Can we now admit that they weren't refugees?

Irish economy booms. Suddenly, out of the blue, the place is swamped with hundreds of thousands of asylum applications, largely from countries which, though poorer than here, are not experiencing notable civil unrest or war.

Irish economy collapses. Suddenly, out of the blue, the number of asylum applications crashes overnight. Nothing has notably changed in the countries from which the vast majority of our 'asylum seekers' originate - Nigeria, China and Pakistan, in other words. Pakistan is no more unstable than it ever was, China is no more open than it was five years ago and Nigeria remains stable though corrupt oil-rich nation.

Department of Justice figures have repeatedly revealed that the vast majority of such claimants are simply lying, and are nothing more than economic migrants. Now the economy is in the shitter, obviously the number of claimants is drying up, vindicating the Department's statistical claim that these are not, were not and never were political refugees.

So can we now admit that the bulk of asylum seekers were simply chancers on the make? Or will we continue squandering much needed public funds denying reality in the name of political correctness?

Such a strategy has finally become too much of a burden for one Irish council, it seems. For years, the Dun Laoghaire 'Festival of Cultures' was heralded as the flagship event of multicultural Ireland - a public festival that celebrated diversity and the rich heritages of the many migrant communities in Ireland.

Now that it's been scrapped, the council has revealed that actually the festival was a financial disaster, sucking half a million quid out of its much stretched budget and resulting in street violence.

Why couldn't they have told us this earlier? And why was the state paying for this at all? The Chinese community celebrate their New Year in Dublin annually. They pay for it themselves. There are St Patrick's Day parades all over the world. They are primarily funded by local Irish-descended community groups.

But here we have an occasion for public disorder, that cost the council a fortune annually, dressed up as a beneficial interaction of migrant cultures.

Over the past fifteen years, we have seen some seismic changes in Ireland, irreversible changes that have not all been beneficial to the state. After the Celtic Tiger rollercoaster, we find ourselves once again bankrupt and exporting our brightest youth to other shores, where they will not receive political asylum with its free housing, food and education. Nor will they receive 200 euro a week benefits or find the local council spending half a million to promote their culture.

A scan of the origins of PPS number recipients by nationality over the past decade or more reveals just how our immigration and asylum system was abused. How our good nature and hospitality was effectively abused.

Yes, there are a few Iraqis and Afghans. Not many Congolese, or Darfurians, though. No, what we received were primarily lying Nigerians, from one of the richest of all African countries, who circumvented the Dublin protocol on asylum to claim where the benefits were greatest.

Now, I'm the first to accept that they're not leaving. The days of a homogenous and pasty white Ireland are gone for good, and I won't particularly miss them.

But in our newfound poverty, can we also emulate the actions of Dun Laoghaire-Rathdown council and introduce some honesty at last into the diversity debate?

The 'festival of cultures' was a money-sucking excuse for public order offences. Can we similarly now admit that the vast majority of asylum seekers to Ireland weren't actually refugees at all, but simply economic migrants who lied their way into the country?

New Year's Revolutions

Happy nearly New Year, y'all.

Hopefully, you realise tomorrow is just another day, and you don't need to make lifechanging decisions while drunk tonight that will transform into mid-January bouts of guilt as you fail.

You could stop smoking, lose weight or try to get a new job starting any particular day. Why do it alongside the rest of the herd? Is there camaraderie in failing en masse? I don't know.

What I do know is that I think New Year's Resolutions are about as pointless as those 'Caution: Hot!' warnings on takeaway coffees - they're really only needed for the truly remedial.

So I've decided to go with some New Year's Revolutions instead. Here are the revolutions I'd like to see in 2010:

1. A Chinese counter-revolution. Seriously, fuck the Chinese Communist Party. I'd love to see them overthrown and subjected to a quick round of real people power, the human-abusing thug junta. This same prescription also applies to the scum ruling Belarus, North Korea, Burma, Zimbabwe and a host of other thugocracies.

2. A drugs revolution. The war on drugs is lost. Why are our governments still fighting it? Increasingly, world leaders, health experts, religious minorities and influential commentators have come out in favour of a complete reversal of current failed policies.
I hope that either the lawmakers start listening, or else a proper grassroots movement comes along and makes ongoing prohibition unworkable for good. If the EU reverted to the Portuguese model, we might finally get a handle on drug crime and on harm reduction for addicts.

3. An economic revolution. The return of the gold standard? The end of fractional banking? Back to barter? Jail for banksters?
I'm no economist (and am suspicious of that pseudoscience in any case), so I will refrain from being prescriptive.
But since the current system just went pop for the umpteenth time, you'd like to think we might rebuild with some new method that doesn't unerringly result in a bubble and collapse every decade or two.

4. A democratic revolution in Ireland. Take a look at the Dail. Do those people really represent you? Do they look after your interests? Well, why keep voting for them?
I'd love to see an end to the cronyism, the parochial parish pump politics, the gombeens, the brown envelopes and the nepotism in Irish politics.
But that would require an electorate to grow up and take responsibility for those they elect.

What revolutions would you like to see next year? And are there any that you're prepared to man the barricades to bring about?

Tis the season to be clairvoyant

It's that time of the year again, when most people defer cynical normality until the New Year, eschew common sense and start spouting goodwill to fellow men.

But not Skinner, no sirree bob.

For me, it's the season for casting a gloomy, pessimistic, jaundiced eye over the year to come, read the runes, scatter the entrails, gaze into the crystal ball and attempt to predict what the year ahead has to offer.

We'll hold fire on last year's predictions until this year is officially up. (Though nothing's stopping you checking now.) Instead, it's full steam ahead with what's ahead in 2010.

1. I can haz double-dip recession? Sort of inevitable at this stage, really. Credit card debt should do it for Ireland, which is tragically appropriate for what has happened to us as a nation in the mass delusion of the 'Celtic Tiger'.
In America, it will be the ongoing slide in dollar value, while Britain will simply run out of cash. China is hamstrung by its dollar exposure, lack of Western demand for plastic tat made in sweatshops and the fact that the rest of the world will be slow to forget how China stitched up Copenhagen for its own ends.
In short, more red lines on the charts, more capital flight to precious metals, more lost jobs, more housing price decline, more negative equity, more foreclosures, more unemployment and more excuses from those responsible.

2. What does Africa need right now? You were thinking 'major soccer tournament', weren't you? Isn't that top of their list of needs?
Africans agree, of course, which is why they're having two in six months. Never mind the HIV epidemic, the grinding poverty, the neverending wars, famines and disease. I must haz mi football. Right?
South Africa 2010 will see predictions of violence against the occasional drunk affluent visitor sadly fulfilled. Stadia will be full of white people flown in for the occasion. A European team, likely Spain or Italy, will win, though an African team, likely Nigeria, will get to the semis.

3. General election in the Republic of Ireland.
Seriously, this government wouldn't even have lasted this long were it not for the dire standard of political opposition in the Dail, and the utter disorganisation of political opposition outside of it.
Enda Kenny is as effective and reliable as the Billings method, while the beards running the unions have already shot their bolt and allowed their campaign to be cleverly cut in two by a government sneakily talking up public sector V private rivalries.
But to hold together an administration this flimsy, talentless and aimless would require both the cunning of a natural alliancemaker like Bertie Ahern and endless pots of overflowing gold to pay everyone off and keep them all happy.
Cowen has neither Ahern's touch nor any money whatsoever, since Ahern spent it all already. So it's inevitable that sooner rather than later the faeces will fly into the fan.

4. Result of election? Fine Gael and Labour, that unhappily married couple, back in the saddle again, this time minus the self-exploded Greens.
Stasis for the Shinners, though a few new faces in their line-up, including Joe McHugh. A move against Churry as leader of the party finally coalesces around someone other than the unelectable Mary Lou. Toireasa Ferris, perhaps?
Fianna Fail to regroup around a new leader - with Martin facing off against Dermot Ahern for the job and Martin winning. Most of the current cabinet retire to count their ill-gotten gains.

5. A general election is already scheduled for next year in Britain and the North, so they're already in mid-campaign.
The toff Tories to edge it in a surprisingly close-run thing after an initial rally of the British economy in the Spring. But they will claim no seats in the North, leaving their alliance with the UUP in tatters.
Lady Sylvia to win as independent in North Down, taking their last seat, leaving them behind the TUV, for whom Allister will ascend Paisley's old throne in North Antrim.
Alisdair McDonnell to become the next SDLP leader, and subsequently hold South Belfast. A resurgence for this party might then finally be possible, especially if a Shinner generation shift starts to coalesce.

6. Post-Lisbon, the EU will grow ever more important. Initially in Ireland this will either not be noticed or welcomed when spotted, since it will come alongside support for our comatose economy or will be warmly contrasted with our indigenous mismanagement of our political affairs.
But elsewhere, the twin-track Europe does begin to finally emerge. Eager to push on with the long march to federalism, the elites of Brussels will seek to seduce an inner circle to move faster. Welcome to the beginning of a Europe of the centre and the fringes again, just like the Roman Empire.

7. Poor ole spook kid Barack just won't catch an even break in 2010. With the messiah sheen of his election campaign long lost in most memories, Americans will get on with the fact of confronting growing poverty and unemployment, a reduction in international relevance alongside a growth in international danger, not only in current war spots but also in some new ones too.
I'd expect more Islamoterror next year, likely of the old Nineties format of attacks on foreign -based US troops. And that will of course stabilise Pakistan hugely.
Not.

8. China realises its dollars are worthless and we don't want their tat anymore, and there's only so much African resources and commodities you can stockpile for future good times, so it belatedly decides to spree its dollar mountain on Western assets.
This overt accumulation of Western trophies, akin to the Japanese intervention into California in the Eighties, will be the first sign for many of the Chinese century everyone was suspecting might come about.

9. Chelsea for the league, Barcelona for the Champions League, Rafa for Real and Mourinho for Anfield after an Arab buyout of the bankrupt Yanks.

10. Russia will play silly buggers with the gas pipeline to the West again as it tries and largely succeeds in splitting both Georgia and the Ukraine in two.
Everyone talks tough, but the Kremlin ain't listening. Once again, decadent old Europe realises too late that the Eastern threat to its stability has never gone away but merely morphed into yet another totalitarian guise, following the Tsarism and Sovietism of the past.

Should be a good year.

Tiananmen: 20 years of silence and oppression

We have to remember Tiananmen Square.

It's two decades to the day since the Chinese people demanded their freedom from the despotic, mass-murdering junta that rules their nation.

It's twenty years since they stood in Tiananmen Square and sang songs and demanded that the Communist dictators quit power.



It's twenty years since the power-hungry psychotics turned tanks on their own people and murdered them for asking to be free, killed them, jailed them, sent them to re-education gulags where they were tortured horrendously.

It's twenty years in which more terror has been inflicted on the people of occupied Tibet, the Uighur nation, and the other minorities within the Maoist monolith.

Twenty years in which the hypocrites of the West facilitated China's leadership by hiring their slave labour, buying their bloodstained products at dirt cheap prices, handed back free Hong Kong and Macao into their anti-democratic hands and helped them block the internet from reaching their people, and let them hold a propagandist Olympics that will go down in history as stomach-churning as Hitler's Berlin Games in 1936.

Twenty years in which their template for terrorising their own people has been exported elsewhere, to other stubborn juntas who will not countenance democracy or liberty or freedom of choice, in places like Burma.



It is not anywhere near as long since I was in China. But the people there still yearn for freedom.

We cannot allow the Chinese government to exercise their blanket control over information. We cannot let them rewrite history. We cannot permit the spirit of Tiananmen to be ignored.

Because one day, the proud Chinese people will be free from the sixty year nightmare of Maoism, and they will legitimately say:

"Yes, for much of that time, we bowed to the terror and let ourselves be ruled. But one day we rose and sought our freedom, and we were brutally beaten down. And you in the West did nothing. Rather than insist on our freedom as you did for the people of South Africa, you instead rewarded the Communist cadres and made them millionaires."

Remember Tiananmen. Remember what they did.

Remember how democracy was stillborn in China twenty years ago, and how we still trade with the murderers.

A thousand unemployed call centre workers cheer...

It's happening in India too. Three cities in a row, I've found that waiting and kitchen staff in hotels in India were predominantly Chinese.

Fair enough, a lot of people like Chinese food, even in India. But I cannot fathom how it could be cost-effective for employers to take on migrant workers ahead of one of the lowest- paid workforces there is.

Perhaps the Chinese government is subsidising this as part of some sort of training programme? Does anyone out there know if there is method behind this madness?

Surely when Chinese staff are populating the rosters of hotels in a place like India, we've already exceeded even the flimsy economic purpose for mass migration?

And how can the Indian authorities justify these jobs going to non-Indians, given the poverty and deprivation in the country?

And have they foreseen the negative effects on their tourist industry?

After all, it wasn't that long ago that they were hiring hotel staff for Connemara in Newfoundland because so many complaints were coming in to Bord Failte from American tourists about non-English speaking staff in Irish establishments.

And with no Irish forthcoming for the jobs, they looked for staff in the one other place where people sounded and looked Irish. There is, it appears, a premium of authenticity that tourists attach to visiting places like Ireland or India that involves interacting with locals and not with imported Chinese labour.

So why are Indian hotels hiring from China? Does anyone know?

Asian babes not good enough for marketing mongs

Apparently Asian babes aren't good enough for the marketing morons at chav outfitters, the incorrectly named Top Shop.

When they decided to foist their tacky, ill-fitting clothing on the people of China, the advertising wonks didn't think to hire some local models to try to make their clobber look wearable.

Nope, instead they spunked 24 million euro on ageing addict Cocaine Kate.

According to one fashion victim, the reason why people keep giving this human car crash so much money for effectively just standing about looking bored while wearing clothes is because of her 'look.'

Now, I'm no fashion expert. So I rely on those morons who are to inform me as to what this magical 'look' is (since to my untutored eye she looks exactly like what she is, which is a skinny, coked-up chav from Croydon.)

And here's what they say:

"Kate Moss was so different when she first arrived on the fashion scene," says Jen Stevens, editor of U Magazine. "At the time the catwalks were filled with six-foot goddesses and then suddenly along came this short, pretty ordinary girl from Croydon. It was this 'difference' that drew everybody's attention and upon which she managed to build a career."

So it isn't her look, because she looks short and ordinary. My eyes weren't actually lying after all. Even the fashionistas think she looks like a chav.

Okay, let's try again. Maybe it's her winning personality? Nope again. In fact, she almost never speaks in public and barely ever in ads. One assumes her paymasters in the fashion industry are aware that the sound of her grating estuary tones would shatter the glamorous image they've spent a fortune on creating.

Is it perhaps her life story that inspires people? That's definitely what one fashion victim believes:

"Maybe it's because she's fallen so low and fought her way back up again," says model agency boss Celia Holman Lee. "She's shown a vulnerable side that people can relate to."

Yes, you heard that correctly. Cocaine Kate's tabloid fall from grace, not to mention her house-trashing antics and association with hard drugs and hard druggies, is something that we can all relate to. What a load of shit.

Which brings me back to the news item I began with. What the fuck are Top Shop paying this cokehead chav tens of millions for?

And if they really must pay people preposterous amounts of money to stand around looking bored while wearing clothes, what's wrong with paying some stunning looking Chinese babe who doesn't do tons of hard drugs and isn't closer to forty than twenty?

Juntas don't vote for voting rights for all

Trocaire director Justin Kilcullen has called on the Irish Olympic Committee to consider a boycott of the Beijing games in protest at the Chinese authority's tacit refusal to put pressure on their fellow-travelling Military Junta in Burma.

At the Burma Action protest in Dublin on Saturday, Mr Kilcullen stated that the Olympics had gone to China in the hope that holding such an open and global event would encourage the Chinese Communist Party to move faster on providing basic human rights to the citizens of China.

"However China hasn’t kept up its side of the contract," he said, and who can disagree?

I've written before about how China has denied its people even access to information about themselves and the regime they suffer under, by firewalling the internet.

Their pals in Burma have gone one step further and switched net access off throughout the country in the hope of preventing images of their brutality leaking to media outlets outside of Burma.

I've spoken in the past about how China has abused its military might by occupying a sovereign nation's territory and seeking to wipe them out culturally and politically.

Of course, The Karen people of Northern Burma might well see a parallel there in their own fate. They have fought an intermittent insurgency against the illegal military junta for years. They have reaped genocide as their reward.

I've even highlighted how China has behaved in exactly the same way to its own internal demands for democracy as the Burmese Junta are doing now - with military force and the shooting of unarmed, peaceful protesters.

It is therefore foolish to expect such a regime to exert pressure on an identical one to encourage a democratic process. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas, and military juntas don't vote for voting rights for all.

Nevertheless, as I wrote last week, the Chinese are in a major quandary on this one. They cannot be seen overtly supporting the suppression of a people's demand for freedom, especially by such an internationally unpopular regime.

The world has spoken in relation to Burma, but it must keep speaking out if the UN mission to Burma is to achieve anything. It must also keep speaking out in order to force change in Burma, not only for the benefit of the people of Burma, the Burmese, the Karen, the other ethnic minorities.

It must keep speaking out because only when Burma is free of this horror, can we hold out a slender sliver of hope for the people of Tibet, for the people of China itself, all of whom yearn for their own sovereignty and for democracy, for human rights and freedom.

So for all of those reasons, we should support Trocaire's call for a boycott of the Beijing Olympics.

Chinese bad habits

The Chinese government are telling their people to quit their bad habits in advance of next year's Olympics in Beijing.

Reuters reports that citizens are being warned not to swear, spit or litter, and to learn how to queue in a line properly.

Such a terrible pity that it's not the other way round. I've little doubt that the Chinese people would only love to tell the Government to quit their bad habits, which are a lot more serious that clearing your throat in public or failing to line up neatly.

Invading sovereign nations like Tibet and subjugating them, for example. That's a very nasty habit of the Chinese Communist Party.

Or stifling all dissent by murdering or incarcerating anyone who dares protest against any aspect of the regime. That's a very nasty habit dating back to the time of that crazy old psychopath, Chairman Mao.

Starving the people in needless famines, that's probably the most nasty of the habits of the Chinese one-party government. They've done it repeatedly too, causing tens of millions of deaths.

And rewriting history to suit their own ends, so that everything they don't like, such as the KMT's leading role in defeating the Japanese during the war, or the Tiananmen Square democracy massacre of 1989, gets airbrushed out of their history. That's a tremendously nasty habit right there.

There are plenty of bad habits that ought to be corrected before China is permitted to hold a global event like the Olympics. But spitting and swearing are the least of them, I'd suggest.

Boycott the Beijing Olympics.

Getting a rise out of Chinese 'medicine'

It came as no surprise to me to hear that some unscrupulous Chinese medicine practitioners in Northern Ireland have been dosing their Oriental snake oils for impotence with Viagra.

This doesn't surprise me for two reasons. Firstly, I have first hand experience that Chinese medicine doesn't work, and secondly, Chinese people rarely pass up a genuine business opportunity.

If the GP's research is correct, and I appreciate the vested interests involved in his motivation for researching this, then it seems like some naughty Chinese medicine practitioners saw fit to take a substance that ought only be sold subject to a doctor's prescription and add it to some amusingly exotic looking and sounding herbal treatments to make them actually work, while simultaneously quadrupling the price for gullible Westerners.

Nice mark-up if you can get it. Since there are no formal qualification requirements to open up a Chinese medical practice, anybody of an Asian extraction can open up premises with some inscrutable Asian qualifications mounted on the wall, and sell quack cures to the gullible with relative impugnity.

And it's only when they get supergreedy and start adding generic Viagra to their impotence snake oil, and a vigilant doctor catches them out, does anyone stop to think of the potential dangers of these charlatans.

Does Chinese 'medicine' work? No doubt some of their herbal remedies have certain physiological effects. In fact, some of them are actually downright dangerous. And when they include prescription drugs, you can see how dangerous it can be to permit people with no medical training to be handing these substances out.

Once, on a trip to Beijing, I decided to visit the Great Wall of China and the Ming era tombs of the Emperors. Like so many tourists before me, I was kidnapped into a traditional Chinese medicine centre near the tombs, so that the operation could try to sell us shit we didn't need.

Or as they put it, 'to permit us the pleasure and excitement of diagnosis of our ails by the most estimable doctors of China.'

The brief backstory is that I was actually viciously hungover and also suffering the after-effects of a kidney infection I'd caught in Russia. My travelling companion, however, was in rude good health.

The experts of the clinic, dressed in white lab coats gave us a talk and then mingled to 'diagnose' us, by drumming lightly on our pulse points with three fingers. These people made a great deal out of having treated Chairman Mao no less back in the Seventies. It seemed churlish to point out he died shortly afterwards.

I was declared hail and hearty by my attendant consultant, albeit in need of something anti-inflammatory for my entirely unpained ankle. Its yin and yang were allegedly out of kilter, requiring a $20 purchase of some random ointment that was swiftly produced from a box and waved in my face.

My colleague, however, was warned severely about heart, kidney and liver troubles, and it was sternly advised that she part with nigh on $100 for seemingly randomly chosen boxes of pills and tinctures.

I refused and so did she, at first politely then with increasing annoyance and frustration. It became evident that our tour group was captured until someone parted with money for some quack cure.

Eventually, an American gave in and on we went. I noticed that he smartly dumped the 'cure' in a bin at the tomb site, later.

As with all placebo cures, there will be some who will claim miraculous results from the kindly attentions of their local well- (or ill-) meaning Chinese quack doctor with his amazing exotic array of Oriental herbs and preparations, so evocative of a medieval apothecary.

But the bottom line for me is that Chinese medicine is not evidence based medicine.

And medicine that is not evidence based,
medicine that seeks to diagnose by drumming on the pulse points only,
medicine that proffers expensive and potentially dangerous cures without first investigating whether patients are already taking medications,
medicine that thinks it is okay to adulterate snake oil cures with knocked-off prescription drugs,

- such medicine is bad medicine indeed.