Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

A view of the world from an Irish hole

Category: bigotry

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Blueshirts in Cavan

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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A service economy

On the topic of vindictiveness you only have to look at the fate of the Combat Poverty Agency. It was trying to highlight the systematic penury which due to structural inequalities persisted in Ireland even at the height of the so-called Celtic Tiger period. However, it was gradually starved of funds and has now been swallowed up by the Department of Social and Family Affairs where it will have no other identity except that of a bauble in the midst of a ministry headed by the Lady Bountiful who doesn’t believe anyone is entitled to any welfare payments, a stance in which she is supported by her senior well-paid officials.

I may have mentioned that the story about the ombudsman was nobbled. It was pushed off the top of the news – in fact the news altogether – by reports about how some government agency has identified 5 billion euro worth of public spending cuts. These will include a savaging of welfare payments. It won’t effect the members of the oligarchy and elite, who can be comfortable that their taxes aren’t going to the “work shy”. It will of course lead to an increase in mendicancy and probably an increase of those women and girls who will be forced to sell their bodies in order to make ends meet. Such an increase in supply will be music to the ears of the many senior civil servants, judges and members of the judiciary who frequently use such services – I could name names here. They’ll be delighted to have prossies who speak English instead of all of the foreign women they’ve had to deal with. But then some of these gentlemen’s tastes extend beyond women and girls.

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Crime and Punishment in Ireland

The sentence handed down to Frank Dunlop shows once again how blind and socially prejudiced the Irish courts are. He’d have got a heavier sentence for having multiple welfare claims. But this reiterates what every one knows: Irish jails are for poor people – knackers, people from the other side of the tracks who aren’t members of golf clubs.

 

There is another peculiarity of the Irish judicial system. Those who are prosecuted can get time taken off their sentence for the trauma of the prosecution itself. The fact that they have been outed as crooks and the resultant loss of social cachet is viewed as something deserving pity and the commiserations of the court.  There is a glib saying in the ‘states; if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.

 

But then there are the personnel of the judicial system: judges, barristers, solicitors. They wouldn’t know justice if it jumped up and bit them on their penises, though from what I have heard some of them are willing to pay a lot of money for the experience in the North Inner City.

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Bring on the clowns in Stormont

Once more the loyalist corner-boy Sammy Wilson has made a show of himself in Stormont, performing not like a minister but like a Linfield Football supporter.

 

I’m afraid had I been any of the members of the assembly’s environment committee who were the recipients of his unpardonable guff, I would have walked over the floor and planted my fists deep into his pathetic jowls.

 

He intends to go ahead with his ban of the advertisement advocating changes in behaviour to combat climate change. I can imagine how this will play out amongst the G&T drinking denizens of the leafy golf clubs of Surrey. “I say, have you heard about this politician in Ireland who won’t show an advertisement against climate change. Well that’s the paddies for you what? What?”

 

Of course such people are unable to see through their anti-Irish prejudice that the politician in question would rather be beggared by a (Protestant) gorilla than be called Irish; that he is a minister in that part of Ireland which is still a de facto part of the United Kingdom; that he is a die-hard supporter of her Majesty the Queen, but into whose breast he would nevertheless plunge a bayonet were she to ever contemplate becoming a Roman Catholic.

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A return to the bad old days?

The murders of the two British soldiers at the week-end and of PSNI constable Andrew Carroll can only be described as the cowardly acts of people who have a maniacal dependence on violence and destruction. They are psychopaths who try to cover their deranged actions with appeals to bogus political causes.

Any armed conflict contains such elements. There are those who make the transition to “normal” democratic life and activity fairly easily. Then there are those who have enjoyed a level of power, influence and prestige, often accompanied by financial gain. They are often criminals who clothe their criminality behind the ideals of the organisations they join. Once the armed struggle is over they usually revert to criminality as one (often the only way) to hold on to the lifestyle.

But then there are the sickoes. Sometimes they suffer from apparently mild neuroses with obsessions towards criminal damage and vandalism. Sometimes they achieve a surprising degree of reintegration into society. But then there those who should be in very secure mental facilities. Perhaps they were sick even before the conflict broke out and used their involvement as a means of achieving recognition. Others may well have started out unscathed, but conflicts scar even the sanest. Even at the height of the armed struggle period they are often sidelined by the mainstream who recognise in their psychological volatility threatens the entire outfit. They no doubt have senses of their own importance out of all proportion to reality, and no doubt bear deep resentments towards those of their former colleagues whom they consider to have overlooked their “manifest” abilities. So there can often be a degree of internal score-settling going on.

But leaving aside the pop psychology, the fact is that three people are dead who should still be alive today.

I’m old enough to remember how horrible the North was during the Troubles. True I was on the periphery but those people who lived throughout in a border county were only too well aware of easily the whole thing could have spilled over. How awful it is to remember those days when seated before the TV, a BBC entertainment program would be interrupted with the news of the explosion of a devise in some Northern Irish town, accompanied by a plea to key-holders to check their premises, or how the Six O’Clock news would begin with a shot of a blanket-covered body surrounded by scene-of-crime tape.

The Real IRA, Continuity – whatever they’re called, for me they seem very like a group such as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, who don’t give a damn about anyone, especially their victims. These dissidents, as racists, would be outraged at being compared to “niggers” and “black bastards”.

For let me reiterate they are racists. I pity the poor Polish delivery man who got shot on Saturday night. The Poles in the North are getting it from all ends. There are those in the “Unionist” camp who hate them, not only as foreigners but as Catholic foreigners. For a small handful on the other side they must be enemies, because they are serving the British. And all British people are enemies. One of the soldiers killed was of Indian origin – all the more reason in the eyes of some on this island for him to die.  

I dare say that some of those behind these murders are probably staunch, not to say bigoted in their religious beliefs. They are probably dead set against abortion – and homosexuals.  But then Joseph Kony, internationally-indicted war criminal, is fighting for the creation of a state based on The Ten Commandments.

I should have kept my mouth closed and not written the above, as sad to say there are probably quite a few resting terrs around here. Still, I have to speak out.
PS. Psychopaths they may be, but I’m not suggesting for one minute that when they are eventually brought to trial they should be able to make use of the M’Naghten test.

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Sammy Wilson and Climate change

Championing a Protestant environment

Championing a Protestant environment

The cockles of all true God-Fearing and worthy Christians were no doubt warmed by the strong stand taken by Northern Ireland environment minister Sammy Wilson in refusing to allow the airing of an admittedly twee advertisement recommending that humans stop contributing to climate change. Now Sammy knows that we are not responsible for the mess the world’s climate is in and has refused to be brow-beaten by New Labour political correctness.

Were I to meet Sammy I would have to say this to him: “How’s Rhonda these days?” Now just because yowere plugging the big man’s daughter and you ddidn’t get her into the club does not mean all men are  incapable of changing the world for the worst, though with a face like hers you were probably nipping in the back.

Sammy is well known for standing up for his beliefs. When he was a teacher he would not let a globe into his classroom or any other symbol 0f the abomination that the earth was round. On many occasions he took globes from their stands and dashed them into the consistency of pancakes to make his point.

But even Sammy has gone soft. All true believers who are loyal to Her Majesty know that greenhouse gasses are caused by those Fenian bastards in

Sinn Fein IRA.. These are to be distinguisdhed from good honest-to-God Protestant Orange house gases which are used to ensure that Ulster’s pantries grown under the weight of good wholesome produce. These are particularly noteworthy from bonfres of used tyres illuminating July evenings which fill the air with fumes that may cause cancer to those not in God’s elect.

Sammy is forgetting who the real enemy is at the gate. It’s all very well giving it to homosexuals, Chinkies, Poles and blacks, but Ulster has retained its British identity by saying no to the whore of Bablylon and his special agents.

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February 12, 2009

Coming out for air

I’m sorry I haven’t been blogging for a while. In truth, I’m too exhausted to write much; even an e-mail seems to take it out of me. Anyway I’ve got the feeling that nothing I say matters much. The world continues turning, war and distress multiply and I seem to earn nothing but the smirks of Cavan’s corner-boys.

In Somalia the ship MV Fain that was taken hostage by pirates is being released by its captors, no doubt after the payment of a huge ransom. Anyway what were the pirates going to do with the cargo? You can’t really get rid of dozens of tanks on the “black market”. A new president has been elected but whether he can make a reality of the Somali state, ruled by anarchy for nearly two decades, is anyone’s guess.

In Guinea Dadis Camara seems to be pursuing a policy of questioning the way in which the country’s wealth has been siphoned off, usually into the pockets of multinational mining companies who throw some baksheesh to local officials who ferret the sums away in foreign bank accounts.

And in Zimbabwe a national unity government has finally been agreed between the autumnal patriarch Robert Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai. The country is fucked, there’s 90 per cent unemployment and a major cholera outbreak. What’s more inflation has rendered the national currency into a joke. The perpetrators of political violence still walk tall and their directors are sitting down at last with their victims. The decision by Mugabe to grant Tsvangirai the job of Prime Minister is a little like an offer of a lift in someone’s broken down car.

There are so many wars and conflicts. We all know of the genocide in Gaza, but other wars go unrecorded, such as that in Sri Lanka, which sees the civilian population often made into unwilling human shields by either the Sri Lankan government or the ever more desperate Tamil Tigers.

In the borderlands of Uganda and the Not-So-Democratic Republic of Congo (NDRSC), the grim antics of the Lord’s Resistance Army, has spread from its original nursery bed in the north of Uganda the northeast of the NSDRC. This leaves in its wake burned villages and massacres of church-goers. The LRA has a “no-frills” approach to recruiting soldiers; no one can accuse them of ageism – the younger the better. Indeed their approach to winning friends and influencing people is basic – after seeing your loved ones raped and chopped into pieces, you’ve got two choices – join us or join them.

And as for events closer to home all I can say is that they’re just like a demented pantomime. But then everyone knows this. I don’t know whether anyone else has noticed how incredibly well-fed the pantomime managers are. Our Minister for Finance, for example, who may well tell everyone else to tighten their belts, but can he without giving himself a hernia? The same is true of our prime minister. None of them are showing any signs of the financial squeeze – far from it. A few weeks’ ago there was an edition of RTE’s rural programme Ear to the Ground, in which it was mentioned that the present financial straits affecting many people had led to greater demand from Irish butchers for cheaper cuts of meat. I was glad to see a restaurant critic who said that many of these cuts have a far better taste than the more expensive joints. But something tells me that none of our senior politicians or civil servants are tucking in to oxtail stew. And as for our minister for health! Look, no more nudge-nudge, wink-win, sexist jokes about fatsoes. But the fact is she is obese. Obesity is a medical condition which can be alleviated, but what’s she doing about it? And then there’s her husband, the man who was for so long implicated in the exorbitantly costly mix of Hi-De-Hi and Absolutely Fabulous which was FAS. They were supposed to be finding jobs and training opportunities for the unemployed, but I feel that if Mr Harney had ever been told that he might meet an unemployed youth, maybe from “the wrong side of the tracks”, his response would have been “Heaven forbid.”

Our rulers try to look statesman-like, but they always come across as at best incompetent idiots, at worse as three-card cheats. There was a particularly heart-wrenching interview with a senior banker today in which he revealed that due to the economic downturn his “disclosed” renumeration package would probably be less than 2 million euro this year. Think of it – less than 50 thousand euro a week, ten thousand a day. How can anyone survive on that? Picture his poor children, his desperate spouse no doubt tearing her false blond hair from its roots as all of them have to wrestle with the indignity of approaching the local Vincent de Paul. And with everybody in a bind there is no possibility of picking up some week-end work mowing grass, while the little chizzlers will look in vain for any paper rounds.

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December 31, 2008

Cuntsmas

 

Thank goodness the Christmas piss-fest is coming to an end, though there are still those who want to drag it out. I really feel that Christmas should be renamed Cuntsmas as it seems to give so many people an opportunity to act like cunts.

The world seems to be so full of hatred that any signs of love and amity are deeply hidden. If we have one New Year’s resolution surely it should be: “Let’s try to hate people less in 2009”.

I can say, hand on heart, that I cannot understand people who hate large sections of their fellow men. It is true that there are some people I dislike intensely. These include people I have never met and do not wish to meet, like North Korea’s “dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il and Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. There are others closer to home. Usually these are people whom I’ve never met but who have arrogantly decided that they can treat me with disrespect. I make friends for life, and enemies as well. I’ve always worked hard to try and overcome any disabilities I have. I see myself as a winner, but sometimes I get well tired. These people may have brains that make an average pea look like a football, but at the end of the day they are “bigger than me”.
I’d like to send them my special malediction this Christmas. They include Dr Brendan Scott, Research Officer of Cavan’s County Museum. Until this summer he was just a name. I’ve never met him but yet he decided to snub me by not inviting me to his little conference. Why? I’ve heard that it was “because there had been trouble between me and the museum, but it had been before his time, and the second reason, because he didn’t want to embarrass me. How nice and considerate Dr Scott. Are you sure it hadn’t more to do with a fear that I might embarrass you by my presence?
But why dwell in the past. Any plans for conferences this year? How about one on Masturbation in 17th century. Get people who are REALLY big this year, like Bruce Forsythe or maybe Britney Spears. Pricey, but sure fuck it the council will pay. This isn’t hatred: it’s just pity.

People with flashy and gaudy titles signifying nothing always remind me of Francisco Macias Nguema, first president of Equatorial Guinea. He amassed quite a bag-full of titles before his nephew ousted and shot him – he’d also ordered all the people in his country, called by some the Belsen of Africa – to be happy, on pain of death. One of these silly titles was El gran milagro – the great miracle. Did he believe he was miraculous, especially as he stood in front of the firing squad at Malabo’s Black beach?
 
And then there is Dr Scott’s boss, County Manager Jack Keys. I was told informally that one of the reason’s he didn’t reply to my letter was that he was sick. I have tremendous sympathy for anyone who is ill, but if I am prevented through illness from working so many people smile indulgently, shrug their shoulders and say that it’s proof that in spite of all my bluster and rhetoric I cannot and never can operate at the same level of an able-bodied person. His illness however is the result of the great strain and responsibility he has to carry, and if anything is viewed as almost an inevitable though unwelcome side-effect of his job.

This New Year I feel slightly uneasy – under threat in fact, not from any hob-goblins who may be swimming around, or from any of the multifarious baddies and criminals who are lurking in the undergrowth. No, I feel threatened by An Gardai Siochana, especially the goons attached to the station in Ballyconnell Co. Cavan. I haven’t done anything – I am a paragon of civic virtue. The gardai should be protecting my welfare and defending my peace; instead they are only interested in aiding and abetting criminals from beyond our shores. The gardai may not know it but there are criminals who are NOT Nigerians.

But I want to be happy and have a laugh. One of my mottoes for 2009 is “Don’t give a shit for little pricks”. I’m going to settle down nearer the witching hour with my darling Rosie, maybe a glass of fine scotch, and waft into a sea of domestic calm and good will. I might sing Auld Lang Syne, but I doubt it as I’m determined to remain sober.

There are a couple of people I want to send new Year’s greetings to. The staff of the Cavan Echo, as well as my dear readership. I also want to send gree4tings to my dear friend Noel Monahan. Let us hope that 2009 will be a year of verdant verbiculture.

So Happy New Year and remember, it’s only 358 days till Christmas.

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December 12, 2008

Where some are more equal than others

The dogs on the street know why the Equality Commission in Ireland has suffered a 43 per cent cut in its funding as a result of Brian oge’s budget. They were obviously doing their work too well and had stood on a couple of rather big, calloused and bunioned toes in the higher echelons of the civil service, especially toes belonging to members of the Knights of St Columbanus and Opus Dei. For fuck’s sake equality! For everyone? women, Jews, queers, cripples, knackers … for Christ’s sake where would it end? Niall Crowley and his pinko secular humanist, lapsed Catholic friends were threatening to undermine the status quo in Ireland. If they had their ways an appalling vista whereby the friends of the great and the good, their sons and very occasionally their daughters and wives would not be able to get the pick of plumb jobs in areas like the Department of Finance or Foreign Affairs.

I think Niall Crowley must be commended on resigning rather than be further implicated in the farce which is the implementation of equality legislation in Ireland.

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Presidential visit

I am disappointed that President McAleese, on one of her rare visits to the county, should come here to open an Orange Hall. The Orange Order means very little to the vast majority of inhabitants of this county. Its contribution to the history of Co. Cavan has always been divisive. Having said this I don’t see anything wrong with the Orange Order pursuing peaceful activities, in which it should be left unhindered and its halls and buildings should not be subjected to mindless vandalism. Remember that the Order closes its membership to the vast majority of the citizens of the island of Ireland. It has always espoused narrow sectarian views combined with socially reactionary policies. Maybe this is one of the reasons why the Irish government has suddenly become so generous to it. I don’t believe that it should receive marks of favour from the government of either of the jurisdictions on this island, nor should any other narrowly-based religious group.

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