The Big Bollix

I was in the queue at Ben Gurion airport when the Israeli security forces finally caught up with me. Probably, I should have listened to that little voice telling me to exit via the West Bank and Jordan, but I simply didn't have the cash to hand to do it.

So I risked exiting as I came, and they pulled me aside.

First, I was taken to a side room and strip-searched. Then they went to remove my bag. I protested, as images flashed before my eyes of getting fitted up for heroin smuggling or the like. Eventually, unable to remove my hands from the bag, they agreed to let me dress and search it in front of me.

They took everything out and found nothing to be suspicious about. But that only heightened their suspicions.

They swabbed every single item in my bag and tested the swabs for explosives residue. I felt like telling them that the closest I had come to armaments was their Uzis in my face, and the shots pinged at me in Beit Jala from the nearest Jewish settlement, but stifled my tongue. In the end, reluctantly, they decided to let me board my plane.

As they escorted me past the security desk, past my co-passengers (thus arousing their concerns - none would sit next to me on the flight), I decided to match their spite with my own. Rather than go to the gate meekly, I insisted on going to the loo and shopping in duty free.

I was frogmarched to the front of the queue in both by my security detail.

My last memory of Israel was a tourism poster of Tel Aviv on the airport wall as I finally boarded my plane. 'Come to Tel Aviv - The Big Orange!'

How pathetically tragic, I thought. But not so unlikely in a town so suffused with transplanted New York Jews. Here they were, missing the point about how their apartheid city was utterly unlike the magnetic multiculture of NYC.

How sad to be concocting such a transparently derivative nickname for a town once known by its Palestinian name - Jaffa.

As I drifted off to sleep on the plane, across two other seats vacated by my co-passengers (both Hassidic Jews), I thought that no other city would be so idiotic, so basely dumb as to seek to piggyback on the organically derived NYC nickname.

Surely, I felt, only a town with such obvious negatives for tourists (merely a century of history, little culture, the ground zero of Jewish nationalism in an apartheid state at perpetual war with its neighbours) could feel the need for such transparently borrowed plumage.

And I was right, until this weekend I came across tourism references to Bangkok as 'The Big Mango.'

That's even more pathetic than the Big Orange (which at least has the Jaffa orange heritage to recommend it.)

The Big Mango? Like mangoes don't grow anywhere else, or as if they originated in Thailand? Does a city of immense culture and 13 million people really need to promote itself thus?

I mean, what's their competition? They've got the Western market nailed on for South-East Asia. Burma is a dictatorship, Cambodia suffered a massive genocide in living memory and Laos is as close as you can get to the 13th century outside of Central Africa.

But if this is going to catch on, perhaps we should get in on the ground floor. Galway could be the Big Rainy. Cork, the Big Langer. I'm open to suggestions for Dublin. So are Failte Ireland, most likely.

Please offer your best suggestions ASAP before they start promoting the Big Bollix in America next Spring.

The Culchie Coup D'Etat

Yes, I know I wanted rid of Bertie Bung. Be careful what you wish for and all. I know.

But still.

A culchie coup d'etat?

The BIFFO for Taoiseach we knew about. A man with no experience outside of politics running the country (into the ground) in a time of economic downturn. Fantastic.

What we didn't see coming was the near total eradication of Dublin influence in the governing party at the executive table.

With Bertie gone to the back benches, and Seamus Brennan jumping (for health reasons) before he was pushed, and his constituency colleague Tom Kitt bizarrely axed, the cabinet loses three Dublin ministers.

And with Mary Hanafin demoted for her mishandling of the autism issue (and for being from Dublin), the capital loses further influence.

In their place comes perennial non-achiever from Caaark like, 'Batt' O'Keefe, and Cavan-Monaghan slogger Brendan Smith, the man who has spent the guts of a decade ploughing a lonely furrow in the North-East defending the indefensible health cuts on behalf of the government.

And the indefensible herself, Mary Harney, remains at the trough, against all common sense.

We also saw the arrival of Pat Carey as chief whip, replacing poor Tom Kitt. This is the man who previously oversaw the national drugs strategy. No, not the strategy that led to Ireland becoming awash in cocaine. The strategy that tried to prevent Ireland becoming awash in cocaine. So, not much talent there.

And some of the other appointments are culchie-tastic too. Micheal Martin as Foreign Minister? We lose the urbane (but potential Taoiseach) Dermot Ahern as our international representative and have him replaced by Langerman? The man who launched a thousand health reports? Give me a break.

Dermot Ahern to Justice is another demotion, no matter how it's spun. That's Biffo's none too subtle method of de-fanging the main opposition to his leadership. Ahern must surely realise now that he should have had the stones to make a contest of the leadership.

Right now, he'd be better off as a disgruntled back bencher, leading the anti-biffo FF, than in his current ignominious position implementing Brian Lenihan's policy agenda.

But it gets better. Instead of sacking that useless oxygen thief Martin Cullen, Biffo has promoted him to Tourism Minister. Frankly, if this country was the sunniest, safest, and cheapest on Earth, I'd still think twice about visiting if it was his ugly lying mug asking me to. And Ireland is none of those things.

But the real 'fuck you' to city dwellers is the elevation of 'lovely girl' Mary Coughlan to Tanaiste. I mean, come on. Are we meant to laugh or cry at that? Are we now basking in mediocrity to this extent?

In fairness, it's been a bad day for Dublin South, losing two cabinet ministers at one fell swoop. I predict incinerators and sewage plants to be built in Dundrum shortly.

Tom Kitt may have been smarmier than Bob Monkhouse, but he was at least an effective whip, toiling away beyond notice, ensuring that FF maintained their ever-tenuous but ever-present grip on power for the past half-decade.

The loss of two ministers will go down well next to Harvey Nicks. Well, it won't, but it'll go down really well with the bogtrotters who bussed it up to Dublin from Offally and gathered outside Leinster House like gombeen groupies earlier to cheer on Cowen's elevation.

If I were a betting man, I'd go out and stick a couple of quid on Fine Gael to lead the next government. If they can't outpunch this bunch of gobdaws, they don't deserve to ever run the country.

High Times

First, Cork was literally awash in cocaine.

Now it's growing on trees in Limavady.

So, can anyone tell me how the war on drugs is to be won when Columbian marching powder is so prevalent in Irish natural surroundings?

We'll have to start banning things that grow wild shortly. Oh, we did that already...