I haven't blogged with particular regularity recently. This is because, as the title states, I'm cold, skint and depressed.
Like most of the country, basically.
Well, like those who aren't actually bankrupt or in hundreds of thousands of negative equity they now owe to the bailed-out banksters.
Or like those who aren't actually flooded out of the homes some gombeen developer built on flood plains with dodgy planning and possibly a brown envelope or two.
Or like those who can't get their operation or healthcare because our minister for Obesity keeps hiking the cost of a prescription or attending A+E.
Equally, I'm not so smug, comfortable, with my African dictator-sized Merc and Garda chauffeur, with my dodgy finances and my millionaire daughters to comfort me, that I'm in a position to advise those complaining about the state of the nation to fuck off and grow bluebells, like Bertie Ahern did.
I'm cold, skint and depressed, and I'm still better off than most. That's how bad this place has become. And it will get worse as Clowen and his cohorts seek to mug us all again in the budget.
Come the Spring, I might well grow some bluebells, in order to bring some much needed colour back into the place.
And then I'm going to Drumcondra to look for a former politician's arse I can ram them up, to stop the corrupt little fucker from speaking out of that particular orifice any further.
Seriously, why isn't he in jail yet?
Monday, November 30, 2009
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Evra is a tosser
Sorry for the third football related post in a row, but I could not let things pass without noting for posterity that Patrice Evra (seen on the right, breathing heavily while sexually abusing a reluctant Wayne Rooney) is a multiple tosser.
Firstly, he has a girl's name. Secondly, he plays for Merchandise United. But primarily, he's a tosser for his response to the Thierry Henry debacle.
Yes, he said that they should erect a statue to his cheating pal. Yes, he also cheekily offered a replay on his playstation. But those moronisms are not why Patrice Evra is tosser of the week.
Here is his response to the fact that politicians joined the calls for a fair play replay: "When you hear politicians calling for a replay, you wonder if they know the ball is round or oval."
Erm, like your handballing mate Thierry Henry last Wednesday night, do you mean, Patrice?
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Why the internet doesn't matter
I've discovered a new mathematical formula today. It expresses the relevance of the internet, and I have calculated it to be 0.1%.
How did I do this? Quite simply. I took the 300,000 people who said on Facebook that they would march to the French Embassy to protest against the thieving of our World Cup place and divided that number by the 300 or so who actually turned up.
This little illustration firstly confirms the old gag that internet petitions aren't worth the paper they're written on. But it also reveals the extent to which posturing has replaced action in the repertoire of modern man.
Perhaps we are much more cowed, more frightened, more afraid to rock the boat than previous generations. Perhaps we are more lazy, more indoors, more sedentary too.
But primarily I think we're more inclined to spoof and bluster and posture than previous generations, and few things fulfil that remit better than the 'look at me' amateurism of the internet, especially (yes, I know) blogs and social networking sites.
We already know that such things aren't work. They aren't proper communication either. And if they're what passes for fun in the 21st century, I'd like to be put on the first bus back to the 20th, please.
So what are they? A billion electronic clamours for attention? Hard to say. One thing is increasingly sure though. The internet doesn't matter, and what you read there is almost definitely bullshit, unless it was nicked from some more trustworthy offline source.
How bullshit? Well, on the basis of my calculations at the French Embassy today, somewhere around 99.9% bullshit (unless I somehow missed a quarter of a million people in my count.)
How did I do this? Quite simply. I took the 300,000 people who said on Facebook that they would march to the French Embassy to protest against the thieving of our World Cup place and divided that number by the 300 or so who actually turned up.
This little illustration firstly confirms the old gag that internet petitions aren't worth the paper they're written on. But it also reveals the extent to which posturing has replaced action in the repertoire of modern man.
Perhaps we are much more cowed, more frightened, more afraid to rock the boat than previous generations. Perhaps we are more lazy, more indoors, more sedentary too.
But primarily I think we're more inclined to spoof and bluster and posture than previous generations, and few things fulfil that remit better than the 'look at me' amateurism of the internet, especially (yes, I know) blogs and social networking sites.
We already know that such things aren't work. They aren't proper communication either. And if they're what passes for fun in the 21st century, I'd like to be put on the first bus back to the 20th, please.
So what are they? A billion electronic clamours for attention? Hard to say. One thing is increasingly sure though. The internet doesn't matter, and what you read there is almost definitely bullshit, unless it was nicked from some more trustworthy offline source.
How bullshit? Well, on the basis of my calculations at the French Embassy today, somewhere around 99.9% bullshit (unless I somehow missed a quarter of a million people in my count.)
Thursday, November 19, 2009
The French are cheats
Did anyone doubt that the French would cheat their way to the World Cup finals?
Well, consider your naivety shattered tonight.
The inevitable happened - Ireland won the game and were cheated out of the World Cup final by a combination of Thierry Henry's legendary lack of sportsmanship and FIFA and UEFA's desperate desire to rig the finals to ensure that the French (and their large TV audience) attend the World Cup.
Thierry Henry, as anyone who watched the diving petulant scumbag in the premiership will know, is an awful inveterate cheating arsebag who'd throw his granny in front of a train to rob an undeserved goal.
And he did exactly that tonight with his double handball which ought to have warranted a red card for such blatant gamesmanship.
But this vista could never had arisen were it not for the inate corruption within FIFA and UEFA, who rigged the draw AFTER the qualifiers were over in the hope of sparing France and Portugal proper tests in the qualifiers.
Not only did they insist on a seeded draw, they also rigged it to ensure that recent results (bear in mind Ireland went through their campaign unbeaten) were not included.
Then the nightmare occurred and la belle France got drawn against the Irish - nice team, everyone likes the country but only 3 million TV viewers, so fuck them.
Of course, France had to win. And after a dodgy deflection in Croke Park that seemed like an odds-on affair. Then Ireland arrived in Paris and destroyed the French. The referee was clearly desperate by midway through the second half to throw the French a lifeline of any sort.
You just knew that the first opportunity to give a free kick or penalty to the French would be gratefully granted by the ref on behalf of his FIFA and UEFA paymasters, who were so desperate to see a French victory.
In the end, some classic Thierry Henry cheating had to make do. It was the best a moribund and poor French team could offer, having been totally mastered by the Irish.
In short, we have been robbed of a World Cup final place, and the FAI, have they any balls which they do not, would be taking this to the European Court of Sports Arbitration.
The French have no place in South Africa and ought to be ashamed of claiming a role in that tournament, having blatantly cheated to get there.
Remember that. The French are cheats. Fuck them. Stop buying their products. Ignore their poncy perfumes and BS fashion. Shove their smelly cheeses up the place their aroma recalls. Drink Spanish and Italian wines instead (or Aussie or Yank - they're all as good and not as expensive.)
If you're a proud Irish person, don't let the French forget they had to steal our World Cup place by cheating. Take every opportunity in the next eight months to remind each and every French person you meet that they should feel ashamed of their nation.
Despite losing every war they fought for the past eight hundred years or so, the French remain bizarrely impervious to shame.
After tonight, it's time to introduce them to that concept. Because they should feel utterly ashamed.
Well, consider your naivety shattered tonight.
The inevitable happened - Ireland won the game and were cheated out of the World Cup final by a combination of Thierry Henry's legendary lack of sportsmanship and FIFA and UEFA's desperate desire to rig the finals to ensure that the French (and their large TV audience) attend the World Cup.
Thierry Henry, as anyone who watched the diving petulant scumbag in the premiership will know, is an awful inveterate cheating arsebag who'd throw his granny in front of a train to rob an undeserved goal.
And he did exactly that tonight with his double handball which ought to have warranted a red card for such blatant gamesmanship.
But this vista could never had arisen were it not for the inate corruption within FIFA and UEFA, who rigged the draw AFTER the qualifiers were over in the hope of sparing France and Portugal proper tests in the qualifiers.
Not only did they insist on a seeded draw, they also rigged it to ensure that recent results (bear in mind Ireland went through their campaign unbeaten) were not included.
Then the nightmare occurred and la belle France got drawn against the Irish - nice team, everyone likes the country but only 3 million TV viewers, so fuck them.
Of course, France had to win. And after a dodgy deflection in Croke Park that seemed like an odds-on affair. Then Ireland arrived in Paris and destroyed the French. The referee was clearly desperate by midway through the second half to throw the French a lifeline of any sort.
You just knew that the first opportunity to give a free kick or penalty to the French would be gratefully granted by the ref on behalf of his FIFA and UEFA paymasters, who were so desperate to see a French victory.
In the end, some classic Thierry Henry cheating had to make do. It was the best a moribund and poor French team could offer, having been totally mastered by the Irish.
In short, we have been robbed of a World Cup final place, and the FAI, have they any balls which they do not, would be taking this to the European Court of Sports Arbitration.
The French have no place in South Africa and ought to be ashamed of claiming a role in that tournament, having blatantly cheated to get there.
Remember that. The French are cheats. Fuck them. Stop buying their products. Ignore their poncy perfumes and BS fashion. Shove their smelly cheeses up the place their aroma recalls. Drink Spanish and Italian wines instead (or Aussie or Yank - they're all as good and not as expensive.)
If you're a proud Irish person, don't let the French forget they had to steal our World Cup place by cheating. Take every opportunity in the next eight months to remind each and every French person you meet that they should feel ashamed of their nation.
Despite losing every war they fought for the past eight hundred years or so, the French remain bizarrely impervious to shame.
After tonight, it's time to introduce them to that concept. Because they should feel utterly ashamed.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
The Big Bollix
I was in the queue at Ben Gurion airport when the Israeli security forces finally caught up with me. Probably, I should have listened to that little voice telling me to exit via the West Bank and Jordan, but I simply didn't have the cash to hand to do it.
So I risked exiting as I came, and they pulled me aside.
First, I was taken to a side room and strip-searched. Then they went to remove my bag. I protested, as images flashed before my eyes of getting fitted up for heroin smuggling or the like. Eventually, unable to remove my hands from the bag, they agreed to let me dress and search it in front of me.
They took everything out and found nothing to be suspicious about. But that only heightened their suspicions.
They swabbed every single item in my bag and tested the swabs for explosives residue. I felt like telling them that the closest I had come to armaments was their Uzis in my face, and the shots pinged at me in Beit Jala from the nearest Jewish settlement, but stifled my tongue. In the end, reluctantly, they decided to let me board my plane.
As they escorted me past the security desk, past my co-passengers (thus arousing their concerns - none would sit next to me on the flight), I decided to match their spite with my own. Rather than go to the gate meekly, I insisted on going to the loo and shopping in duty free.
I was frogmarched to the front of the queue in both by my security detail.
My last memory of Israel was a tourism poster of Tel Aviv on the airport wall as I finally boarded my plane. 'Come to Tel Aviv - The Big Orange!'
How pathetically tragic, I thought. But not so unlikely in a town so suffused with transplanted New York Jews. Here they were, missing the point about how their apartheid city was utterly unlike the magnetic multiculture of NYC.
How sad to be concocting such a transparently derivative nickname for a town once known by its Palestinian name - Jaffa.
As I drifted off to sleep on the plane, across two other seats vacated by my co-passengers (both Hassidic Jews), I thought that no other city would be so idiotic, so basely dumb as to seek to piggyback on the organically derived NYC nickname.
Surely, I felt, only a town with such obvious negatives for tourists (merely a century of history, little culture, the ground zero of Jewish nationalism in an apartheid state at perpetual war with its neighbours) could feel the need for such transparently borrowed plumage.
And I was right, until this weekend I came across tourism references to Bangkok as 'The Big Mango.'
That's even more pathetic than the Big Orange (which at least has the Jaffa orange heritage to recommend it.)
The Big Mango? Like mangoes don't grow anywhere else, or as if they originated in Thailand? Does a city of immense culture and 13 million people really need to promote itself thus?
I mean, what's their competition? They've got the Western market nailed on for South-East Asia. Burma is a dictatorship, Cambodia suffered a massive genocide in living memory and Laos is as close as you can get to the 13th century outside of Central Africa.
But if this is going to catch on, perhaps we should get in on the ground floor. Galway could be the Big Rainy. Cork, the Big Langer. I'm open to suggestions for Dublin. So are Failte Ireland, most likely.
Please offer your best suggestions ASAP before they start promoting the Big Bollix in America next Spring.
So I risked exiting as I came, and they pulled me aside.
First, I was taken to a side room and strip-searched. Then they went to remove my bag. I protested, as images flashed before my eyes of getting fitted up for heroin smuggling or the like. Eventually, unable to remove my hands from the bag, they agreed to let me dress and search it in front of me.
They took everything out and found nothing to be suspicious about. But that only heightened their suspicions.
They swabbed every single item in my bag and tested the swabs for explosives residue. I felt like telling them that the closest I had come to armaments was their Uzis in my face, and the shots pinged at me in Beit Jala from the nearest Jewish settlement, but stifled my tongue. In the end, reluctantly, they decided to let me board my plane.
As they escorted me past the security desk, past my co-passengers (thus arousing their concerns - none would sit next to me on the flight), I decided to match their spite with my own. Rather than go to the gate meekly, I insisted on going to the loo and shopping in duty free.
I was frogmarched to the front of the queue in both by my security detail.
My last memory of Israel was a tourism poster of Tel Aviv on the airport wall as I finally boarded my plane. 'Come to Tel Aviv - The Big Orange!'
How pathetically tragic, I thought. But not so unlikely in a town so suffused with transplanted New York Jews. Here they were, missing the point about how their apartheid city was utterly unlike the magnetic multiculture of NYC.
How sad to be concocting such a transparently derivative nickname for a town once known by its Palestinian name - Jaffa.
As I drifted off to sleep on the plane, across two other seats vacated by my co-passengers (both Hassidic Jews), I thought that no other city would be so idiotic, so basely dumb as to seek to piggyback on the organically derived NYC nickname.
Surely, I felt, only a town with such obvious negatives for tourists (merely a century of history, little culture, the ground zero of Jewish nationalism in an apartheid state at perpetual war with its neighbours) could feel the need for such transparently borrowed plumage.
And I was right, until this weekend I came across tourism references to Bangkok as 'The Big Mango.'
That's even more pathetic than the Big Orange (which at least has the Jaffa orange heritage to recommend it.)
The Big Mango? Like mangoes don't grow anywhere else, or as if they originated in Thailand? Does a city of immense culture and 13 million people really need to promote itself thus?
I mean, what's their competition? They've got the Western market nailed on for South-East Asia. Burma is a dictatorship, Cambodia suffered a massive genocide in living memory and Laos is as close as you can get to the 13th century outside of Central Africa.
But if this is going to catch on, perhaps we should get in on the ground floor. Galway could be the Big Rainy. Cork, the Big Langer. I'm open to suggestions for Dublin. So are Failte Ireland, most likely.
Please offer your best suggestions ASAP before they start promoting the Big Bollix in America next Spring.
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Stephen Gately RIP, but let's not pretend he was Gandhi
Stephen Gately was a moderately talented singer and disco dancer.
He was not Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Jesus Christ.
The cult of celebrity that led to firstly the virtually state funeral he had yester with thousands outside the church and secondly the wall-to-wall coverage of his death is to me sadly symptomatic of a society in thrall to fame.
Let's not forget, another man was buried yesterday - a man who was a talented athlete, who volunteered at his local scout troop, who was immensely talented at his job, training our air corps pilots and who tragically died last Monday.
Yet on RTE's 1pm news, we got 15 minutes of the Gately funeral and 15 seconds of Derek Furniss's funeral. Something's wrong with our priorities.
Gately died of a pulmonary oedema resulting from heart failure that appears to be genetically related. The lad was fit and healthy and drank little and smoked little. Some of the papers are carrying the toxicology reports, and they reveal only cannabis and some prescription medications in his system, none of which could possibly have caused his death.
He was involved in a relationship with his partner which is the homosexual equivalent of marriage - a civil union. However, despite this, he and his partner went to a gay nightclub on holiday and picked up a Bulgarian student, brought him home and took turns having sex with him.
The Daily Mail's Jan Moir was hauled over the coals for homophobia when she suggested that there was something 'unnatural' about Gately's death. There was nothing unnatural about his death except the tragically young age at which he died.
But on one point she was correct - the sort of sexual scenario Gately was engaged in at the time of his death - effectively sharing a nightclub pick up with his partner - does not advance the cause of gay marriage one iota.
Finally, Gerald Kean is representing the Gately family here. No one else. Hence there have been arguments with Louis Walsh among others over how information emerged and other matters.
Keane is speaking for the family when he contradicts the version of events presented by the Bulgarian. It is in their interests to see the public reputation of their deceased relative preserved to the utmost.
On the other hand, the Bulgarian may stand to make money by selling a sordid tale to the tabloids.
The truth may be discerned however by the fact that Gately's partner has not offered a version of events which contradicts the Bulgarian's version, and that the Spanish police are also happy that the Bulgarian's testimony is correct.
To conclude: it's sad he died so young, but he didn't die of sex, drugs or suicide, and he wasn't Gandhi, so let's all move on and not make this into our Princess Diana national cringefest, please.
He was not Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or Jesus Christ.
The cult of celebrity that led to firstly the virtually state funeral he had yester with thousands outside the church and secondly the wall-to-wall coverage of his death is to me sadly symptomatic of a society in thrall to fame.
Let's not forget, another man was buried yesterday - a man who was a talented athlete, who volunteered at his local scout troop, who was immensely talented at his job, training our air corps pilots and who tragically died last Monday.
Yet on RTE's 1pm news, we got 15 minutes of the Gately funeral and 15 seconds of Derek Furniss's funeral. Something's wrong with our priorities.
Gately died of a pulmonary oedema resulting from heart failure that appears to be genetically related. The lad was fit and healthy and drank little and smoked little. Some of the papers are carrying the toxicology reports, and they reveal only cannabis and some prescription medications in his system, none of which could possibly have caused his death.
He was involved in a relationship with his partner which is the homosexual equivalent of marriage - a civil union. However, despite this, he and his partner went to a gay nightclub on holiday and picked up a Bulgarian student, brought him home and took turns having sex with him.
The Daily Mail's Jan Moir was hauled over the coals for homophobia when she suggested that there was something 'unnatural' about Gately's death. There was nothing unnatural about his death except the tragically young age at which he died.
But on one point she was correct - the sort of sexual scenario Gately was engaged in at the time of his death - effectively sharing a nightclub pick up with his partner - does not advance the cause of gay marriage one iota.
Finally, Gerald Kean is representing the Gately family here. No one else. Hence there have been arguments with Louis Walsh among others over how information emerged and other matters.
Keane is speaking for the family when he contradicts the version of events presented by the Bulgarian. It is in their interests to see the public reputation of their deceased relative preserved to the utmost.
On the other hand, the Bulgarian may stand to make money by selling a sordid tale to the tabloids.
The truth may be discerned however by the fact that Gately's partner has not offered a version of events which contradicts the Bulgarian's version, and that the Spanish police are also happy that the Bulgarian's testimony is correct.
To conclude: it's sad he died so young, but he didn't die of sex, drugs or suicide, and he wasn't Gandhi, so let's all move on and not make this into our Princess Diana national cringefest, please.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Cliftonville FC 3 Glasgow Celtic 0
No, that's not a typo. It really happened.
North Belfast part-timers Cliftonville wallopped mighty Glasgow Celtic 3-0 last night and it could actually have been easily 6.
Few things on Earth are likely to unite the loyalist denizens of Ibrox and the Irish republicans of Ardoyne. But this astonishing victory by Ireland's oldest club over the famous Glasgow Celtic just might.
Fair enough, it wasn't quite Celtic's first XI. But there were numerous players on display for the Scots whose individual alleged values far exceeds that of Cliftonville's entire team, and Solitude stadium too.
My suggestion? Celtic should ditch the lot of them, because they were terrible, and buy Cliftonville's entire squad instead.
Incidentally, Cliftonville made about six substitutions, including their keeper, and Celtic still couldn't score.
It's fair to say that by the end of the game, when Cliftonville were utterly embarrassing their guests by playing Barcelona-style one-touch possession passing around them, it was actually Cliftonville's reserves outplaying Celtic's second string.
It's a far cry from the last time Celtic came to Solitude, when the friendly was interrupted by the RUC who decided for no good reason to shoot plastic bullets into the crowd in an appalling sectarian attack by the security forces, and thankfully so.
How times have changed in the intervening quarter century. Solitude has a gleaming new stand, the team hammered their prestigious guests and no one was hospitalised by police brutality.
For those who missed out on a night when Ireland's oldest club (don't listen to the LIES of Bohemians) made yet more history, here's some highlights:
And some more!
North Belfast part-timers Cliftonville wallopped mighty Glasgow Celtic 3-0 last night and it could actually have been easily 6.
Few things on Earth are likely to unite the loyalist denizens of Ibrox and the Irish republicans of Ardoyne. But this astonishing victory by Ireland's oldest club over the famous Glasgow Celtic just might.
Fair enough, it wasn't quite Celtic's first XI. But there were numerous players on display for the Scots whose individual alleged values far exceeds that of Cliftonville's entire team, and Solitude stadium too.
My suggestion? Celtic should ditch the lot of them, because they were terrible, and buy Cliftonville's entire squad instead.
Incidentally, Cliftonville made about six substitutions, including their keeper, and Celtic still couldn't score.
It's fair to say that by the end of the game, when Cliftonville were utterly embarrassing their guests by playing Barcelona-style one-touch possession passing around them, it was actually Cliftonville's reserves outplaying Celtic's second string.
It's a far cry from the last time Celtic came to Solitude, when the friendly was interrupted by the RUC who decided for no good reason to shoot plastic bullets into the crowd in an appalling sectarian attack by the security forces, and thankfully so.
How times have changed in the intervening quarter century. Solitude has a gleaming new stand, the team hammered their prestigious guests and no one was hospitalised by police brutality.
For those who missed out on a night when Ireland's oldest club (don't listen to the LIES of Bohemians) made yet more history, here's some highlights:
And some more!
Monday, October 12, 2009
The tricky task of finding a Ceann Comhairle
The Irish parliament needs a speaker, after the last one was caught swanning around the planet like Marie-Antoinette at the taxpayers' expense.
This is a problem for Fianna Fail, because while the ideal would be for a member of an opposition party to take the chair (thus boosting the government's slender majority), it's unlikely that anyone from Labour or Sinn Fein can be bought off, and Fine Gael will have those who might be tempted on a tight leash in the hope of forcing an election or change of government.
Hence we're seeing some strange names popping up. The latest is Trevor 'I won't lead the Greens into Government with Fianna Fail' Sargent. On the one hand, that would ensure at least one Green in the next Dail, as literally all of their seats are now under real threat.
From a Fianna Fail perspective, it makes holding what they have in Dublin North very difficult. For them to win two seats, as they currently have, next time out would be a huge ask in the current climate.
But given the utter anonymity of their two deputies there, and the vast backlash against Fianna Fail, putting Sargent into the chair would leave them trying to defend two seats out of three when they could well be pushed to get one.
This is why I suspect Biffo will reverse one of the most egregious casualties of his Culchie Coup and elevate Tom Kitt, former Fianna Fail chief whip, to the post.
Kitt was always a good operator, knows the procedural elements of parliament backwards (unlike John O'Donoghue) and is civil and respected by the other parties (again unlike John O'Donoghue.)
But more importantly, he's threatened to step down from his seat in Dublin South, the constituency where former minister Seamus Brennan died and Fianna Fail were unable to defend the seat in a by-election that took a full year to be held.
Currently, that would leave Fianna Fail in the desperate position of having no one except Shay Brennan (Seamus' son) who was wallopped into a distant third place when he was parachuted into the aforementioned by-election, to run in the hope of regaining two seats.
But if Kitt retained his seat as Ceann Comhairle, a totally different picture emerges. Suddenly Fine Gael are in the position of trying to defend three seats in a four seater - impossible, frankly. And Fianna Fail retain the reins of the parliamentary chair for some time to come.
Fianna Fail are already in major damage limitation mode. They can smell the election coming. They saw at the weekend how close the rump Greens are to walking out of government. They've had to issue a stern warning just to whip the Greens into line on the forthcoming budget. In short, they know the gig is soon to be up.
So already, they're plotting for a life after government. A term in opposition, with a favourable Ceann Comhairle, and the opportunity to take at least one Fine Gael scalp during the forthcoming meltdown, would seem to be their best option.
If Kitt's not dead set on retirement (and I suspect he only promised to quit because of how he was ousted from cabinet by Cowen when he had reason to expect promotion), then I imagine he will be placed in the post.
Tuesday, October 06, 2009
Let's ditch England
As I wandered around the sunny squares of Glasgow today, I couldn't help but recall that once upon a time Belfast sort of looked like this, before it all got blown up.
As I wandered the redbrick Victorian squares and terraces, I remembered that Belfast has much in common with this town, just as Dublin and Edinburgh architecturally are so reminiscent of each other.
Outside the Buchanan galleries, laden with bottles of whisky, I overheard a lost Japanese tourist ask two smoking old dears how to get to the Holiday Inn.
'Sure we wouldn't know,' they told him apologetically. 'We're not from this part of the world at all.'
After I pointed the Japanese lad in the right direction, I corrected the two old ladies.
'You're from Ards or Bangor, I'm guessing' I said to their astonishment. 'To my mind, that's definitely this part of the world.'
Sure enough, they were indeed from North Down. Their accents - effectively lowland Scots with an Irish lilt - gave that away. It's one I'm fairly familiar with.
And that got me thinking about the sphere of influence that goes back all the way through the medieval kingdom of Dalriada to the Red Branch cycle of mythology and Cuchullain's time with Scatha the Witch on Skye.
The same sphere of influence that the descendants of the Scottish planters of the Hamilton-Montgomery plantation of 1609 now wish to parlay into a quasi-nationhood - the so-called Ulster-Scots.
But the links go further and deeper than the ongoing and divisive effects of that particular plantation. The Scotii were in origin Irish themselves.
A deep shared culture, encompassing forms of the Gaelic languages, whisk(e)y distillation, croft farming, and continual cross-pollenisation of people and culture has created a bond between the two nations that is perennially sublimated by the fact that both remain culturally and politically dominated by England.
Just as the riches of Ireland - its great forests, its manpower, its food - were denuded for English benefit, so have the Scots suffered greatly through that unbalanced power relationship with their southern neighbour.
The highland clearances are no less a holocaust than the repeated attempts at Irish genocide concocted in London in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. And the daylight robbery of their massive North Sea oil reserves parallels the lengthy theft of Irish resources for English gain during the past umpteen centuries.
It's self-evident to all but the Tory rump of the UUP that partitioning Ireland hasn't worked and never will. Even the self-denying Ulster nationalists within the DUP are coming to a slow realisation that their economic future and well-being is utterly and inextricably tied up with that of the rest of the island.
The question remains how to square the circle - how to encompass the stern and implacable opposition to the perceived 'Rome rule' of a unified Ireland that unionists espouse with the undeniable reality of their Irishness?
Perhaps the answer is a union of a different sort. Scots and Irish, Ulsterman and Highlander, Aberdonian and Corkonian can all agree on one simple fact - England never did you a single favour, but used you to their own benefit.
Maybe the answer is to ditch the English. Would the unionists accept a different type of union - one with our historical brother Scotland rather than the isle of Britain as a whole?
Those who espouse Irish unification always point to the fact that unionists would be kingmakers in Dail Eireann - driving coalitions from the minority position as the PDs did for the past decade.
But this is not sufficient for our unionist brethren.
So why not ditch the English?
We could have a union of over 11 million people, with stunning natural resources, and benefit from the boosted economy of scales that would provide. A true Celtic homeland, one made up of Protestant, Catholic and dissenter in even enough numbers to threaten no one.
The poor lost hybrid souls of Ulster would have both their parents back together, married for the first time without a third abusive and dominant partner involved in the relationship.
The Scots of Irish descent could finally feel truly at home in their homeland, no longer sickened by football thugs telling them to 'go home, the famine's over.'
The Scots do not benefit from their association with England under the British banner. They never did. Many, likely a majority, would support independence from London and the English yoke.
The English will always be with us. We are both, Scotland and Ireland, firmly within London's sphere of influence. But England's greatest fear has always been a coherent and strong rival culture located on its Celtic fringe.
Why not have a new unionism - a marriage of Scotland and Ireland - and find out just what it was that has been frightening England down through the many centuries?
We asked the Japanese tourist what he thought.
'If you say you are from Ireland, then you are Irish,' he answered slowly. 'But you sound like the Scots do to me. You look like them too.'
Even outsiders see the family resemblance, it seems.
As I wandered the redbrick Victorian squares and terraces, I remembered that Belfast has much in common with this town, just as Dublin and Edinburgh architecturally are so reminiscent of each other.
Outside the Buchanan galleries, laden with bottles of whisky, I overheard a lost Japanese tourist ask two smoking old dears how to get to the Holiday Inn.
'Sure we wouldn't know,' they told him apologetically. 'We're not from this part of the world at all.'
After I pointed the Japanese lad in the right direction, I corrected the two old ladies.
'You're from Ards or Bangor, I'm guessing' I said to their astonishment. 'To my mind, that's definitely this part of the world.'
Sure enough, they were indeed from North Down. Their accents - effectively lowland Scots with an Irish lilt - gave that away. It's one I'm fairly familiar with.
And that got me thinking about the sphere of influence that goes back all the way through the medieval kingdom of Dalriada to the Red Branch cycle of mythology and Cuchullain's time with Scatha the Witch on Skye.
The same sphere of influence that the descendants of the Scottish planters of the Hamilton-Montgomery plantation of 1609 now wish to parlay into a quasi-nationhood - the so-called Ulster-Scots.
But the links go further and deeper than the ongoing and divisive effects of that particular plantation. The Scotii were in origin Irish themselves.
A deep shared culture, encompassing forms of the Gaelic languages, whisk(e)y distillation, croft farming, and continual cross-pollenisation of people and culture has created a bond between the two nations that is perennially sublimated by the fact that both remain culturally and politically dominated by England.
Just as the riches of Ireland - its great forests, its manpower, its food - were denuded for English benefit, so have the Scots suffered greatly through that unbalanced power relationship with their southern neighbour.
The highland clearances are no less a holocaust than the repeated attempts at Irish genocide concocted in London in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. And the daylight robbery of their massive North Sea oil reserves parallels the lengthy theft of Irish resources for English gain during the past umpteen centuries.
It's self-evident to all but the Tory rump of the UUP that partitioning Ireland hasn't worked and never will. Even the self-denying Ulster nationalists within the DUP are coming to a slow realisation that their economic future and well-being is utterly and inextricably tied up with that of the rest of the island.
The question remains how to square the circle - how to encompass the stern and implacable opposition to the perceived 'Rome rule' of a unified Ireland that unionists espouse with the undeniable reality of their Irishness?
Perhaps the answer is a union of a different sort. Scots and Irish, Ulsterman and Highlander, Aberdonian and Corkonian can all agree on one simple fact - England never did you a single favour, but used you to their own benefit.
Maybe the answer is to ditch the English. Would the unionists accept a different type of union - one with our historical brother Scotland rather than the isle of Britain as a whole?
Those who espouse Irish unification always point to the fact that unionists would be kingmakers in Dail Eireann - driving coalitions from the minority position as the PDs did for the past decade.
But this is not sufficient for our unionist brethren.
So why not ditch the English?
We could have a union of over 11 million people, with stunning natural resources, and benefit from the boosted economy of scales that would provide. A true Celtic homeland, one made up of Protestant, Catholic and dissenter in even enough numbers to threaten no one.
The poor lost hybrid souls of Ulster would have both their parents back together, married for the first time without a third abusive and dominant partner involved in the relationship.
The Scots of Irish descent could finally feel truly at home in their homeland, no longer sickened by football thugs telling them to 'go home, the famine's over.'
The Scots do not benefit from their association with England under the British banner. They never did. Many, likely a majority, would support independence from London and the English yoke.
The English will always be with us. We are both, Scotland and Ireland, firmly within London's sphere of influence. But England's greatest fear has always been a coherent and strong rival culture located on its Celtic fringe.
Why not have a new unionism - a marriage of Scotland and Ireland - and find out just what it was that has been frightening England down through the many centuries?
We asked the Japanese tourist what he thought.
'If you say you are from Ireland, then you are Irish,' he answered slowly. 'But you sound like the Scots do to me. You look like them too.'
Even outsiders see the family resemblance, it seems.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
20% swing in Lisbon vote
So now we have a figure on what proportion of the Irish electorate are easily scaremongered. I suppose the 17 million euro we spent on Lisbon II was worth it to at least find that out.
I hope everyone who made the mistake of voting 'yes to jobs' and 'yes to recovery' noted that not one of the grinning politicians mentioned jobs or recovery in their self-aggrandising speeches today.
That's because Lisbon won't be leading to any jobs or recovery, obviously. The Irish Times business section (about the only bit of the paper worth reading) published a very astute article recently detailing seven reasons why we'll still be bolloxed when the rest of the world is booming again.
The really scarey bit? They didn't even refer to the NAMA black hole that Fianna Fail are cooking up for you and your children to pay for.
Declan Ganley promised to return to the RDS next October with some 'Yes for Jobs' posters and see if the jobs had materialised. He may or may not turn up next October, but you can be sure the jobs definitely won't have.
Another potential plus of this referendum is the Donegal vote. That surely has to undermine Sweary Mary Coughlan. Biffo's government is already on life support, and will face a torrid two days explaining itself over Rody Molloy's golden handshake in the Dail next week.
And then on Saturday, the hobbits will gather to decide what magic beans they'd like to get from Fianna Fail in order to stay in government. And the NAMA banker bailout is yet to come.
So there are a number of potential banana skins there for Biffo. The last thing he needs right now is someone lobbing more of them onto the path in front of him.
He should heed the words of the 'most cunning, most devious of them all', Bertie Ahern, who pinpointed Sweary Mary as a wrong un in his autobiography. He made a mistake in appointing her as Tanaiste, but clearly couldn't resist the culchie coup.
Well, here's his chance to ditch some of the dead weight. Even the meeja think it's time she went. She failed to carry her own county in the referendum. That's a reason the grass roots gombeens will accept for dumping her. It diverts attention from the mistake he made in appointing her in the first place.
On a personal note, I'm inclined to agree with Pearse Doherty (probably a first) in paying tribute to the people of Donegal who were not bullied into doing what the Euro elite wanted.
The rest of the country may have voted to be serfs, but they did not. Fair play, Donegal. Stand tall tonight.
I hope everyone who made the mistake of voting 'yes to jobs' and 'yes to recovery' noted that not one of the grinning politicians mentioned jobs or recovery in their self-aggrandising speeches today.
That's because Lisbon won't be leading to any jobs or recovery, obviously. The Irish Times business section (about the only bit of the paper worth reading) published a very astute article recently detailing seven reasons why we'll still be bolloxed when the rest of the world is booming again.
The really scarey bit? They didn't even refer to the NAMA black hole that Fianna Fail are cooking up for you and your children to pay for.
Declan Ganley promised to return to the RDS next October with some 'Yes for Jobs' posters and see if the jobs had materialised. He may or may not turn up next October, but you can be sure the jobs definitely won't have.
Another potential plus of this referendum is the Donegal vote. That surely has to undermine Sweary Mary Coughlan. Biffo's government is already on life support, and will face a torrid two days explaining itself over Rody Molloy's golden handshake in the Dail next week.
And then on Saturday, the hobbits will gather to decide what magic beans they'd like to get from Fianna Fail in order to stay in government. And the NAMA banker bailout is yet to come.
So there are a number of potential banana skins there for Biffo. The last thing he needs right now is someone lobbing more of them onto the path in front of him.
He should heed the words of the 'most cunning, most devious of them all', Bertie Ahern, who pinpointed Sweary Mary as a wrong un in his autobiography. He made a mistake in appointing her as Tanaiste, but clearly couldn't resist the culchie coup.
Well, here's his chance to ditch some of the dead weight. Even the meeja think it's time she went. She failed to carry her own county in the referendum. That's a reason the grass roots gombeens will accept for dumping her. It diverts attention from the mistake he made in appointing her in the first place.
On a personal note, I'm inclined to agree with Pearse Doherty (probably a first) in paying tribute to the people of Donegal who were not bullied into doing what the Euro elite wanted.
The rest of the country may have voted to be serfs, but they did not. Fair play, Donegal. Stand tall tonight.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
The most dishonest political campaign ever
That's what Lisbon II has been.
It's as if every single campaigner on both sides of the debate have been possessed by demons making them lie. In the case of the professional politicians, that's business as usual. In the case of Mick 'low fares plus huge charges' O'Leary, it's to be expected.
But when Intel and fundamentalist Christians start in on the spoofing act, one really does begin to despair.
The blatant attempts by the supposedly impartial EU to buy the election have been as despicable as the attempts by foreign Eurosceptics like Bonde or the UKIP to swing the decision to what suits them.
No one comes out of this with any credit. Not the liars who have attempted to link a yes vote with economic recovery. Not the liars who said a yes vote would lead to a shredding of the minimum wage.
The bottom line remains: you're voting on the treaty itself and nothing else. Not on the 'guarantees' which don't actually exist. Not on the minimum wage, or abortion, or a federal Europe, or economic recovery, or the current government, or NAMA, or anything else. Just the treaty.
My advice? Read the treaty. Not the summaries offered by vested interests, but the treaty itself.
I did. It's almost impenetrable. It took me about four days to finish it. At the end I was extremely concerned at how much of the treaty eroded our say over our own country and how many things were open to wide interpretation.
They say that if you don't understand a contract, you shouldn't sign it. Equally, if you don't know what to make of an issue, you should probably vote against it.
For those reasons, and not for any of the dishonest, disingenuous reasons offered by both the Yes and the No campaigns, I will be voting No on Friday.
I suggest that unless you've read, understood and approve of the treaty, you should do likewise.
Friday, September 18, 2009
Plan B
Biffo says there is no other option than NAMA. He says there is no Plan B.
Apart from the fact that Fine Gael have proposed a good bank/bad bank option and Labour have proposed temporary nationalisation of the banks, Biffo is still wrong.
While the Opposition proposals are improvements on the blatant bailout of Biffo's plan, there is a third option. It's called capitalism. Not crony capitalism like Fianna Fail understand. Proper capitalism.
Allow me to summarise: LET. THE. BANKRUPT. BASTARDS. GO. TO. THE. WALL.
But Biffo says we need to bail out these banks so that they can get lending to the rest of us and improve the economy so that we can stop borrowing a billion every fortnight and we won't have to call in the IMF.
Biffo couldn't be thicker if he was a bottle of pigshit.
Here's how to save the country's finances, Biffo. Here's Plan B:
But it is such a clear and vast improvement on the Government's plan A - to give tens of billions to corrupt bankers and their bankrupt specuvestor clientele - that you'd have to question who the Government actually represent.
Because it's definitely not the Irish taxpayer.
Apart from the fact that Fine Gael have proposed a good bank/bad bank option and Labour have proposed temporary nationalisation of the banks, Biffo is still wrong.
While the Opposition proposals are improvements on the blatant bailout of Biffo's plan, there is a third option. It's called capitalism. Not crony capitalism like Fianna Fail understand. Proper capitalism.
Allow me to summarise: LET. THE. BANKRUPT. BASTARDS. GO. TO. THE. WALL.
But Biffo says we need to bail out these banks so that they can get lending to the rest of us and improve the economy so that we can stop borrowing a billion every fortnight and we won't have to call in the IMF.
Biffo couldn't be thicker if he was a bottle of pigshit.
Here's how to save the country's finances, Biffo. Here's Plan B:
- Let the zombie banks and the developers go to the wall. 77 billion saved right there. Then start prosecuting the bankers. Take them through the courts, using CAB if necessary. Probably a couple of billion minimum right there.
- After that, there's halving the salaries of TDs, closing the Seanad and making all representatives provide receipts for expenses, and capping the total at 10K per person per annum. Hundreds of millions saved.
- Make ministers drive their own cars and fly with their new bessie mate Mick O'Leary, and sell the Mercs and jets.
- Increase corporation tax by 2%. Not enough to drive FDI away, but enough to bring in an absolute ton of revenue.
- Cut the dole to no more than 25% higher than Britain's. That'll stop the vast amount of welfare tourism into Ireland, and will incentivise the unemployed to seek other options. Ideally, I'd timecap it to six months too, but in current circumstances it's unreasonable to expect people to find work in that period. But I'd timecap it as soon as we get unemployment back under 300,000. Billions saved there. Literally billions.
- Scrap the asylum system entirely, including the appeal system, and implement a pro-active approach involving identifying a capped number of those worthy of asylum and patriating them here ourselves. Deport everyone who has lost their case without appeal. Stop anymore coming in at the airport. Insist on Romanians and Bulgarians demonstrating an ability to support themselves here for three months or refuse them entry. Hundreds of millions annually saved on legal fees alone. Hundreds of millions more saved on processing bogus claims from the likes of Nigerians, over 95% of whom were found NOT to have a case on first application. And probably at least a billion saved in free legal aid, medical care, welfare benefits and so on.
- Introduce a third rate of tax on earnings over 100K per year of 60%. Introduce the American system of demanding tax returns from ex-pats on pain of loss of citizenship.
- Cap public sector wages at 150K per annum per person across the board from Brendan Drumm down. Introduce legislation to end their generous pension entitlements.
- Cancel all property-related tax incentives immediately, and the same for stud farms and all the other rich men's tax shelters.
- Legalise cannabis, licence it for sale and tax the hole out of it. Hundreds of millions in revenue right there.
- Introduce a property tax based on square footage of property owned, on an exponential scale, with exemptions for primary family homes under 100 sq m. Own half of Wicklow? Time to pay up, sell up, or open up your stately home to the nation.
- Prosecute Ahern. Not a lot of cash in this, but it is essential to demonstrate to the world that we're drawing a line under our corrupt and shady past.
But it is such a clear and vast improvement on the Government's plan A - to give tens of billions to corrupt bankers and their bankrupt specuvestor clientele - that you'd have to question who the Government actually represent.
Because it's definitely not the Irish taxpayer.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
The NAMA Republic
At a time with approaching half a million on the dole, 25% of mortgage holders in negative equity, the government borrowing nearly a billion every two weeks to stay afloat, and all public sector and PAYE workers facing the third round of cuts in their wages, what does this corrupt and shameless government do?
They bail out their developer pals to the tune of tens of billions we don't have.
Congratulations. If you are an Irish taxpayer, you have just been heisted to the tune of around 35,000 euro. And that will go to bail out Liam Carroll, Sean Dunne and their odious ilk, who gambled and lost on a punt that the property prices they inflated would keep ballooning forever.
They've done this by propping up the corrupt bankers who gave them the preposterous sums in the first place. No room for capitalism here - no chance of watching these banks and their shoddy speculator customers go to the wall.
No, when it's the elites involved, it's time to bail them out with YOUR money.
Don't buy for a minute the nonsense that they need to keep these banks afloat. They do not. There are other, cleaner, banks in this country already. I bank with one, and I urge you to do likewise.
See this for what it is - corporate welfare for the guys in Fianna Fail's Galway tent. The guys who charged you half a million for a thrown together house in the middle of nowhere two years ago. The guys who handed over brown envelopes to the likes of Liam Lawler to get the fields they were built on rezoned.
Do you want to give 35 grand to those people? Do you want to keep on supporting the likes of Rody Molloy's pension, or John O'Donoghue's half a grand taxi jaunts across Heathrow airport, or the likes of Sean Fitzpatrick's holiday home in Marbella?
Do you?
If you do, sit on your hands and say nothing. Do nothing. They'll rob your money with impugnity and laugh at your foolishness.
But if you object to this, the greatest theft in Irish history since the Brits invaded and took the entire island, then you need to take action now.
Sorry about that. You will need to turn off 'Fair City' and actually DO SOMETHING.
Go on the NO TO NAMA march this Saturday if you can in Dublin. Better still, get in your TD's face. You know the fellow - jowly red face from too many free lunches at your expense. Go to his clinic, call his office, and roar down the phone at the prick for voting in favour of your being robbed.
Remember what they want from you. Your compliance. Your fear. Your resignation. Fuck that. Demand their resignation instead.
You could start by voting down the anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty. They badly need you to pass that. It's a great start. Then when they're hurting, demand a general election. And keep demanding until the scum are out of government. On the hustings, ask for written assurances from every candidate that they will back legislation to reverse NAMA, no matter what.
Don't take mealy-mouthed BS like 'We had to', 'systemic importance', 'going forward', or any of that oul blather. Get an assurance in writing that they will reverse NAMA or else resign yourself to writing them a big fat cheque for 35 grand.
Or watch this and learn what they're doing to you and your country:
They bail out their developer pals to the tune of tens of billions we don't have.
Congratulations. If you are an Irish taxpayer, you have just been heisted to the tune of around 35,000 euro. And that will go to bail out Liam Carroll, Sean Dunne and their odious ilk, who gambled and lost on a punt that the property prices they inflated would keep ballooning forever.
They've done this by propping up the corrupt bankers who gave them the preposterous sums in the first place. No room for capitalism here - no chance of watching these banks and their shoddy speculator customers go to the wall.
No, when it's the elites involved, it's time to bail them out with YOUR money.
Don't buy for a minute the nonsense that they need to keep these banks afloat. They do not. There are other, cleaner, banks in this country already. I bank with one, and I urge you to do likewise.
See this for what it is - corporate welfare for the guys in Fianna Fail's Galway tent. The guys who charged you half a million for a thrown together house in the middle of nowhere two years ago. The guys who handed over brown envelopes to the likes of Liam Lawler to get the fields they were built on rezoned.
Do you want to give 35 grand to those people? Do you want to keep on supporting the likes of Rody Molloy's pension, or John O'Donoghue's half a grand taxi jaunts across Heathrow airport, or the likes of Sean Fitzpatrick's holiday home in Marbella?
Do you?
If you do, sit on your hands and say nothing. Do nothing. They'll rob your money with impugnity and laugh at your foolishness.
But if you object to this, the greatest theft in Irish history since the Brits invaded and took the entire island, then you need to take action now.
Sorry about that. You will need to turn off 'Fair City' and actually DO SOMETHING.
Go on the NO TO NAMA march this Saturday if you can in Dublin. Better still, get in your TD's face. You know the fellow - jowly red face from too many free lunches at your expense. Go to his clinic, call his office, and roar down the phone at the prick for voting in favour of your being robbed.
Remember what they want from you. Your compliance. Your fear. Your resignation. Fuck that. Demand their resignation instead.
You could start by voting down the anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty. They badly need you to pass that. It's a great start. Then when they're hurting, demand a general election. And keep demanding until the scum are out of government. On the hustings, ask for written assurances from every candidate that they will back legislation to reverse NAMA, no matter what.
Don't take mealy-mouthed BS like 'We had to', 'systemic importance', 'going forward', or any of that oul blather. Get an assurance in writing that they will reverse NAMA or else resign yourself to writing them a big fat cheque for 35 grand.
Or watch this and learn what they're doing to you and your country:
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
You Can't Trust Them
Coir are an annoying shower of kerazzee godbotherers.
But they're right about the Lisbon Treaty being a shoddy deal for us and for the peoples of Europe.
But the best reason for voting against Lisbon again (apart from the fact that they arrogantly dismissed the sovereign voice of the Irish people last time) has got to be this: you can't trust the people who want you to sign up to it.
But they're right about the Lisbon Treaty being a shoddy deal for us and for the peoples of Europe.
But the best reason for voting against Lisbon again (apart from the fact that they arrogantly dismissed the sovereign voice of the Irish people last time) has got to be this: you can't trust the people who want you to sign up to it.
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Boycott fashion
Amid the acres of newsprint of what's hot to wear comes at last a fashion story that people should actually read.
The advertising posing as journalism which makes up most fashion articles leaves me, as a man, cold. My mammy doesn't get to tell me what to wear, and I don't let anyone else do so either.
I've got a basic sense of appropriate dress (no pyjamas in public, no footie shirts at posh dinners, no tuxedos down the pub) and that does for me.
But it is a multi-billion euro industry, and the evil embodied within it goes a lot further than scamming women out of cash for overpriced clothing made in Chinese sweatshops.
We already knew about the models forced to starve themselves in order to get work, and the feminists (who are ever concerned for White Western Woman) have of course declared fat to be a feminist issue.
But fewer people are perhaps aware that the catwalk industry, which feeds on stick-thin post-pubescent girls, luring them in with the promise of travel and fame, is driven by sexual abuse and rape.
The casting couch is hardly new, but the scale of abuse suffered by models and wannabes is truly shocking.
Hadley Freeman in the Guardian rightly points out the hypocrisy of a media and society which witters endlessly for a week about a model's teeny roll of fat and entirely ignores the conviction of a leading fashion photographer on dozens of charges of sexually assaulting underage models.
Leading psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler once identified the core problem at the heart of the fashion industry: it is dominated, he says, by gay men who subconsciously hate women and therefore set impossible standards for women to aspire to that coincidentally also mimic the bodyshape of young boys.
What's really scary is that he was writing in the FIFTIES. How much more now is fashion dominated by the vision of gay men?
Into this toxic industry, add addictive stimulants and appetite suppressants like cocaine to keep the little girls thin and boyish. Fly them around the world half-starved, and treat them peripatetically like cattle or heroes, depending on circumstances.
Is it any surprise then that the industry attracts vile sexual predators like Anand Jon Alexander? Access to young, confused, underfed, drugged girls and women, whose egos are veering like that of a bi-polar sufferer from zero to hero at all times - that's manna from Heaven for a career rapist like Anand Jon.
Where the feminists are right is in identifying the fashion industry as toxic to women.
It's toxic because of the vision imposed on women by gay men, and because of the use that evil hetero perverts like Anand Jon make of the fashion industry to sexually abuse young girls.
Women need to ditch their Vogues and their Marie-Claires. They're nothing more than hate literature aimed at their gender by a tiny cohort of female-hating men, and they facilitate the rape and abuse of vulnerable young girls.
It's time to boycott fashion.
The advertising posing as journalism which makes up most fashion articles leaves me, as a man, cold. My mammy doesn't get to tell me what to wear, and I don't let anyone else do so either.
I've got a basic sense of appropriate dress (no pyjamas in public, no footie shirts at posh dinners, no tuxedos down the pub) and that does for me.
But it is a multi-billion euro industry, and the evil embodied within it goes a lot further than scamming women out of cash for overpriced clothing made in Chinese sweatshops.
We already knew about the models forced to starve themselves in order to get work, and the feminists (who are ever concerned for White Western Woman) have of course declared fat to be a feminist issue.
But fewer people are perhaps aware that the catwalk industry, which feeds on stick-thin post-pubescent girls, luring them in with the promise of travel and fame, is driven by sexual abuse and rape.
The casting couch is hardly new, but the scale of abuse suffered by models and wannabes is truly shocking.
Hadley Freeman in the Guardian rightly points out the hypocrisy of a media and society which witters endlessly for a week about a model's teeny roll of fat and entirely ignores the conviction of a leading fashion photographer on dozens of charges of sexually assaulting underage models.
Leading psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler once identified the core problem at the heart of the fashion industry: it is dominated, he says, by gay men who subconsciously hate women and therefore set impossible standards for women to aspire to that coincidentally also mimic the bodyshape of young boys.
What's really scary is that he was writing in the FIFTIES. How much more now is fashion dominated by the vision of gay men?
Into this toxic industry, add addictive stimulants and appetite suppressants like cocaine to keep the little girls thin and boyish. Fly them around the world half-starved, and treat them peripatetically like cattle or heroes, depending on circumstances.
Is it any surprise then that the industry attracts vile sexual predators like Anand Jon Alexander? Access to young, confused, underfed, drugged girls and women, whose egos are veering like that of a bi-polar sufferer from zero to hero at all times - that's manna from Heaven for a career rapist like Anand Jon.
Where the feminists are right is in identifying the fashion industry as toxic to women.
It's toxic because of the vision imposed on women by gay men, and because of the use that evil hetero perverts like Anand Jon make of the fashion industry to sexually abuse young girls.
Women need to ditch their Vogues and their Marie-Claires. They're nothing more than hate literature aimed at their gender by a tiny cohort of female-hating men, and they facilitate the rape and abuse of vulnerable young girls.
It's time to boycott fashion.
Friday, August 28, 2009
How to end clamping
A Frenchman told me tonight how to prevent clamping from taking hold in your neighbourhood.
Buy superglue, and keep it on your person.
The next time you see clampers immobilising some poor bugger's car, just wander past the clamper van and squirt a whack of the superglue in the lock. Do as many doors as you can.
According to the Frenchman, in his town (he didn't specify and I didn't ask, sorry), when they introduced clamping, everyone armed themselves with superglue.
Within a matter of weeks, the clamping was cancelled, due to the cost of replacing locks on their own vehicles.
Obviously, this is not legal. And I'm not suggesting that the spineless citizens of Dublin should follow suit in defending their liberties against clampers as the French have.
But wouldn't it be fantastic if they did?
Buy superglue, and keep it on your person.
The next time you see clampers immobilising some poor bugger's car, just wander past the clamper van and squirt a whack of the superglue in the lock. Do as many doors as you can.
According to the Frenchman, in his town (he didn't specify and I didn't ask, sorry), when they introduced clamping, everyone armed themselves with superglue.
Within a matter of weeks, the clamping was cancelled, due to the cost of replacing locks on their own vehicles.
Obviously, this is not legal. And I'm not suggesting that the spineless citizens of Dublin should follow suit in defending their liberties against clampers as the French have.
But wouldn't it be fantastic if they did?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The REAL danger of music piracy
I read Seanachie's piece on home taping with interest and a degree of nostalgia.
What person, anywhere on Earth, who's currently aged between 25 and 50, DIDN'T make a mix tape, or record a live concert off the radio, after all?
And he's absolutely right - home taping didn't kill music at all.
He makes an interesting point (borrowed from AquariumDrinker) about the development of CDs. Basically, we can now acknowledge that the compact disc format brought us nowhere as consumers, but was a great payday for the record companies.
CDs couldn't record, were fragile, looked rubbish and cost more. What mugs we were for buying into that one.
I recall in the early Nineties visiting a factory in the West of Dublin where they made CDs. They had just installed a facility for making a whole new thing called DVDs. I was intrigued, and a bit impressed.
Until they showed me a DVD and it looked exactly like a CD, only double-sided. Now, I wasn't impressed.
"This is the same technology, right? You've basically taken two CD surfaces and put them back to back, haven't you?", I asked.
Effectively, with a little additional information compression and creation of further storage space, that's what they had done. The factory manager looked a little guilty and sheepish.
"We nearly didn't open this facility," he told me in confidence. "But a lot of money has been spent on this format worldwide. The music and entertainment industry are going to get behind it anyway. I reckon we'll get five years out of it."
"What happens then?" I asked in all innocence.
"The future is no media at all," he laughed. "Things will be stored virtually and you'll just download them onto your stereo or TV when you want them."
That was the first time I encountered the concept of digital media storage in the home. The industry knew it was coming a decade before it properly did, but they just had to squeeze one last tired media format out there in the hope that we'd all be mugs and buy all our albums all over again for the third time (or perhaps replace all our VHS and Beta tapes with shiny DVDs.)
Of course, with its business model predicated on soon-to-be-defunct product, that factory no longer exists today.
But it reminded me that we owe these industries no loyalty. The entertainments industry and their pals at Sony and the other format creators have systematically and cynically been ripping off the public for decades, selling them one set of Emperor's new clothes after another.
CDs were shit, so were CD-Rs, so were DVDs, so were DVD-Rs, so were... you get my point. It was all a delaying tactic (a lucrative one, too) aimed at preventing the dawn of the digital virtual storage era.
Now we're in that era, they've returned to a previous position - the mantra that piracy kills music (or film, or whatever) coupled with preposterous law suits against individuals worldwide.
Memo to those industries: suing your customers is not a smart business model.
As a result, there's been a predictable backlash, and now we're seeing 'Pirate Parties' sprouting politically in different nations. This is of concern, but not to the big entertainment industries. This is of massive concern to writers, painters, musicians - artists themselves.
On the one hand we have Google seeking to digitise and publish online every book they can lay their hands on. First they started with out of copyright books. Now they don't seem to care what they digitise. They've offered a crappy deal to authors who can take it or leave it. Google doesn't give a shit for creator's rights. They want to own literature, and that's what they're intent on doing.
In this regard, buzzing flies like the Pirate Party (basically a load of 'no to everything' anarchists) become extremely useful idiots for entities like Google. As the pirates agitate against copyright and intellectual property ownership, they seem to resemble a grassroots campaign that backs all Google's arguments.
See here, says Google. Look at these misguided European hippies. But say, perhaps they're right? Perhaps no one should be able to own intellectual property that they created? Why isn't every book in the planet free to all?
The real danger of music piracy is not that people make copies of things for their own enjoyment.
The real danger of music piracy is that it has led to the situation where we now find ourselves with music firms suing their own customers, and the public backlash against that is being used by multinational corporations to erode the concept of copyright so that they can steal the world's literature.
Sunday, August 23, 2009
The sound of sirens
Hello sirens, my old friend,
I'm on the Northside once again.
Because when I was in Clonskeagh,
a gentle quiet came over me.
Now the Northside skangers are yelling in the night,
about some shite,
amid the sound
of sirens.
In restless dreams I walk alone,
through hordes of drunken Gaa-head clones,
neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp,
when my kidney was stabbed by the knife
of some junky skite.
Oh what a fright,
amid the sound
of sirens.
And in the naked light I saw
Eighty thousand boggers, maybe more.
People drinking without speaking,
People puking and then pissing,
People throwing their shite in my front garden,
They all dared,
despite the sound
of sirens.
You fool, they said, don't you know
the Northside's full of crazy Joes.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But their words like silent raindrops fell,
and were lost,
amid the sound
of sirens.
And the people drink and bray,
and piss and puke outside all day.
Perhaps I should have heard the warnings,
Resident protests seem habit-forming.
And the signs say that they'll clamp you
right outside your own door,
by tenement halls,
amid the sound
of sirens.
I'm on the Northside once again.
Because when I was in Clonskeagh,
a gentle quiet came over me.
Now the Northside skangers are yelling in the night,
about some shite,
amid the sound
of sirens.
In restless dreams I walk alone,
through hordes of drunken Gaa-head clones,
neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp,
when my kidney was stabbed by the knife
of some junky skite.
Oh what a fright,
amid the sound
of sirens.
And in the naked light I saw
Eighty thousand boggers, maybe more.
People drinking without speaking,
People puking and then pissing,
People throwing their shite in my front garden,
They all dared,
despite the sound
of sirens.
You fool, they said, don't you know
the Northside's full of crazy Joes.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But their words like silent raindrops fell,
and were lost,
amid the sound
of sirens.
And the people drink and bray,
and piss and puke outside all day.
Perhaps I should have heard the warnings,
Resident protests seem habit-forming.
And the signs say that they'll clamp you
right outside your own door,
by tenement halls,
amid the sound
of sirens.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Trapped in Dublin
Are they trying to trap us here?
First the security chimps at Dublin airport go on an unofficial work to rule, preventing nearly 100 passengers from getting to their flights before they departed.
Then the main train line to the North mysteriously falls into the sea.
And there is a strike on at Dublin Port that could start affecting passenger ferries at any time.
Already it costs money to leave Dublin via motorway, and of course, with the Greens in government, that will keep rising.
Are they trying to stop us from leaving so that we'll be forced to pay their preposterous new taxes in the Autumn?
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The grumpy parent's Q+A
BBC's online magazine asked readers to answer ten of the most common difficult questions that children ask. They didn't publish my suggested answers for some strange reason, so I reproduce them here instead:
1) Why don't all the fish die when lightning hits the sea?
Why don't you go swimming during the next thunderstorm and ask them?
2) How much does the sky weigh?
Who fucking cares? Do your homework! That is one of your homework questions? Meh. I'm getting you moved into Ordinary Maths next term.
3) Why can't people leave other people alone?
Are we talking about kids in your school or strange smelly old men in grubby white vans?
4) Why are birds not electrocuted when they land on electricity wires?
They wear tiny wellies, obviously. Tiny invisible wellies.
5) What is time?
The thing you're never on.
6) Why is the Moon sometimes out in the day and sometimes at night?
Because it's not subject to my curfew. Now get your sorry ass back inside the house!
7) Why did God let my kitten die?
He hates you, of course. Actually, God didn't let your kitten die. There is no God. Must've been you who killed it. And no, you can't get a puppy to replace it.
8) Why do I like pink?
Because you're gay. Your mother's heart is broken, by the way.
9) Why is water wet?
It's not as wet as you, with your pink and your kittens and what not.
10) Why does my best friend have two dads?
He doesn't. He has a dad and a mum like anyone else. But his mum left when she found out his dad was a batty boy.
1) Why don't all the fish die when lightning hits the sea?
Why don't you go swimming during the next thunderstorm and ask them?
2) How much does the sky weigh?
Who fucking cares? Do your homework! That is one of your homework questions? Meh. I'm getting you moved into Ordinary Maths next term.
3) Why can't people leave other people alone?
Are we talking about kids in your school or strange smelly old men in grubby white vans?
4) Why are birds not electrocuted when they land on electricity wires?
They wear tiny wellies, obviously. Tiny invisible wellies.
5) What is time?
The thing you're never on.
6) Why is the Moon sometimes out in the day and sometimes at night?
Because it's not subject to my curfew. Now get your sorry ass back inside the house!
7) Why did God let my kitten die?
He hates you, of course. Actually, God didn't let your kitten die. There is no God. Must've been you who killed it. And no, you can't get a puppy to replace it.
8) Why do I like pink?
Because you're gay. Your mother's heart is broken, by the way.
9) Why is water wet?
It's not as wet as you, with your pink and your kittens and what not.
10) Why does my best friend have two dads?
He doesn't. He has a dad and a mum like anyone else. But his mum left when she found out his dad was a batty boy.
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