Happy (Saint) Paddy's bingefest 09

Well, it seems the annual bingefest is upon us.

Soon, deluded Americans will stand, shivering, on O'Connell Street in Dublin, perplexed at a series of crap floats trundling by in the drizzle.

Later, locals decked out like leprechauns will commence binge drinking in earnest, while their teenage children pass out mid-afternoon from too many Smirnoff WKDs, or have sex in public.

Later again, very drunk people will urinate on each other, vomit on each other, punch each other until blood flows from each other.

Eventually, everyone will pass out, get up late for work the following day and limp in ruefully clutching a handful of paracetemol.

When did celebrating a Christian feast day become this horror show?


You'd think, well, the one positive element of this tawdry annual bacchanalia is that at least it can't get any worse. I've news for you. Sure, it can.

I heard the head of the 'St Patrick's Festival' on the radio yesterday morning. He's reportedly a very nice chap, Donal Sheils by name. He's only the front man for the event, so in a sense cannot be personally blamed for everything.

A priest rang in to complain, legitimately in my opinion and I'm an avowed atheist, that it was ridiculous that Christian themes were barred from the St Patrick's parade.

This festival bod Shiels then wittered on about how the 'festival' wasn't anything to do with a Christian saint - it was a 'celebration of the people and the country' and therefore couldn't have any narrow religious elements whatsoever.

Then he added - to my growing incredulity - that "there will be a float entitled 'City Fusion' in the parade, celebrating 20 different nationalities and 14 different religions will be represented on that."

So, in short: St Patrick's day is neither a day (it's a festival) nor is it anything to do with a Christian saint.

Instead, it's a secular inclusivist 'celebration' of Ireland and the Irish. Hmmm. But let's run with even that debased and state-enforced definition. If it's a celebration of Ireland and the Irish people, then what are they doing with a float with 20 nationalities on board from 14 different religions?

I couldn't care less for the annual bingefest. At it's best it was self-regarding kitsch, and at its very best it was self-regarding kitsch enacted by diaspora descendants in other places. After all, the first parades were in New York.

But as if the annual bingeathon wasn't bad enough, this multi-culti state-funded gobshitery that St Patrick's Day has been turned into is a classic of that odious genre - the public celebration designed by committee.

It represents neither me nor my nation, and consciously denies the feast's origins in Christianity. It is, in short, a state-enforced propaganda spectacle, aimed at proselytising a specific political ideology while seeking to destroy existing ones.

St Patrick's Day, in the hands of Donal Shiels and his paymasters, has become Ireland's Arirang - a thought-police spectacle:


The thought police ideology is, like all such ideologies, utterly simplistic:

Catholic Ireland - bad. Christian Ireland - bad. Irish Ireland - still bad.
But secular Ireland - good. Multicultural Ireland - very good.

Mention of celebrating Patrick's Christianising of Ireland is officially verboten. Instead, we're permitted only state-vetted Paddywhackery with an obligatory side dish of multiculturalism.

The irony is that when the Orla Barry radio show went onto the streets to ask people what the festival meant to them, not one of the foreign born respondents said it meant anything to them other than a reason to drink Guinness, perhaps.

I'm proud to be Irish - not all of the time, but most of the time. I'm proud of Ireland, again not all of the time, but most of the time. One of the times I'm ashamed to be both is on a day when we're told to ignore the origins of our culture and debase it into kitsch and alcohol.

Count me out.

A story that needs to be told

It's not often that Irish daytime radio does anything impressive.

In a country where people like Roisin Ingle or Joe Duffy are allowed on air, it's obvious that the powers that be want you to work, goddammit, during daytime hours, and broadcasters facilitate this by having the most abysmal radio on Earth clog the airwaves while it's light outside.

There have been exceptions, rare exceptions. Dunphy's 'Last Word' was one. 'The Right Hook' is occasionally another. I'm about to make a case for Brenda Power as another.

Brenda's first and foremost a journalist. A real, actual journalist. Not a former rugby player or some refugee from Radio Kerry or a student agitator or any of the other strange pastimes that seem to permit one access to the airwaves in Ireland. She's actually a journalist who worked for the Press, when there was a Press, and she knows what a story is.

And she zoned in on a great story this morning. A sad story. A story that has been told before, but has been ignored by the populace at large. A story that needs to be told.

The story of elder abuse.

In this era of preposterous house prices, a lot of older people are sitting in goldmines. Never mind that these goldmines are their homes, have been their homes often for decades.

And their greedy, evil, ungrateful offspring all too often are ushering their parents out of their homes and into institutions solely in order to get their greedy mitts on the goldmines left behind.

Old people are often vulnerable. Their children are often their only lifeline. Like abused children, they feel conflicted loyalties to the very people abusing them. Abuse of elders is sometimes physical, but more often it's emotional neglect coupled with financial exploitation.

That's why elder abuse so rarely is reported. But in order to get away with these daylight robberies, the scum who abuse their elderly relatives require the assistance of professionals like bankers and solicitors, who all too often know exactly what is going on, but are happy to be complicit in order to pocket their own fees.

This morning, Brenda Power highlighted a number of cases of elder abuse, where older people have been effectively incarcerated in institutions while their homes have been sold against their will, or are occupied by their children against their will. In one sad case, an elderly woman was described as being stuck in a nursing home while her own children rented out her house for profit.

Due to their age and frailty, even those elderly people who fight to gain access to their homes or funds stolen or exploited out of their accounts will often die before correcting the injustices done to them by their own flesh and blood in their twilight years.

Anyone listening to Brenda's show today can only have been angered by the descriptions of what some amoral people are prepared to do for money in this country. Congratulations to Ms Power for highlighting another Irish scandal that has the capacity to be as nationally shaming as the institutional child abuse issue was.

It's high time that legislation was introduced to enforce solicitors, banks and financial advisors to report suspected cases of elder abuse just as medics and nurses are already required to do.

And they should also be held partially responsible for cases when elder abuse is discovered and proven, and they have been complicit in it.

It's a sad day when we need sharks like solicitors and bankers to police how people look after their own elderly relatives. But that's Celtic Tiger Ireland for you.

Well done, Brenda.

The information line number for Elder Abuse is lo-call 1850 24 1850.