Those were the wise words of Chris Rock to all fathers everywhere. The one duty of a father, he said, was to keep their daughter away from a career stripping.
It's probably redundant to add, keep her out of porn too. That's sort of implicit in what he said. Yet increasingly, the San Fernando Valley in California is inundated with girls who think that they might have found a back door to fame by whoring themselves on camera.
I was watching a documentary the other night about Ron Jeremy, the world's best known male porn star, and I found it tragicomic, poignant and ultimately depressing.
Here's a man who is engaging, warm, friendly and self-deprecating. A man from a good New York Jewish family, who works like a navvy even at 50 plus. A man who many other men believe has had the best life in the world.
Yet he's lonely, depressive, and ultimately frustrated in his lifetime ambition to make it in mainstream movies as an actor.
That got me thinking: if that's how life ended up for the industry's success story, how did others fare in porn? Then I found this blog, which tracks porn stars after their career. And the answer to my question was revealed. And it was frightening.
Sure, Stormy Daniels is running for Senate and Jenna Jameson is a millionairess. But what about all the others? Let's start with Chasey Lain, who was once so well known that she had a top 10 hit written about her.
Now a crackpipe ho. Pretty tragic. But she's still alive. Which is more than can be said for:
Billy London: murdered, his head and feet found in a dumpster
Marilyn Chambers: heart attack after taking prescription meds
Bryan Kocis: murdered by two other gay porn actors
Buck Adams: repeated heart attacks caused by drug and alcohol abuse led to his death at 52
David Wasserman: suicide
Missy: dead of a drug overdose at 41
Anastasia Blue: dead, apparently from drug use
Megan Lee: suicide by gunshot wound at 26
Melba Bruce: dead in her thirties in mysterious circumstances
Miyouki Asou: suicide at 22, believing porn had ruined her life
Paige Summers: drug overdose at 27
Star Stowe: murdered by a serial killer at 41
Elisa Bridges: drug overdose at 28
Dorothy Stratten: murdered
Lea de Mae: died of brain cancer at 27
Kathy Harcourt: found shot in the head, possibly self-inflicted
Vanessa Freeman: murdered at 30 by her boyfriend
Angela Devi: suicide by hanging at 30
Naughtia Childs: found dead at bottom of a stairwell, either suicide, murder or accidental death while tripping on LSD
Trinity Loren: overdosed at 34
Rene Bond: dead at 44 from liver cirrhosis
Rebecca Steele: died penniless in a motel room from a drug overdose at 42, while suffering from full-blown AIDS
Taylor Summers: murdered by photographer in possible snuff movie shoot
Terri Diver: dead at 29 from a drug overdose
Sheridan: wiped out in car crash at 20
Lolo Ferrari: died from 'mechanical suffocation' at 4o, husband spent time in prison for it.
Lisa de Leeuw: dead from AIDS at 34
Eva Lux: heroin overdose at 32
Britney Madison: died in car crash at 21
Chanel Price: overdosed at 35
Zoe Zane: murdered aged 18
Cal Jammer: shot himself aged 34
Haley Paige: dead of an overdose, boyfriend committed suicide before he could be questioned as to whether he had murdered her
Nancee Kellee: hanged herself
Alex Jordan: found hanging in her own closet, suicide or auto-erotic asphyxiation suspected
Savannah: shot herself aged 23
Julie Robbins: died in a car crash possibly caused by her being impaired at the wheel aged 26
Linda Wong: drug overdose at 36
Kristi Lynn: died in a car crash, suspected to be drunk at the time of driving
Shauna Grant: shot herself aged 20
Chloe Jones: died penniless of liver failure caused by alcohol and Vicodin abuse aged 29
Jon Dough: Suicide by deliberate overdose aged 43
And others are alive, but clearly damaged:
Kay Parker: believes she's been alive for 6,000 years.
Lori Michaels: faked her own death to avoid porn fan stalkers
Houston: former drug addict, cancer sufferer, now a Christian, sacked from her job because of her porn past
Alisandra: arrested for employing underage girls as strippers
Janine Lindemulder: jailed for tax evasion and lost custody of her kid
Tommy Saxx: jailed for credit card fraud
Fleur Brown: crack addict, jailed for trying to sell the virginity of a 13 year old
Hyapatia Lee: suffering from multiple personality disorder following the trauma of her porno experience
Jack Venice: jailed for raping a college girl
Max Hardcore: jailed for over three years for abusing women in his videos
Tony Eveready: jailed for possession of cocaine and guns
Danielle Rush: crippled in a car crash
Barbara Dare: broke and living with her parents in her late 40s
JR Carrington: a prostitute in a Nevada brothel
Marilyn Starr: convicted and jailed for insider trading
Melissa Walker: jailed for attempted murder
I probably didn't need to reproduce so many names. But I wanted to counter any charge that I was cherrypicking horror stories here.
Sure, some porno stars get out alive and relatively well. Though who knows what's going on inside their heads?
But this lengthy list of casualties has some common threads running through it: drug abuse, suicide, criminality, suspect car accidents, murder.
Given the small number of porn stars, and the incredibly young ages some of these people died at, it seems to me that one of the best ways to preserve your life to a respectable age would be to avoid porno as a career choice.
Let's go back to Chasey Lain before I finish. She was the subject of the Bloodhound Gang's 1990 hit 'Ballad of Chasey Lain' in 1990. But nearly two decades on, she's still apparently doing porn, when her crackpipe addiction permits her to perform.
She has a son. She's still not even 40. But like others on this list, she'll be dead or jailed soon enough, judging by the video above.
I'm no prude and I'm not judgemental. I'm not a big fan of porno generally. It's monotonous and sort of gross sometimes. But it's not a $10 billion industry for nothing. People like it and buy it and use it all the time.
Someone's making that $10 billion, but it's clearly not the performers. Not those who died through murder or suicide or overdose. Not those in jail, or ill, or mad. Not even relatively successful and affluent people like Ron Jeremy or Jenna Jameson.
And whoever's making the money clearly doesn't give a shit for the performers, who to them are as dispensible as the tissues they wipe down their sets with when their done filming.
I recently came across a campaign against cocaine which berated coke users for being 'selfish' because something like 3 square metres of rainforest is cleared to produce every gram or so of the drug.
What a species of people we are, who care more for trees than we do for people.
Porno can be bad for people who consume it, since it can become addictive and replace genuine affection and sexuality in people's lives.
But it is far more destructive to those who perform in it. When will we see an anti-porn campaign that is based, not on Christian disgust or feminist outrage, but on genuine concern for the people being damaged by the industry?
Do we really care more for Brazilian trees than we do for flesh and blood people?
Monday, August 03, 2009
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Stop, please! No more irony!
I am suffering from an overdose of irony.
Evening Herald columnist and stay-at-home mom Suzanne Power has an especially pertinent title to her column this week.
It's been titled: "So look, stranger, don't bore me with your sad life and pathetic small talk."
I'm still not sure if this title refers to her article, which of course is the usual oul shite about men being crap, daytime TV and bodily functions - in other words, the same oul shite EVERY stay-at-home mommy columnist writes about.
In fact, I suspect it may be a comment from a wry editor or sub-editor forced to read this drivel as they put it on the page.
Evening Herald columnist and stay-at-home mom Suzanne Power has an especially pertinent title to her column this week.
It's been titled: "So look, stranger, don't bore me with your sad life and pathetic small talk."
I'm still not sure if this title refers to her article, which of course is the usual oul shite about men being crap, daytime TV and bodily functions - in other words, the same oul shite EVERY stay-at-home mommy columnist writes about.
In fact, I suspect it may be a comment from a wry editor or sub-editor forced to read this drivel as they put it on the page.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
United Kingdom of Big Brother
CCTV cameras everywhere.
Corrupt police permitted to stop and search anyone they choose without need of suspicion, and arrest them and hold them for months on end without charge.
Endless databases of information about members of the public held by the authorities in insecure environments, including laptops left on trains or in taxis.
Criminal sanctions for not submitting your data to the databases.
Firearms and watercannons used routinely to suppress legitimate protests.
Authorities retaining DNA evidence supplied by suspects subsequently found to be innocent, including from children, despite being told by Europe to stop it.
A leader without a mandate who was not elected by the people, running a government that has no support, implementing laws that the people oppose and ignoring the will of the people on issues they care about.
And now the latest crackdown on civil liberties, the latest suppression of dissent in Big Brother Britain - Cops can break into your home and tear down protest posters.
Britain is now little better than an open prison.
Corrupt police permitted to stop and search anyone they choose without need of suspicion, and arrest them and hold them for months on end without charge.
Endless databases of information about members of the public held by the authorities in insecure environments, including laptops left on trains or in taxis.
Criminal sanctions for not submitting your data to the databases.
Firearms and watercannons used routinely to suppress legitimate protests.
Authorities retaining DNA evidence supplied by suspects subsequently found to be innocent, including from children, despite being told by Europe to stop it.
A leader without a mandate who was not elected by the people, running a government that has no support, implementing laws that the people oppose and ignoring the will of the people on issues they care about.
And now the latest crackdown on civil liberties, the latest suppression of dissent in Big Brother Britain - Cops can break into your home and tear down protest posters.
Britain is now little better than an open prison.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Poison Pens Six: Feminist columnist wants to ban men
No knee jerks with such predictable, goose-stepping precision as that of a feminist when men deign to comment on female health issues.
The not-so-hidden subtext of such reactions is generally that men should STFU about women's health issues entirely, the patriarchal scumbags.
In this context, one can of course understand that British hack Melanie Reid (medical qualification: X -X chromosomes) is infinitely more qualified than a certain Dr Denis Walsh (medical qualifications: associate professor in midwifery at Nottingham University) to comment on childbirth (scroll to bottom, past the other shite she's written this week.)
Dr Walsh has opined that women are having too many epidurals these days. Not so controversial, you might have thought, to suggest that too many dangerous spinal injections for pregnant women during labour should perhaps be discouraged.
But that would be to disregard the righteous wrath of people like Melanie Reid, who, like Caroline Simons in a very different context, is apparently supremely qualified for everything by virtue of her possession of a functioning womb.
Let's start by reminding ourselves that Melanie is, first of all, a HUGE fan of medicalising pregnancy and birth as much as possible. Not for her the hippy nonsense of homebirths or that sort of delinquent behaviour. No, no. Mel wants hospitals, and caesareans, and drugs. And she wants everyone else to want that too.
Bear in mind, she's expressed some extremely strange opinions in the past. Probably the most bizarre before today was when she went on BBC Radio to talk about how caring for the elderly is bad for them and people should just let their elderly senile parents die alone of hypothermia like she did.
So let's ignore her prescriptive preaching, since it actually serves to strip pregnant women of choice. Let's ignore also her nonsense about what nasty people medics are for encouraging women to breastfeed. Let's instead focus on her latest bout of uterus-focused lunacy - men can't talk about pregnancy or childbirth because men don't have wombs.
Dr Denis Walsh is a midwife. Not just any old midwife, though. He teaches other midwives. He teaches them so well that he is now a professor of midwifery. He's been in the childbirth game for decades, and has seen the rates of epidurals rising rapidly, and he's concerned.
He's concerned because epidurals are risky, and because they lead to women needing hormones to boost their contractions, which has god knows what effect on the children. As the good doc says, we've no idea what the long-term effects of this will be.
He also reckons that there are a load of other pain relief options for women in labour. And he'd know, because he's a professor of midwifery and this is his subject of expertise.
But that's not good enough for Mel. She's got a womb, so clearly she is way more qualified to discuss such matters than Dr Walsh. In fact, she reckons that he should be sacked from his job for the sole crime of being a man - him and every other male midwife.
Let's imagine for a moment that I said: "Look here, this Melanie Reid is a pretty piss-poor journalist. Here she is criticising experts who know way more than she does. She's clearly not qualified to be doing her job. In fact, it's unnatural for her to be doing it at all. For centuries we relied on men to be journalists. All women should be banned from journalism because it's unnatural."
I take it the flaws in that argument would be evident to all. So now let's look at what Melanie has to say about Dr Walsh. (You might want to settle down and get the popcorn out for this - such spectacular nonsense rarely gets a public outing):
I have a little suggestion of my own, if we're in the business of proposing that people be banned from stuff. Melanie Reid should be banned from writing about childbirth, or medicine, or health, or men ever again, since she clearly has only frothing-mouthed feminist cant to contribute.
In fact, perhaps we should consider a breeding ban for Mel too. After all, she clearly doesn't like the way women are given options and advice and care when giving birth in Britain, and she clearly hates the fact that men are allowed to perform some of these tasks. And do we really want someone with such bizarre opinions in control of kids, even her own?
If she falls pregnant accidentally, we could of course refer her to the Afghani health service and those Taliban midwives - you know the ones, all dressed in black with zero education, living in squalor and under genuine male oppression - that she rates so highly.
Melanie Reid, take a bow for being the stupidest cow in British newspapers this week.
The not-so-hidden subtext of such reactions is generally that men should STFU about women's health issues entirely, the patriarchal scumbags.
In this context, one can of course understand that British hack Melanie Reid (medical qualification: X -X chromosomes) is infinitely more qualified than a certain Dr Denis Walsh (medical qualifications: associate professor in midwifery at Nottingham University) to comment on childbirth (scroll to bottom, past the other shite she's written this week.)
Dr Walsh has opined that women are having too many epidurals these days. Not so controversial, you might have thought, to suggest that too many dangerous spinal injections for pregnant women during labour should perhaps be discouraged.
But that would be to disregard the righteous wrath of people like Melanie Reid, who, like Caroline Simons in a very different context, is apparently supremely qualified for everything by virtue of her possession of a functioning womb.
Let's start by reminding ourselves that Melanie is, first of all, a HUGE fan of medicalising pregnancy and birth as much as possible. Not for her the hippy nonsense of homebirths or that sort of delinquent behaviour. No, no. Mel wants hospitals, and caesareans, and drugs. And she wants everyone else to want that too.
Bear in mind, she's expressed some extremely strange opinions in the past. Probably the most bizarre before today was when she went on BBC Radio to talk about how caring for the elderly is bad for them and people should just let their elderly senile parents die alone of hypothermia like she did.
So let's ignore her prescriptive preaching, since it actually serves to strip pregnant women of choice. Let's ignore also her nonsense about what nasty people medics are for encouraging women to breastfeed. Let's instead focus on her latest bout of uterus-focused lunacy - men can't talk about pregnancy or childbirth because men don't have wombs.
Dr Denis Walsh is a midwife. Not just any old midwife, though. He teaches other midwives. He teaches them so well that he is now a professor of midwifery. He's been in the childbirth game for decades, and has seen the rates of epidurals rising rapidly, and he's concerned.
He's concerned because epidurals are risky, and because they lead to women needing hormones to boost their contractions, which has god knows what effect on the children. As the good doc says, we've no idea what the long-term effects of this will be.
He also reckons that there are a load of other pain relief options for women in labour. And he'd know, because he's a professor of midwifery and this is his subject of expertise.
But that's not good enough for Mel. She's got a womb, so clearly she is way more qualified to discuss such matters than Dr Walsh. In fact, she reckons that he should be sacked from his job for the sole crime of being a man - him and every other male midwife.
Let's imagine for a moment that I said: "Look here, this Melanie Reid is a pretty piss-poor journalist. Here she is criticising experts who know way more than she does. She's clearly not qualified to be doing her job. In fact, it's unnatural for her to be doing it at all. For centuries we relied on men to be journalists. All women should be banned from journalism because it's unnatural."
I take it the flaws in that argument would be evident to all. So now let's look at what Melanie has to say about Dr Walsh. (You might want to settle down and get the popcorn out for this - such spectacular nonsense rarely gets a public outing):
"There’s simply no point trying to be reasonable about this. Dr Walsh either wants women to suffer or he thinks being controversial is a good career move. Either way, this is the midwifery equivalent of bombing women back to the Stone Age. Personally speaking, I’d rather take my chances with the Taleban [sic] than inhabit a system run by Dr Walsh and his kind.
And incidentally, don’t you think men should be banned from becoming midwives? If we’re talking tradition, after all, a male midwife is even more unnatural than a pain-free childbirth."
She has no intention of being reasonable.
She'd rather receive pregnancy and labour care from the Taliban than a professor of midwifery in one of the safest countries in the Western World to give birth.
She considers his sage advice that less epidurals be used as akin to being bombed into the stone age.
She wants men to be banned from a job that many do well, saving little lives each day, purely on the basis of their gender.
I have a little suggestion of my own, if we're in the business of proposing that people be banned from stuff. Melanie Reid should be banned from writing about childbirth, or medicine, or health, or men ever again, since she clearly has only frothing-mouthed feminist cant to contribute.
In fact, perhaps we should consider a breeding ban for Mel too. After all, she clearly doesn't like the way women are given options and advice and care when giving birth in Britain, and she clearly hates the fact that men are allowed to perform some of these tasks. And do we really want someone with such bizarre opinions in control of kids, even her own?
If she falls pregnant accidentally, we could of course refer her to the Afghani health service and those Taliban midwives - you know the ones, all dressed in black with zero education, living in squalor and under genuine male oppression - that she rates so highly.
Melanie Reid, take a bow for being the stupidest cow in British newspapers this week.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Poison Pens Five: HOLD THE FRONT PAGE!!!!
'Journalist asks question at press conference shocker!'
Seriously, I'm not making this up. About four national newspapers have all covered this non-story.
A journalist went to a press conference, plucked up the courage to ask a question, got an answer, then left.
I mean, OMG!!! All those scary old dudes there, asking about, like football and stuff. No wonder plucky Lisa has her hand totally to her chest in shock at what she's done (while posing for a photo, natch.) She, like, TOTALLY asked a question at a press conference?
I know! Like, who knew journalists did that? She should get a medal or something. Probably Fianna Fail are already tapping her up to run in the next general election.
Let's remind ourselves - this chick went to university. She trained as a journalist. Her daddy was a journalist before her. So she's seen her dad do this, she's educated and trained to do it. Why is it so shocking that she went as a journalist to a press conference and asked a question? It's her JOB to do that!
What so-fucking-what yawnathon will the Irish media treat us to next? 'Man rose early and drove electric cart to deliver milk'? 'Sun expected to rise in the East tomorrow morning'? 'Moon disappointingly not made of cream cheese'?
The media rightly get it in the neck sometimes for their sense of whats worthy of reporting and what isn't. People see endless tabloid headlines about Jade Goody, or Jordan, or David Beckham, and despair.
But this article is a spectacular classic of an even more debased genre - journalists puffing themselves and each other.
People do their jobs everyday without expectation of public acknowledgement, and many people do a damn sight more important work than asking Cristiano Ronaldo about his shorts.
Where are their articles?
People who perform surgery, fly airplanes, teach children or cure cancer, take note. Here's what a REALLY difficult job is like:
"It was mortifying from my point of view," said Lisa Cannon, "but at the end of the day that's what I was sent there to do."
Well done for spotting that, love. Yes, you went to a press conference and did your job. Congrats. Do we have to read about it in the paper everytime you do your job properly?
"It was a pretty difficult interview because I couldn't ask him any of the questions I really wanted to but I'm glad I did it," she continued.
Oh, hold on a minute. She didn't ask any of the questions she wanted to? Why not? Isn't asking some questions the sum total of her task? What stopped her? Did someone overpower her and clamp a chloroform cloth over her mouth before she could get the words out?Perhaps she didn't do her job so well after all, if she couldn't ask questions at a press conference when your job is to do exactly that.
I don't mean to knock the girl - she's probably very nice and might well be generally excellent at her job, which I understand involves talking about clothes and make-up a lot on TV3. And it wasn't her decision to put this tripe into the national press.
My only questions remain for the national press themselves:
Why should the public give a fuck about this?
What is it doing in a newspaper?
How many 'Journalist did their job' stories do you reckon you could print before gangs of brain surgeons, airline pilots, firemen, nurses, teachers and other actually relevant people storm your newsroom and gag the lot of you with chloroform cloths?
Sunday, July 12, 2009
The Dude at Masada
I met the Dude again recently. He's a friend of a friend I don't see much.
The Dude is a lovely fella of Israeli background and has spent quite some time there. He may even have done military service. He's also Jewish. We tend not to talk much about Israel because we tend not to agree on much about that topic.
But I was a little drunk, and I told him I have a picture of Masada up on my wall.
JC: I swear, it hangs above my desk next to the Buddha. I have it there to remind me that Israel fell before and will again.
Dude: That's hilarious. When Israelis visit, they climb to the summit and swear that they'll never let Masada fall again. Everyone in the army has to during their training. But others who aren't in the military will come of their own accord. Even Jews from other countries come and climb up to Masada to swear. It's like an allegiance to Israel.
JC: Really? Is that why they all climb up to the top when there's a perfectly good cable car running all the way to the summit?
Dude: That's for the tourists. I bet you took the cable car. Most young people will climb up the serpent's path. It's a good old hike, but it only takes an hour or so. Only lazy foreigners ever take the cable car.
JC: Or people who don't attribute any mystical significance to marching up a mountain in the desert at dawn when you can get a lift.
Dude: You did take the cable car!
JC: Might have.
Dude: And that's why Israel is here to stay, mate. We can talk about Israel and you'll be passionate and I'll be passionate. You have your opinion and I have mine.
But at the end of the day, it's Israelis who are prepared to march up the mountain in the desert for what they believe in. If you're not prepared to march up the mountain too, how can you expect to overcome those who are?
JC: Were you ever at Masada yourself?
Dude: I took the girlfriend there when I went to visit my parents last year. She loved it.
JC: Well, it is pretty spectacular. How long did it take you to walk the serpent's path?
Dude: She was wearing heels and we had to get back to Tel Aviv later that day.
JC: Cable car's comfy, isn't it?
Dude: So what if I took the path of least resistance that day? You can't climb mountains every morning.
JC: Sooner or later, everyone's got to take the cable car. There was an old fella from the US who took the car up with me when I was there. His daughter was some sort of professor, and he was on crutches, but she left him with me and went to climb.
Dude: But she climbed! She came from America and climbed Masada. The old men can take the cable car as long as there are still younger, stronger people to climb the path. That's why they built the cable car - so that old people could get up there and experience the place.
JC: In summary, people climb the mountain so that there can be a cable car?
Dude: It's the Middle East. People kill themselves and others so that they can live freely. Why are you still trying to make it make sense?
Saturday, July 11, 2009
Lies, damned lies and TD expenses
Just a quick post to point out the further contempt in which Irish politicians hold their electorate.
In a brief moment of lucidity, Justice Minister Brian Lenihan decided to deal with the issue of dodgy TD expense claims by asking them to swipe a card in and out of the building.
This of course has the additional value of letting security know instantly who's in Leinster House and who isn't at any given time, which would be sort of important in a crisis, like a fire.
The response of one (sadly unnamed) TD in the Irish Independent?
"Can you imagine a member of parliament with a constitutional role having to swipe in as if he were a factory worker?"
"What if a fella comes up on a Monday night and decides to go straight to his or her hotel," continued our anonymous TD. "Is he meant to swipe his card first in the Dail?"
Yes. That's the system, gobshite.You get a card, you swipe it when you go to work and when you leave. You want to go to Dublin late on Monday night and crash out in your hotel room? Fire away. No one is stopping you. But don't expect us to pay you for going to a hotel and lying down!
It's the tone that is objectionable, the self-entitlement that oozes from every word. Scratch the surface further, and you hear of how FF members of the committee that made this recommendation to Minister Lenihan have been continually lobbied by their own party on this issue.
Bottom line is that the Leinster House mob don't want to lose their lucrative expenses and daily allowances that they can currently claim for whether they're entitled or not, because no one checks TD claims.
Earlier this year, the Sunday Mirror did. They found that Beverly Cooper-Flynn had claimed enough mileage in one year to drive the circumference of Planet Earth twice! This clearly did not actually happen, so one can only conclude that Deputy Flynn has got away with yet another lucky and undeserved payday at the taxpayer's expense.
Which is ironic, given her previous job was helping Bank of Ireland customers avoid paying tax. In different ways, Flynn has been screwing us all for years.
Or how about Bertie Ahern claiming mileage (he doesn't drive, has no licence, and as former Taoiseach already has a state Merc and driver on call 24-7) and overnight allowances (he lives in the North inner city, ffs)? Ahern's expenses claims are now about as plausible as his tax status, which continues to make no sense to anyone, least of all the Revenue Commission.
Jackie Healy-Rae also claimed thousands upon thousands of euro in mileage - yet the paper photographed him getting the train! And as a pensioner, he is entitled to travel for free anyway!
The fact is that the honour system can not be used any longer, because it is demonstrable that our TDs don't have any honour.
We need to save money - lots of money - from the state expenditure. Parliamentary remuneration has to stay top of the list. They shouldn't get to take a penny of us without hurting themselves first, because it was them and not the rest of us that scrapped banking legislation, fuelled property speculation and that blew our economy apart.
And we have to start with their expenses, the massive pay cheques they effectively sign for themselves each year without scrutiny.
Let the fuckers sign into work every day or not be paid. Let them produce receipts for everything or receive no expenses.
It's the very least they could do, and Lenihan is utterly right to demand this of them.
Friday, July 10, 2009
JC Skinner's letter on Lisbon
Dear Irish Turkeys,
Please do not vote in favour of Christmas.
The assurances of a happy festive season for all coming from our human partners in Europe have no binding legal basis.
This is the exact same Turkey-murdering Christmas that we rejected previously. No aspect of the celebration has been altered. It is also 95% identical to previous Christmases rejected by Turkeys in Holland and France.
Vote Yes or get stuffed is the message from Brussels. However the reality, my dear turkeys, is that if you vote Yes you WILL be stuffed, for good.
All the best,
JC
Please do not vote in favour of Christmas.
The assurances of a happy festive season for all coming from our human partners in Europe have no binding legal basis.
This is the exact same Turkey-murdering Christmas that we rejected previously. No aspect of the celebration has been altered. It is also 95% identical to previous Christmases rejected by Turkeys in Holland and France.
Vote Yes or get stuffed is the message from Brussels. However the reality, my dear turkeys, is that if you vote Yes you WILL be stuffed, for good.
All the best,
JC
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Ireland's debt clock
Ticking down to the midnight hour when the IMF turn us all back into peasants, I bring you...
Ireland's debt clock!
Ireland's debt clock!
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Once In A Blue Moon
Recipe:
Take one bottle of traditionally illicit Antrim poitin, matured three months to six, and into it macerate some fresh seasonal blueberries for nine months.
Serve two fingers of the resulting fruit poitin in a Slim Jim with fresh mint leaves, muddled.
Add ice to the top, then dilute with quinine tonic water to the brim.
Citrus slice optional.
The best summer cocktail ever.
Take one bottle of traditionally illicit Antrim poitin, matured three months to six, and into it macerate some fresh seasonal blueberries for nine months.
Serve two fingers of the resulting fruit poitin in a Slim Jim with fresh mint leaves, muddled.
Add ice to the top, then dilute with quinine tonic water to the brim.
Citrus slice optional.
The best summer cocktail ever.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Pervert dies, America mourns
Michael Jackson, who wrote and performed some shit songs, is dead.
One feels sorry for his offspring (assuming they are actually his), only some of whom he has held off three storey balconies.
However, they live and their putative father is dead. And one should speak well of the dead, except of course for the small issue of child abuse.
Jackson shared his bed with little boys. That's neither normal nor right, but in keeping with the way of justice on this planet, being rich meant he never faced charges relating to his admissions of sharing beds with small boys.
In one sense, I have sympathy. He had no privacy, no normality, no childhood, no life. Not in a fit would I swap with his existence, no matter how large his fortune. That can't have led to a normal life.
But in another I do not. He put himself in a position whereby he settled a court case about child abuse and was faced with other cases. And there's no excuse for that.
One can have sympathy with Jackson over his childhood and his background without ever endorsing the situation in which he found himself among kids.
But in the long run, I suspect the main legacy will be the fact that he was black and turned his skin white.
What better condemnation of the modern world is there than the fact that "the most talented musician in the planet" (according to Sky News) sought to spend his lifetime changing his skin colour?
One feels sorry for his offspring (assuming they are actually his), only some of whom he has held off three storey balconies.
However, they live and their putative father is dead. And one should speak well of the dead, except of course for the small issue of child abuse.
Jackson shared his bed with little boys. That's neither normal nor right, but in keeping with the way of justice on this planet, being rich meant he never faced charges relating to his admissions of sharing beds with small boys.
In one sense, I have sympathy. He had no privacy, no normality, no childhood, no life. Not in a fit would I swap with his existence, no matter how large his fortune. That can't have led to a normal life.
But in another I do not. He put himself in a position whereby he settled a court case about child abuse and was faced with other cases. And there's no excuse for that.
One can have sympathy with Jackson over his childhood and his background without ever endorsing the situation in which he found himself among kids.
But in the long run, I suspect the main legacy will be the fact that he was black and turned his skin white.
What better condemnation of the modern world is there than the fact that "the most talented musician in the planet" (according to Sky News) sought to spend his lifetime changing his skin colour?
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Some questions about Monica Leech
1. The court has found Monica Leech was not libelled by an Evening Herald article which said she travelled to New York with a ministerial delegation and did not attend the UN. So, what was she doing there and how much did it cost the taxpayer?
2. You get a quarter of a million for a lost limb from the personal injuries board. What lunatics rate a married woman's virtue as worth nearly ten lost limbs?
3. Monica Leech was hired in a process found to be flawed and wrong in which no one else was allowed to apply for the position, was paid well in excess of going rates, and has not been replaced in her role since departing her job with the minister. Since then, she has worked on the Higher Education Authority - a ministerial appointment - despite having little knowledge of that sector. Given that the articles did not make any reference to any affair, how is it possible for a victim of an alleged libel to completely make up such an allegation and attribute its meaning to a series of articles that clearly and overtly describe cronyism?
4. Monica Leech said during the trial that the articles 'only got her name right' and afterwards that the Evening Herald 'made up a story'. Since the court has found that their article was true, what story does Monica Leech believe they made up?
5. When are Ireland's creaking libel laws going to be overhauled, and when are caps going to be put on libel damages?
2. You get a quarter of a million for a lost limb from the personal injuries board. What lunatics rate a married woman's virtue as worth nearly ten lost limbs?
3. Monica Leech was hired in a process found to be flawed and wrong in which no one else was allowed to apply for the position, was paid well in excess of going rates, and has not been replaced in her role since departing her job with the minister. Since then, she has worked on the Higher Education Authority - a ministerial appointment - despite having little knowledge of that sector. Given that the articles did not make any reference to any affair, how is it possible for a victim of an alleged libel to completely make up such an allegation and attribute its meaning to a series of articles that clearly and overtly describe cronyism?
4. Monica Leech said during the trial that the articles 'only got her name right' and afterwards that the Evening Herald 'made up a story'. Since the court has found that their article was true, what story does Monica Leech believe they made up?
5. When are Ireland's creaking libel laws going to be overhauled, and when are caps going to be put on libel damages?
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Solidarity among bloggers
I note with interest that celeb gossip blogger 'Perez Hilton' has been allegedly assaulted at some Canadian music video awards show.
'Hilton' is in reality an overweight gay Latino wannabe called Mario Lavandeira, and he has for a long time now been desperate to parlay his blogging nerdery into a place at the table with those he spins scandal about.
Hence the bizarre scenario whereby this overtly gay man ends up judging the Miss America contest, which predictably results in controversy when he decides to get outraged because one girl's a devout Christian and doesn't agree with gay marriage.
I don't know if this pointless cretin was really hit or not. Certainly, he appears to have got his video camera out and filmed himself crying like a little girl, though.
So, buried under layer upon layer of self-importance and self-regard, is the tiny possibility that someone really did the world a favour by slapping this bitch up.
And the inadvertent comedy of those 'tweets', in which 'Hilton' pleaded with the public to rush to his hotel to help him with the 'bleeding' will raise a smile for some time yet.
Should I be showing more solidarity for my fellow blogger? Should I not show sympathy for someone unfairly struck down? After all, according to the self-publicist, 'violence is never the answer.'
Except, of course, if the question is: "What word beginning with V describes the sort of act of aggression that is the correct response to dealing with whining, self-important, duplicitous gossip queens without talent when they accost you at a music awards ceremony in Canada?"
Let me be clearer still: 'Perez Hilton' is the bleeding edge of all that's wrong in the modern media. He inhabits the nexus where the internet, web 2.0 and social networking intersect with reportage and old media.
You'd hope for better from such an intersection - a democratisation of information, perhaps. A gripping real-time account of revolutions, such as we thought, for a second, we were going to get in Iran (until we all realised that the protests are a CIA funded activity.)
Instead we get this poison - 'Perez Hilton' breathlessly puffing other pointless inanities, but most of all himself. It upsets me that people care enough about such vacuous irrelevances to keep 'Perez' thinking that he's important.
So that's why I'm delighted today to see that he's cupping his eye and crying for teacher, just like the mouthy, bitchy little wanker in the playground who thinks he's fantastic being full of cheek to all the other kids until eventually someone stops him with a fist.
Because it seems to me that 'Perez' is still living in the playground. A dose of playground morality, therefore, doesn't seem amiss.
'Hilton' is in reality an overweight gay Latino wannabe called Mario Lavandeira, and he has for a long time now been desperate to parlay his blogging nerdery into a place at the table with those he spins scandal about.
Hence the bizarre scenario whereby this overtly gay man ends up judging the Miss America contest, which predictably results in controversy when he decides to get outraged because one girl's a devout Christian and doesn't agree with gay marriage.
I don't know if this pointless cretin was really hit or not. Certainly, he appears to have got his video camera out and filmed himself crying like a little girl, though.
So, buried under layer upon layer of self-importance and self-regard, is the tiny possibility that someone really did the world a favour by slapping this bitch up.
And the inadvertent comedy of those 'tweets', in which 'Hilton' pleaded with the public to rush to his hotel to help him with the 'bleeding' will raise a smile for some time yet.
Should I be showing more solidarity for my fellow blogger? Should I not show sympathy for someone unfairly struck down? After all, according to the self-publicist, 'violence is never the answer.'
Except, of course, if the question is: "What word beginning with V describes the sort of act of aggression that is the correct response to dealing with whining, self-important, duplicitous gossip queens without talent when they accost you at a music awards ceremony in Canada?"
Let me be clearer still: 'Perez Hilton' is the bleeding edge of all that's wrong in the modern media. He inhabits the nexus where the internet, web 2.0 and social networking intersect with reportage and old media.
You'd hope for better from such an intersection - a democratisation of information, perhaps. A gripping real-time account of revolutions, such as we thought, for a second, we were going to get in Iran (until we all realised that the protests are a CIA funded activity.)
Instead we get this poison - 'Perez Hilton' breathlessly puffing other pointless inanities, but most of all himself. It upsets me that people care enough about such vacuous irrelevances to keep 'Perez' thinking that he's important.
So that's why I'm delighted today to see that he's cupping his eye and crying for teacher, just like the mouthy, bitchy little wanker in the playground who thinks he's fantastic being full of cheek to all the other kids until eventually someone stops him with a fist.
Because it seems to me that 'Perez' is still living in the playground. A dose of playground morality, therefore, doesn't seem amiss.
Friday, June 19, 2009
The Pogrom That Wasn't
A week on from screaming headlines all over the globe, what are we to make of the anti-immigrant pogroms in Belfast?
It made for perfect headlines for the world's media. To the outside eye, the North of Ireland has always resembled a boiling pot of irrational hatred and sectarianism.
Logic dictates that if these neanderthals are prepared to kill each other, despite sharing language, culture, skin colour and a God, what wouldn't they do to foreigners?
And that's what we got, all over the world, last week. Endless handwringing articles about a 'return to hatred', hectoring PC sermons from fingerwagging commentators in other countries, multiculturalism 'experts' warning ominously about the slide toward Nazism.
It always helps to return to the facts, and on this occasion, they didn't really get aired at all (although fair play to some of the local media and indeed Myles Dungan on RTE for eventually getting round to reporting the facts.)
So what happened? Same as everywhere else in Europe - a load of Roma gypsies moved into a nice area and made shite of it. Robbed, begged, intimidated local elderly people, and howled racism when asked to stop.
Wellington Park and Wellesley Avenue are NOT some Loyalist shithole full of 'For God and Ulster' meatheads. It's a mixed area next to the university and always has been. Go back two decades and it was probably one of the few areas of the city where a foreign face could be seen. Many Chinese and Indians live in the vicinity, as do many foreign students.
It's a nice, peaceful residential area, and it's not the sort of area that would easily accommodate a family of thieves, living in squalor 30 to a house, intimidating the locals.
Now let's deal with the lies. No one put copies of 'Mein Kampf' through any letterboxes. No glass bottles rained down on the 'anti-racist' march. No organised campaign by Loyalist terror groups or the BNP or Combat 18 or any other far right group took place. There is, in fact, no evidence of ANY FORM of far right or racist involvement whatsoever.
The only organised element in these whole proceedings where those of the sinister far left Socialist Workers Party. These demented Trots, none of whom come from or live in the area, saw a bandwagon to jump on and did so with gusto.
They organised an 'anti-racist' march through the area, pissing off all the locals and attracting abuse from drinkers at a local pub. Petrol on the flames as far as the Roma were concerned, I'd imagine, but far be it from the Socialist Workers to think of others. They had an issue to hijack after all.
So they lied to the media about being struck down in a hail of bottles that never happened. They lied to the media about copies of 'Mein Kampf' being put through letterboxes. They lied to the media about the involvement of a who's who of far right organisations. Not a word of any of it was true, but the media lapped up the headlines and repeated them unquestioningly.
There is a Polish shop on that street, but no Poles came out even for a minute to show solidarity with either the bussed-in Socialist Workers or the Roma. However, plenty of Romanians could be found protesting AGAINST the Roma.
How so? Well, who knows the Roma better than their compatriots? Who suffer more from being confused for Roma than other Romanians? Who are most upset at the good name of their country being dragged through the gutter by the behaviour of Roma gypsies than Romanians? And so Romanians were also involved in the protest against this particular clan of gypsies.
Where are we now? The world's base opinion of Northern Ireland is once again confirmed thanks to the clever media spinning and lies of a tiny coterie of crazy Trots. A bunch of thieves who should be facing charges are instead hiding in churches and claiming to be the victims of racism, while they await free flights home.
The losers are the good people of South Belfast, and a special neighbourhood that always accommodated everyone, even at the height of the Troubles. They have been maligned, and libelled, and lied about.
The winners as always are the Roma. More free food and clothes and accommodation and someone else to pay for their flight home from the squalor they've made in yet another foreign town.
And in two months time, they'll be back, in Belfast or Dublin or Galway or Leeds or London or Paris or Naples or Munich or Valencia, squatting in a house they don't own, fifteen or thirty of them, living like animals and creating a hygiene problem for the neighbours, who they will threaten with their big knives even as they beg from them and steal from the local shops.
Until once again, either the authorities will take their children into care and arrest them or deport them. And so the merry-go-round spins again.
The people of South Belfast are not the problem. Romanians are not the problem. Racism is not the problem. Far right organisations are not the problem. Policing is not the problem.
The Roma are the problem, and that problem was deliberately and disgracefully compounded by the pondlife of the Socialist Workers Party, a political movement of such extremity that they do not dare run candidates in elections.
Belfast has suffered many pogroms in the past. My own family were burnt out of an area in the Seventies during one of the most dangerous ones. The Thirties also saw some horrific pogroms too.
And of course, in the furore about the rights of thieving foreign gypsies to intimidate local communities, we have all seemingly forgotten how a Catholic man was kicked to death in Coleraine, his wife and a pregnant woman assaulted too, only a few weeks back.
That's a REAL pogrom, but 'Loyalist bootboys still murdering Catholics for kicks' isn't as sexy a headline as 'Race riots in Belfast' even if it has the benefit of being true.
But this week saw a new chapter being written in Belfast - the pogrom that wasn't. Despite the lies and the headlines, I think that's progress.
Related posts here and here.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Moonlighting for the Irish Left Review
At the request of the Irish Left Review, I've done some in-depth analysis of the Dublin Euro election and the Dublin Central by-election and the Dublin local authority elections.
The story of the transfers reveals both crisis and opportunity for the many-headed hydra that is the Dublin political left.
Read more here.
The story of the transfers reveals both crisis and opportunity for the many-headed hydra that is the Dublin political left.
Read more here.
Monday, June 08, 2009
Elections 09 - Parsing the Prelude
As even the bookies are now offering only 1-2 odds on a general election this year, it seems we have entered dead government walking territory.
Hence, these local and European elections aren't just a referendum on the government's performance, they are a prelude to the main event of a general election.
As I write, the three Dublin seats have been filled, with sitting MEPs Eoin Ryan and Mary Lou McDonald making way for Socialist leader Joe Higgins. In a sense, that tells half the story of these entire elections: a slump in support for the government parties, Sinn Fein disappointment and the rise of protest Independents.
We saw the power of support for protest independents on Saturday at the Dublin Central by-election too, where Maureen O'Sullivan, the 'Gregory' candidate, managed to parlay her friendship with the late Tony Gregory into a Dail seat.
And the government slump has seen the Greens hardest hit, cut to the very bone for dancing with the Fianna Fail devil. Their organisation is now reduced to a handful of councillors, their MEP candidate lost her deposit and came in behind Independent Green Patricia McKenna, and now no Green Dail seat can be considered safe.
Fianna Fail themselves must look hard for positives. The backwoods of Westmeath and Roscommon offer a starting point. They actually improved their representation in those areas. And given the trend among some nervous FF-ers to go independent in order to ensure election to local authorities, Fianna Fail will find their numbers boosted as the likes of Tony Fox return to the fold. So this is not quite the tsunami that it initially looks.
There is further upside for Fianna Fail in the return of some dozen former PDs to local councils as independents. The PDs may be gone as a party, but as the cart which led the FF horse for over a decade, the working relations of PDs with Fianna Fail remain strong and ideologies remain compatible. FF are therefore boosted by their presence too.
Fine Gael's Christmases have all come at once. Historic is actually the word for it. George Lee elected first count in a by-election, 3 Dublin South TDs for the first time since the early 80s, the biggest party in the state for the first time ever.
No wonder Enda Kenny spent much of yesterday evening in the RDS grinning like a Cheshire Cat.
But the downside is that even if FG can maintain momentum into a general election, their simple lack of political nous means that they will not maximise their representation in Leinster House.
Tomorrow, Enda Kenny will overshadow the Dail debate on the Ryan report into clerical abuse by tabling a motion of no confidence. This is exactly the sort of politico-nerd behaviour the public despair of in the FG leader, and it is why Fine Gael should still consider thanking Enda for his great work so far and promoting Bruton to leadership in advance of a general election. But they won't.
The biggest winners of all appear, paradoxically, to be Labour. I say paradoxically, because one might have assumed it was a poor election for them, what with losing both Dublin by-elections and having a stiff race in the Ireland South European constituency.
But their representation across the country means that they, rather than the now-stalled Sinn Fein, are the main left challenge pretty much everywhere. If they had only fielded more candidates, they'd have maximised their representation even more. Labour for the first time in a generation have a national base to build on. And with a soft Fianna Fail vote there for the taking, Labour may well feel they can make it a three horse race in future.
What does this mean for any possible general election? Well, if the bookies are right and we see one in the next six months, it is fairly certain that Enda Kenny will be Taoiseach of a FG-Labour coalition.
The Greens can expect to be annihilated in their current form, while former Greens like McKenna and Maher could end up being the eco-representatives in Dail Eireann.
Sinn Fein appear to have reached their glass ceiling of 10%. Mary Lou will get a seat next time out, but they won't grow their vote until they outgrow the dodgy Northern leadership that too many Southerners find toxic.
The heart will be out of Fianna Fail campaigners for another election. They were anonymous on the ground this time and will be even more so in a general election. This is an opportunity for Fianna Fail to rid itself of much dead wood.
Perhaps they will be especially smart and de-select some of their sitting TD cohort in advance. Why bother running what the electorate wants shot of? Run the young candidate instead, give them a base from which to build. But FF are ultimately a party of gombeens shafting each other, as Mary Fitzpatrick could tell you, so don't expect this to happen. It's too sensible for them.
When will we see this election? Very soon. The Green leadership is panicked, trapped in power with their party and their voters deserting them. They're actively looking for the exit.
And Brian Lenihan is promising another hairshirt budget to punish the electorate for voting against Fianna Fail. That is likely to be the catalyst to bring people onto the streets to demand the removal of this government, which clearly now has no mandate left.
Hence, these local and European elections aren't just a referendum on the government's performance, they are a prelude to the main event of a general election.
As I write, the three Dublin seats have been filled, with sitting MEPs Eoin Ryan and Mary Lou McDonald making way for Socialist leader Joe Higgins. In a sense, that tells half the story of these entire elections: a slump in support for the government parties, Sinn Fein disappointment and the rise of protest Independents.
We saw the power of support for protest independents on Saturday at the Dublin Central by-election too, where Maureen O'Sullivan, the 'Gregory' candidate, managed to parlay her friendship with the late Tony Gregory into a Dail seat.
And the government slump has seen the Greens hardest hit, cut to the very bone for dancing with the Fianna Fail devil. Their organisation is now reduced to a handful of councillors, their MEP candidate lost her deposit and came in behind Independent Green Patricia McKenna, and now no Green Dail seat can be considered safe.
Fianna Fail themselves must look hard for positives. The backwoods of Westmeath and Roscommon offer a starting point. They actually improved their representation in those areas. And given the trend among some nervous FF-ers to go independent in order to ensure election to local authorities, Fianna Fail will find their numbers boosted as the likes of Tony Fox return to the fold. So this is not quite the tsunami that it initially looks.
There is further upside for Fianna Fail in the return of some dozen former PDs to local councils as independents. The PDs may be gone as a party, but as the cart which led the FF horse for over a decade, the working relations of PDs with Fianna Fail remain strong and ideologies remain compatible. FF are therefore boosted by their presence too.
Fine Gael's Christmases have all come at once. Historic is actually the word for it. George Lee elected first count in a by-election, 3 Dublin South TDs for the first time since the early 80s, the biggest party in the state for the first time ever.
No wonder Enda Kenny spent much of yesterday evening in the RDS grinning like a Cheshire Cat.
But the downside is that even if FG can maintain momentum into a general election, their simple lack of political nous means that they will not maximise their representation in Leinster House.
Tomorrow, Enda Kenny will overshadow the Dail debate on the Ryan report into clerical abuse by tabling a motion of no confidence. This is exactly the sort of politico-nerd behaviour the public despair of in the FG leader, and it is why Fine Gael should still consider thanking Enda for his great work so far and promoting Bruton to leadership in advance of a general election. But they won't.
The biggest winners of all appear, paradoxically, to be Labour. I say paradoxically, because one might have assumed it was a poor election for them, what with losing both Dublin by-elections and having a stiff race in the Ireland South European constituency.
But their representation across the country means that they, rather than the now-stalled Sinn Fein, are the main left challenge pretty much everywhere. If they had only fielded more candidates, they'd have maximised their representation even more. Labour for the first time in a generation have a national base to build on. And with a soft Fianna Fail vote there for the taking, Labour may well feel they can make it a three horse race in future.
What does this mean for any possible general election? Well, if the bookies are right and we see one in the next six months, it is fairly certain that Enda Kenny will be Taoiseach of a FG-Labour coalition.
The Greens can expect to be annihilated in their current form, while former Greens like McKenna and Maher could end up being the eco-representatives in Dail Eireann.
Sinn Fein appear to have reached their glass ceiling of 10%. Mary Lou will get a seat next time out, but they won't grow their vote until they outgrow the dodgy Northern leadership that too many Southerners find toxic.
The heart will be out of Fianna Fail campaigners for another election. They were anonymous on the ground this time and will be even more so in a general election. This is an opportunity for Fianna Fail to rid itself of much dead wood.
Perhaps they will be especially smart and de-select some of their sitting TD cohort in advance. Why bother running what the electorate wants shot of? Run the young candidate instead, give them a base from which to build. But FF are ultimately a party of gombeens shafting each other, as Mary Fitzpatrick could tell you, so don't expect this to happen. It's too sensible for them.
When will we see this election? Very soon. The Green leadership is panicked, trapped in power with their party and their voters deserting them. They're actively looking for the exit.
And Brian Lenihan is promising another hairshirt budget to punish the electorate for voting against Fianna Fail. That is likely to be the catalyst to bring people onto the streets to demand the removal of this government, which clearly now has no mandate left.
Friday, June 05, 2009
I'm voting against Fianna Fail today
In the locals, in the by-election and in the European elections.
I will carefully arrange my preferences to insure my vote doesn't come within an arse's roar of benefiting any Fianna Fail candidate.
Thankfully, given the abysmal candidates they have offered me, there is no confliction whatsoever for me in doing so.
Were Seamus Brennan Sr running, for example, there might be a slight twang of regret at putting his preference bottom, below non-entities like George TV and kerazees like that O'Gorman punter.
But thankfully they've made it oh-so-easy for me to punish them completely and properly for their corrupt mismanagement of this nation to their own selfish ends by running some of the most unqualified, shirking, gombeen eejits one could ever dread to meet.
These people are the wannabes (or in Eoin Ryan's case the hasbeen) in an institution that has lined its pockets and those of its wealthy benefactors at our expense.
They are the party that beggared the nation, who destroyed the economy for generations, and who are still doing so. A party so bereft of morality that, far from apologising for their many, many corrupt and shady deals in government with developers, rapist papists, and giving away our natural resources, they are still in utter denial of having done anything wrong.
These are the people who stole our gas, who let rapists away with it and paid for their sins with our money, who puffed property to the sky for their developer funders so that ordinary couples are now in debt for generations with only a shoebox in a dormitory burb to show for it, who took brown envelopes to rezone sites of national heritage for motorways.
Vote Fianna Fail LAST. Give them the very dog-end of your preferences.
Go right down the ballot, past the fringe parties, past the Shinners, past the single issue candidates, past the kooks, the loons, the anti-immigration nutjobs and the psycho Catholics, past even the Green lapdogs all the way to the end. And then vote Fianna Fail with your bottom preferences, or no preference at all.
It's time they were held accountable for their crimes. Let it start on Friday with a ringing rejection of all they've done to us. Let's get off our knees and kick the gombeen bastards in the bollocks.
Thankfully, given the abysmal candidates they have offered me, there is no confliction whatsoever for me in doing so.
Were Seamus Brennan Sr running, for example, there might be a slight twang of regret at putting his preference bottom, below non-entities like George TV and kerazees like that O'Gorman punter.
But thankfully they've made it oh-so-easy for me to punish them completely and properly for their corrupt mismanagement of this nation to their own selfish ends by running some of the most unqualified, shirking, gombeen eejits one could ever dread to meet.
These people are the wannabes (or in Eoin Ryan's case the hasbeen) in an institution that has lined its pockets and those of its wealthy benefactors at our expense.
They are the party that beggared the nation, who destroyed the economy for generations, and who are still doing so. A party so bereft of morality that, far from apologising for their many, many corrupt and shady deals in government with developers, rapist papists, and giving away our natural resources, they are still in utter denial of having done anything wrong.
These are the people who stole our gas, who let rapists away with it and paid for their sins with our money, who puffed property to the sky for their developer funders so that ordinary couples are now in debt for generations with only a shoebox in a dormitory burb to show for it, who took brown envelopes to rezone sites of national heritage for motorways.
Vote Fianna Fail LAST. Give them the very dog-end of your preferences.
Go right down the ballot, past the fringe parties, past the Shinners, past the single issue candidates, past the kooks, the loons, the anti-immigration nutjobs and the psycho Catholics, past even the Green lapdogs all the way to the end. And then vote Fianna Fail with your bottom preferences, or no preference at all.
It's time they were held accountable for their crimes. Let it start on Friday with a ringing rejection of all they've done to us. Let's get off our knees and kick the gombeen bastards in the bollocks.
Thursday, June 04, 2009
Tiananmen: 20 years of silence and oppression
We have to remember Tiananmen Square.
It's two decades to the day since the Chinese people demanded their freedom from the despotic, mass-murdering junta that rules their nation.
It's twenty years since they stood in Tiananmen Square and sang songs and demanded that the Communist dictators quit power.
It's twenty years since the power-hungry psychotics turned tanks on their own people and murdered them for asking to be free, killed them, jailed them, sent them to re-education gulags where they were tortured horrendously.
It's twenty years in which more terror has been inflicted on the people of occupied Tibet, the Uighur nation, and the other minorities within the Maoist monolith.
Twenty years in which the hypocrites of the West facilitated China's leadership by hiring their slave labour, buying their bloodstained products at dirt cheap prices, handed back free Hong Kong and Macao into their anti-democratic hands and helped them block the internet from reaching their people, and let them hold a propagandist Olympics that will go down in history as stomach-churning as Hitler's Berlin Games in 1936.
Twenty years in which their template for terrorising their own people has been exported elsewhere, to other stubborn juntas who will not countenance democracy or liberty or freedom of choice, in places like Burma.
It is not anywhere near as long since I was in China. But the people there still yearn for freedom.
We cannot allow the Chinese government to exercise their blanket control over information. We cannot let them rewrite history. We cannot permit the spirit of Tiananmen to be ignored.
Because one day, the proud Chinese people will be free from the sixty year nightmare of Maoism, and they will legitimately say:
"Yes, for much of that time, we bowed to the terror and let ourselves be ruled. But one day we rose and sought our freedom, and we were brutally beaten down. And you in the West did nothing. Rather than insist on our freedom as you did for the people of South Africa, you instead rewarded the Communist cadres and made them millionaires."
Remember Tiananmen. Remember what they did.
Remember how democracy was stillborn in China twenty years ago, and how we still trade with the murderers.
It's two decades to the day since the Chinese people demanded their freedom from the despotic, mass-murdering junta that rules their nation.
It's twenty years since they stood in Tiananmen Square and sang songs and demanded that the Communist dictators quit power.
It's twenty years since the power-hungry psychotics turned tanks on their own people and murdered them for asking to be free, killed them, jailed them, sent them to re-education gulags where they were tortured horrendously.
It's twenty years in which more terror has been inflicted on the people of occupied Tibet, the Uighur nation, and the other minorities within the Maoist monolith.
Twenty years in which the hypocrites of the West facilitated China's leadership by hiring their slave labour, buying their bloodstained products at dirt cheap prices, handed back free Hong Kong and Macao into their anti-democratic hands and helped them block the internet from reaching their people, and let them hold a propagandist Olympics that will go down in history as stomach-churning as Hitler's Berlin Games in 1936.
Twenty years in which their template for terrorising their own people has been exported elsewhere, to other stubborn juntas who will not countenance democracy or liberty or freedom of choice, in places like Burma.
It is not anywhere near as long since I was in China. But the people there still yearn for freedom.
We cannot allow the Chinese government to exercise their blanket control over information. We cannot let them rewrite history. We cannot permit the spirit of Tiananmen to be ignored.
Because one day, the proud Chinese people will be free from the sixty year nightmare of Maoism, and they will legitimately say:
"Yes, for much of that time, we bowed to the terror and let ourselves be ruled. But one day we rose and sought our freedom, and we were brutally beaten down. And you in the West did nothing. Rather than insist on our freedom as you did for the people of South Africa, you instead rewarded the Communist cadres and made them millionaires."
Remember Tiananmen. Remember what they did.
Remember how democracy was stillborn in China twenty years ago, and how we still trade with the murderers.
Monday, June 01, 2009
Stop the taxpayer bailout of Anglo-Irish Bank
Are you annoyed that 4 billion euro has just been added to the national debt in order to bail out the big property speculators and Fianna Fail funders who owe around 7.5 billion in bad debt to Anglo-Irish bank?
Do you feel sickened that your grandchildren will still be paying taxes in order to save the asses of a small golden circle of ultra-rich elite?
Well, then it's time to ask the EU to block the deal. Brian Lenihan cannot go ahead with this robbing of the taxpayer to bail out his cronies if Europe blocks it.
So, let the EU know what the Irish people think of this shoddy backroom backscratcher of a deal.
Send an email to this address, SG-PLAINTES@ec.europa.eu , and highlight your feelings about the bailout NOW. Tell Europe you object to this deal and believe it is a betrayal of the Irish people.
Because it is.
Do you feel sickened that your grandchildren will still be paying taxes in order to save the asses of a small golden circle of ultra-rich elite?
Well, then it's time to ask the EU to block the deal. Brian Lenihan cannot go ahead with this robbing of the taxpayer to bail out his cronies if Europe blocks it.
So, let the EU know what the Irish people think of this shoddy backroom backscratcher of a deal.
Send an email to this address, SG-PLAINTES@ec.europa.eu , and highlight your feelings about the bailout NOW. Tell Europe you object to this deal and believe it is a betrayal of the Irish people.
Because it is.
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
The Truth
Congratulations to Michael O'Brien for telling the truth to the world last night.
A Fianna Fail minister was told in 1955 about the abuse in these schools and did nothing. And Fianna Fail kept assisting the church to cover it up and avoid its responsibilities for decades.
Even after the truth first emerged, they sent battalions of lawyers in to the Laffoy tribunal to browbeat victims of rape and sodomy. They obstructed Justice Laffoy to such an extent that she quit the tribunal in disgust. They indemnified the Church from paying compensation for their many crimes.
Fianna Fail are complicit in the mass rape and abuse of children for nearly half a century, and are still on the side of the rapists and not the victims.
Let's not forget the truth.
A Fianna Fail minister was told in 1955 about the abuse in these schools and did nothing. And Fianna Fail kept assisting the church to cover it up and avoid its responsibilities for decades.
Even after the truth first emerged, they sent battalions of lawyers in to the Laffoy tribunal to browbeat victims of rape and sodomy. They obstructed Justice Laffoy to such an extent that she quit the tribunal in disgust. They indemnified the Church from paying compensation for their many crimes.
Fianna Fail are complicit in the mass rape and abuse of children for nearly half a century, and are still on the side of the rapists and not the victims.
Let's not forget the truth.
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Commemorate 1798
It's time the Irish nation commemorated the United Irishmen and the rising of 1798 properly.
Their vision of a free, equal society throughout all of Ireland offering liberty and prosperity for all Irish people, be they Protestant, Catholic or Dissenter (or, we could well add today, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist, of all faiths or none) is as essential and enlightened today as it was 211 years ago on this day when the United Irishmen first arose against colonial oppression.
We have two bank holidays back to back in Ireland - May Day, an increasingly tokenistic vapidity allegedly in the name of working people, and the June bank holiday, which has no point to it at all save a day off work.
Let us replace one of these with a national day of celebration of ALL Irish people on May 24th, the anniversary of the 1798 rebellion.
Let us abandon the Paddywhackery of the 17th of March to the diaspora and the Catholic church. It is their festival, not that of Ireland and its residents.
Let us claim our OWN day of celebration, and there is no better one to celebrate than May 24th, the day when brave men and women sought to claim freedom for all the people of Ireland.
Please sign the petition to call on the Government to initiate a national day of celebration on the anniversary of the 1798 rising to commemorate that vision of the United Irishmen, in the hope that one day we might create the nation that they dreamed of.
Sign your support for a national day to commemorate the vision of 1798!
Their vision of a free, equal society throughout all of Ireland offering liberty and prosperity for all Irish people, be they Protestant, Catholic or Dissenter (or, we could well add today, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Agnostic, Atheist, of all faiths or none) is as essential and enlightened today as it was 211 years ago on this day when the United Irishmen first arose against colonial oppression.
We have two bank holidays back to back in Ireland - May Day, an increasingly tokenistic vapidity allegedly in the name of working people, and the June bank holiday, which has no point to it at all save a day off work.
Let us replace one of these with a national day of celebration of ALL Irish people on May 24th, the anniversary of the 1798 rebellion.
Let us abandon the Paddywhackery of the 17th of March to the diaspora and the Catholic church. It is their festival, not that of Ireland and its residents.
Let us claim our OWN day of celebration, and there is no better one to celebrate than May 24th, the day when brave men and women sought to claim freedom for all the people of Ireland.
Please sign the petition to call on the Government to initiate a national day of celebration on the anniversary of the 1798 rising to commemorate that vision of the United Irishmen, in the hope that one day we might create the nation that they dreamed of.
Sign your support for a national day to commemorate the vision of 1798!
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
Recycling: some questions
I went to a dump in Belfast, and dumped some wood. I had a pane of glass too.
There being no place to dump glass (only bottles) I asked the lad where he wanted it.
"Glass? That goes in soft furnishings," he said.
What?
A few months back, I went to a dump in Dublin and dumped some gardening waste.
I was charged money for the privilege of doing so.
And they wonder why people fly-tip like tinkers in the Republic.
So my questions are fairly simple: why isn't using recycling centres free in the Republic in order to encourage people to USE the damn places instead of fly-tipping sites of natural beauty in the middle of the night?
And if glass counts as soft furnishings, how efficient is recycling anyway?
Thursday, May 14, 2009
None of this is real
While watching the Vinnie Browne show, I took refuge in reading this academic study which concludes, on the basis of an overview assessment of modern scientific discoveries, that none of this is real.
You're not real, I'm not real, Vinnie Browne isn't real, the recession isn't real. In fact, the world, and the entire universe, are not real.
Instead, apparently we are living in a virtual reality projection.
This theory apparently resolves all of the major insoluble issues facing science currently, such as the Big Bang and the universe's possession of a maximum speed, as well as the many bizarre things occuring on a quantum level, such as the existence of quantum equivalence and the uncertainty principle.
That doesn't mean The Matrix, by the way. There is no ur-reality in which we slumber while we dream this one. As the paper states, unlike the virtual realities we have created, like The Sims, we are unable to see the reality through the guiding interface, because we're entirely contained within it.
I dunno if that helps anyone worrying about the global downturn or suffering from depression to know that their concerns aren't real, though.
So, how do you all feel about being virtual?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
A question for unionists
I have a question for anyone who considers themselves to be a Unionist. It's something I've always wondered about, so I'm putting it out there now.
What aspects that you, as Ulster Unionists, envisage about the prospect of a United Ireland make you opposed to it?
It seems to me that given the lack of any actual presentation of a vision for unifying Ireland by either Sinn Fein, the SDLP or the Southern parties, that there is no actual vision on the table. Rather, the idea of a United Ireland is a vacuum, an absence, a tabula rasa.
So since a unified island nation could potentially be anything you wish it to be, what is it that you, as Unionists are concerned about?
Rules of Engagement: Entitlement to British citizenship is already secured under the GFA, and the Republic isn't a Catholic theocracy.
Therefore arguments based on an attachment to a British (or to be accurate a Northern Irish or British-Irish) identity or opposition to the Catholic Church aren't valid for the purposes of this discussion.
Trolls posing as Unionists and those suspected of being such don't get to play, and non-Unionists don't get to second-guess or mindread what they think Unionist opinions on the issue really are.
What I'm really curious about here is what do Unionists believe a United Ireland might look like, what do they fear or oppose in that, is there a form of United Ireland acceptable to Unionists, and if not, why not?
I await your answers with eager interest. The floor is yours.
What aspects that you, as Ulster Unionists, envisage about the prospect of a United Ireland make you opposed to it?
It seems to me that given the lack of any actual presentation of a vision for unifying Ireland by either Sinn Fein, the SDLP or the Southern parties, that there is no actual vision on the table. Rather, the idea of a United Ireland is a vacuum, an absence, a tabula rasa.
So since a unified island nation could potentially be anything you wish it to be, what is it that you, as Unionists are concerned about?
Rules of Engagement: Entitlement to British citizenship is already secured under the GFA, and the Republic isn't a Catholic theocracy.
Therefore arguments based on an attachment to a British (or to be accurate a Northern Irish or British-Irish) identity or opposition to the Catholic Church aren't valid for the purposes of this discussion.
Trolls posing as Unionists and those suspected of being such don't get to play, and non-Unionists don't get to second-guess or mindread what they think Unionist opinions on the issue really are.
What I'm really curious about here is what do Unionists believe a United Ireland might look like, what do they fear or oppose in that, is there a form of United Ireland acceptable to Unionists, and if not, why not?
I await your answers with eager interest. The floor is yours.
Friday, May 08, 2009
How corrupt is UEFA?
I'm now officially suspicious about UEFA.
Normally, when people refer to corruption in football, they mean attempts to fix matches by dodgy Far Eastern gangs. The discussions focus on whether players 'threw' games, whether they might have taken a 'bung', whether the betting patterns reveal a coup.
But I'm beginning to wonder about UEFA's role in a couple of very odd incidents.
The first relates to whether they have been rigging the draw for the Champions' League in order to manipulate the big box-office matches that they want. Last year, the quarter final draw was revealed to a Liverpool fans website two hours before it was made.
Now, that's either a 104-1 lucky guess, or else it is overt corruption. According to UEFA, it was just a lucky guess. They then refused to say anything further on the matter.
However, the original post which revealed the draw suggested that not only was the draw a pre-decided issue, but that the details had come from a disgusted UEFA employee and that bookies had ceased to take bets on the matter, which they indeed had.
But things got even stranger on Wednesday night. My sympathies go out to Chelsea, who were effectively robbed of a second successive Champions' League final appearance by the extremely erratic, if not downright bogus, behaviour of the referee, who is now in hiding after he denied Chelsea at least two legitimate penalties.
Feeling hard done by, one Chelsea player chased the ref about the pitch yelling in his face, while another roared his disgust at the TV cameras, and a third has since come out stating that he believes the ref was 'under orders.'
Sour grapes? Perhaps. Until, that is, you hear that the UEFA website posted the result of the game HOURS before it even kicked off!
The 'test' post was supposedly a dummy run. But it had the correct score and even named the players who were booked!
Chelsea's manager, one of the most respected and experienced names in football, has openly speculated that the referee was under orders not to allow Chelsea to proceed to a second final against Manchester United, because UEFA thought a second all-English final looked bad.
Of course, UEFA have dismissed suggestions of a fix. But they also ordered the match referee to go into hiding and not to talk to the press.
Books such as the excellent 'The Ball is Round' have examined the corporate corruption of UEFA, and its parent body FIFA, and revealed how football administration at the very top is run by some extremely dodgy people.
I'm now wondering just how dodgy they are. Dodgy enough to rig a draw? Dodgy enough to rig a game? Dodgy enough to pick and choose who should play in the world's biggest club football game - the Champions' League final?
Perhaps they are.
Wednesday, May 06, 2009
Investing in Education, or Old Skool discos for middle-aged men?
The government's all about education, they say. You know the buzz words - fourth-level learning, research and development, the knowledge economy.
Apparently none of this stretches as far as actually investing in education, of course. We'll be seeing third-level fees re-introduced after a two decade absence shortly (to add to the existing four figure sum 'non-fees' for 'registering' in college.)
And kids in schools with leaky roofs, no hot water but hot and cold running rats and roaches will have to take comfort in the fact that the education minister has secured additional funding this year - for renting prefabs, some of which have been in situ since the Eighties at this stage.
So, in this morass of misery that is the Irish education system, it does one's black heart much joy to see Irish universities hosting major international conferences into ground-breaking areas of research of significant importance to us all.
University of Limerick, take a bow. In these times of recession and Dell lay-offs, heaven knows the Mid-West is miserable now.
So fair play to the eggheads, who last year started something they couldn't finish. But this year they did finish it - two full days of a symposium dedicated to the work of Morrissey.
Seriously, they spent funds on studying the works of the old misery monger for two days. Don't believe me? Here's the awful, academic-meets-Manc-quiff proof of it all:
Stop me if you've heard this one before, but I'm not entirely convinced that indulging fortysomething daffodil-inspired obsessives is where our university system should be focusing its funding and attentions.
No doubt everyone present were charming men, but ultimately, what difference does it make?
Actually, shoehorning Smiths songs into a blog post may be fun, but spending state education funding on this sort of thing isn't justifiable when working class kids are forced to abandon third-level plans and kids are dodging the rodents in their pre-fab classrooms.
Silly and indulgent research events like this one might have been grand at one time, when we as a nation had the cash to be frivolous. But today?
That joke just isn't funny anymore.
Apparently none of this stretches as far as actually investing in education, of course. We'll be seeing third-level fees re-introduced after a two decade absence shortly (to add to the existing four figure sum 'non-fees' for 'registering' in college.)
And kids in schools with leaky roofs, no hot water but hot and cold running rats and roaches will have to take comfort in the fact that the education minister has secured additional funding this year - for renting prefabs, some of which have been in situ since the Eighties at this stage.
So, in this morass of misery that is the Irish education system, it does one's black heart much joy to see Irish universities hosting major international conferences into ground-breaking areas of research of significant importance to us all.
University of Limerick, take a bow. In these times of recession and Dell lay-offs, heaven knows the Mid-West is miserable now.
So fair play to the eggheads, who last year started something they couldn't finish. But this year they did finish it - two full days of a symposium dedicated to the work of Morrissey.
Seriously, they spent funds on studying the works of the old misery monger for two days. Don't believe me? Here's the awful, academic-meets-Manc-quiff proof of it all:
Stop me if you've heard this one before, but I'm not entirely convinced that indulging fortysomething daffodil-inspired obsessives is where our university system should be focusing its funding and attentions.No doubt everyone present were charming men, but ultimately, what difference does it make?
Actually, shoehorning Smiths songs into a blog post may be fun, but spending state education funding on this sort of thing isn't justifiable when working class kids are forced to abandon third-level plans and kids are dodging the rodents in their pre-fab classrooms.
Silly and indulgent research events like this one might have been grand at one time, when we as a nation had the cash to be frivolous. But today?
That joke just isn't funny anymore.
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Una Hardester should be jailed
This is Una Hardester. She works as a human rights activist. But for most of her short life, she didn't give a crap about the human rights of a life she did her best to destroy.
She has admitted that she wrongly accused her neighbour Michael Feichin Hannon of sexually assaulting her when she was ten years old, even though she had never met the man.
As a result, he has spent over a decade living in the shadow of public approbrium, with the world assuming he was a child-abusing scumbag.
In reality, Una made up the allegations to assist her father who was having an ongoing spat with his neighbours, the Hannons.
Her father is a successful American bit-part actor who left Ireland in 2000 with his family after scoring a payday in 'Saving Private Ryan'. Michael Feichin Hannon, on the other hand received a criminal sentence for his troubles and is, in his own words, 'a shadow' of the person he used to be.
Una Hardester finally admitted to her lies in 2006, claiming that her father had prevented her from doing so earlier. She has not explained how her father was able to do so. Michael Feichin Hannon had his case declared a miscarriage of justice and is now expected to gain up to one million euro in compensation from the state.
I want to know why we, the Irish taxpayers, are shelling out for Una Hardester's lies. I want to know why she is not, as she expects, facing jail for perjury and for her false accusations.
Her father is an affluent man and by all accounts appears to have been a major influence both in this case coming about and in delaying its resolution. Why isn't he shelling out the compo to Michael Feichin Hannon?
We've had this with the banks already. Why is the Irish taxpayer underwriting the mistakes of private entities and individuals?
And why is it apparently okay to accuse an innocent man of child sex abuse?
Una Hardester has spent recent years as a human rights activist. It's such a terrible pity that she didn't give more thought to the human rights of Michael Feichin Hannon, which she herself so egregiously destroyed.
She should be jailed.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Overcrowding: Third World style
In the Third World (as we used to call it before we decided they were developing), the most popular beast of burden is not the horse, the ox, the yak or the llama.
It's the combustion engine - specifically a two-stroke motorbike, often adapted into a three-wheeler tuk-tuk. And by goodness do some people work those little engines hard.
When I was in India earlier this month, I used to play a little mental game to ease my nerves while being propelled through the mass deathwish that is Indian traffic.
Basically, I couldn't shut my eyes to the perpetually imminent risk of horrific accident, so instead I'd try to distract myself by counting the people perched on the back of motorbikes or in the seat of a three-wheel tuk-tuk.
I soon developed a mathematic theorem to describe the maximum number of people per vehicle by reference to the number of wheels. Basically, 2 to the power of the number of wheels is the maximum.
For the innumerate, that means 2 X 2 (4) on a motorbike, 2 X 2 X 2 (8) in a tuk tuk, and 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 (16) in a car.
However, I was soon proved wrong. Within days, in Jaipur, I saw a tuk-tuk (which is built to carry three people, including driver) carrying TEN people in total. And five on a motorbike became a regular sight. And I never saw more than four or five in a car (because cars in India are for the rich and they don't like to be crowded out.)
I was in Cambodia in the past too, and they're also big fans of overcrowding their metallic beasts of burden. But I can honestly say I never saw eight people on the back of a bike before.
But there you go. Four adults and four kids (plus a bag of shopping and large tin of something heavy looking) all on one little motorbike. If you squint you might see some of it between their many legs.
It's a chastening thought for anyone sat alone in their car in Ireland, giving out about the traffic.
It's the combustion engine - specifically a two-stroke motorbike, often adapted into a three-wheeler tuk-tuk. And by goodness do some people work those little engines hard.
When I was in India earlier this month, I used to play a little mental game to ease my nerves while being propelled through the mass deathwish that is Indian traffic.
Basically, I couldn't shut my eyes to the perpetually imminent risk of horrific accident, so instead I'd try to distract myself by counting the people perched on the back of motorbikes or in the seat of a three-wheel tuk-tuk.
I soon developed a mathematic theorem to describe the maximum number of people per vehicle by reference to the number of wheels. Basically, 2 to the power of the number of wheels is the maximum.
For the innumerate, that means 2 X 2 (4) on a motorbike, 2 X 2 X 2 (8) in a tuk tuk, and 2 X 2 X 2 X 2 (16) in a car.
However, I was soon proved wrong. Within days, in Jaipur, I saw a tuk-tuk (which is built to carry three people, including driver) carrying TEN people in total. And five on a motorbike became a regular sight. And I never saw more than four or five in a car (because cars in India are for the rich and they don't like to be crowded out.)
I was in Cambodia in the past too, and they're also big fans of overcrowding their metallic beasts of burden. But I can honestly say I never saw eight people on the back of a bike before.
But there you go. Four adults and four kids (plus a bag of shopping and large tin of something heavy looking) all on one little motorbike. If you squint you might see some of it between their many legs.
It's a chastening thought for anyone sat alone in their car in Ireland, giving out about the traffic.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Let's hope Swine Flu becomes a pandemic
It's important to cut through the shrill 'Sky News' breathless scaremongering and establish some facts about Swine Flu.
Let me endeavour to do just that, because once the facts are known, it is likely that many people might join me in hoping that Swine Flu breaks out globally and becomes a dreaded pandemic.
Firstly, you should know how influenza works. It's a vast family of viruses, constantly changing, some of which affect birds, some pigs and some us.
Because it's always changing, and because there are literally hundreds of strains out there at any given time, it's not possible to create a perfect flu vaccine.
So Swine Flu is basically a pig flu that has jumped species to humans and is now being passed from person to person. So, no, eating Irish bacon is not a risk (unless they've filled it with dioxin again, of course.)
Every year, tens of thousands of people die from some version of the flu. They tend to be older, frailer people. But every now and again, a strain of flu comes along which most people have little or no immunity to.
Basically, it comes out of nowhere and is so different to the previous strains that no one's body has ever seen anything like it.
When that happens, a pandemic (global epidemic) can happen. And often with pandemics, it's mostly young, healthy people who die.
The last pandemic was in 1968, over four decades ago. That means that one is WAY overdue. But, the world, and especially our part of it, has never been better prepared for a pandemic.
We've got loads of anti-viral drugs that seem on first impression to be a bit effective against the Mexican Swine Flu strain.
And last year's flu jab contained a quite similar strain, so it might offer some protection to anyone who got the jab last Autumn.
But the best news is that this particular strain doesn't seem particularly fatal. When you consider that the Spanish flu of 1918 killed more people than World War I, then you can imagine what very fatal flus could do in this age of modern air travel and the global village.
But while many people have died in Mexico, it seems that for the most part they had delayed some time in getting medical help.
In other countries where travellers have returned with the illness, so far no one has died because they got medical help in time.
Since we're overdue a flu pandemic, I'd rather we had one that wasn't particularly fatal. And perhaps a successful global response to fighting a common enemy, like an epidemic, might be the catalyst the world requires to snap out of the recession slump.
In short, don't lose any sleep over Swine Flu. Equally, don't go holidaying on Mexican pig farms either.
This has been a JC Skinner public health announcement.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Dermot Ahern and Fianna Fail still hate fathers
It appears that Justice Minister Dermot Ahern and his Fianna Fail cronies still hate fathers.
In a parliamentary question, Deputy PJ Sheehan asked the Minister to explain why unmarried fathers are still forced to go and queue with junkies in order to get their names on their child's birth certificate, and why they are still required, unlike married fathers, to apply to courts to be guardians of their own children.
Inevitably, the answer from the powers-that-be, petrified as they are of the single mummy mafia, is that no change is forthcoming.
In fact, according to our esteemed minister, the current situation is a 'comprehensive' solution, based on 'the welfare of the child'. Which is nonsense, clearly.
It is prehistoric to discriminate between fathers on the basis of their marital status in this manner, and I look forward to the day when someone challenges this in court or via equality legislation.
But I have little or no faith in the Irish legislature, which has a lengthy track record of ignoring the needs of fathers and their children for each other, in reforming itself.
Given the latest reiteration of hardened attitudes and ignorance from the Justice Minister, one can only conclude that they still hate fathers, and still fear the mommy mafia, who are entrenched in opposing rights for fathers despite their odious rhetoric about equality when it comes to demanding ever more state funding for child care, single mommy allowances, free education and back to work allowances and so on.
One day, likely at the insistence of the EU, we will eventually concede in Ireland the fact that fathers are immeasurably beneficial to the development of their children and that the status quo we have espoused for so long amounts to nothing short of human rights violations and child abuse.
In the meantime, we still have to put up with crap like lesbian lovers being granted parental rights over fathers, like fathers being accused slanderously of various crimes by bitter mothers in closed courts, and like children being denied equitable parenting from the moment of birth on the basis of their parents' marital status.
In the meantime, because Dermot Ahern and his cohort are so lazy and fearful of a feminist backlash, fathers will have to continue to queue up with the junkies to get on the birth cert, plead with courts to know how their children's health and education is proceeding and face ongoing denial of their and their children's rights to justice.
Fuck you, Dermot Ahern. I genuinely hope that you find yourself in a family law court one day, slackjawed with shock because the other half has accused you of sexually abusing your kids in order to get back at you for divorcing her, or because she simply doesn't want to have to deal with you at all.
I hope you enjoy the endless months of expensive legal applications, the monitored visits with social workers in tow, and then ultimately the success of paying half your wages in maintenance to live in a rented bedsit and see your kids in McDonalds every other Saturday.
It's not normally a prospect I'd wish on my worst enemy. But I wish it upon you, Minister for Injustice, because it is exactly that fate that you, in your ongoing refusal to reform Irish family laws, have condemned other fathers to indefinitely.
PQ and answer below:
In a parliamentary question, Deputy PJ Sheehan asked the Minister to explain why unmarried fathers are still forced to go and queue with junkies in order to get their names on their child's birth certificate, and why they are still required, unlike married fathers, to apply to courts to be guardians of their own children.
Inevitably, the answer from the powers-that-be, petrified as they are of the single mummy mafia, is that no change is forthcoming.
In fact, according to our esteemed minister, the current situation is a 'comprehensive' solution, based on 'the welfare of the child'. Which is nonsense, clearly.
It is prehistoric to discriminate between fathers on the basis of their marital status in this manner, and I look forward to the day when someone challenges this in court or via equality legislation.
But I have little or no faith in the Irish legislature, which has a lengthy track record of ignoring the needs of fathers and their children for each other, in reforming itself.
Given the latest reiteration of hardened attitudes and ignorance from the Justice Minister, one can only conclude that they still hate fathers, and still fear the mommy mafia, who are entrenched in opposing rights for fathers despite their odious rhetoric about equality when it comes to demanding ever more state funding for child care, single mommy allowances, free education and back to work allowances and so on.
One day, likely at the insistence of the EU, we will eventually concede in Ireland the fact that fathers are immeasurably beneficial to the development of their children and that the status quo we have espoused for so long amounts to nothing short of human rights violations and child abuse.
In the meantime, we still have to put up with crap like lesbian lovers being granted parental rights over fathers, like fathers being accused slanderously of various crimes by bitter mothers in closed courts, and like children being denied equitable parenting from the moment of birth on the basis of their parents' marital status.
In the meantime, because Dermot Ahern and his cohort are so lazy and fearful of a feminist backlash, fathers will have to continue to queue up with the junkies to get on the birth cert, plead with courts to know how their children's health and education is proceeding and face ongoing denial of their and their children's rights to justice.
Fuck you, Dermot Ahern. I genuinely hope that you find yourself in a family law court one day, slackjawed with shock because the other half has accused you of sexually abusing your kids in order to get back at you for divorcing her, or because she simply doesn't want to have to deal with you at all.
I hope you enjoy the endless months of expensive legal applications, the monitored visits with social workers in tow, and then ultimately the success of paying half your wages in maintenance to live in a rented bedsit and see your kids in McDonalds every other Saturday.
It's not normally a prospect I'd wish on my worst enemy. But I wish it upon you, Minister for Injustice, because it is exactly that fate that you, in your ongoing refusal to reform Irish family laws, have condemned other fathers to indefinitely.
PQ and answer below:
77. Deputy P. J. Sheehan
asked the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform
Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform (Deputy Dermot Ahern):
Under the law as it stands - section 6A of the Guardianship of Infants Act 1964, as inserted by section 12 of the Status of Children Act 1987 - an unmarried father may apply to the court to be appointed a guardian of his child. Alternatively, where there is agreement between the parents, they can make a statutory declaration under section 2(4) of the Guardianship of Infants Act, as inserted by section 4 of the Children Act 1997, conferring on the father the status of guardian.
Under section 11 of the 1964 Act, a guardian may apply to the court for its direction on any question affecting the welfare of the child, including directions as to custody and access. In addition, the section provides that the unmarried father of a child, even if he is not a guardian, may apply to the court for orders on custody and access. Section 3 of the Act provides that, in deciding on an application relating to the custody, guardianship or upbringing of a child, the court shall regard the welfare of the child as the first and paramount consideration.
These legislative provisions are comprehensive. They permit the court in cases of disagreement to decide on arrangements for the child’s care and upbringing having regard to the child’s best interests. The vast majority of applications by unmarried fathers for guardianship are granted by the court.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
The unanswerables
At what point does just wanting to chill out in the house become clinical sociopathy?
How many nightly headaches are required for a diagnosis of brain tumour or loss of libido?
In a time of rising prices and recession, is installing a bar in the house a shockingly unnecessary luxury or a money-saving scheme?
Does food you buy in IKEA have to be assembled before eaten?
If you can't control your own currency, can you be said to manage your economy? And is that as relevant for people as countries?
Why does Coca-Cola need to take eight litres of water to make each litre of their toxic waste sugar drink? And why do they keep locating their bottling plants in drought regions of the Third World? And why do people still drink the stuff, anyway?
Where will they put all the unused aircraft currently parked in Nevada if it starts raining there?
Can whiskey ever really be considered an investment?
Would it be better to be spectacularly successful early in life and then spend the rest of your existence in a sort of afterlife, or would it be better to be moderately successful late in life, when you might appreciate it better and go out on a high?
Why doesn't democracy work? Would more work, or less? Do we really get the governments we deserve?
Why are the worst recreational drugs legal and the least addicting, least socially hurtful, least personally damaging ones prohibited?
What are we here for? What if we're not here for anything?
Jetlag makes me pensive. Time to crack open the duty-free, perhaps.
How many nightly headaches are required for a diagnosis of brain tumour or loss of libido?
In a time of rising prices and recession, is installing a bar in the house a shockingly unnecessary luxury or a money-saving scheme?
Does food you buy in IKEA have to be assembled before eaten?
If you can't control your own currency, can you be said to manage your economy? And is that as relevant for people as countries?
Why does Coca-Cola need to take eight litres of water to make each litre of their toxic waste sugar drink? And why do they keep locating their bottling plants in drought regions of the Third World? And why do people still drink the stuff, anyway?
Where will they put all the unused aircraft currently parked in Nevada if it starts raining there?
Can whiskey ever really be considered an investment?
Would it be better to be spectacularly successful early in life and then spend the rest of your existence in a sort of afterlife, or would it be better to be moderately successful late in life, when you might appreciate it better and go out on a high?
Why doesn't democracy work? Would more work, or less? Do we really get the governments we deserve?
Why are the worst recreational drugs legal and the least addicting, least socially hurtful, least personally damaging ones prohibited?
What are we here for? What if we're not here for anything?
Jetlag makes me pensive. Time to crack open the duty-free, perhaps.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
A thousand unemployed call centre workers cheer...
It's happening in India too. Three cities in a row, I've found that waiting and kitchen staff in hotels in India were predominantly Chinese.
Fair enough, a lot of people like Chinese food, even in India. But I cannot fathom how it could be cost-effective for employers to take on migrant workers ahead of one of the lowest- paid workforces there is.
Perhaps the Chinese government is subsidising this as part of some sort of training programme? Does anyone out there know if there is method behind this madness?
Surely when Chinese staff are populating the rosters of hotels in a place like India, we've already exceeded even the flimsy economic purpose for mass migration?
And how can the Indian authorities justify these jobs going to non-Indians, given the poverty and deprivation in the country?
And have they foreseen the negative effects on their tourist industry?
After all, it wasn't that long ago that they were hiring hotel staff for Connemara in Newfoundland because so many complaints were coming in to Bord Failte from American tourists about non-English speaking staff in Irish establishments.
And with no Irish forthcoming for the jobs, they looked for staff in the one other place where people sounded and looked Irish. There is, it appears, a premium of authenticity that tourists attach to visiting places like Ireland or India that involves interacting with locals and not with imported Chinese labour.
So why are Indian hotels hiring from China? Does anyone know?
Fair enough, a lot of people like Chinese food, even in India. But I cannot fathom how it could be cost-effective for employers to take on migrant workers ahead of one of the lowest- paid workforces there is.
Perhaps the Chinese government is subsidising this as part of some sort of training programme? Does anyone out there know if there is method behind this madness?
Surely when Chinese staff are populating the rosters of hotels in a place like India, we've already exceeded even the flimsy economic purpose for mass migration?
And how can the Indian authorities justify these jobs going to non-Indians, given the poverty and deprivation in the country?
And have they foreseen the negative effects on their tourist industry?
After all, it wasn't that long ago that they were hiring hotel staff for Connemara in Newfoundland because so many complaints were coming in to Bord Failte from American tourists about non-English speaking staff in Irish establishments.
And with no Irish forthcoming for the jobs, they looked for staff in the one other place where people sounded and looked Irish. There is, it appears, a premium of authenticity that tourists attach to visiting places like Ireland or India that involves interacting with locals and not with imported Chinese labour.
So why are Indian hotels hiring from China? Does anyone know?
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Superclass and the Untermensch
I'm the underbelly. I'm the untermensch.
Though it can be hard to remember that while being ferried by taxi to a five star hotel.
Now, global rich list might say otherwise. But I don't feel like one of the priveliged people, even if I am in the lucky-enough position of being able to say 'fuck it' when accommodation somewhere like New Delhi goes belly up late at night, and can buy my way out of trouble temporarily.
There may be air-conditioning, and all-night net access and a fresh water swimming pool and special slippers. But I'm just visiting, and paying a large price for the privilege. I don't get to live here.
But some do, and it is worth remembering that. People would like you to forget. I see them in their chosen environment on my rare visits, though. I see them, in their suits, with their expense accounts picking up the tab, and they're relaxed, off the hook, among friends.
Over a few drinks in the hotel bar, they look almost human.
But you can't forget that these people are the ones running the world for their own personal benefit, so that they can have the air-con on full blast while Delhi swelters, and their pick of Scotches from the bar.
All over the world, especially in the developing world, your prospects in life are closely defined by one perameter only - your proximity to the superclass.
I've been reading David Rothkopf's fascinating eagle-eye account of the superclass in his book that came out last year. I've been meaning to read it for some time. Another benefit of time off is catching up on the reading.
Rothkopf was a regular attendee at Davos. He rubbed shoulders with the extremely small coterie of people exercising nearly all the power and managing most of the money on the planet for decades.
And even though he is utterly an insider with an unjaundiced degree of admiration and affection for them, he is enough of a journalist and writer to point out the simple fact that the whole planet is run by a very small number of extremely connected people.
In a very real sense, we're currently in a re-run of the late Nineteenth century, when most of the most powerful people in Europe were all related to Queen Victoria. Late imperial battles where invariably also family squabbles writ large.
At the top of investment banks, major economies, trans-national industrial entities and diplomatic circles runs the same small number of people in tight little circles encompassing each other's boards of directors, advisory councils, Bilderberg and Carlyle, Halliburton and Davos.
Rothkopf reckons that the large bulk of wealth and power on the planet inhabits a little over 6,000 people, most of whom he has at some point or other met.
They all know each other, is Rothkopf's point, and they know and like each other a lot better and have much more in common with each other than they have with the rest of us, the untermenschen.
Rothkopf's qualifying criteria for his chosen few is admittedly somewhat arbitrary. But power is not a simply transparent thing to measure, any more than wealth is.
But it works out at an exceptional few, almost entirely male, mostly white, each one a one in a million compared to the number of us who aren't part of the party.
It's also a shifting feast, with some in and some out each season in keeping with current policies and fashions.
So Bono and Peter Sutherland are in, Mary Robinson and John Bruton are too, Bertie was until recently, but McAleese and Cowen never were and likely never will be.
Whether you accept this tiny coterie of the superclass as a beneficent oligarchy or not, that's what they amount to. Democracy is little more than tokenism and the methodology for ensuring a small crack open to permit new blood.
Their loyalties, ultimately, are to ensuring they can have the air-con on full blast while Delhi swelters. Their interest in the underbelly is only to make sure they stay above it.
Though it can be hard to remember that while being ferried by taxi to a five star hotel.
Now, global rich list might say otherwise. But I don't feel like one of the priveliged people, even if I am in the lucky-enough position of being able to say 'fuck it' when accommodation somewhere like New Delhi goes belly up late at night, and can buy my way out of trouble temporarily.
There may be air-conditioning, and all-night net access and a fresh water swimming pool and special slippers. But I'm just visiting, and paying a large price for the privilege. I don't get to live here.
But some do, and it is worth remembering that. People would like you to forget. I see them in their chosen environment on my rare visits, though. I see them, in their suits, with their expense accounts picking up the tab, and they're relaxed, off the hook, among friends.
Over a few drinks in the hotel bar, they look almost human.
But you can't forget that these people are the ones running the world for their own personal benefit, so that they can have the air-con on full blast while Delhi swelters, and their pick of Scotches from the bar.
All over the world, especially in the developing world, your prospects in life are closely defined by one perameter only - your proximity to the superclass.
I've been reading David Rothkopf's fascinating eagle-eye account of the superclass in his book that came out last year. I've been meaning to read it for some time. Another benefit of time off is catching up on the reading.
Rothkopf was a regular attendee at Davos. He rubbed shoulders with the extremely small coterie of people exercising nearly all the power and managing most of the money on the planet for decades.
And even though he is utterly an insider with an unjaundiced degree of admiration and affection for them, he is enough of a journalist and writer to point out the simple fact that the whole planet is run by a very small number of extremely connected people.
In a very real sense, we're currently in a re-run of the late Nineteenth century, when most of the most powerful people in Europe were all related to Queen Victoria. Late imperial battles where invariably also family squabbles writ large.
At the top of investment banks, major economies, trans-national industrial entities and diplomatic circles runs the same small number of people in tight little circles encompassing each other's boards of directors, advisory councils, Bilderberg and Carlyle, Halliburton and Davos.
Rothkopf reckons that the large bulk of wealth and power on the planet inhabits a little over 6,000 people, most of whom he has at some point or other met.
They all know each other, is Rothkopf's point, and they know and like each other a lot better and have much more in common with each other than they have with the rest of us, the untermenschen.
Rothkopf's qualifying criteria for his chosen few is admittedly somewhat arbitrary. But power is not a simply transparent thing to measure, any more than wealth is.
But it works out at an exceptional few, almost entirely male, mostly white, each one a one in a million compared to the number of us who aren't part of the party.
It's also a shifting feast, with some in and some out each season in keeping with current policies and fashions.
So Bono and Peter Sutherland are in, Mary Robinson and John Bruton are too, Bertie was until recently, but McAleese and Cowen never were and likely never will be.
Whether you accept this tiny coterie of the superclass as a beneficent oligarchy or not, that's what they amount to. Democracy is little more than tokenism and the methodology for ensuring a small crack open to permit new blood.
Their loyalties, ultimately, are to ensuring they can have the air-con on full blast while Delhi swelters. Their interest in the underbelly is only to make sure they stay above it.
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
I know nothing about the budget
I'm abroad and I've been deliberately ignoring all news from home. We all need a break.
So, I've heard nothing about the budget and now I'm afraid to look.
Could someone break the news to me gently?
(I'm assuming it's bad.)
So, I've heard nothing about the budget and now I'm afraid to look.
Could someone break the news to me gently?
(I'm assuming it's bad.)
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Cowboys and Indians
I'm forsaking the cowboys of the Irish economy for a well-deserved rest from the recession.
I'm off to India for a couple of weeks or so instead.
Firstly to remind myself what real poverty looks like, after having been affected by the weeping and gnashing of teeth from the buy-to-let 09 beemer class in Dublin.
But also because I want to see what an economy on the up, built on actual industry and not on bubbles or bullshit looks like.
By the time you read this, I'll be en route or there already. I may or may not post while I'm away. I will try to pop in and read any comments, though.
So happy Easter, y'all. See you on the other side.
I'm off to India for a couple of weeks or so instead.
Firstly to remind myself what real poverty looks like, after having been affected by the weeping and gnashing of teeth from the buy-to-let 09 beemer class in Dublin.
But also because I want to see what an economy on the up, built on actual industry and not on bubbles or bullshit looks like.
By the time you read this, I'll be en route or there already. I may or may not post while I'm away. I will try to pop in and read any comments, though.
So happy Easter, y'all. See you on the other side.
Friday, April 03, 2009
What the government is really doing
The current titles of our Government departments are almost meaningless. They certainly are bearing increasingly little relevance to their actual tasks.
The Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, for example. Seriously? There is no enterprise in Ireland worth talking about, trade's gone down the shitter with the sterling and dollar exchange rates and employment is a distant dream.
So I propose that we start renaming the departments to reflect what the Government is actually doing.
Department of Health and Children:
Department of Privatising and Outsourcing Health
Department of Justice, Equality and Law Reform:
Department of Enabling Nigerian Asylum Scammers and letting Scumbags out on Bail
Department of Foreign Affairs:
Department of Letting Britain run the North and letting Europe run the rest of the country
Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food:
Department of Paying Farmers to do Nothing
Department of Social and Family Affairs:
Department of Welfare Tourism for Eastern Europeans
Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs:
Department of Unjustifiable Grants for Pretending to Speak Irish at Home
Department of Transport:
Department of Repeatedly Taxing Motorists
Department of Defence:
Department of the Ministerial Helicopter Taxi Service
Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government:
Department of Putting Motorways through National Historic Monuments
Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism:
Department of Subsidising Bono and Gerry Ryan, and Begging rich Yanks to Visit
Department of Education and Science:
Department of Subjecting Kids to Squalor and Overcrowding
Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources:
Department of Suppressing Broadband and Giving Ireland's Oil and Gas Away for Free
But I imagine you could do better?
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