Top Quality Property Porn

I love property porn. You know the stuff: it comes in a colour supplement in your weekly regional paper that's longer than the paper itself is.

Before they get to the actual adverts, which funds the whole thing, there's a few pages of blatant fluff masquerading as reviews of newly available property.

No matter what the economic climate, never mind if there is an enormous property bubble popping around your ears, what you'll read in property porn is always universally positive.

If prices are collapsing, then property porn will tell you 'this house should be of interest to investors and first time buyers, offering unprecedented affordability in this much sought-after area."

If it's a derelict flat in a slum redlight district, it will be described as "offering a unique opportunity for a developer in an up-and-coming area of town."

If you're particularly gullible or unintelligent, you may not have worked out that all this property porn is either directly written by the estate agents themselves or else has been lightly adapted by hacks and shills masquerading as journalists.

But most of us are a lot smarter than to be taken in by this gushing, lying, overwritten shite about shoddy, sub-standard, overpriced housing.

It's a lot of fun noting how shrill and desperate the tone of property porn has become, how the page lengths are dropping alongside the prices, and how terrifyingly upbeat the tone remains, reminiscent of the grin on the face of a Club Med holiday rep watching helpless as a load of boozed-up lager louts pick her up to throw her into the pool.

But even more fun is this hilarious pastiche of a contemporary property ad, produced by Maxdiver, one of the regular posters on HousePriceCrash:

Great new property investment schemes now available. You've seen it on TV - now experience the joys of Property Investment.

With Mulligan Property Investors all your dreams can come true. In the North Coast's most popular investment Village - Causeway Glen a new way of life is coming. A great new development will be opened in 2009 - and it's surely the most popular residential concept Northern Ireland has ever seen.

The demand for these great Nest Egg investments has been extraordinary. With all units having been snapped up within minutes of having been up on sale - we aren't making this up. But don't worry - you can still get in on the action.

To help the savvy beginning professional Property Investor get rich quick we Mulligan Property Investors are giving 1,000 lucky investors who thought they missed out on the bargain of a lifetime - the chance to share in the success of Causeway Glen.

Listen to this great deal: For someone starting out in the making money business, Pay only £500 per month + the cost of the £249,950 loan for a 1 bedroom town house and you will buy this great high quality life-style investment in 2009 when the development is complete for the same £250k.

Prices range from £249,950 for chic 1-bedroom town houses to £1,499,950 for a 6 bedroom Mansion with Double Garage.

You stand to benefit enormously from this limited offer - with house prices having risen and according to respected commentators in the media - to keep on increasing - you need to sign up with us today.

Imagine how great it will feel - knowing that for only £500 per month you can share in ever growing prosperity.

Hurry - this is a limited offer - and any Property Investor worth their salt is rubbing their hands with glee.

And if that isn't enough - all investors will recieve a free iPod shuffle and 10% off the cost of fitting upstairs curtains!

MPI have over 100 years experience in making people fabulously wealthy through property - with over 30 eager staff - give us a call and see if you are the type of person who knows a good deal when they see it. Call us now on 02890-xxxxxx. You'll be glad you did.

Big Ian leaves: compare and contrast

Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein, his fellow Chuckle Brother, said:

"Obviously there's a lot of interest in the work I have been doing with Ian Paisley in the course of the last ten months," he said at Stormont. I think I have to say it's been a remarkable and unique experience."
"I think many of you will know I had a very dim view of Ian Paisley prior to the 26th March last year (when Sinn Fein and the DUP agreed to share power) and I suppose he even had a dimmer view of me if we are to be truthful about all of this."
"But we managed to work together on a deal brokered by Ian Paisley and leader of my party Gerry Adams and we developed a positive and constructive working relationship within the Office of First and Deputy First Minister."

Bertie Ahern, of Fianna Fail, and Taoiseach of the Irish Republic said:

"I'm not going to say I didn't spend most of my political life taking a different point of view (to Mr Paisley), I did."
"But when it came down to making the Good Friday Agreement work and to having an inclusive executive in Northern Ireland and to have North-South bodies, he made the big moves. We've worked hard to get the stability, we've worked hard to build a relationship with Dr Paisley."
"We've achieved that, it was not easy, and now the main player in a few months' time will go off the stage. We have to now work to see if that harmonious relationship can continue. Obviously, I hope so but time will decide that."

Only Seamus Mallon of the SDLP had the balls to say:

"The paradox is that it was the Good Friday Agreement, which he set out to destroy, that allowed him to be inside in terms of influence for the first time in his whole political career. Those are two of the areas that historians will look at and people will be assessing from now on."
Mallon, who once watched Mr Paisley during the famous Civil Rights march at Armagh when he took over the city said "it was that desire for dominance that many people in the nationalist community will remember."
And he also pointed out that the fact that among Paisley's first moves during serious negotiations with the Governments was for seats in the House of Lords and a Privy Councillorship indicated "his desire, not just for power, but for the trappings of power."
"Yes he brought unionism into a power-sharing arrangement with Sinn Fein, but to do that he had to destroy, as he had destroyed Terence O'Neill, as he destroyed Faulkner, as he destroyed Chichester Clarke, he had to destroy the unionist leader David Trimble."
"It tells you about the paradox of all this, that the creativity which he undoubtedly gave the political process in Northern Ireland in his later years, was achieved as a result of the destructive element in his approach to politics and this type of political atavism which demanded absolute and total power."

Correct, Seamus.

Additional useful perspectives on Paisley from Trimble and Ruarai O'Bradaigh can be read here, at Best of Both Worlds.

Prison by the motorway

Okay, so the new national juvenile detention centre is to be located at Lusk (subscription required), a small North Dublin village near the coast and the M1.

It will cost 145 million euro.

Fair enough, if that's what it costs, though one wonders why not build it OUTSIDE of Dublin and away from picturesque coastal villages, where land is surely cheaper.

One also wonders why this centre, like Thornton Hall before it, are being built in greater Dublin at all. We've already seen the obscene cost of Thornton Hall spiralling out of control like so many infrastructural projects before it.

But surely one way to keep the price down would be to locate these facilities outside of where property and development land cost one of the highest prices per square foot in Europe?

Locating prisons in remoter areas would have the added benefit of not assisting escaping prisoners. If anyone does get over the fence from either of these facilities, they're mere miles from the main train line and motorway to the North. Within an hour of breaking out, they could be out of the state, or indeed anywhere within it.

This is further squandering of tax payers' money, and indicative of a lack of joined-up thinking by the authorities and their 'advisory committees.'

Politics.ie weather report

A sudden downpour of technical glitches on www.politics.ie has caused widespread panic among underemployed Dail staffers, student politicians and disillusioned party hacks throughout the nation.

They are now believed to be flooding niche bulletin boards and refugee stations have been set up on boards.ie for the worst afflicted.

Reports suggest that initial fears of a legal tsunami were misplaced. Rather, the current crisis appears to be the result of a high-pressure software upgrade clashing with p.ie owner David Cochrane's busy schedule.

Meteorologists predict that the site should be back up by the weekend.

Political junkies are urged to find shelter offline, and seek comfort in bound copies of old Oireachtas debates.

Jobs for the Girls

Norway has set quotas on the number of female directors companies must have. The bar is set at a minimum of 40%.
As a result, many companies have been forced to decide which of their serving directors to sack in order to bring in female replacements.

Which is fine, if you have female staff you can promote who know the firm's business, or can identify female business talent who could bring useful skills to the table. Certainly, the Norwegians are claiming that the quota system has bred success.

But what they mean is that it has bred success for that small coterie of qualified women who are now cleaning up with boardroom appointments. It remains unproven whether individual businesses have benefited at all.

No one's bothered to do the research to find out. After all, negative conclusions might be construed as sexist, even when based on the cold math of the bottom line. Best not to ask at all.

I have a female partner, a mother, a sister, a daughter. I'm surrounded by women, appreciate women and believe firmly in equality. Generally, what I see around me is equality. My work colleagues get paid the same irrespective of gender. I don't know of an industry where that doesn't happen.

But I'm with Anne Widdecombe (a strange and disconcerting place to find myself) on this one. If you got your job in a quota system rather than on pure merit, you shouldn't be thrilled. You should feel grossly insulted.

After all, where is the self-respect, the sense of achievement in knowing that you're a walking token gesture to political correctness?

Like affirmative action in the US, the Norwegians are going about equality the wrong way with their skewed promotions and their anti-merit systems.

Taste the Bright Lights

This is the most terrifying book I've ever read.

And it's for kids.

It's scary because it bleeds truth. Probably it's more useful for parents to read than kids. Kids already know what a feral jungle of self-immolation teenagedom is these days. But it's still frightening to see it put down, in print, so authentically, so viscerally.

It's available for download or from Lulu, but I understand it will be in shops throughout Ireland too some time soon.

Just as soon as Eason's can source some lead-lined bags to store it in.

Incendiary reading. Exemplary writing. I read it in one sitting and couldn't move for an hour afterwards. In fact, I'm still having nightmares about it.

Twenty Major doesn't smoke!

These revelations just in from the Irish Blog Awards which were held last night:

Sinead Gleeson travels with a permanent retinue of other female arts correspondents.

Bock the Robber is a lightweight who can't handle his ale. He went home before nine o'clock last night. Which was a pity as I was hoping to meet him and call him a wanker for liking not only Munster but Scunthorpe.

Irish Flirty Something has dyed her hair. I know this must be the case because I asked every redhead in the place if they were flirty or not. Yes, I did indeed get some funny looks for that.

Sarah Carey and Richard Delevan couldn't get babysitters.

And Twenty Major, who is a very nice, well spoken lad in real life, is off the fags. Who's smoking in Dublin bars now, eh? Well?

Congrats to everyone who won, and to all those who got nominated, or just got drunk. And an especial well done to Mulley for putting it all together and Rick O'Shea for compering the event.

See y'all next year.

In defence of tabloids

I like tabloids. There, I said it. I'm not a sexist neanderthal. I have an extensive education. I work in a decent job. I can understand abstract concepts. I also read a lot of broadsheets, magazines, websites and blogs.

But I like tabloids, and I think ironically that they get a very bad press.

This week, a court gave a convicted criminal and admitted fraudster nearly a million euro in a libel judgement against a tabloid, because they couldn't prove he was a drug dealer as they had said.

Now, the chap in question had already been forced to make a payment to the Criminal Assets Bureau, who have stated that they believed he had made substantial amounts of money in Britain through drugs trafficking.

But nevertheless, he sued for libel, and won 900,000 euro for the loss of his 'good name.' That's five times what you'd get if you lost your arm in an accident at work! For the loss of a criminal's good name.

After the verdict, Mr McDonagh went on air to blame tabloids for all the ills in Ireland today. I thought this was a bit rich. But then again, with a million in his pocket of the Sunday World's money, everything about Mr McDonagh is now a bit rich.

The paper is appealing and I hope they win. I found that judgement to be ridiculous. But I noted the glee among a certain class of people. They were delighted that a tabloid had been slapped down. Never mind that meant siding with a criminal. They were just chuffed to see a tabloid punished.

I read most if not all Irish papers daily. I find a lot of outdated assumptions prevail in relation to a lot of newspapers. Primarily those assumptions are held by people at the top rather than the bottom of the educational/social spectrum.

There is the assumption that the Irish Times is the best news source in the country, when it wouldn't be top ten.

Then there is the assumption about tabloids: 'I don't read tabloids myself, but I believe they're all soaps, celebs, sport and tits.' But they seem to forget that The Guardian is a tabloid (Berliner format? That's posh for tabloid.)

The Irish Indo is a tabloid. So is the London Times. So is the Daily Sport. And they're all different beasts. I agree that there is a similarity in the red-top market, where the Sun, Mirror, Star and Evening Herald all feature quite a similar news style, agenda and content. But they have different hacks, different sources and compete strongly for the news.

What is certain is that tabloids break news. They break the bulk of news stories in Ireland, I would argue. RTE, with their vast newsroom and highly paid dozens of correspondents, does manage to do breaking news extremely well. But I would argue the red tops break stories better than anyone else, in general. At least on weekdays.

I understand the criticism that tabloids dumb down stories. A pal of mine who ran a newsagent once described the red-tops as 'the Disney version of the news', a phrase I found memorable.

But I believe their value in breaking news more than outweighs po-faced moaning about sensationalism (of which the broadsheets are equally guilty) or dumbing down (which is just a snooty way of complaining that the tabloids communicate to people with less formal education than some other media outlets.)

I think it is especially important in this regard to tread extremely carefully when you encounter a criminal like McDonagh or yet another politician lambasting tabloids.

The fact is that they do not like being held to account. This goes double when their actions conflict with their public positions, or when they're caught with their snouts in the trough. This is why dictators like Mugabe have effectively banned the media.

Our politicians are no different, except in terms of degree. They too do not enjoy the scrutiny of the fourth estate. And while they can rely on the cosy consensus of the Dail bar contingent not to rock the boat, they find it somewhat more problematic to silence newspapers which are not reliant on the doling of leaks from ministers for exclusives.

In no shape or form would I ever defend everything the Irish tabloids do. The Brian Murphy coverage sticks out as appalling in my mind.

But I find it strange how the very people who lambast tabloids for sensationalism and so on always seem to forget that most of the most outrageous media stunts in recent times were committed by broadsheets which they revere.

I've seen people blaming tabloid culture on making up lies about Liam Lawlor being with a hooker at the time of his death in Moscow. No doubt many people think that is the case, but it isn't.

It was the respected broadsheeets the Sunday Independent and the Observer who peddled that lie, with the latter even inventing brothels in Prague that the late Mr Lawlor was alleged to have attended regularly.

Tabloids do cause some harm on occasion. I wouldn't say much. But so do all newspapers. In general though, I think we as a nation benefit from having such a dense and diverse media environment, and I include the national broadcaster, Newstalk, the regional papers and radio stations and the niche media like La and the news magazines in that too.

Ireland has the healthiest, by which I mean densest, media topography of anywhere. Rather than sneering about papers one doesn't read dahling, perhaps people should be happy that there is a choice available, rather than in most middle-size American cities (Dublin size and greater) which are often served by a single, poor quality local rag.

No one's forcing you to read the tabloids. If you're happy with the turgid press release rewrites that pass for news in the Irish Times, then bully for you.

But on the basis that it's preferable to speak on matters from the position of experience rather than ignorance, I would encourage everyone to take a day out sometime and read ALL the papers. You might find yourself surprised at the quality of news coverage throughout the Irish media.

Including the tabloids.

Michael likes Thomas

This is possibly the saddest story I've ever heard.

A pal told it to me tonight. He was walking through a leafy affluent South Dublin suburb yesterday, passing a very expensive and prestigious boys school as they were letting out at the end of the school day.

He noticed one lad, slightly taller than another, torturing the second boy. He had him in a grip around his neck and was wrestling him to the ground. Other boys were watching. None of these boys were older than ten, apparently. All small children really.

As he wrestled his prey to the ground, the taller lad was jeering at the one he was persecuting. "Michael likes Thomas! Michael likes Thomas!" The gathered crowd of lads joined in with the chant. Soon, the poor lad on the ground was surrounded by his classmates all chanting 'Michael likes Thomas!"

My pal, passing by, was struck initially at how early homophobia appears to emerge among kids these days. But then he suddenly noticed a third lad, hanging back behind a tree away from the pack. This lad was completely dishevelled, as if he'd been assaulted himself, and was sobbing his heart out as he watched the proceedings.

Suddenly it dawned on my pal that this was Thomas. With a chill running down his spine, he realised it wasn't a case of homophobia at all. He suddenly saw that the bullying at this expensive, prestigious prep school was so appalling that not only was Thomas being bullied, but another boy Michael was being bullied solely on the basis of being friendly to Thomas.

That level of personal targetting is almost too appalling to contemplate. How isolated, how fearful must that young lad Thomas be on a daily basis? But at least, in a good expensive prep school, you'd expect the staff to jump on top of it, wouldn't you? Well, think on.

A teacher emerged from the school and walked straight past the debacle with only an over-the-shoulder comment. As she headed on, the bullying continued uninterrupted.

Is it any wonder that suicides are getting younger and younger?

Bullying is getting more serious in nature too. It's no longer name calling and the odd dig in the head.

Last week in Galway, a young girl was grabbed by a gang of boys, bound with tape, her mouth stuffed with a scarf and was sexually assaulted while others watched, laughed and filmed the assault. The school's response? Three day suspensions for the cowardly little rapist-wannabes involved.

Three days home from school as 'punishment' for aggravated sexual assault on a young, vulnerable girl? Those boys ought to be doing six months in a Borstal right now, not lounging at home watching daytime telly.

It emerged this week that my own nipper has been suffering ongoing bullying at the hands of a gang of teen boys too.

What sort of spineless, weak, cowardly morons gang up on a girl? There's only two possible answers. The first is in response to those who excuse bullying on the grounds that the bullies don't realise the effects of their actions and were only 'having a bit of fun.'

There's a word for people whose idea of fun is to inflict pain on others. That word is 'sadist.' Research demonstrates that male children who express sadistic impulses are those most likely to go on in adult life to commit murder. So if a bully really is 'having a bit of fun', what they urgently require is constant monitoring and long-term counselling if they are to avoid a lifetime behind bars.

For the vast majority of bullies, sadism is not the motivating factor. For these boys, and perhaps the boys in Galway, I believe the motivating factor is their own crippling inadequacies as individuals. As stunted, weak, immature young males, they are driven by their own sense of insecurity to seek security in the comfort of a pack, just like immature male lions and other animals do.

Lacking the self-confidence to be fully rounded individuals, they shore up their sense of inadequacy by hiding in the herd. Without intervention or somehow becoming self-enlightened, these boys will be permanently trapped in their cycle of inadequacy, their lives capped and stunted by their overwhelming need to remain in scenarios where they are not challenged as individuals, where they can hide in a herd.

I've reported the abuse to the school of course, but I'm concerned that they'll respond like the teacher at that Southside prep school, with some cursory warnings that fail to prevent anything.

I don't mean to sound like a doddery old fascist, but this would not have happened in my day. Any boy, never mind a gang of boys, who so much as picked on a girl would themselves have been beaten to within an inch of their lives by their own peers for being so pathetic.

I reserve the right to deal with this my way too. The school has anti-bullying procedures, so they get first go at resolving this.

But if they don't succeed, I intend to get 'North Belfast' on the spotty, sweaty, pathetic little rugger buggers who require to gather in a gang to pick on a lone girl in order to shore up their stunted masculinity.

And by 'North Belfast', I mean I am entirely prepared to hospitalise each and every one of them, and go to prison if necessary.

It's win-win-win as I see it. My child is no longer bullied. These amoeba get to learn that there's always a bigger bully, a lesson that just might set them on the right path in life.

And I'd get a few weeks in Thornton Hall, where I hear the cells are going to be 'apartment-style' with flat-screen TVs. Nice.

Congrats

Well done to all the Irish Oscar winners yesterday.

Even though I thought 'Once' was a load of twee tripe, I'm delighted for the Irish film industry to see another accolade coming in this direction. The local film industry desperately needs a shot in the arm like this, so congratulations to all involved.

Now, I know this is going to come across as some sort of begrudgery or whatever, but that can't be helped. I am genuinely happy for those involved in the film. Even if I didn't like it, clearly a lot of other people did.

But seriously, is no one else even a teensy bit disturbed by the fact that Glenn Hansard and Marketa Irglova (above) first met when he was 31 and she was 13?

I mean, fair enough, they didn't hook up until a couple of years back (during filming of 'Once', when she was 17), but he's on record saying that he'd 'been falling in love with her for a long time, but I kept telling myself she's just a kid.'

No one else is a little grossed out by that? Okay, must just be me then.

Well done again to all concerned.

Keeping track of the dig outs

30 December 1993: Bertie Ahern lodges IR£22,500:
of which IR£15,000 cash,
IR£5,000 from Padraic O'Connor of NCB
and IR£2,500 from Des Richardson.

25 April 1994 Bertie Ahern lodges IR£30,000,
of which IR£27,164.44 to special savings account
and IR£2,835.26 to current account.

8 August 1994 Bertie Ahern lodges IR£20,000
to account in names of daughters

11 October 1994 Foreign Exchange. 
Bertie Ahern lodges IR£24,838.49 to deposit account
(equates to £25,000 stg)

5 December 1994  IR£50,000
(in two amounts-28,000 and 22,000)
is transferred from Bertie Ahern's account to Celia Larkin account (CL1)

5 December 1994 Foreign Exchange. 
IR£28,772.90 lodged to Celia Larkin account (CL2)
(equates to $45,000)

19 January 2005 IR£50,000 transferred from Celia Larkin deposit account to cash save account

27 January 1995 IR£50,000 withdrawn from Celia Larkin Deposit Account and given to Bertie Ahern

15 May 1995 IR£8,442 withdrawn from CL2

19 June 1995 IR£20,050.91 withdrawn from CL2 for  work on house

22 June 1995 Foreign Exchange 
IR£9,684.71 balance from CL2 used to open a new Larkin account - CL3
Also lodged to this account on this day was IR£11,743.74,
comprising IR£2,000 and £10,000 stg (£IR 9742.74)

24 July 1995 IR£9,655 lodged into CL3 account

1 December 1995 Foreign Exchange 
IR£19,142.92 lodged to Bertie  Ahern's deposit account
(equates to £20,000 stg)

New A/Cs Feb '08
IPBS a/c £38,000
BT a/c £52,000
That's half a million euro worth of dig outs in total.

Pervert Poet

Pervert poet Cathal O'Searcaigh has apologised for sexually exploiting young boys in Nepal.

Only he hasn't.

What he actually did was apologise 'if his gay lifestyle and relationships had offended anyone.'

Now, the Rape Crisis Centre isn't buying that for a minute. They are rightly still highly concerned about a middle-aged self-styled bohemian who flies to third world countries and plies teens with large amounts of money, first for their sexual favours and secondly in an attempt to buy their silence.

And Colm O'Gorman, spokesman for the One In Four organisation which represents victims of clerical abuse in this country, isn't buying it either. He spoke out strongly this week about how these Nepali boys were exploited and how O'Searcaigh has a case to answer.

What I'm looking forward to, in this week that the gay lobby started officially demanding the right to use the term marriage, is for that self-same lobby to come out in protest at O'Searcaigh defining his abuse of third world boys as a 'gay lifestyle.'

After all, we have heard them condemn from the rooftops for decades any suggestion that homosexuality and sexual exploitation of children are fellow travellers. Paedophiles are paedophiles, whether they prey on girls or boys, we have been told. Homosexuality is nothing to do with it, and men who prey on boys are paedophiles and not gay.

Fair enough. Will the gay lobby in Ireland now take a minute out from their campaign to commandeer the title of a religious sacrament to dignify their own unions, which in any case already have been granted equal rights as heterosexual marriages in Irish law, and condemn this pervert poet?

Let me be clear. I believe in equal rights for all citizens. I firmly support equality under Irish law for gay couples and always have done. However, I see no need for them to be so provocative as to demand a title that has for centuries been reserved for a heterosexual union performed under religious auspices which they do not accept. Civil unions offer equality under Irish law to both religious heterosexual marriages and civil heterosexual unions. Anything else is beyond equality and simply provocation of Irish religious conservatives.

I look forward to seeing some consistency from the gay lobby this time, but I won't hold my breath. The likelihood of them continuing to stand by their former favourite son is as high as the mountains in Nepal amid which pervert poet O'Searcaigh spent his time abusing third world teens.

But if we are to accept, and I do, that paedophiles are paedophiles and not homosexuals when they abuse young boys, then O'Searcaigh is a paedophile and not simply enjoying a 'gay lifestyle.' Does the Irish gay lobby agree?

Is medical tourism the only answer to Ireland's health famine?

After years of fulminating against the Irish health service, I finally put my money where my mouth is.

For a long time, I have headed across the border to the North anytime I needed a check up, some primary care, or some minor emergency treatment. Who wouldn't, given the opportunity, since the British NHS is actually free? No fifty quid to see a doc, no fifty quid to get into A+E. Free to those who need it.

Not to mention shorter A+E queues, cleaner hospitals, more English-speaking staff, fewer flesh-eating bugs, etc, etc.

But I have needed a small operation on my toe for some years now. It wasn't the sort of thing you would get done quickly in the Irish health service, as I wasn't actually bleeding to death and don't have a VHI Plan E insurance card.

But increasingly, it was impeding my ability to walk. It's been years since I could kick a football. And because it is an existing complaint, even if I did sign up for private health insurance that I can't afford, the VHI or their corporate rivals wouldn't pay for the op.

I costed the operation in Ireland, and was quoted a significant four figure sum from a very well known private hospital in the greater Dublin area. This is a lot of money to me. So I decided to keep on suffering.

But the pain got progressively worse, so I looked further afield. In Britain, a number of private hospitals appeared able to do the minor operation required. They were, however, reticent to quote a price without my actually coming to them to be assessed. I can understand this need to assess first, but it is a very simple operation.

A doctor of my acquaintance warned me that it should be as easy to quote for such an operation as it would to quote for, say, laser eye surgery. He also warned that due to increasing medical tourism from Irish patients, and a perception that Irish patients are all loaded, some UK hospitals might possibly be guilty of inflating prices for Irish patients to the upper end of the scales.

Then I came across the Bumrungrad hospital in Bangkok. Go look at their website. This hospital is as good as anything anywhere on earth. Their doctors are nearly all American or UK trained. The facilities are second to none. Ex-pats living all over Asia flock to it when they need medical treatment.

And they're cheap. My operation took an hour and cost 230 euro. In perfect sterile conditions, by highly qualified staffd, and complete with two follow-up examinations and post-operative medication.

While I was there, I met a lad whose cousin tragically succumbed to a drug overdose and has been in a coma in intensive care at the hospital for seven months. A doctor relative had told the lad I spoke to that he didn't believe the patient would have survived in Britain (or, by extension, Ireland) because the quality of care at Bumrungrad so greatly exceeded what was available back home.

I can believe that.

On the one hand, I feel cheap and tawdry for using what little financial clout I have to fly away from the car crash of the Irish health service to avail of proper world class medical facilities. I feel sad for those who can't afford to do likewise, for all those poor people trapped in squalor on trollies in our crowded and dangerous A+E wards.

On the other hand, I was never going to get my operation if I hadn't flown to Thailand to have it done.

Today, Newstalk Radio are holding a themed broadcast day about the Irish health service, which they've rightly entitled the 'Health Famine.' They've been asking people to call in with their stories. I don't do call ins, so I'm putting my story here instead.

This country is infinitely richer than Thailand, yet we cannot even approach the quality of care available there, at a fraction of the cost of healthcare in Ireland. That fact alone ought to have long since accounted for Mary Harney's political career. Why it hasn't is simply beyond me.

Perhaps the people of Ireland are too complacent and accepting of appalling healthcare to demand better. Or perhaps I should fly back to Bangkok and have my head examined.

God knows, it would be inexpensive and the quality of care would be magnificent.

My toe's grand now, by the way. Thanks for asking.

It chokes me to say it

But I'm proud of Baby Ian.

Not because he's been diddling the taxpayer over his office expenses (150 seater office, Ian? WTF?) or because he was blatantly lobbying to privatise the Giant's Causeway into the hands of his pal, private developer Seymour Sweeney.

Nope. I'm proud of Ian Junior because he has singlehandedly resurrected a political practice I feared had been abandoned forever on the island of Ireland. That of resigning when you've been caught doing wrong.

Okay, he hasn't (and won't) admit he's done wrong. And he only resigned to protect his da, who also has a series of hard office-related questions to answer.

But it is entirely refreshing to see an Irish politician having the relative decency of falling on their sword when caught out.

I do hope the denizens of Leinster House will take note and learn from this. There is a long queue of wrongdoers in there who by any moral compass ought to have jumped a long time ago.

Top of my personal list are Mary Harney, for crimes against the Irish people by seeking to privatise the health service into her funders' pockets, and Bertie Ahern, for the most eye-wateringly bizarre personal finance practices ever engaged in by an alleged Finance Minister.

Who would you like to see emulate Little Ian and resign, then?

Asia and Africa

I'm currently in Asia, reading about Africa. It's an interesting compare and contrast.

I'm specifically reading Martin Meredith's 'The State of Africa', which chronicles how it all went wrong across Africa in the fifty years since most colonial powers pulled out and the various countries achieved independence.

What a sorry litany of kleptocracy, famine, pointless war and endless tribal conflict it all adds up to.

The irony is that many of those countries, whatever you care to think of the colonial legacy, were in pretty good financial shape when they were handed over to the indigenous 'Big Men' dictators who assumed control after independence.

But after a few decades of nutters like Amin, Mobutu, Bongo and so on, the continent is in worse shape than it ever was.

The contrast with Asia is simply staggering. Here in Bangkok, a city of sixteen million people, the work ethic of the Thais is impossible to ignore. Sure, begging exists, practiced by those with genuine disabilities. But this is a people prepared to better themselves, to try to work their way out of poverty and a people who are proud of their own self-determination.

They are fond of the odd bloodless coup, and corruption is certainly familiar to those at the top of the heap. The latter applies equally well to Ireland, for anyone familiar with our many tribunals. Nowhere's perfect.

In that regard, one could feel disdain for Thailand's sex tourism, the suppression of minorities in the south, and indeed the protectionist nature of its property market and currency.

But when compared with the latest news from Zimbabwe, for example, where what was one of the richest countries on the continent a mere three decades ago is now suffering 66,212.3% annual inflation (official government estimate; others put it closer to 150,000%) and at least 80% unemployment, it becomes clear that the Asian Tigers are, with the possible exception of Burma, infinitely preferable places to live.

Thaksin Shinawatra may or may not have lined his pockets to the tune of millions while in power. But he is wanted by the courts in Thailand who want to hold him to account. That's no different to how Russia has dealt with those oligarchs who have displeased Putin.

And you could contrast it with Charles Haughey's fate, which was to be permitted to live unmolested in a big house visiting his big private island while wearing his Charvet shirts, even though he had been found guilty of corruption.

On the flip side, not one African despot has ever been held to account in a court of law. They've either died in their sleep as preposterously wealthy men, or been dragged from their beds and murdered by their successors.

I'm coming to the conclusion that in the vast majority of African countries, there is little hope of expecting indigenous democracy, indigenous industry free from corruption. Can you imagine any African country recovering from genocide as successfully as Cambodia has? Rwanda may be healing, if you believe the various optimistic news reports. But it's still poorer than a church mouse, even compared to somewhere as poor as Cambodia.

It strikes me that in Asian countries, the people have more self-respect than to permit leaders to stay at the trough for decades upon end, or to expect the West to continue to finance their economic follies via the aid train.

Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia and other Asian countries may well be poor, as poor as much of Africa. But they are determined to succeed on their own merits. They get up in the morning, facing the same heat, the same diseases as afflict Africans. The difference is, they take responsibility for their own lives. They do get up and they do go to work.

The Asian Tiger period may have passed, but there is much to note economically in this region apart from the usual suspects of China, Japan, Hong Kong, Korea and Singapore. Places like Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia are also on the up, and they will drag the slackers like Cambodia and Laos with them.

There is no such similar hope for Africa, I fear. Bulging with natural resources, African countries have been systematically ravaged by their own corrupt elites. When I look at the actions of that syphilitic loon Mugabe, and hear inflation figures that beggar belief, I wonder how long such a man would have lasted in South East Asia.

One day, Africans will have to stop looking to others to blame for their troubles, and start acting in their own self-interest. And that doesn't mean lifting machetes and going on tribal murder sprees as has happened in so many African countries, including Kenya and Sudan at this very moment.

They could usefully learn from Asians the benefit of working together for a common purpose, I believe.

Poison Pens - Irish media nonsense exposed

Obviously every single day you can pick up an Irish newspaper, any of them really, and roll your eyes in horror at the errors, misspellings, pretensions, outrageous opinion masquerading as objectivity, and blatant spin.

So I'm going to reserve this occasional series for serial offenders and major errors of fact.

In the first category is long-time frustrated poet, Irish Independent sports writer Vincent Hogan, whose airbrushed, outdated 'matinee idol' byline picture is only matched by his fondness for prose more purple than a crate of Ribena.

Maybe you were busy Wednesday night, and didn't catch the Ireland V Brazil game? Thought you'd pick up the Indo on Thursday and read all about it? Vince has other plans for you.

From the casual racism of the opening line - 'It was settled by the deftness of a street thief" - you knew this was going to be vintage Hogan balls.

There's the one word sentences, the irrelevant multi-paragraph digressions, and the errors of fact that make you think he wasn't at the game at all. (On this occasion, the suggestion that the Brazilians were singing Ole. Ole is a Spanish word, associated in South America with Brazil's bitter rivals Argentina. It was the Irish fans chanting Ole, Vince.)

Receiving my inaugural 'Liam Lawler's Hooker' award for getting their facts completely wrong in an Irish newspaper is inevitably the Daily Mail, who've never enjoyed the closest relationship with factuality.

In a heavily topspun and overwritten article about the British Embassy employment dispute (with inevitable tired references to Ferrero Rocher and ironing newspapers), the offending scribe Lucie van den Berg manages a whopping error in her opening paragraph. See if you can spot it:

"It had all the appearances of the final days of the Raj. The last bastion of the Perfidious Albion's Imperialism in Ireland - or the British Embassy as we now call it - was the site of outrage among what Edmund Burke called 'the swinish multitude' yesterday."

It's got everything, hasn't it? The ridiculous analogy with the Raj is a nice starter, followed by a main course of ungrammatical factual error. Last bastion of English imperialism in Ireland? Erm, try 70 miles north of Dublin, love. And for desert, a sickly sweet pointless quotation culled no doubt from www.findmeaquotetomakemesoundsmart.com.

The story itself, you ask? There isn't one, really. Some people at the British Embassy were laid off, and their mates took a two hour picket action in sympathy.

Congrats to Vincent and Lucie, penning Irish media drivel at its finest.

Roaming the blogosphere

As a prelude to sitting down and properly looking over the many excellent Irish blogs to be found on the long lists for the Irish Blog Awards, I thought I'd share with you some of the more unusual, but interesting non-Irish blogs I've come across recently.

For Girls Who Can't Do Football - A bit of untruth in advertising here. The splendidly monikered Georgina Best strides that fine, previously unknown, line between gurly life rambling blog (second biggest blog category in the whole 'sphere apart from cat blogs) and footie fanatic blog. Quality result! The girl done well.

Chatsoccer - Not strictly a blog, though it has group blog-like qualities. I mentioned them a little while ago, when they were still all new and pink with that lovely baby smell. Now they're already toasting the mainstream media on all things Irish footie-related. Spare yourself the euro and ignore what you read on the red-tops' backpage. Chances are, if it's true they probably nicked it from Chatsoccer.

What Does John Know? - Everything, actually, if what you want to know about is whiskey. John publishes a glossy expensive magazine purely about whiskey - the sort of mag you find in the rack in suites of five star hotels. But go to his blog, and for the price of the internet connection, you get the full inside track on whiskey, whisky, bourbon, rye and that muck that Japanese, New Zealanders and for all I know Martians also claim to be the water of life.

Tattooblog - Does exactly what it says on the skin, sorry, tin. It's not the usual insider 'body adornment' mong banging on about how 'tribal' his studio in some San Diego basement is. Though there is a serious appreciation of skin art expressed herein.
Nope, this blog strikes the tone of a celeb mag, with plenty of pics of new celeb tats and fresh pics of what's hot in tatworld (and not in the half-dressed biker chick kind of way). Wanna see tattoos of Darth Vader crossed with Hello Kitty, or read about braille tattoos for blind people? Or just find out what Amy Winehouse or Jordan's new tattoos are? This is where to go.

Weird Meat - Michael from Weird Meat is the inevitable result of the fetishisation of food and cuisine in modern culture. But writes it all up so well, you have to forgive him his penchant for chowing down on worm fungus, live shrimp and lizard soup in various unsignposted backstreet eateries in Asia.
This is what happens when you cross the food pornography of a Nigella or a Jamie with the backpacker spirit of eating local from a dodgy street stall even when your brain and tummy tell you not to. The lad has balls (sheep's balls, and he ate them in Shanghai).
For proper dodgy meat, however, he really needs to get out of Asia and over to Iceland, where rotten shark, whalemeat and singed sheep heads are traditional fare (I've had one of them and it was fantastic - not saying which one, though!)

There are more, but those are my current faves out there. And yes, I need to get out more, so I'm going to try doing that next week.

Super Tuesday

It's a little shocking to my ears, having spent my childhood in the bosom of the British NHS, to listen to how Americans are responding to Hilary Clinton's plan for universal health entitlements.

She's been roundly lambasted by the Republicans for her 'Hilaryaid' proposals, which sound nothing more than the mildest, weakest version of what most Western Europeans would consider a fundamental human right.

While Barack continues to witter pointlessly about bringing 'change', without ever specifying what change he's bringing (loose change, perhaps?), at least La Clinton has put an actual concrete proposal on the table for discussion.

And to me, that discussion has been frightening.

If you were to listen to Mitt Romney or Huckabee, you'd think that she was proposing Communist totalitarianism. The idea of any form of universal state supported health care is anathema to these people. And their millions of supporters.

Those views, abhorrent as they are to most people on this side of the pond, are not unknown here, however. You could map our current Health Minister's agenda almost exactly over what Republicans believe is a functioning health system - ie a multi-tier affair based on ability to pay rather than need, bloated with inefficient beaurocracy and outrageously expensive due to rampant litigation against medics, the aforementioned paper-pushing and the need to generate profits for private entities.

There's something to think about, not only on Super Tuesday, but the next time you hear Harney trying to sell you some snake oil about 'co-location'.

The lies they tell: Part 5

Two weeks ago, Bertie Ahern said Enda Kenny told a 'bare-faced lie' after the Fine Gael leader had pointed out that the Taoiseach is not tax-compliant.

It turns out that the Taoiseach was telling a bare-faced lie. He is not tax compliant.

Ahern then went on to claim he was unable to become tax compliant until after his involvement with the Mahon tribunal ceases. He said the tax authorities told him that.

This also was a bare-faced lie.

Bertie then claimed he had meant to say 'authorities on tax' (ie his accountant), rather than tax authorities (ie the Revenue.) Yesterday in the Dail he finally admitted that the Revenue have made no mention of Mahon and are not intending to, or required to, wait until the end of the tribunal to deal with the Taoiseach's tax issues.

So, Enda Kenny told the truth. And the Taoiseach has repeatedly told lies about his tax status.

The only remaining question to my mind is why anybody in this country still believes a word this man says.

He's still laughing at us.

More on this from Slugger and Public Inquiry.

President Obama's conundrum

Here's a pertinent little point I suspect might raise a few hackles, but that's what I'm here for, so let's go.

What would President Barack Obama do about affirmative action programmes after he was elected?

Try as I might, as I wade through the positivist verbiage that passes for political discourse in the US presidential election, I can't find a single hard statement by Obama on the issue.

But in the past, he has said he supports affirmative action supporting the promotion of blacks in educational admissions, public employment and state contracting. Then again, he's also said that the black community need to take responsibility for their own fate, and that there is no black or white Americans, just Americans. So, the position is a little contradictory.

But if he gets elected, the future of affirmative action going to come to a head, no doubt about it.

Because a black president would put the nail in the coffin of the theory that underpins the entire process. A black president would be walking, talking proof that there is no glass ceiling for minorities in the land of opportunity. Obama himself holds an undergrad degree from Columbia and a Harvard Law degree, and there is little evidence he entered either institution as a result of affirmative action. He's just a very smart guy.

Whither then, the state-sponsored skewing of access to higher education in favour of blacks?

Equally, a black president, mindful of his core vote while seeking a second term, would be mental if he rolled back on the system whereby blacks are privileged in terms of access to the halls of learning, by way of quotas, lower admission levels, and so on.

It's a perfect checkmate, and one that conservative Republicans would be all too quick to put him in.

Let's briefly consider the concept of affirmative action. Firstly, it's discriminatory and anti-meritocratic. It permits those with lower test results to enter higher education in the United States purely on the basis of their skin colour.

This is based on the theory that black people are in some sense the subject of endemic prejudice within the education system, as borne out by systematically lower levels of educational achievement across the board.

Now, one of three things is causing that lower level of achievement. (Here's where the hate mail begins.)

Either the systematic racism exists, is widespread, and in many cases is being perpetrated bizarrely by (presumably self-hating) black teachers in predominantly black schools.

Or black students are simply not applying themselves to their studies to the same degree white and Asian students do.

Or they can't apply themselves to that degree because they are generally not capable of competing at the same level.

Depending on your position, there's a case to be made for all three explanations. Does racism exist? Sure. But is it really as widespread as to push black student test results around 15% below that of white students in general? Let's say it is. In which case, a country so endemically racist is unlikely to ever elect a black president. We'll see about that come November. But if he is elected, then the country just isn't that racist.

Do black students not take their studies as seriously as other students? Perhaps not. Poverty could be feeding into that, of course. So could gang culture, family breakdown and a few other factors. But Latino students are just as impoverished in general, just as affected by gang culture and family breakdown, and they do better than black students in general. South-East Asian kids are, especially first and second generation immigrants, also impoverished. But they do better than the white kids in general, never mind the black kids.

Are black kids inherently less academically able? (Cue the hate mail.) There are IQ studies that show a clear differential in educational attainment for various races. Ashkenazi Jews score 15% higher than Caucasian kids on IQ tests. Black kids are a further 10% behind. Such studies are often depicted as racist, junk science in the PC media without their ever offering scientifically based counter-arguments.

But they're invariably done by highly respected scientists, who have a lot to lose and little to gain by publicising such research. And simple logic dictates that we are not all born with the exact same intelligence potential.

And simple examinations of post-grad level students, especially in the sciences, indicate a vast predominance of Jewish and Asian (including sub-continental Asian) kids well out of kilter to their predominance within the wider population. And given how many of those are the children of recent immigrants, at least among the Asians, affluent backgrounds don't explain it.

Which brings us back to President Obama's affirmative action conundrum. He cannot support affirmative action in education if his own election demonstrates that America is not endemically opposed to black betterment in society. And he cannot scrap it without alienating his core vote.

If you can work a way out of that checkmate for him, he may well have a job for you as Education Secretary come next January.

And the nominations are ...

According to one informed net source, this little blog has made it to the Irish Blog Awards longlist as Best Political Blog for the second year running.

Once again, it's up against some very stiff opposition, in the shape of major group efforts like Irish Election and Slugger O'Toole, and the blogs of professional politicians, such as Eric Byrne and Ciaran Cuffe.

From my perspective, it's great to see some of Ireland's longest running political bloggers on the list too, like Richard Delevan and El Blogador. Nice to see the less serious commentators, like Bock, rubbing shoulders with the occasionally too serious, like the Cedar Lounge boys too.

It's an eclectic list, well worth delving into by anyone with any sort of political interest in this country.

If there's a surprise omission, for me it would have to be the always excellent and provocative Public Inquiry. But I suppose you can't have everything.

I'm frankly delighted to have made the cut, especially considering that three-month period last Autumn when lack of net access meant I could barely blog at all. And I would urge y'all to consider Skin Flicks when you get around to voting in the Blog Awards.

More than anything, though, congratulations are due to Damien Mulley for organising the event.

The best thing about the Irish blog awards is the fact that it brings, in the shape of the long lists, a sampling of the very best of the Irish blogosphere to a wider reading audience.

So take some time out, peruse the various nominees in all the different categories, from food blogs to photoblogs, politicos to humourists, and discover for yourself some of the excellent Irish blogs out there. That's what I intend to do over the next few weeks.

Well done to all taking part, and of course, vote Skin Flicks if you're so inclined!

State of the union address translated

Why am I up so late? Good question. Blame the damn birds.

Actually, I'm watching Bush's final State of the Union address. (Link to full text.)

This is a depressing experience I wouldn't recommend to all but the hardiest of souls.

So to spare the more delicate among you, let me bring you some relevant excerpts, complete with translations into English:

"In the long run, Americans can be confident about our economic growth. But in the short run, we can all see that growth is slowing."
- Oh. Y'all noticed the recession, huh?

"Members of Congress should know: If any bill raising taxes reaches my desk, I will veto it."
- I need all the money I can get for my exceedingly expensive war and to stave off the worst of the forthcoming economic collapse. So let's keep borrowing!

"Thanks to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships you approved, more than 2,600 of the poorest children in our Nation's capital have found new hope at a faith-based or other non-public school. Sadly, these schools are disappearing at an alarming rate in many of America's inner cities. So I will convene a White House summit aimed at strengthening these lifelines of learning."
- Let's teach more kids about intelligent design, everyone. And while we're at it, we can cut funding for state schools.

"The United States is committed to strengthening our energy security and confronting global climate change. And the best way to meet these goals is for America to continue leading the way toward the development of cleaner and more efficient technology."
- Fuck Al Gore. We had to sign that Green crapola in Bali. But in the meantime, at least we've got Iraq to milk dry of its oil.

"Every Member in this chamber knows that spending on entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid is growing faster than we can afford. And we all know the painful choices ahead if America stays on this path: massive tax increases, sudden and drastic cuts in benefits, or crippling deficits."
- Fuck the poor and sick too. We can't afford that shit. We're at war remember? Make that wars, actually. So let's axe the handouts.

"We are engaged in the defining ideological struggle of the 21st century. The terrorists oppose every principle of humanity and decency that we hold dear. Yet in this war on terror, there is one thing we and our enemies agree on: In the long run, men and women who are free to determine their own destinies will reject terror and refuse to live in tyranny. That is why the terrorists are fighting to deny this choice to people in Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and the Palestinian Territories. And that is why, for the security of America and the peace of the world, we are spreading the hope of freedom."
- The people of Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Palestine are all terrorists. And we have to fight them, because they're this century's Soviets.

"One of the most important tools we can give them is the ability to monitor terrorist communications. To protect America, we need to know who the terrorists are talking to, what they are saying, and what they are planning. Last year, the Congress passed legislation to help us do that. Unfortunately, the Congress set the legislation to expire on February 1. This means that if you do not act by Friday, our ability to track terrorist threats would be weakened and our citizens will be in greater danger. The Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted."
- You can't give citizens their privacy and civil liberties back after you've taken them for no reason. So let's keep bugging the people.

America is opposing genocide in Sudan and supporting freedom in countries from Cuba and Zimbabwe to Belarus and Burma."
- Only we're doing it really quietly, because none of them have oil we want.

"America is a force for hope in the world because we are a compassionate people, and some of the most compassionate Americans are those who have stepped forward to protect us."
- We express our compassion through military force and imperial occupation, which is why we're so popular all around the world.

That's the state of the union, folks. Teetering on the verge of economic collapse, eradicating secular education, scrapping welfare and health for the poor, fighting Muslims because the country needs an enemy, and bugging their own people.

Nice work, George.

P.S. Here's a beautiful Youtube edit of last year's speech. All you're meant to take away from the entire address in a minute flat.

Man on the moon?

Everyone is entitled to believe one crazy conspiracy theory.

Human minds being what they are, discerning patterns among unrelated events is both the reason we rose above the other great apes to the level of civilisation and the reason paranoia is endemic.

Hence the popularity of clearly mental propositions, whether they be the Zionist one-world government, the secret bloodline of Jesus, the CIA took out the twin towers on 9/11, or my personal favourite, the faked moon landing.

Now, being by nature too lazy to research the facts about dubious issues, I am happy in my ignorance over whether man ever did make it to the nearest satellite or not. Suffice to say, that in my lifetime precious little advancement in space travel has occurred.

So either NASA hit a wall pretty quick in terms of what's technologically possible, or they faked their early successes in order to get one over on the Russkies. Since whatever factual records exist are edited, or classified, or possibly faked, it's hard to know for sure.

Certainly, the issues over lighting in the moon landing footage, and the inability of satellites to discover where the original landing site is today, do raise a few concerns. But let's face it, none of this particularly matters in (and on) a world suffering so many wars, famines, corruption and atrocities as the one we inhabit.

There are other things to get upset about, you know.

Like the Jews running the world with the shape-shifting lizards, who got the Vatican-controlled CIA to blow up New York and blame it on the ragheads because otherwise people would find out about Jesus's children, for example.

The moon landings, fiction or fact, don't rate highly in terms of contemporary relevance, I'd argue.

But you'd think that NASA, conscious that there are people out there who doubt everything they've ever claimed to have done, would be sensitive to anything that would imply it was all a big game.

Apparently not. The defunct Multideath Corporation, so defunct in fact that they never got to funk at all, has drawn my attention to NASA's latest project: they're looking to team up with a computer games firm and create an educational online game about space travel.

So NASA intend to go up against the World of Warcraft, Lord of the Rings online and all those other outlets for net-enabled nerds with too much time and not enough social life.

Fair enough, one thinks. A little bit harsh on the games companies who will have to compete against the US government in their own market, but if this is where NASA are going, so be it.

But it does leave me wondering why they're ploughing US tax dollars into creating games software, designed to allow people to pretend they've visited the moon when they haven't left their unkempt bedrooms. Unless, of course, NASA have a special expertise in this area.

Is this a prelude to NASA admitting that they've been spunking tax dollars on fantasy space travel for the past fifty years?

Just a thought. A crazy, paranoid conspiracy theory thought. But we're all entitled to one.

P.S. Seems like Fred Reed agrees too. I'm becoming worried at how many opinions I find I'm sharing with a notoriously unhinged, former 'Soldier of Fortune' staffer.

How much democracy would you like?

How much democracy do you have? And how much would you like?

If you're reading this, chances are you live in a 'democracy'.

That's because a founding pillar of democracy is freedom of speech. It's also because liberal democracies encourage optimal economic circumstances, leading to more widely spread affluence, and by extension, greater computer ownership and internet access.

Or so we're told.

I live in Ireland. It's a 'democracy'. Most of the people who read this blog are from Ireland and other Anglophone countries like Britain, America, Australia, Canada and so on. They're all 'democracies' too.

But are any of those places truly democratic, and what do we mean by the word 'democracy' anyway?

I'm a democratic fundamentalist myself. I believe in the primacy of the will of the people. From where else does executive power draw its legitimacy?

But is voting once every four or five years for local representatives, who then subordinate their wills to those of rigid party structures in order to secure advancement, really an assertion of your will?

Do those representatives truly represent the views of those who elect them? Is the ability to remove such representatives once every five years genuinely sufficient to ensure that they act upon the will of those who elect them?

Of course not. And this is the fundamental problem with Western Democracy as we know it.

Let's consider Ireland:
An unelected President.
A head of government that the people didn't elect (and never do), who is mired in dodgy financial dealings.
Inconvenient referendum results ignored by the executive, and re-run until their chosen result is obtained.
Licorice all-sorts coalitions in control, composed not by the people but by the political party structures.
Support for a war that the people marched in their hundreds of thousands on the streets to reject.

None of that truly represents the will of the people. It is undemocratic to the core.

Then there are the undemocratic elements we share with other Western democracies. Things like irregular elections, executives that are elected by parties not the people, lengthy periods where the public are unable to challenge any government decision except through protest or the media.

Not to mention the vested interests that subvert democracy here and elsewhere. Everything from the overtly corrupt - like big business lobbying and cosying up with the politicians - to the structural, such as the internal party structures that inflict governments on the public that they never chose, such as the FF/PD coalition, or the current incumbent government.

A true representation of the popular vote any time in my living memory ought to have elected a FF/FG coalition. But it never did.

Democracy as a word comes from Greek roots - demos, meaning the people, and kratia, meaning to rule. Democracy literally means the system through which the people rule themselves. By that definition, we don't have a democracy in Ireland. Almost nowhere actually has a democracy, in fact.

There's a reason for that, plenty of reasons in fact. Liberals tell us that true democracy is dangerous, as it amounts to the tyranny of the majority. Given true democracy, like neanderthals we would all vote to disenfranchise gays, ethnic minorities and so on. Everywhere would be like Stormont once was - rule of the majority for the majority only.

The right also hates true democracy. That's because the people get in the way of important economic decision-making. People want to keep national resources and not give them to private enterprise. They want costly, bloated public services like health and education that private enterprise can deliver more efficiently. Basically, they get in the way of profit-making.

Is it any wonder then, with such opposition, that democracy has never been permitted to flourish?

Except in one place, that is. One tiny country, with almost no natural resources, and difficult geography. A country that, without military power, has managed to remain one of the most peaceful and affluent on Earth for centuries, despite internal divisions of geography, language and culture.

That country is Switzerland. You'd have thought such a successful system would have given other places food for thought. But apparently not. The rest of us cannot be trusted with the direct democracy enjoyed by the Swiss.

The Swiss are the living example that the early American constitutionalists who first iterated the fear that true democracy leads to tyranny of the majority were wrong.

In Switzerland, if you don't like a law, you consult your fellow citizens about it. If 49,999 others don't like it either, you can challenge that law and a referendum is automatically called on the issue. Same deal if you want a law introduced.

Ancient Athenian democracy was so concerned about the potential of the rich and powerful hijacking elections and garnering power to their own ends that they eschewed voting. The government was decided by lot instead, on the assumptions that everyone (alright, everyone who was a native, and wasn't a woman or slave) was equally qualified for public office purely by virtue of being a citizen.

That's an intriguing concept to ponder in this age of Hilary Clinton spending $100m (and counting!) on her US presidential campaign. Where did all that money come from, and why? If she is elected, how beholden will she be to those funders? The same question can be asked of any of the candidates in either party, of course. They're all tainted.

I'm not suggesting a return to Athenian democracy, not even one based on universal suffrage. The fear of Roisin Ingle or Steve Staunton accidentally becoming Taoiseach is simply too much.

But we could definitely go down the road that Switzerland has, with many more decisions being turned over to the people to decide for themselves. A referendum on the war would have shut Shannon to US warplanes. A referendum on the health service would have rejected Harney's transparent privatisation plan and insisted on proper funding of beds and services. A referendum on the M3 would have ensured the road went nowhere near the Hill of Tara.

You can begin see why the powers-that-be don't want you to have too much democracy now, can't you? The pesky people would get in the way of making the decisions they want - decisions that enrich them and their funders and pals at the expense of the rest of us.

I'd like to see a lot more of the decisions in Ireland made by the people. We really aren't as stupid as the professional political class think we are. Usually, we're well ahead of their curve.

And I'd like to see regular referenda as a prelude to much more democracy, including a strong right to impeach any member of the Oireachtas or indeed the President, by way of popular vote. Don't like the Minister for Transport? Get the petition together, and we'll have a vote on removing him from office.

We don't live in a real democracy. We live in a land, like most other lands, run by a political class for their own benefit and that of their funders, occasionally influenced by the fourth estate, who themselves aren't shy at posing to represent the people while peddling their own agendas. Here's what Fred Reed has to say about democracy and the press in an American context.

So how much democracy do you really want? How much do you deserve? And when are we going to get up off our knees, remove our collective mouth from the peckers of those who rule us with contempt, and demand the right to rule ourselves?

Chat Soccer

A big shout out to the lads behind www.chatsoccer.eu, a new online news service and chat forum for everyone with an interest in Irish soccer, from the Eircom league to Keano's Sund-Ireland, from the FAI's shenanigans to the grass roots junior game.

If footie's your thing, then this site is going to be of interest, I reckon.

Already chatsoccer has shown its credentials by beating the mainstream media pack to the developments on the international manager story, so clearly 'going forward' (as some might say!) it's the site to check out for the insider knowledge on all things Irish football related.

Now, if only they can organise a sub-section on the Irish League, my life will be complete!

Daft birds singing in the dead of night

Dublin, January, 2.30 in the morning. Afflicted again by insomnia, I am standing, chilled, in the sodden remnants of the back garden.

And birds are singing.

For sure, the sky is not exactly the ebony emptiness speckled with flickering stars that nighttime evokes in rural areas. A swathe of clouds to the north, towards the city centre, are reflecting back to ground the amber glow of streetlights.

And in the gaps between the orange clouds, the sky is that greyed-out kind of cornflower blue which one generally associates with dull November afternoons, the ones that end in sudden rain.

But this is the middle of the night, not the afternoon. And it is January, nearly the darkest time of the year. We are many hours from sunrise.

So why are the birds singing?

I can hear starlings and sparrows, and a number of other songbirds my urban ears are incapable of identifying. They are all singing, a full throated dawn chorus. In the middle of the night.

I'm no naturalist, as I said. So I don't know if this is a perfectly normal thing for birds to do. Though I suspect something is deeply wrong here. Wrong against the natural order, if you will.

Perhaps this error on the part of local birdlife is something to do with global warming, akin to migratory flocks taking off at the wrong time of year, or snowdrops peeking through the ground in Autumn and not the New Year.

Or perhaps there is another explanation, in which case, I would genuinely love to hear it.

Why are the birds singing in the middle of the night? Is this unique to Dublin or is it happening elsewhere? Perhaps there is some folksy country aphorism that can explain this? 'Birds sing at night – your ecology is shite.'

I'm actually a little concerned by this. If anyone can explain this phenomenon, please let me know what the birds are doing and why.

It might help me sleep a little easier.

Roaring laughing

RTE had an 'experimental' new comedy series on over these last two weeks. It was, not to put too fine a point on it, shite.

This is not surprising, given RTE's track record of comedy incompetence. This is the station, after all, that cancelled 'Scrap Saturday', turned down 'Father Ted' and yet pumps money into endless series of brain manure like 'Killinaskully' and 'Naked Camera.'

RTE don't do comedy. Period.

RTE appears to have all the comedic capacity of a four year old's funeral. The station couldn't raise a laugh with a fork-lift truck. Nothing they do, least of all their own dadaist business practices, is ever funny ha-ha. Funny peculiar? All the time. But never funny ha-ha.

So, I tuned into 'The Roaring Twenties' with a heavy heart and some valium handy. It wasn't promising. The premise, something about four young doleheads and media monkeys living in Rathmines, was obvious and depressing. The acting was as hammy as a gammon sandwich. The v/o was creepy. And it wasn't funny at all.

So far, so standard issue from RTE. But apparently the people behind this particular televisual waste of time are noobies, fresh out of college and still cutting their TV teeth. So, a little credit for the first-timers. The truth is, it wasn't all their fault.

Now, for reasons I can't outline here, I happened to see the script for this show last Autumn, before it was filmed. I will clarify that I had fuck all to do with making this show. It was nothing to do with me at all. But the script did pass through my hands at one point. And I will say this. It was shite, but it made sense.

It had a start, middle and end. Early scenes set up gags that happened later on. There was plot progression. It was shite, but it had it's own internal logic.

But what appeared on RTE didn't make any sense whatsoever. Stuff was apparently cut arbitrarily during the filming. There were end-of-show gags that made no fucking sense whatsoever because the set-up scene earlier on had mysteriously been axed. The net result of this editing by madman was that what little coherence or humour that had existed in this project was cut to ribbons.

Oddly, all the bits that got cut seemed, to my recollection, a little risqué. Which is especially odd, given that the same show happily depicted some goth chick watching a pig-sex porno. (I kid you not, it was that sort of show.)

I can only conclude that someone in RTE's hierarchy, fearful that an deliberate and amusing gag could be broadcast over the network for the first time ever, slashed the show to bits to prevent it from making any sense whatsoever, and therefore eradicating the possibility that it might make anyone laugh.

So another RTE comedy dies. Farewell, it won't be mourned. But I for one feel a bit sorry for the noobies who thought this was going to be their big TV break, and I feel a bit sorry for the actors and crew who put their time into making something only for it to be sliced up like turkey breast back in Montrose.

Hopefully, next time everyone will have more sense and take their scripts to Channel Four like Linehan and Mathews instead.

RTE don't do comedy. Period.

Poor Liverpool

First they have to share their European City of Culture status with some frozen Norwegian village.

Then it emerges that the arsehole Americans who bought Liverpool FC have been attempting to remove Rafa Benitez from his job and replace him with former Olympic diver Jurgen Klinsmann.

This is beyond tragic.

Thankfully, Rafa kept winning long enough for the blond bombshell to look elsewhere and he will now be mismanaging Bayern next season instead, thank fuck.

It seems that the Arab consortium which wanted to buy LFC last year, but were beaten to the deal by the Yanks, are still interested. Fantastic. Let's all pray to Allah that the Americans sell out to them and fuck off ASAP.

Hicks and Gillett - you are no longer welcome at Anfield. You do not understand this sport, or this club. You have over-indebted yourself for this ego-trip at our expense. Do not dare lumber LFC with the financial mistakes you have made. And do not dare sack Rafael Benitez.

Please sell up to the Arabs, who at least are proper fans, and vanish back across the Atlantic now.

You're not fucking welcome.

Mystic Skinner

Exactly a year ago today, I made my 2007 predictions. I even foolhardily suggested that the good folk of the blogosphere should go out and punt their hard-earned on my predictions.

So, is there now a mass mob of irate and skint bloggers headed to Skinner Towers to attack it again?

Let's find out:

I said:
The NI elections will see a bump in the SDLP vote, but not enough to overhaul Sinn Fein. Both parties will hail their performances as a success. The UUP will similarly close on the DUP and both parties again will claim public support for their strategies. Ian Paisley will then find further nit-picking reasons not to enter power-sharing, and the whole process will end up on ice again, and Northern Irish citizens will still be denied democracy.

2007 said: Ner-ner. Totally wrong. Big Ian ended up fancying Marty McFly something rotten and now they both love being in bed together, so to speak. Who knew?

I said:
More American troops will enter Iraq, which will deteriorate further, if that is indeed possible. The US government will blame Iranian influences within Iraq for the upsurge in violence and, with the support of Tony Blair, though without British troops, will attempt to overthrow the Ahmedinejad regime.

2007 said: Half-right. It's still a work in progress. Only yesterday the Bush baby was out sabre-rattling about Iran again. This is coming down the pipeline, just a little slower than I thought.

I said:
The destruction of Afghanistan will continue apace, in media silence and to no particular outcry from the Western world. Al-Qaeda will retain a presence there, and British and American troops will start to leave in order to free up manpower for Iraq, and later, Iran. Opium will flow out of the place, children will starve, women will be suppressed and many people will die needlessly.

2007 said: Bang on the money. Ross Kemp in Afghanistan isn't going to show you the opium dealing or the complete chaos that is Helmand province. But he will make a nice show about the brave squaddies still stuck out there. Bless.

I said:
Fianna Fail will be returned to power in a bad-tempered election marked by the emergence of negative campaigning for the first time in Ireland. Expect particular trouble in the Dublin Central constituency, where Bertie the cheque signer faces off against the fashion wing of the Republican movement, Mary-Lou.

Hard to fault that. 2007 says, well done Skinner! 100%

I said:
However, the PDs will not be returned to power, leaving McDowell in control of himself only in the Dail, as Mary Harney, Mae Sexton and the rest all bow out ungraciously. The PDs will be behind Joe Higgins' Socialists in parliament after they secure a second seat.

2007 said: Close but no cigar. Harney stayed and McDowell lost. So did Higgins.

I said:
The Shinners will boost their number of TDs, but not so much as to create a hung Dail. Bertie will make up the numbers of his government with randomers like Jackie Healy-Rae as he did previously.

2007 said: Yes on the all-sorts government, no on the Shinner tide. Half wrong and half correct.

I said:
Enda Kenny will face a leadership challenge, as will Pat Rabbitte. Enda may survive his, but Pat will not. Expect to see Brendan Howlin in charge of Labour by year's end.

2007 said: No one wanted Enda's job, so he stayed. Howlin didn't want Rabbitte's job so it went to Gilmore instead.

I said:
Tony Blair will finally get thrown out of Number Ten, to be replaced by Gordon Brown after a late party leadership challenge from John Reid and some other numpties. 'New' Labour will continue to ignore the needs of the British working class despite the figurehead change, and will continue to leak support to the Tories. The BNP, Respect and Scots and Welsh nationalist votes will all inexorably rise.

2007 said: Spot on again! Another bullseye.

I said:
The Basque peace process will collapse, leading to further sporadic bombings and violence. Shinners will wring their hands about it and talk about the need for dialogue.

2007 said: Yes, but not quite as critical a development as was predicted. Only a little violence, and only a few arrests. But this peace train is definitely going in reverse.

I said:
Conflicts will flare across Africa, in Sudan, Somalia, and along the Western coast. But that happens every year, so that's not really much of a prediction, I admit.

2007 said: Nope, not much of a prediction. But it did happen. Darfur is a genuine weeping ulcer on the face of the planet at this stage.

I said:
Manchester United will win the Premiership, leading to the 'mutually agreed' departure of Jose Mourinho from Chelsea. In a fit of pique, he will take Frank Lampard with him to Real Madrid. Whoever wins the Barcelona-Liverpool tie will win the Champions' League.

2007 said: Hope you made money on the Premiership tip because the CL was a little off. Liverpool beat Barca but couldn't get past AC Milan in their second final meeting of three years. Spot on about Mourinho, though. And as soon as he gives up on managing Liverpool and takes the Madrid job, Fat Frank will be packing his bags.

I said:
There will be a major spike in oil prices again.

2007 said: Instead there were many and repeated spikes in oil prices. And there's more to come.

I make that more than three-quarters correct. Is it time to start applying for a job as a seer or oracle?

2008 Predictions

I made a few predictions this time last year. I'll return to see how wrong I was about 2007 in my next post.

In the meantime, here is my doom-mongering for 2008.

1. Pakistan becomes the no. 1 threat to world peace. By no. 1, I mean the return of the nuclear fear and five minutes to midnight.

2. Bertie gets dumped at long last by Fianna Fail. When the chairman starts offering support to the manager in soccer, it's invariably followed by a sacking. So how else to read the fact that half the cabinet are sympathising with El Berto's ongoing tribunal antics?

3. A Republican, possibly Romney, will be the next US President. Pace Richard Delevan, who's been proselytising for Obama for some time (which is odd as eggs for an American right-winger), I can't see the US electing a black man. If he ran as Hilary's Veep, they could do it, but the 'dream ticket' will never come off, now that Obama thinks he can gain the nomination.

4. Man Utd for the premiership, annoyingly. Ferguson to again fail in Europe, and again to delay his retirement, much to Carlos Queiroz's chagrin. Real or Sevilla for the champion's league. Rafa Benitez to leave Liverpool in the summer after row with the club owners.

5. The SDLP and UUP to leave the Northern executive and set up in proper opposition. The SDLP will be courted by FF and Irish Labour who both finally formally set up as Northern parties, thus simultaneously copper-fastening the union and pissing off the unionists.

6. British final pull-out from Iraq, and probably Afghanistan too.

7. Ongoing dollar collapse, commodity surges, oil spikes, banking crises and falling house prices in Northern Europe, especially the bubbles like NI and Spain. In other words, job losses, house repos, and the end of living beyond your means on credit. There will be no credit available this time next year.

8. No boycotts of the Beijing Olympics, despite the appalling behaviour of the Chinese government. The Chinese will finally outperform America in the medals table. People will mutter about drugs, as if that's a surprise. The 13 year old British diver will be the new Eddie the Eagle Edwards. In other words, he'll be crap but the British public will love him.

9. People will realise that 'social networking' sites are a waste of their time. Others will migrate from one site to another with increasing frequency. Astronomical share valuations in these firms will collapse. Call it Dot-bomb 2.0.

10. I will finish my damn novel. Really, I will.