Jail the taximen arseholes

Has anyone else ran out of patience with scumbag taxi drivers blockading our towns and airports?

I rang the cops yesterday in a panic when I heard about their shenanigans in Dublin. My child was crossing town on a bus. Ten minutes later, and everyone on that bus would have been held captive for hours by the caprice of the cabbies.

On the radio, I could hear interviews with baffled and frightened tourists trying to get to their hotels, irate parents trying to get the kids and shopping home, annoyed drivers blocked from moving in any direction by a completely illegal blockade.

And what did the plod do? What do they ever do? Absolutely nothing. While our economy is going down the shitter, these mongs are permitted to block the airport and the commercial heart of the city without any punishment, allowed to break the law without being stopped or prosecuted.

And they were at it all around the country too.

Let's note the double standards here. If you're a protester annoyed at the risk to human life and the theft of Irish natural resources in Rossport, and you stand in the middle of the road to protest, you'll be jailed.

If you're a cabbie, annoyed because your industry is no longer a closed shop, and you blockade the city centre for hours on end, the police will do nothing to stop you.

I reported them for committing a series of traffic offences, yet I understand there was not one arrest of any of those blockading. They're lucky I wasn't on the road myself at the time. I'd have given the cops one chance to move them, then rammed my way through.

Since when did the possession of a PSV licence and a yellow sign entitle anyone to shut down the city?

Two of them apparently did get scooped for invading the taxi regulator's office and refusing to leave. They whined afterwards that they were only seeking a meeting with the Transport Minister.

Here's a clue for you cabbie cretins: he doesn't work in the regulator's office. If I wanted a meeting with your boss, would it be reasonable for me to break into your house and occupy it?

Yet their removal - under court order - was apparently sufficient 'provocation' to bring the rest of the no-brainers out to shut down the city centre for hours on end, terrifying kids, frustrating parents and workers, and screwing over the few much-needed tourists.

I couldn't give a shit what they want. It's not about what they want. It's about what works for the whole of society.

What we need is taxi drivers who know their way around the town; none of this 'you show-I go' nonsense. We need cabs that are new, clean, with disabled access. We need the fares to be about half of what they are currently.

And if all of that results in half of the taximen ending up on the dole, so be it.

They couldn't give a shite about inconveniencing the rest of us, so I don't see why we should indulge their petulant and childish pranks anymore.

The next time (and inevitably, given that they've the collective intelligence of the average dung beetle, there will be a next time) they pull a stunt like this, I want to see mass arrests.

They're not above the law, and it's long past time that the law was enforced upon them.

The Irishness of Protestants

I've fairly simple criteria for what it means to be Irish.

Are you from Ireland? If you can answer yes, then you're Irish in my book.

Of course, not everyone sees it the same way. And according to a new study by a Protestant academic, apparently Irish Protestants are seen by many of their compatriots as somehow being a lesser form of Irish.

Which is frankly despicable, especially in this day and age when the Irish Times and the many, many statefunded multicult quangos spend so much effort trying to insist that people from distant continents who arrived here in the last few years to scam our welfare system are, in fact, 'new Irish.'

Let's be blunt - Irish Protestants are Irish. Some may like, as indeed some Irish Catholics like, to carry other passports too. But they're no less Irish for that or indeed for their choice of religion or their family background.

This study is now likely to be used as another stick with which to beat the Irish nation. A cold house, Rome rule, etc, etc.

But I think perhaps something else is feeding into this.

All Irish people are familiar with the selective co-opting of Irish people by Britain when it suits them.

When Michelle Smith was winning Olympic medals, she was hilariously described as 'one of ours' by the BBC. But when she was caught urinating whiskey into drug sample bottles, of course she became an Irish cheat.

And let's not forget Samuel L. Jackson's legendary correction of Brit telly hackette Kate Thornton when she sought to claim Colin Farrell as British.

But this trend continues today, even in something as vapid and irrelevant as Piers Morgan's top 100 British celebrities list. The former tabloid hack states up front that Irish celebrities 'such as Bono and Colin Farrell' aren't included.

Then he goes on to list a bunch of Irish people on his list anyway - Kenneth Branagh, Christine Bleakely, Graham Norton.

Let's go through that carefully for a moment. Branagh and Bleakely are from the North, which is British-ruled. But Norton? Born and raised in Cork, for goodness sake. And where's Liam Neeson or Terry Wogan, surely bigger stars than either Branagh or Bleakely?

Obviously the real criterion here is their religious background. According to Morgan, you're British if you're an Irish Protestant, even if you're from Cork, but you're not British if you're an Irish Catholic, even if you grew up under British rule or lived your entire working life in England as the beloved voice of middle-aged Middle England.

We remain firmly in the cultural hinterland of London, and hence it isn't surprising to me to find that research indicates a reticence about the Irishness of Protestants, when the British media still firmly insist that the Protestant community of this island belongs to them.

I look forward to the day when Irish Protestants start directing their anger at attempts to dilute their nationality, not only at their fellow Irish people, but also at the British who continually assume prior claim to them.

One further criterion I ought to have added above: you're Irish only if you want to be Irish.

So while I consider it despicable that some Irish people see their fellow citizens as somehow lesser, I think the only way that can be addressed is for the Irish Protestant population to be a bit more vocal in insisting on their nationality, especially when it comes under such regular assault from our ever-colonial neighbours.

You're Irish - shout it out and then no one can dispute it, not your Catholic neighbours or your British ones.

Rhino-dating the Irish service sector

I've learnt quite a bit this week.

Apparently, 'Rhino-dating' is what happens during speed-dating nights when you sit down opposite someone of the opposite sex and they spend the entire three minutes criticising your clothes and ranting about how brilliant they are, then at the end of the night they collar you on the way out the door for some abuse, because they're shocked you didn't choose to see them again.

I've been rhino-dated by the Irish service sector this week, and it wasn't too pleasant.

There was the fuel firm who took my money, promising me my heat within 24 hours, 48 max. It took them five days to get around to delivering to me in the end.

And that was only after I had to call them daily, have others call them daily, and even threaten to sue for my money back. And on the rare times I got them on the phone, they had the insane audacity to say I was being unreasonable. They lied repeatedly, and even sought to fabricate emails.

But now that they've finally delivered to me, they've sent me an email asking me to 'keep their number safe' for future deliveries! Classic rhino-dating delusions there. I'd rather freeze than keep such a shower of useless cunts in business, needless to say.

I'm not quite at the point of naming and shaming, but if you're concerned to avoid these shitehawks, don't order fuel online like I did. Call someone local instead.

Then there's the bank whose machine chomped my banklink card earlier this week.

I called the number on the machine as you do, and got some thundering gobshite who insisted my card 'must have broken' their machine, who suggested I was lucky his bank weren't in the habit of suing for such damages and who insisted they'd never had an IT glitch in his 'twenty-five years with the bank.'

So we have someone manning a customer service desk - frontline with the general public - who makes up nonsense, fails to apologise for the inconvenience caused, preposterously threatens legal action and ridiculously claims that they alone of all firms on Earth are immune to technical problems.

Is there any wonder that AIB still have this mong manning phones after 25 years service, assuming he didn't make that shit up as well?

I'm fed up rhino-dating the Irish service sector. I'd like a nice positive interaction with a service industry who valued my custom, treated me with respect, took responsibility when they screwed up, apologised when they let me down and actively sought to resolve my problems with their service.

But in this country, that sounds like some romantic fantasy, far removed from reality.

I'd emigrate if I could

Twenty Major reckons the obligatory pension (translation: more tax) is his tipping point. He's leaving if it's implemented.

I couldn't blame him.

I'd do it myself if my circumstances permitted it. After all, when the rats are leaving the ship, why should the hard-pressed crew remain as the tide rises above the neck?

The bankers have fled to their hidey-holes in Spain or Canada already. The cabinet are bailing out one by one.

Why stay to pay for their mistakes, their incompetence and yes, their crimes?

If you can, go. No one will thank you for remaining behind, except of course the aforementioned bankers (whose debts you'll pay) or the aforementioned politicians (whose pensions your 'pension levy' will fund).

There's a really simple choice here - stay and get shafted, stay and fight back, or leave and don't ever look over your shoulder at the mess behind you.

I'm forced into option 2. But despite the 'fighting Irish' nickname we have worldwide, this nation is one of meek, subservient sheep who would take any punishment and tug their forelock gratefully in response.

In short, I don't expect to see many others backing my belligerence because historically, the Irish have never shown backbone in a crisis. 1798? Most of the country bottled. 1848? Same again. 1916? Same again.

When it comes to fighting each other, we're masters though. Look at the North, or the civil war, or indeed the public V private spat ongoing at present.

If you're going, you do so with my blessing and best hopes for the future.

If you're staying, please get up off your knees, remove the penises from your mouth, stand up and fight for justice.

Fight to jail the crooks. Fight to see the corrupt bankers and developers bankrupted and jailed. Fight against being lumped with their debts and fight to retain some dignity in this country.

Lemmings led by beards

It seems that 92% of those taking the new taxi 'knowledge' exam are failing it first time, and some 80% are failing it even after repeating.

At last, an exam in Ireland which doesn't suffer from rampant grades inflation.

But sadly the test only applies to those who entered the industry since last July. The regulator wants all existing taximen to sit it by 2012. So far, so good.

However, I see that SIPTU is warning that if existing drivers are made sit the test, they would 'withdraw their services'. Is that a threat or a promise to the public?

Because if 400 taximen who are so afraid they don't know their way around decide NOT to work, I for one would be delighted. I'm fed up with dealing with 'You show-I go' merchants, or those who think it's okay to smoke and eat in the cab, or those reliant upon sat-nav to find O'Connell Street.

Here we go again. It's like the public service - more lemmings led by beards, over the cliff.

Take note: the PAYE private sector is getting royally screwed right now, losing jobs and paying disproportionate tax compared to the dodgers in business, farming, taxiing and elsewhere. Since they're being forced to pay for the whiners in the public sector, they've long since lost sympathy with any argument suggesting they shouldn't suffer a cull in numbers and wages.

Same applies here with the cabbies. If 400 taximen bottled out of taking the knowledge test, I believe the public would cheer, and secretly pray that they lost their PSV licences for good.

The cult of AGW

It's been the coldest winter since 1963 here in Ireland, apparently.

And we're not unique. Most of the planet has been experiencing exceptionally cold weather this winter.

This goes quite a long way towards explaining why you don't hear the words 'global warming' being bandied about so much any more.

These days, the buzz words are 'climate change'. I'd be inclined to refer to climate changing by its old-fashioned title, 'weather'.

But plenty of the true believers in the cult of anthropogenic global warming are still keen to claim that armageddon is imminent, and it's all your fault and mine for, well, existing basically.

Global warming, yesterday.

On BBC Radio 4 today, they were covering the British parliament's grilling of the lying scientists who conspired to fabricate data, cover up the truth and twist the results of research.

They then turned to some invited 'expert' to respond. I didn't catch his name. I wish I had because he should be added to the list of lying scumbags banking research grants for peddling this tosh.

He hummed and hawed about his lying colleagues getting busted, then went on to insist that, of course, none of this should impact at all on the need to reduce carbon emissions, the pressing need for carbon taxes, and so on and so forth.

Amazingly, the presenter didn't call him on any of this crap. But that's the nature of religious faith. One cannot question under any circumstances.

Yes, oil is running out and we need to be smarter about how we use it (ban SUVs for a start), and we need to find replacement sources of energy.

But that is no reason to seek to tax the developed world to the point of penury. There's a perfectly simple and indisputable reason for our cold weather. It's called the solar minimum.

When the sun flares up with nuclear force on its surface, it sends waves of additional heat and light our way. These flares are called sunspots, and they occur in cycles. We're at the bottom of the cycle currently, so there are virtually no sunspots and as a result, much less heat for us.

When there were plenty of sunspots a few years back, the world was exceptionally warm, and that's when this global warming crap began getting propagated.

So, since we know their scientific underpinning for AGW (man-made global warming/cooling/change/whatever you're having yourself) is not only junk science but deliberate lies, the only remaining question is why is the cult still propagating this?

Well, what is the result of a carbon tax? It's a penalty on the developed world for being developed. It's a glass ceiling on the prospects of the developing world to continue improving the lives of those living there. In short, it's a charter for reversing development.

In other words, it's more back-to-hobbiton fantasies from the Gaia-brigade, who'd like nothing more than to see mankind reduced to a few hundred thousand people living in an imaginary vegan wonderland without machinery, transport, or anything that might interrupt their fantasy idyll.

It's a cult, and it's time to stop pandering to them. They're more dangerous than any other bunch of crazy faith-based loonies right now, including the Roman Catholic paedo-clerics, the Islamo-fascist suicide bombers or the Judaic imperialists.

These people want to end the world as we know it. In proposing one spoof Armageddon, they hope to bring about a real one.

They need to be stopped. This nonsense has gone too far and for far too long already.

It's time we repudiated their ever-changing anti-human, anti-development lies and stopped letting them take us for sheep that will believe any old rubbish, and happily pay to be returned to the middle ages.

Oh, not again!

Algeria's police chief has been shot dead this morning.

The authorities are now searching for half a dozen Irish citizens with ringlets and little black hats.

Trevor caught by the Cutting Crew

Fianna Fail were never going to take the axeing of O'Dea lying down.

It didn't take long for them to wheel out some dirt on possibly the cleanest TD of all, Not-so-clever Trevor Sargent.

The government is rocking, right now. The gaps are opening up. Cowen can't keep it together much longer, especially with Dermot Ahern bootboying around the place as he has been.

Trevor's gone, and will eventually be the focus of the Greens again when this regime falls and the Gormley era is consigned to the unrecyclable bin of political failure.

In the meantime? Why not do as I do and crack open some popcorn and a nice beer and watch another government minister forced to quit.

Death by a thousand cuts

With a title like that, you're possibly expecting another economic rant from me.

Nope, it's option two on this occasion - this rancid government.

I wish I didn't feel compelled to pen my outrage on these two topics so often. It's wearying and depressing to return again and again to stare into the abyss and yell back what I see.

God only knows what you lot feel about it.

(Well, actually, Statcounter knows. And he says you're way more interested when I write about dead porn stars, or tattooing in Goa, or music piracy, or Irish whiskey, or the farce that is Ulster-Scots. Anything, in other words, other than the above two conversation-stoppers.)

So I'll try to think of posting about tattooed porn stars pirating Ulster-Scots albums or something similarly gripping later this week.

Remember when John O'Donoghue got forced out of his cosy, parasitic sinecure?

It felt like something had shifted in the universe. A senior politician in Ireland quit? That hadn't happened since forever.

But now that lying lowlife Willie O'Dea is gone too.

And Brian Lenihan, the last intelligent member of cabinet and the only one with any sort of respect outside a cumann singalong, is way more ill than they are publicly letting on.

And hoppity shortarse Martin Cullen is soon set to depart, what with his back finally caving in (likely due to his utter lack of spine.)

That leaves three seats at the top table soon to be empty,and let's not forget that Harney is only in her supersized chair because nobody else in government is taking enough hallucinogens to think running the Department of Health is a good idea of a career move.

And a level down the greasy pole, their margin is wafer thin in the Dail due to two by-elections and the distaste of panic-stricken backbenchers to continue supporting the insupportable.

Never mind the ever-skittish Greens, and the collection of allegedly Independent village idiots and parish pump attendants their every vote is now reliant on.

Finally, this has roused Fine Gael, many years later than it should have, and we have the riveting sight of blustering Enda in the Dail.

Obviously, with their huge poll lead and the almost unimaginable dream of possible one-party rule, they want to deliver the knockout blow as quick as is humanly possible.

After all, who knows when Labour will cop on and disassociate themselves from the unions' ruinous and publicly unpopular campaign to exempt overpaid, underworked public sector workers with job security from sharing the burden of the recession?

But thus far, the blueshirts remain utterly ineffectual, reliant on the Continuity Greens (the ones still technically in the tent, as opposed to McKenna's Real Greens, De Burca's Official Greens or any of the others who've already walked in disgust) to do any real damage.

The only thing that seems likely to prevent this government limping along, dying the death of a thousand cuts as one rat after another speeds for safety, is the incompetence of the incumbents.

God forbid that a government in Ireland changed because the public got disgusted by its corruption and incompetence and demanded its removal.

No, instead we must have, as we always do, some ridiculously irrelevant issue to get collectively mental about for a week, until before you know it, someone's off up the Aras and those fecking posters sprout on the lampposts all over again.

When O'Donoghue resigned, he whined that others in government had done much worse and seen no harm come to them. Why, his baffled mutton head seemed to ask, am I being picked on?

This week, we've seen O'Dea moaning exactly the same tune.

And so it will go, on. Some of them will slip out the backdoor, pleading illness. But those which remain will face a scrutiny that comes many years too late.

None of them will withstand such scrutiny. All of them will feel aggrieved, to have their past behaviour judged by proper standards of probity at last, when for years they quite rightly believed they could get away with anything, because they always did.

Then they'll be gone, with big cheerio cheques in their pockets, and we'll be left with blustering Enda, a prolonged recession, no jobs and a huge deficit.

And it'll happen all over again in another few decades, unless we start jailing people.

We should start with prosecuting O'Dea, who is guilty of perjury. We should go back to Ahern, who cannot explain away his financial shenanigans to the taxman, and prosecute him too.

Until these people are held accountable, they're beyond the law and will act accordingly.

And exactly the same principle applies to the banksters too.

(Oh, look! This post is about the economy after all!)

It takes a thief to spot global theft

The name Darius Guppy probably doesn't provoke much recognition in Ireland, even though he lived here for some time.

A brief precis of his life thus far might run:
Privileged schooling at Eton,
followed by more of the same at Oxford where he chummed around with top Tories David Cameron and Boris Johnson as part of the odious Bullingdon society,
followed by his father's spectacular bankrupcy,
which in turn led to Guppy Jr scamming Lloyds insurance to make up for the cash he believed Lloyds had stolen from his family.

Guppy was caught, prosecuted and jailed, then vanished into obscurity on release, firstly in Ireland and latterly in South Africa.

In short, he's the sort of rum bloke that the British aristocracy churn out all the time - the well-spoken crook.

But he's no fool and no idiot. And his introductory essay as a journalist for the Sunday Telegraph today is one of the more important articles to be published today or any other day.

Guppy's not the first to argue as he does, that the core problem with our global economy is the banks and how they invent money out of nothing in a form of alchemy that better resembles a card sharp's sleight of hand.

But few others have ever made the case so convincingly, so accessibly and so simply.

He argues clearly that you cannot allow banks to invent ever more amounts of money when the planet itself is finite. But this isn't an eco-hippy argument in favour of culling children so that the whales may feel free. This is a warning to everyone - the global economic collapse isn't over; it's barely started.

Perhaps it takes a thief to tell the rest of us that the banks are thieves on a truly colossal scale, and that a root-and-branch overhaul of the entire way money operates is now needed to prevent global meltdown.

His article is essential reading for anyone with a bank account, mortgage, personal loan, savings or property. If you haven't dropped out of society entirely, he's speaking to you.

Or, like the banksters, you might prefer to embed your head back in the sand and hope for business as usual to resume. It won't of course.

Money is debt, and allowing banks to create unending supplies of it is what's wrong at the core of our world. If you've got more time, perhaps you might like to view the following documentary, which expounds even further on the same points Guppy makes so excellently.

Britain has the wrong Bullingdon yobs running for office. Guppy would make a much better PM than Call-me-Dave Cameron. Because his criminality is so much less serious, and because he at least is prepared to acknowledge the real wrongs.

Do you know any of these Israeli Assassins?

These are the passport photographs used by the Israeli hitsquad that murdered a Hamas leader in the Gulf last month.

At least three, possibly four, posed as Irish, thereby putting at risk every single genuine Irish person on the planet who travels to the Gulf or indeed any other state with sympathies for Palestine.

These people are extremely dangerous and need to be found and tried.

And the terrorist government of Israel must issue an apology to the Irish people for hiding behind our good name while they go about their spineless murders.

That extra F

I've blogged before about how parents who give their children stupid names should be up on child abuse charges.

It's a global problem, generally committed by the lumpenproletariat whose imagination, stunted by a childhood diet of smokes and deepfried food, leads them to brand their offspring with the name of whatever pop star, white wine, car model or city happens to be in front of them at the time of birth.

But surely there must be a special ring of Hell set aside for people who, given perfectly reasonable names by their perfectly normal parents, jettison that in favour of some eye-popping nonsense.

I'm not talking about actors and writers assuming stage or pen names. I'm talking about Celtic Tiger eejits who decided to 'rebrand' in order to feed the ravenous monster that is their attention-seeking ego.

That extra F did it for me. Malcontent with being just another Aoife, some balloon off some RTE reality show (another ring in Hell dedicated to anyone involved in making those, I'd have thought) decided she needed an extra F in there 'to be different'.

Note to Aoiffffffe: Adding random letters to your name isn't 'different'; it's illiterate.

Graduates of advanced level Celtic Tiger naming idiocy include people who call themselves 'Puffin', 'Turtle', 'Doodle', 'Vogue' or 'Gavin Lambe-Murphy'.

By no coincidence whatsoever, all of these people can be found on the southside of Dublin 'working' in jobs that don't sound like jobs to people who work 9 to 5.

You know - they're models, or in PR, or they simply consider themselves to be celebs. Some such shit.

These people need to realise that it's not big or clever. It doesn't make you look different, or special. It makes you look like a self-important tool who can't spell and has industrial sized attention issues.

A kid like Rocco Ahern I feel sorry for (in more ways than one.) It's not their fault. But the adults who insist people call them by the name of exotic animals? I simply feel contempt for them.

It's not 2007 anymore. Change your name back to Mary or Padraig or whatever normal name your parents gave you before you copped a double dose of Celtic Tiger delusions, you planks.

Bury the dream with this poor girl

I've been to Turkey, and I've nice memories of the place.

It was full of beautiful ancient Ottoman buildings, and earlier remnants of other awe-inspiring eras like the Greeks and Romans and Persians.

The people were urbane and friendly, the beer flowed freely, the transport infrastructure was impressive by Irish standards and the food was wonderful.

So I can see what people mean when they claim that Turkey is a European nation, that deserves to take its place in the European Union.

But of course, when I was in Turkey, I didn't leave Europe. I was in Istanbul, a city under its previous incarnations as Byzantium and Constantinople that was for long periods European in culture and still is by geography.

But on the other side of the Bosphorus is another Turkey - the real Turkey. The huge Asia Minor bulk of the country. Their cultural practices are not so obviously in tune with European norms as those in Istanbul are. Unless, of course, we're talking about European values back in the Dark Ages.

Turkish police found the dead body of a 16 year old girl in a pit in a village. She had died through inhalation of large quantities of soil, indicating that she had been alive when buried.

Her own family did this to her, to preserve their 'honour', because she had been seen transgressing their cultural rules.

What was her crime, this unnamed creature of woe? She was seen talking to boys.

There may be room in the EU for Istanbul, should it and it's Euro-hinterland ever choose to secede from Turkey, not that it seems likely.

But there will never be room in Europe for the redneck lunacies of the hillbilly Anatolians.

Application denied.

Sympathy for the daddy devil at last?

Obviously, men are evil and wrong. We already knew that.

Even when women murder their own children in cold blood, it's not their fault but that of some man, somewhere, who drove them to it by callously leaving them, or having the audacity to sleep with someone who isn't a crazy child-killer.

Yup, somehow, it's always a man's fault.

We've seen this in some of the commentary about this sad case, where an upper middle-class affluent mum lost the plot and killed her two toddlers.

Not one article has failed to mention that her husband left her insane ass before Christmas, as if that was the causative reason for the death of these two poor kids, and not their crazy knife-wielding mother.

And plenty of online comment has sought to exonerate her entirely in the context of the allegedly clear and obvious distress she was under due to the break up.

Well, what about the distress of the father? He's had to answer a knock at the door from the plod and hear that his children have been killed by their mad ma. He'll be struggling to contain his grief right now, wondering why he didn't take them with him when he split from their mother.

Maybe in future, the next time a crazy bitch decides that her children must die in order to hurt her ex-partner, the media and the public will lay blame where it actually belongs.

When Arthur McElhill burnt his family to death, no one would have dared suggested or implied that somehow his utterly innocent partner, who tragically died along with her children, had any responsibility for his despicable act of murder.

So why the eagerness to transfer some of Fiona Dennison's blame onto her former partner? Does anyone seriously believe, as he mourns his two children, that he isn't suffering enough right now?

This is how the patriarchy myth unfolds in such circumstances. Since, obviously, our society is cruelly dominated by the evil patriarchy, it stands to reason that it is the patriarchy and not the woman with the knife in her hands and the bodies of her children in the boot of her car who is to blame.

For some people, not to mention the legal system, mummy's always right, even when she's a latent killer.There is no court in Ireland or Britain prepared to grant sole custody to a father unless the mother is already in jail or a chronic substance abuser.

One hopes that one day people will see through these double standards. Hopefully one day we will mature to the point of Scandinavian nations, who rightly see parenting as a joint task performed by two people - mother and father.

In the meantime, there is a single glimmer of hope for devil daddies. Britain's bringing in a right to six month's paternity leave for new dads. It's not much. In fact, it's pathetic in the context of what children and fathers ACTUALLY need in terms of new legislation.

But it's a start.

Who raped Martin Cullen?

Who raped Martin Cullen?

According to the Minister for Fun and Junkets, media intrusion into his life has been like being raped.

Obviously, no cabinet minister would dare belittle victims of aggravated sexual assault by comparing their suffering to being written about in a paper, so presumably Cullen would only make such a statement if he was genuinely capable of comparing the two experiences.

Hence my question: who raped Martin Cullen?

Because frankly, if he has never been raped, then his statement is a thundering disgrace and a slap of contempt across the face of all victims of rape.

But did anyone ever expect any better from the poison dwarf of this feudal court ruling the country?

Karma in its most overt form

Tiger Woods and his many skanks.

All the Olympic sprinters and their designer doping kits.

That Hans Ritter UN weapons inspector chap who just got busted trying to seduce what he thought was a kid.

Why do they do it? What makes them think they're going to get away with it?

Ego is obviously one reason. (Because I can.)

That at least accounts for the first skank, the first steroid injection, the first - um - inappropriate internet contact with a minor.

But why keep doing it (whatever it is)? Why not quit the cheating (or whatever) once you've tried it and satisfied the curiosity?

Perhaps the answer lies in Mr Ritter's back history. This is not the first time he's been found trying to arrange sex dates with minors, it seems. In fact, he's been at this crack for years.

He's no moron. He almost-singlehandedly took on the Bush Administration at one point. So what made him think he could possibly get away with continually behaving like he has?

Probably the same reason that made Ben Johnson and the other sprinters keep taking the 'roids, even though they have to undergo regular and unannounced drug tests.

The same reason Tiger kept chasing hoochie-mama skirt even though there was a press pack never far away.

Because they got away with it once, that first ego-driven, curiosity-spiked time. But they don't think 'God, I was lucky to get away with that. Better not risk it in future, since I've so much else to lose.'

These people believe they are so intelligent, so smart, and so powerful that they will NEVER be caught. Having got away with it once, they are almost compelled to repeat, because they genuinely believe they won't be caught.

Which makes them get sloppy, which gets them caught.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how karma functions in its most overt form. What the ego drives us to do, the ego ensures we make amends for.

Nostricles in my frostrils

I woke up with nostricles in my frostrils this morning.

That's when I realised the boiler had packed in again.

I really, really am getting bored with being freezing all the time.

Having to undergo a crash course in boiler engineering by mobile phone in the dark in sub zero temperatures was not one of my resolutions for 2010.

But at least it's working now.

Global warming, where are you?

Looking back at the forecast

Okay, I made a few predictions about where 2009 was heading before it happened, so let's take a look back and see whether my crystal ball was on the blink or not.

1. A severe crash in the housing market of Britain and Ireland, even worse than what's already occurred. The governments forced to intervene with banks to prevent massive scale repossessions and defaults.

Half-right. Bizarrely, the British market rose slightly due to so little properties being on the market. Nevertheless that's only an indication of a delayed further crash.

2. The credit card lifestyle bill finally lands on the mat. Plenty of people with no assets other than a few payments on a 08-D car are going to find themselves defaulting on some very expensive credit loans. The problem of arranging refinancing, from semi-bankrupt banks who themselves cannot get credit, for these unsupported loans is going to stretch the banking sector beyond breaking point.

I think we can note this down as correct.

3. Multinationals use the excuse of recession to relocate to Eastern Europe. Cue 100,000 redundancies next year in Ireland.

Dell, anyone? And we got way more than 100,000 redundancies last year.

4. Euro or no euro (and given that 40% of our trade is with the sterling zone even today, the euro is not currently helping), we might actually have to call in the IMF if the government cannot raise the funds to deal with their income shortfall AND that of the banks, especially if the credit card bill arrives too.

They've avoided complete collapse so far, but then again all sorts of zombie economies are currently being propped up around the world. Faeces meets fan time has therefore been delayed until even worse culprits like Greece and the Baltics are dealt with first.

5. Empty shopfronts in high streets. Cars with for sale signs. Travel agents, estate agents, motor retailers all going bust.

Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick. 100% correct.

6. A general election in Ireland after either the Greens grow stones and pull out of Government or they lose a crucial Dail vote, an election which Fianna Fail lose quite significantly to a Fine Gael-Labour coalition.

Pure fail. We should have had an election but we didn't. Blame the spineless Greens. When we do get one in 2010, I expect the same result as I predicted will finally occur.

7. Obama's Clinton re-run presidency gets off to a poor start with a series of foreign affairs crises that even Bill and Hill can't solve for the noobie. For potential flashpoints, think Pakistan, Israel/Palestine, Ukraine, Indonesia and as usual most of Africa.

I think buyer's regret has definitely kicked in by now. And foreign affairs has been the locale for most of Obama's poor performance, even if he is being criticised over his (very good) health plan and the economy.

8. Britain definitely starts pulling out of their occupations. Troops to start leaving Iraq and Afghanistan. As recession bites, there will be a further round of culls in the Northern Irish public service sector.

We've seen the start of this already. Much more of the same to come this year.

9. Chelsea for the league, with Liverpool nipping their heels in second. United a distant third. Fergie to quit at long last. Perhaps Wenger to join him in walking from the Premiership.

Wishful thinking on my part, perhaps. None of the above occurred.

10. The beginning of the end of low cost air travel. As airlines consolidate, and routes decrease, and more and more craft are parked in the Nevada desert, the consumer ends up with the worst of all worlds - prices like the luxury days of the 1970s with service of contemporary Ryanair.

Sadly, this has come to pass. Hundreds of airlines went belly up last year, prices are rising, routes are being reduced and service standards across the board are abysmal and hardly helped by ridiculous (and pointless) security measures at airports.

I make that around 6/10 right. Meh. I always was a B student.

A spectre is haunting Europe

Not communism, but the spectre of fake Europe.

Fake Europe is the penumbra of countries that pretend to be European when they clearly aren't. Imitation may be the greatest form of flattery, but it gets irksome when these people are indulged in their delusions.

Is anyone else annoyed that this year's European city of culture isn't even in Europe, never mind in the EU?

It's just another example of a mouthy demanding country outside of Europe seeking to associate itself with a continent it doesn't belong to.

Previous exponents of this include Israel, who despite blatantly being part of the Middle East nevertheless are in the European Broadcasting Union and compete in UEFA.

And the EU has had to entertain hilarious membership applications from both these countries, plus other distinctly non-European places like Morocco.

I really wish the EU would produce a map of the world and give some of these people a basic lesson in geography instead of indulging their reality-defying fits of pique and envy.

Here's to you, Mrs Robinson

Ok, let's leave the schadenfreude to one side for now. Iris Robinson is, apparently, an ill woman with a recent history of suicidal ideation.

Of course, she's now utterly ruined as a politician and probably in her personal life too.

Her husband, the first minister, is hanging on tenaciously after a heart-rending performance on TV. But with the fundie Free Presbyterian Paisleyite moralists in his party to answer to, not to mention more questions coming about his family finances, that may not last long.

So where does this leave us? What have we learnt?

Well, firstly we now have first class proof, as if it were required, that the DUP are NOT holier than thou. They are not more upstanding or of a higher moral calibre. They are just as prone to sin, sex, and screwing up as everyone else.

We also have evidence of the dual standards operating in terms of gender. If a 59 year old man, who had been entrusted with the care of a teenage girl by her dying parent, then went on to fuck the girl for a period of time, what do you imagine the headlines might look like?

If the genders were reversed, and it were Peter and not Iris who'd had the affair, he'd be pilloried in the streets of conservative, religious, judgemental Northern Ireland. In fact, his life might even be at risk.

No matter how ill Iris is or claims to be (now, ten months after her apparent suicide attempt), her mental condition cannot excuse how she manipulated and abused her relationship with a much younger man who was effectively under her guidance and care.

I don't think it's too strong to say she groomed this young lad. Looked at through the prism of gender reversal, the scale of her wrongdoing becomes clear.

Finally, we have the prospect, in a British general election year, of NI's three biggest parties all changing their leadership.

Gerry Adams has been fighting a rearguard action for sometime against those in Sinn Fein seeking a change of leadership. But revelations about his child-abusing brother have stuck fast, and will be hard for him to shake off. Plus, there is a lot more to come out about Liam Adams. So Gerry may be forced to step down sooner rather than later.

Peter Robinson, who does appear to have been seriously wronged by his wife's behaviour, is also on a knife edge. He must explain his involvement in his wife's financial shenanigans, which comes on top of criticism of their lavish expense claims - the 'Swish Family Robinson' tag.

And then he must talk the fundies in Unionism into forgiving and forgetting. Meanwhile the TUV will snipe from the wings, and recent DUP converts will sigh and return to the UUP fold. It seems like he is a dead man walking.

Only the SDLP actually are choosing to change their leader.

Now is a moment of transition and possibility for NI, but also a dangerous time therefore. And there are still a lot of guns out there, especially UDA ones, despite their little PR stunt this week.

So here's to you, Mrs Robinson, for blowing holes in all the known assumptions about Northern Irish politics. If you achieved nothing else in your political career (and you did achieve nothing else) at least your sordid abuse of a young man has led to a moment of potential positive change.

And that change involves the eradication of pocket-lining big house Unionism in its modern DUP form - the Swish Family Robinson with their massive expenses and multiple luxury homes, or their predecessors the Paisley clan, with their multi-million church and dodgy property dealings.

Can Unionists turn their backs on such representatives for good? Or how many more such sordid revelations of DUP improbity can they stomach?

Does spouting about Christ in front of a Union Jack really excuse the dodgy pocketlining and sexual predation on a young Catholic man in the eyes of Unionism?

Let's hope so.

PS: I'm surprised to see that www.DUPcougars.com has not yet been registered by some enterprising porno king.