paid intellectual dwarf who sees himself as occupying a more rarefied air than the race of common humanity, far more precious than the semi human life forms his organisation seeks to help. How many Director Generals are there are on FAS courses? Very few.. Let us excuse the FAS supervisors who generally do sterling work with very little recognition for their toil. The reality of being a member of a FAS scheme is to work hard for the equivalent of the money you’d get from the dole anyway, but yet to suffer the scorn and the ill= natured contempt of the scum, yes, the human rubbish, who believe that they have a right to look down their snot-filled on their fellow human citizens.

I challenge Mr Paul O’Toole. Is it not with these people you most readily identify rather than the people on FAS courses and schemes?

 I recall how, as an employee of Cavan Co. Council, helping to set yup Cavan County Museum, myself and the museum curator were able to count on the help and assistance of the members of a FAS scheme. If it had not been for them there would be no Cavan County Museum. Yet, on the day when the museum was to be opened,, the members of the FAS scheme were initially excluded from the invitation. This was only rectified when the Museum’s curator put his foot down and said that if they weren’t invited he wouldn’t be there either. (And let me add that I wouldn’t have darkened that pantomime of an opening with my presence either had it not been for the presence of the FAS scheme members. That way I had someone to talk to.

 Let 8s not overlook the less than honourable role being played in the FAS pantomime by the Trades Unions. Dominic Egan told me of how he relied on the FAS scheme in the County Museum, but yet he recognised that they were being used by the County Council as a form of cheap labour. (he was a decent guy who wanted to see people paid proper wages for their work, not peanuts.) He also told me that he felt that the Trades Unions would not put up with the way the FAS scheme there had been made into a permanent fixture. That was nearly fourteen years’ ago, and as far as I know the FAS scheme is still a feature of the museum’s existence – and it’s not Dominic Egan’s fault. 

 The Director General hints at a name change, yet let me suggest a name by which his organisation has been viewed by those who have participated in its “training programmes”, as well as member of the general public, as being most apposite. FARCE.  An organisation whose senior echelons are addicted to a five-star lifestyle at public expense, who hypocritically look down upon those they are supposed to help,. Let us also add here that many of those who are permanent employees of FAS, who are entrusted with teaching courses of dubious validity, are often closely related to FAS employees, so isn’t it nice to keep it in the family, and consign others to lifetimes of poverty and destitution –that’s if they’re unwilling to do the decent thing and emigrate and leave Ireland in the grip of the human crabs who’ve always ruled the roost here. .

 Let us recall some of the television advertising – all paid for by you-know-who. It featured the artiste Adele King (any relation of Adge?) better known as Twink telling people to say “FAS”. I suppose it made a change from ringing up her estranged oboist husband and telling him what a rotten faggot he was for impregnating his girl fiend and announcing the pregnancy on St  Valentine’s Day. She wasn’t intoning “You could retrain – it’s never too late”, when she was telling hubby that she was going to dip his oboe in Jay’s Fluid and stick it up his arse, after she’d cut his cock off to  prevent him making any further “bastards” with his “whores”.

6 comments
Featured

One, two, three O’Leary

The results of a recently released survey have found that something like forty per cent of Irish males experience difficulty with maths. I think my post about Bread and Circuses shows just how prevalent this is. Not alone do senior members of county council executives have serious issues with basic literacy and letter-writing skills (not to mention wiping their arses), but many of the hoors can’t count. Ah, but then they know that the true value in any balance sheet comes in the “Below-the-line” or maybe in the “Off-balance-sheet” items – sure fuck it! Isn’t it only monopoly money anyhow?

 This is the reality under which so many people in Ireland have to suffer, and to be honest it’s getting a bit tiresome being lectured to by that pampered cancerous poseur intellectual  Brian Lenihan Jr. I don’t carte at those who will be outraged by what I’m about to say, but Being Brian Lenihan Sr’s son may have helped you get “Schol” in Trinner, butt could it stop you getting pancreatic cancer?  Illness or disability is nothing to be ashamed of, I think most decent people will agree. It’s no joke for anyone, but why should Brian Lenihan Jr., the Minister for Finance, who is doing the country down with such arrogant aplomb, be any different from a man or  a woman in the street who’s been working hard all their lives and who never had the chance to attend Trinity College, far less become a “scholar” there be any different? So why should such unfortunates have to suffer as a result? Maybe not at Brian Lenihan or any other government minister’s directions, but at the hands of their employees in the Public Service?  You see when I was in Trinity., studying in the library on a Friday night, I thought I was a true scholar. But no! The only ones entitled to sup at the banquet of riches are the members of “The New Class”; not the New Red Class of Milovan Djilas, but the new Green Class, or here in Cavan the New Blue Class. whose fathers are politicians in either national or local government,. Clever and all that I thought I was I somehow missed that.)  You see I could have become a legal practitioner, but I realised, perhaps in time, that I loved justice too much (and myself not enough) to become a lawyer.

Leave a comment
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.