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.

Frank Fahey needs to come clean

... or the government will fall.

Rumours have been rife for some time now of a Fianna Fail TD being a member of the so-called 'Maple Ten' investors who bought Anglo Irish bank shares with Anglo Irish's own money, pretty much unsecured, which then helped Anglo prop up their share price last Autumn.

Those rumours continually name only one TD - Frank Fahey (image courtesy of the ever marvellous Green Ink). Now, firstly it must be said that there is currently no evidence of wrongdoing by the Maple Ten. They haven't benefited from their investment since the bank was subsequently nationalised.

Secondly, I must also add that I have no knowledge of any of the ten investors involved. The Sunday Times has named four people they allege are involved and suggest heavily about the identities of two more. Frank Fahey's name is not among them, nor is that of any other TD, Fianna Fail or otherwise.

I am therefore not saying that Frank Fahey is involved in this, and even if it transpires that he is, that in itself is not currently evidence of any wrongdoing.

I personally see the identities of these ten as a sideshow. The real issue with Anglo is whether banking officials themselves were breaking the law, in relation to this deal which appears only to have served the purpose of propping up the share price and misleading the market, and also in relation to directors' loans.

There is a wider issue about whether the government, the regulator, or indeed the people of Ireland were misled when they nationalised Anglo Irish. And that issue is the most important of all, since that bank could now cost us - the people - over 5.3 billion euro in bad debts alone, never mind the piddling 300 million that these particular ten individuals have had written off.

But all last week in the Dail, Fine Gael, who may well have heard similar rumours as me, pushed the Taoiseach and Minister for Finance to assure the house that no government TD was involved in the ten.

And the Taoiseach offered such assurances.

If it subsequently transpires that Frank Fahey, or any other Fianna Fail TD, was involved in this contrary to the assurances of the Taoiseach, mere sacking from the party won't contain the anger of the public.

With a Fianna Fail Ard Feis next weekend, the Government majority party could possibly find themselves facing a very angry crowd of protestors anyway as they go for their annual booze up at CityWest.

How much angrier might that crowd be if it had emerged that one of the ten investors in Anglo was, contrary to the Taoiseach's assurances, a Fianna Fail TD? I genuinely think the government would fall as a result.

Fahey does attract ire in certain quarters. People are unimpressed with how he was involved in the Rossport affair at the outset, and some question his amassing of a massive international property empire at a time when he was expected to be representing those who elected him.

Therefore, it is now incumbent on Frank Fahey to come out and state categorically whether he was in any way linked to or involved in this investment, if he actually cares about his party, the government of which he is a member, and the nation at large.

Lesbians versus Lesbians

Well, it looks like the Lesbians have lost the right to exclusively use the term Lesbian.

Lesbians from Lesbos took a case to court in Athens demanding that a Greek gay representative organisation stop referring to the female homosexuals they represent as Lesbian.

Apparently, the inhabitants of the island of Lesbos are in general a bit miffed at how the name of their island, which is as stolidly hetero as the rest of the Greek isles, has been nicked by gay women.

This led to the immortal line uttered by one (male) witness during the case:

"My daughter is a Lesbian, my wife is a Lesbian and I'm a Lesbian too."

It's a little difficult to overturn the common usage of a century, and I'm inclined to look at this court case as a Canute-type attempt to hold back a tide.

At the same time, I do have sympathy for the inhabitants of the isle of Lesbos. The only reason that their name has been co-opted by gay women is because 2,500 years ago, one bisexual lassie who lived there once wrote some smutty verses about lady-loving.

And her name, rather than the name of the entire island, could perhaps more appropriately be used as a descriptor for gay women. And anyway, isn't the term 'Sapphic' so much more, um, poetic than 'Lesbian'?

Of course, 'Sapphic' has been around a long time, and never really caught on. So perhaps a whole new term could be introduced to replace Lesbian and give the poor people of Lesbos their name back.

It would also be a very magnanimous gesture from the Sisterhood to offer to give back the word. Not to mention a rare opportunity to redefine themselves.

A few options come to mind:

Galwegians might work. After all, Ireland's notoriously bohemian West Coast town is so laid back they certainly wouldn't mind sharing their name with the lady-lovers.

Or perhaps Irises. In honour of that gay friendly pillar of tolerance up in Belfast, Mrs Robinson.

Any other suggestions?