Ciaran’s Peculier [sic] Blog

A view of the world from an Irish hole

Category: Irish politics

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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./

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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”.

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Newsweek and the life of Brian

Recently Newsweek magazine chose Irish top honcho Brian Cowen as amongst the worlds top ten statesmen. Was this a joke? Cowen as about as much statesmanship as a randy stoat. He is a typical example of the Irish education system, not to mention a stellar example of the Legal profession, a brainless oaf lacking any social graces. Newsweek could not possibly know of Cowen’s display of statesmanship on the night Albert Reynolds’ regime fell, when he sat amongst the Fianna Fail front benches giving guff to those he disliked in the Dail. Nor could they know of his role as the “Clown Prince of Fianna Fail” when he would seek to rouse the assembled party faithful prior to the presidential address at the Ard Fheis, once more displaying gifts of oratory and rhetorical élan. If I might paraphrase an American labour leader of the McCarthy era. “If it looks like a twit, talks like a twit, chances are it’s a twit.” His face and demeanour are reminiscent of the overall-wearing character Benny on ATV’s soap opera Crossroads. Compare this idiot to statesmen like Barack Obama, or even David Cameron, who sometimes bears too close of a similarity to Family Guy’s Glenn Quagmire, and you see what I mean.

 

 Recently I was reading Plutarch’s description of Tiberius Gracchus, the illfated Roman statesman of the Second Century BC. He wrote of him and his brother Gaius that they were never given to personal abuse of their opponents and that furthermore “… in situations where ambitions and tempers flare … a good natural disposition and a sound education controls and regulates the mind.” Plutarch never says that Tiberius Gracchus ever bawled across the Senate at one of his many opponents: “Ya should put up or shut up” or that Gaius ever told one of the optimates that if they weren’t going to piss they should get o9ff the pot.

 Newsweek has the temerity to praise him for imposing fiscal discipline and chide the Irish people for not supporting him. The fact is Cowen presides over a group of swindlers who are maintained in power by an incompetent and corrupt bureaucracy. There is only one thing this crowd is good at – ensuring that they have enough money to keep themselves, their friends, their families, and their prostitutes in the lap of luxury. I wonder would any of the senior staff writers in Newsweek be able to survive on the reduced unemployment benefit? Of course, they should be lucky to get even that, as they might have been declared “habitually non-resident” by the sagacious Department of Social Protection.

 I am urging those Irish people who feel as angered as I do about Newsweek’s actions to boycott the magazine. People who need a laugh should read The Onion instead.

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Let him who is without shit cast the first stone

Senator Ivor Callely is an egregious crookm, but I can understand how he feels hard done by at the hands of his [party and Senate colleagues. His misdemeanours have been committed, maybe not quite so outrageously, by large number of our public representatives of ALL political parties. The Senate is a strange place, its “elected” members chosen by councillors who themselves were chosen many years previously, or were hand picked by the taoiseach. There are those chosen by university graduates, a group to whom I belong but who I would not unreservedly give the governance of anything beyond a backyard bonfire. 

 Our aspirant TDs and councillors come crawling to us at elections asking us to place our trust in them to represent us. However, once elected many cannot wait to turn their backs on the electorate. Policies and actions of dubious legality and complete immorality are invariably out of their control. The “Law of the Land” must take its course (even when it is plainly illegal) unless that is a nice fat sum is paid to them or their party, on which laws will always case  to be obstacles. Similarly, the policies of local and national government, which go against the interests and welfare of the people who elect them, are supported with vigour, especially when being pursued by large commercial interests. Those who oppose these are denounced as whingers, cranks and flat earthers, while they partake of the largesse offered to them by such developers by way of holidays and junkets. A rather shocking instance of this happened in Co. Cavan shortly after the last local election. (It is the subject of my post “Auf Wiedersehen pets” if anyone wants to read it.)  Meanwhile they all clock up enormous expenses which are the envy of many people in the country, especially those who have to survive on welfare benefits – that’s if they are lucky enough to get such pittances, which can no longer be taken as read any more.

 I believe that many of our legislators, both at local and national level, have betrayed the trust placed in them by the electors. As a result they are not worthy to be members of our legislature and so lack legitimacy. I do not see why the people should then have to go on paying for their mistakes and incompetence.

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Killer Queen

With reference to the forthcoming royal visit, I must say that I have nothing against Elizabeth Windsor. She has lived her life imprisoned in one great doll’s house, with an insensitive brute for a husband and a family who have gone from one emotional disaster to the next with reckless abandon. I certainly mean her no harm. She’s an old girl now, 84 I think, and I hope she brings her bus pass. I would certainly prefer if this were to be a private visit, but instead it will be surrounded by all the rubbish that the government can think of. There are those who are monarchists at heart anyway. The spiritual ancestor of the Fine Gael party, Arthur Griffith, never made any secrecy of the fact that he was, at heart, a “kings, lords and commons man”. But those who will be most fulsome in their celebrations will be the soi disants republicans of Fianna Fail. They hanker after a House of Lords and a knighthood system, but haven’t they got it already? There’s Brian Lenihan, second Earl of Castleknock and the Baron of Clara himself.

 The queen’s visit would make a far greater contribution to the ending of mental hostility between our countries if she were to meet with and apologise to the victims of “loyalist” violence in the republic. Those who carried out these attacks claimed to be loyal to the British crown, and this would be an irrevocable opportunity for the sovereign to distance herself from these barbarities. But the Official Secrets Act might get in the way, as it is generally suspected that many of these, while claimed by “loyalists” were masterminded by sections of the British intelligence establishment.

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Teachers’ pay

It is a disgrace that “front-line” public servants like teachers should be included in the dishonest pay agreement announced on Monday. The Teachers’ union of Ireland (TUI) would be right to reject it. Unlike the “lower paid civil servants” for whom that wretch Blair Horan speaks, teachers already work long hours. What’s more they face increasing obstacles to doing their job through education cutbacks.

 When Horan’s members overcome the tedium of another day of pen-pushing, and the clock strikes four or five they are able to leave their “tasks” unfinished and unloved for another day, to be taken up if and when they return the following day. By contrast teachers’ work never ends when they leave the school; they bring home with them not only their pupils’ homework, but other jobs, such as working out lesson plans.

 And yet this pay agreement has the cheek to expect them to work an extra hour and for less pay. The result of this will be that teaching will be far less attractive as a career choice and will tend to be chosen by those who cannot get anything else which retains any social cachet. This lowering of standards will feed into the education system as a whole. We will then have a nation of dunces – just the thing really, as they won’t know how badly they’re being ripped off.

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Let’s get physical

The results of a survey carried by RTE news has found that 10 % of Irish secondary schools are dropping Physics as a subject, partly due to budget cuts impacting on teaching.

Now I think this is significant. It is time to challenge this pack of panderers, drunkards and cheats who rule us with the assertion that their claims about wanting to create a smart economy staffed by educated people, which will make Ireland a competitive player in the world market, are nothing more than rancid piss.

 I have many regrets         one being that I did not work harder at Maths while at school, and as a result I turned away from Physics. If I had my life over again it would be so different … I opted instead to concentrate on subjects like history, and in retrospect I feel that history is a subject for losers -it’s a thing of the past.

 But how can we provide significantly qualified scientists and engineers, the bedrock of any truly competitive economy, while removing Physics as a subject choice? The subject needs teachers with properly equipped laboratories. It is not something that you can study on your own. To make cuts which impact so seriously on our ongoing competitiveness is nothing short of stupid.

 But we all know that our government is no more than a pack of puppets in the hands of a small group of unrepresentative and shadowy scoundrels. They seem inexorably wed to the McCarthy report, a document which, once it proposed cuts in social welfare payments was like a wet dream to the hard right in Ireland, and to those who, having managed through fairer means than foul to scrape their hoards together, are damned if they’re going to let anyone else do the same.

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Animal cruelty on TV

I hate seeing cruelty to animals. Some people may recall the old Mart & Market on RTE, where the livestock prices from the country’s marts was accompanied by a very grainy piece of film of a man poking a poor demented creature around a ring.

 Well all this came flooding back to me just now when I turned on TG4. The advertised program was live coverage of the Dail. Instead there was a picture of a bespectacled pig in a suit. He was grunting wildly and incoherently, trying to fend off the prods of threatening spectators. He was obviously in pain and distress as he was urinating and defecating all around him, so the smell must have been so atrocious. This was so upsetting that I switched channels to Cash in the Attic. Someone tried to tell me that this was our Prime Minister, but they were obviously pulling my leg.

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Crossing the Red Sea poll with Micheal Martin

Ah come on now Carla...

It was so sad to hear Micheal Martin’s response to the Red C Poll findings. He sounded hurt and bewildered. How could the Irish people respond with such negativity when the government’s actions were earning plaudits from the European Central Bank, the European Commission, stock brokers, fat cat bankers and fascists everywhere. He hadn’t sounded so dejected since Carla Bruni turned down his request for a quicky while Nicolas’ back was turned.

 Micheal, in spite of his Master’s degree in history, obviously still has a problem with how governments work here. Most of those people who think the government is doing a good job live outside the country. What’s more they have nice, well-paid jobs, they’re educated and able-bodied and work in comfortable, heated offices. They don’t have to suffer as a result of the cuts instituted by this government.

 The devil’s in the detail. It’s all very well having a high-sounding policy, if its implementation is unjust, and is dependant on selfish and cowardly decisions inspired by short-term thinking and prejudice, it is worse than useless.

 The sad thing is that we know that it doesn’t mater who is in power. Whether it’s Fianna Fail or Fine Gael the people of Ireland invariably lose and the gangsters who donate to the parties win hands down every time.

 But Fianna Fail has a strategy up its sleeve for dealing with its electoral decline. If the poll findings get really bad Fianna Fail will play the race card. It will say that the cuts in social welfare, not to mention the bollocksed state of the health service, is all due to FFers (f*%£ing foreigners) coming here to steal our dole, our jobs and our women. This way they will hope to steal support from Fine Gael and the Labour Party.

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Gormley’s claptrap

Remember the days when Green Party conferences were places of slightly hippy and left-field idealism? Well thanks to Gormless John those days are past. In fact his speech could well have been delivered by a Fianna Fail minister. So identifiable with a Fianna Fail Ard Fheis was the whole thing that one wonders were the foyers of Watervford’s hotels filled with Green Party activists who had crashed out after a skinful.

  Take the claptrap about “tough decisions”.. This swill could have come from the mouth of that bitch Mary Hanafin.  It was worse, because it was an attempt by Gormless John to try and present himself as a big, hard man, but it sounded as butch as the hysterical squeaks from a harem’s eunuch.

 Now cutting the blind pension is not a tough action; it is cowardly John. And then you come out with the real howler about commitment to a just society – in your dreams.

 I find it hard to square the fact that John Gormley sat at cabinet with people making such cowardly cuts with his supposed defence of the rights of people in Tibet. It will be recalled how the Chinese ambassador was so incensed by his remarks some years ago that he left in protest. If Gormley cares as much for the people of Tibet as he does for Ireland’s blind and partially sighted, he is nothing but a common hypocrite.

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