Dosh and Dali

So, I've just got into the house after dispensing the last of my paltry underperforming SSIA dosh (bloody Ulster Bank!) on servicing some of my spiralling debts, and I log onto breakingnews to see what's going on in the world and suddenly I find myself in an alternative universe.

I'm still not sure where I took the wrong turning through dimensions. Most likely when I boarded the Luas an hour ago, as Dublin pedestrians were unusually and uncharacteristically pleasant to me on my journey home.

But it's only just now, plugging into the world online, that I am truly convinced that I have entered some surrealist state of existence worthy of Salvador Dali's fevered imagination.

Let's peruse some of the headlines I just read:

The Government has paid €3.5 million for some War of Independence memorabilia. What? Like we don't need any hospital beds or school places anymore, that we can now afford to blow millions on some prison sketches? What cabbages have we elected to Government?

A fire broke out at a British nuclear plant that is already nearly fifty years old today. But hey, that's no problem, folks, even though they had to shut the creaking reactor down, and even though the antique plant is due for closure next year. No radiation, we are assured, could possibly have leaked out.

Point one, we don't believe you, BNFL, because you've lied so often in the past. And point two, close the fucking thing down already! It's well past its sell-by date and is now proving positively dangerous!

Two of the biggest scrota in the music industry, Andrew Lloyd-Webber and Eminem no less, might be about to team up for, God forbid, a rap musical. Kill them now or it will be huge, I warn you.

But the proof that I have fallen through a gap in time and space into some surreal alternative universe lies in this story - An Irish high street bank finally admits that house prices are falling!

Daily Mail

For the media savvy reader who has everything - here's the Daily Mail-o-matic! Why bother reading the Daily Mail when instead the Daily Mail-o-matic can auto-generate a plausible and convincing Daily Mail headline for any occasion?

As you can see to the side, the Daily Mail has been responsible for outrageous headlines for a long, long time.

My favourite so far - Will the French impregnate Britain's Swans?

Well, will they????

Why Irish builders should move to Tibet

We all know there's a 'downturn' under way in the Irish construction market. This has something to do with the fact that Irish houseprices are currently marginally more unbelievable than the toothfairy and the Yeti in a clinch.

But it also has something to do with the revelation that a quarter of a million houses in the country are lying empty according to the last census.

We have all the houses we already need. Why pay the silly prices being asked? Once that penny dropped for people, so did the asking prices.

As we watch Irish house prices flutter downwards towards something vaguely and distantly resembling normality, let us consider the plight of the poor, downtrodden property developer.

Yes, he will have smirked wryly to himself over a nice Scotch at the golf club this weekend as news permeated his idyll that his old pals in Fianna Fail have been returned for another five years of playing 'protect the builder.'

But the bottom line is that all the pips have already been squeezed out of that orange.

It's always worth chancing your arm trying to flog crap holiday homes in places no one's heard of, like Cape Verde, especially if people trust you, like they do Eddie Hobbs.

But for most builders, interested only in their declared mission in life of knocking out substandard homes for over the odds prices as quickly as possible, the prospect of slogging it out in the Cape Verde villa market does not appeal.

So what to do? Time to move to Lhasa, I'd suggest.

The ancient capital of Tibet consisted of the Potala Palace, home of the Dalai Lama, and the Jokhang Temple, around which Tibet's main tourist drag of Barkhor Street now runs (see pic of Barkhor above).

A photo I have of Lhasa in 1916 indicates these two buildings as the only things on the entire plain between the Himalayan ranges. Nowadays, the entire stretch of the city, from the Norbulingka Palace to beyond the Barkhor Area, is a predominantly Tibetan 'old' town.

This in itself is odd, given how Tibetans are traditionally semi-nomadic, following their yaks in semi-permanent tents for much of the year, often going on pilgrimages solo, spending time at sacred lakes or sites in contemplation and so on.

But there you go, Lhasa the city exists. But there is another Lhasa - the Chinese immigrant city best viewed from the back of the Potala. This is twice the size of the Tibetan city, and is, apart from its relative cleanliness, indistinguishable from any other Chinese city.

This end of town has the little kids in their sports tracksuit school uniforms, the Bank of China ATMs, the garish neon signs for cheap hotels or good Sichuan food, the travel agents, the shopping centres, the gated communities, the car showrooms.

This is the product, not only of sixty years of Chinese occupation, but also of the dozen flights and numerous trains daily arriving in Lhasa from China in recent years. Lhasa is a Chinese boomtown right now, and Chinese from all over the Middle Kingdom are arriving looking for work or to make a fortune out of foreign tourists.

It's the wild west, from China's perspective, especially since the SARs of Hong Kong and Macau are off-limits for most Chinese.

Now, currently China is gobbling up a quarter of the world's cement, a similar amount of the world's steel and all sorts of other construction materials as it tries to build its way out of murky economic waters, create the Beijing Olympics, renovate Shanghai as a financial centre, and cater for an indigenous property speculation and stock speculation drive.

Mostly, this building is going on in the East, in places like Shenzhen and Shanghai, as well as in Beijing for the Olympics. But the exception is Tibet, where building of housing and massive infrastructure is proceeding at breakneck pace, presumably in an attempt to increase the rate of cultural colonisation and Sinization in Tibet.

Now, it would seem to me that a canny Irish builder looking for a bit of work to tide him over between Irish property boom cycles could do worse than pop over to Tibet right now.

There's no end of work for immoral, shady developers used to corruption and backhanders, who are practised in the dark arts of throwing up developments as quickly and shoddily as possible.

Form an orderly queue, lads.

You asked for it

You asked for a Fianna Fail government and it looks like you're going to get one.

Be careful what you wish for. Good luck with dealing with hours of daily commuting, yo-yoing house prices, a derelict health service and hundreds of new stealth taxes.

Hope you enjoy the corruption in government, an 'unexpected' trebling of the cost of the airport metro, more motorways through sites of national heritage and more revelations of a Taoiseach on the make at the tribunals.

The great thing about the democratic process is that people generally get the government they deserve. Whether it will be Fianna Fail + randomers, Fianna Fail + the Greens or Fianna Fail + Labour, it will be a marginally more caring and equitable government than any government with the morally bankrupt Progressive Democrats.

Farewell and good riddance to McDowell and his neo-con cronies. (Picture of McDowell resigning before my eyes last night to follow.)

But whatever government is returned this week will be a Fianna Fail government. I wonder what it says about us that that is all the Irish people deserve.

Exit Poll

Exit polls put FF on 41.6%, FG on 26.3%, Labour on 9.9%, SF 7.3%, Greens 4.8%, PDs 2.6% and others at 4.8%.
Some websites and news sources make that a FF government, and Paddy Power has already paid out on Bertie as next Taoiseach.
But my number crunching suggests that that can only lead to a rainbow, unless Labour do a FF deal or FF go into bed with SF and/or the Greens.
It still seems to be an extremely tight election, people. Roll on the first counts at lunchtime!
I'll be in the RDS this evening monitoring six of the Dublin counts and will be reporting back to Cian and the boys at Irishelection.com with live updates.

Back from the Orient

I'm now back from the far east, and have quite a number of observations to make about China. But I'll do that next week, as it's impossible to ignore the small matter of a general election this week.

It looks like Bribeable Bert's in real trouble over the small matter of receiving free houses and maintenance buy-offs from shadowy businessmen in Manchester. This doesn't exactly fill me with hope for the nation, since he's still neck and neck to form the next government.

What does it actually take to convince the rump 35% or so that the current batch of Fianna Fail are a ragbag of crooks and incompentants? Do they actually need to see them exiting the Bank of Ireland wearing stripey pyjamas and masks carrying bags with 'Swag' written on them before they understand?

Anyhow, there is at least cheering news that the neo-cons who've actually been running the country for the past decade, while the Fianna Failures were busy lining their pockets, are set to be wiped out.

At least the nation seems to have copped on to the PDs at long last. Perhaps it was Harney's presiding over ever deteriorating health services, while trying to sell off the best bits to her mates, or perhaps it is the perennial frothing mouthed anti-democratic insanity of McDowell that has led them to this pass.

But since those two are the only ones likely to be returned to the Dail, it's more likely that the public have finally copped that there is no PD party. It's just a flag of convenience flown by a truly bizarre bunch of right-wing fellow travellers, each with their own personal reasons for wishing to be a big fish in an ever-evaporating pond.

On the other hand, the Shinners seems set to consolidate a lot of gains, perhaps even enough to force a hung Dail or minority government. In which case, the question is will bribeable Bert be persuaded into bed with the gunmen?

Labour are continuing to insist that they won't assist a Fianna Fail coalition, but that rather depends on them making up the numbers with Fine Gael and, perhaps, the Greens. Which it's looking dubious that they will.

The bookies still like the look of a FF-Lab coalition despite Rabbitte's rantings, and if that does transpire, you can expect to see Pat hoist by his Mullingar petard, leaving the way clear for Brendan Howlin to become Tanaiste.

In short, it's the most exciting, and crucial, election held in Ireland for well over a generation.

Make sure to play your part by casting a vote this week, even if it's only for the Christian Solidarity or Immigration Control candidates.

Actually, I'm joking. If either of those appeal, you shouldn't be allowed to vote.

Coming soon: why Irish builders should move to Tibet.

Great firewall of China

Hi.

Or, in the current circumstances, ni hao.

Sorry for the lack of updates.

Please blame the great firewall of China for stifling my normal loquaciousness.

Normal service will be resumed shortly.

In the meantime, here's a nice pic of a pagoda in the Sichuan city of Chengdu for you all to enjoy.

Ta ta for now.

Vote Skinner!

I was a bit late registering as a political party, so I'm a 'write-in' candidate.

I'm running in your constituency.

You have to write in my name, though. Just scribble out any name you recognise and write JC Skinner instead, or go for my preferred option of writing it in at the top of the list and drawing a separate wee box and putting the number one in there.

If I get elected, I intend to introduce a private member's bill making cocaine mandatory for Enda Kenny, introduce a law declaring Michael McDowell illegal, and I will personally host a dinner in Manchester every week for any of Bertie Ahern's mates who want to give me £30,000.

I will also cull Mary Harney and process her into food for starving economic migrants.

The Green Party will be relocated to Rockall, which will be made independent and given to them to live underground on, like hobbits.

Sinn Fein members will be made to fight the Irish Rangers to the death in special gladiatorial bouts to be held in Croke Park. They will be armed with pikes and copies of Danny Morrison's novel, 'West Belfast.' The Rangers will be issued with Uzis.

Ian Paisley will be stuffed, mounted and glued onto the side of Croagh Patrick to make a nice Mount Rushmore type national monument.

The Hill of Tara will be placed on giant stilts so the motorway can go under it. We will also build a tunnel to Iceland, to reduce commuting times to Dublin from the Arctic Circle.

A new Luas line will be routed through Bono's living room, so that we can all 'see where he lives', like he said we should in one of his songs. It will feature a loop-the-loop section.

Vote Skinner. Better than the other shower.

Wanted...!

One ticket for the Champions' League final in Athens!

I'm serious! I was in Istanbul, and I really want to be in Athens to see Liverpool pick up their sixth European Cup.

If you have a genuine ticket that you want to sell, please mail me and tell me how much you're looking for. I've got the money, and I want to go very badly.

Please help!

Dail dissolved

Well, it was getting embarrassing.

First telling our unelected President to cancel all appointments for Friday afternoon, then bottling it at the last minute.

Then hapless Bert gets a quick graft of backbone from the party, who are fed up at watching their coalition lead erode in the polls.

And it's a dash to the Aras this morning to get La McAleese's autograph before she goes walkies abroad again, as is her wont.

So the Dail is now dissolved. A pity that couldn't be taken literally. Every five years, we could douse the lot of them in a strong hydrochloric acid bath for being useless, pocket-lining chancers.

It would certainly winnow out the less altruistic candidates for election, that's for sure.

Well, folks, you now have until May 24th to decide which chancer running in your neck of the woods is less likely to shaft the economy and you personally than the other chancers.

Don't let apathy win. Your vote counts. Quiz them on the doorsteps, question them on the issues that matter to you. Tell them about your shoddy health service, overpriced public-private partnerships on what should be essential infrastructure and your concerns about the housing market.

Demand costed plans for their manifestos. Seek evidence that they are not the corrupt, pocket-lining time-servers that we have so long suffered in this country in place of public representatives.

Consider voting for candidates that highlight issues you believe in, even if they won't form a government. People who espouse green issues, father's rights, a united Ireland, the preservation of your local hospital.

But make sure to give a preference high up to the candidate of the government of your choice.

Make your say count. There's no mandate for moaning if you didn't vote in the first place. This is your opportunity to hold politicians to account. It only happens once every four or five years. Use it.

The Lies They Tell - Part Three

In the 2002 Fianna Fail general election manifesto, Bertie Ahern promised an extra 2000 Gardai to target street crime and drugs.

But in 2007, we got instead a Garda Reserve of 125 yellow pack police.

In the 2002 Fianna Fail general election manifesto, Bertie Ahern promised 15,000 affordable houses every year for five years.

But the Affordable Homes Partnership was only finally established in 2005, and since then has delivered just over 600 homes, most of which are in the Dublin area.

In the 2002 Fianna Fail general election manifesto, Bertie Ahern promised a metro linking to Dublin Airport.

But in 2007, we're still waiting to even see the plans.

In the 2002 Fianna Fail general election manifesto, Bertie Ahern promised 3,000 extra hospital beds.

But in 2007, Mary Harney is giving land on hospital sites to developers and asking them to build the 3,000 needed beds within the private sector.

By their lies and broken promises, should they be judged.

Will he make a thousand days?

Sorry for the delays in updates. I've been busy.

So, obviously, is Tony Blair.

It's over 940 days now since our Tone promised to resign. That's nearly three years of lies, war and deceit from 'New Labour.'

Rumour has it he's going to go before the likely-to-be-disastrous Scottish election results.

And about time too.

Try not to cry on your way out the door, there's a good chap.

Skinner Towers Attacked!

Fair play to the boys in blue. Perhaps they aren't all the keystone cops and corrupt Donegal shysters I took them for, after all.

Last night, some scumbags tried to break into my house. I heard them before they got in, thankfully, and warned them off, calling the plod for good measure.

While I waited in the darkened house, mobile in one hand and huge knife in the other, watching the shitheads trying to make their next move, the local Gardai arrived within a mere fifteen minutes.

By that stage, the cunts had fucked off to try some house that didn't have an irate, awake Northerner with a huge knife in it, but the plod took a description, had a word with another neighbour whose gaff they'd tried to break into, and circled the neighbourhood for a good hour looking for them.

I don't know if they caught them in the end, but fair play for the effort.

I really hope the boys in blue did catch them, though, because if I ever see them again, my knife hand is very twitchy.

Vote for Parents' Rights

Voters in four constituencies in Ireland will get the chance to vote for parents' rights in the forthcoming election after the Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party became the state's newest official political party this week.

Candidates include former MEP candidate Liam O'Gogain, a veteran campaigner for shared parenting and founder of campaigning organisation Parental Equality, and Alan Beirne, one of Parental Equality's leading members who came to public prominence when he featured in RTE's groundbreaking documentary series on divorce some years back.

Unlike our current Taoiseach, who had wealthy pals to buy him a house and bankroll his marital separation, many divorced and separated fathers in Ireland suffer real financial hardship when their relationships break down.

And unlike our current Taoiseach, they do not always gain unlimited or even any access to their children following separation.

The creakingly antique laws relating to parenting in Ireland are predicated on the outdated belief that a woman's place is in the home and the children's place is at her apron-strings.

Hence the phenomenon of so many children who are now being raised in Ireland without meaningful influence from their fathers. Around 40% of all births in Ireland are now to unmarried parents, but what those many fathers often do not realise is that the state gives their relationship with their children absolutely no protection.

They are not granted automatic guardianship of their children, and if they split with their children's mother, they must petition for access via the courts. They must also seek 'custody', that odious phrase with all its connotations of children as possessions.

Instances of bitter women denying fathers access to their kids, and being facilitated in doing so by our outdated legal system, run into the thousands. In fact, Irish fathers face the worst discrimination in Europe.

The adversarial, Kramer Versus Kramer, format pits mother against father on a queered playing pitch which ensures only that fathers must empty their pockets to finance their former partner's lives, while being simultaneously unable to have meaningful relationships with their children.

The result is that we are raising an experimental generation of children with no paternal input into their lives. Forget the media lie of deadbeat dads. We have a deadbeat system, and it is no wonder that it results in an ASBO generation where the Department of Social Welfare has become husband to lone mothers and father to their children.

The Fathers Rights-Responsibility Party advocate a mediated, shared parenting system that benefits all, especially the children.

To all voters in constituencies where their candidates are running, I urge you to offer these candidates a preference in the forthcoming election, a first preference if possible.

That way, you can send a message out to the incoming government, whoever they may be, that it is time we dragged our legal system out of the dark ages for our children's sake.

Save Alan Johnston

Please click on the link below for up-to-date information on kidnapped BBC journalist Alan Johnston's current condition, and sign the petition calling for his immediate release unharmed.

Don't let Alan join the hundreds of journalists murdered every year while going about their job of reporting the truth to you.

1916 - The Musical

Following such box-office smashes as JFK - The Musical and Jerry Springer - The Opera, now we're getting an all-singing, all-dancing extravaganza about the 1916 rising!

Here's their pitch:

Come with us on an incredible musical journey of courage, pride and determination, ‘1916’ is set against the backdrop of the Easter Uprising and political upheaval. Tracing the lives of those on the front line, the little people in the shadow of major events, this story of love and pain can only end in tragedy and betrayal.

Nice! This comes from the people who brought you Subtransmission, a play described as the 'Anti-Mary Poppins'.

Wherein, of course, a transvestite found on the internet comes to save a suburban family from hell, in case you hadn't guessed.

Inevitably, the people behind this nonsense are based in London, not anywhere in Ireland where it might be understood that a musical about the rising is a bit distasteful to say the least.

This just adds further grist to the mill about funding for the arts. All to often, it ends up actually funding arses, just like this lot.

D- for canvassing

I've been a bit miffed at the lack of canvassing in our area. I would normally have expected Fianna Failures at the door on an hourly basis this close to an election, swiftly followed by that famous Sinn Fein election machine.

Obviously, one is an extremely privileged soul if you manage to get a PD canvasser to your door, since they're rarer than hen's teeth. And the Blueshirts don't tend to come around my area too often either.

But I'd gone to all the trouble to draw up a lengthy list of complaints for all parties, and hence I've been extremely disappointed at the lack of opportunities I've had to present them.

However, the Shinner juggernaut finally traversed our street today, and I was delighted to see that they're running honey traps now. A genuinely stunning young blonde came to the door, all day-glo teeth, Toni and Guy hair and fake tan, asking me would I consider voting Sinn Fein?

The short answer is of course, only at gunpoint, which when discussing the party in question is never entirely off the table.

But in order to produce my list of woes for the first time, I was initially non-committal.

"I'm still thinking about who to vote for," I pondered. "But it won't be Fianna Fail, because I'd like to see some change."

Unfortunately she picked up on my accent.

"You're from the North?" she asked perceptively.

"I am indeed, occupied six counties and all that."

"Ah, right," she looked at her clipboard, marked a tick against something I couldn't see, and started walking away.

As she started knocking on the neighbour's door, I coughed politely and called to her, "I do have a vote, you know!"

"I know you do," she said. "But let's be honest, if you're from the North, you know Sinn Fein and what we stand for. So you're hardly undecided, are you? You're either with us or against us, and I reckon you're against us."

That's Sinn Fein for you, always fighting the war.

D minus for canvassing abilities, though.

Welcome to Jamestown

2007 is a real year for anniversaries. One of the most important is that it will be 400 years next month since the settling of Jamestown by English settlers.

Where's Jamestown, you may ask? Good question, as it's not on any contemporary maps anymore. It was the original settlement of the English in what we now call America.

Forget that fake origin myth about the Pilgrim Fathers. The original settlement was at Jamestown, though it didn't last very long.

In December 1606, over 100 settlers from London sailed from London under orders from James 1st (or the 6th, depending on whether you talk to the English or the Scots) to find gold and a westerly route to the trade centres of the Orient.

Yup, like all imperial adventures, it was a moneygrab, nothing more or less.

They settled Jamestown island in Virginia and almost immediately began fighting the actual inhabitants of the land, the Algonquin indians. Nice way to make friends in a new country. But there was no talk of multiculturalism or assimilation in those days.

By 1609, two-thirds of the population had starved to death. But the colony limped along for another ten years, until it was saved by the importation of, you guessed it, black slaves.

In 1622, the highly pissed-off local population took the battle to the colonists and killed 300 of them. King James was so annoyed he took the land into crown ownership.

The site remained of token importance as the location of Virginia's legislature until 1698, when the statehouse burned down. Within fifty years, it was buried below ground, the abortive first foothold of England on North American soil forgotten.

But its legacy obviously remains. Other English came, eradicated the natives and claimed the land. America became white, anglo-saxon and protestant, Wasp in other words.

Built on the back of black slave labour and continual immigration, not to mention genocide of the native inhabitants, the United States has good claim to be one of the least justifiable regimes on earth, from the very point of its origin to today.

On some level, Americans know this. Hence the continual desire of so many to hyphenate their nationality. They're not Americans, they're Irish-Americans, Latino-Americans, African-Americans.

In fact, the United States is so excited about celebrating its abortive birthplace that they've got luminaries like Bruce Hornsby and Chaka Khan to play at the celebratory event! Talk about ancient history!

On the other hand, the Brits are tremendously excited to resurrect memories of a time when they utilised theft and genocide to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of the world.

The current occupier of James' throne, good old Betty Saxe-Coburg Gotha, will be making a rare trip to the site of Jamestown next month not to commemorate the atrocities commited by the English at the site, but to 'celebrate' them.

What's to celebrate? English imperialism? Indigenous genocide? England doesn't lose habits easily. They're still involved in both activities today, in locations as diverse as Ireland and Iraq.

As Bruce Hornsby might sing, 'Some things will never change.'

Finding a filling station

Looking to fill up your car with petrol in Ireland? I wish you the best of luck.

Never mind the long-standing suspicion among motorists that the majority of filling stations operate cartel pricing practices.

It's simply finding a petrol station that's becoming the problem these days. The Consumers Association is becoming concerned at the lack of competition in the petrol market, and their concern is mild compared to that of motorists.

Ten years ago there were 2,500 petrol stations in the Republic of Ireland. Today, there are fewer than half that number. And that's despite the fact that an average of 170,000 new cars have been registered in Ireland each year since 1999.

So, if we have many more cars on the road, why are there fewer petrol stations, rather than more?

One reason is property speculation. The ever-spiralling cost of property in Ireland has led many petrol station owners to cash in on the large footprint of their forecourts.

You'd be hard pushed to find a single station left in large swathes of the south Dublin suburbs anymore. They've all been sold off for development into yet more boxy apartments.

But here's another reason. Shell and Statoil are currently involved in taking up to €400 billion of gas and oil resources from the Irish people. They struck a deal with our corrupt government to take all of our natural resources and pay nothing in return. What a deal! Some might call it stealing, but to Shell it's just the deal of the century.

Now when some people in Rossport, concerned at the safety or otherwise having a high pressure gas pipeline running past their living rooms, started protesting this decision, Shell and Statoil did what any greedy multinational would do.

They sacrificed their forecourt operations in order to safeguard their mammoth offshore freebie windfall. They sold off their petrol stations, in other words, because protests and boycotts were beginning to happen.

Much easier to dispose of those troublesome assets at a profit rather than face down the legitimate anger of the Irish people whose wealth and future security they have taken for nothing.

So the next time you're cruising the streets, your fuel guage in the red, desperately looking for a petrol station that's open, remember who is responsible and why.

Blame property speculators, blame the scumbags who ran Statoil and Shell, and blame the current government for this appalling Corrib deal which stole this country's natural resources wealth and gave it to Norwegians instead.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter to everyone. Sorry I'm late with the well wishes, but I've just emerged from a chocolate-induced coma.

One thing still confuses me, though.

Could someone please explain to me what this Jesus fella dying or not dying as the case may be has to do with a giant Harvey-type bunny and chocolate eggs?

How come the giant bunny lays eggs anyway? And why are they made of chocolate?

Not that the chocolate did me much good. I think the Easter Bunny hates me.

Man United - violence's common denominator?

Anyone who can work out what I might have been doing in Istanbul in May 2005 will quickly realise that I'm no fan of Manchester United.

The team that Fergie built always annoyed me. Not their successes. Every trophy gets won by someone each season. But the fact that the authorities always seemed to side with them. Jammy decisions, long minutes of extra time when they are losing, no away penalties at Old Trafford...

It all added up to a genuine annoyance factor.

But now there's a new reason to be concerned about Manchester United. Let's rewind briefly to the Eighties to explain this fully.

In the late Seventies and early Eighties, English teams dominated European football. In only a few seasons, Liverpool, Nottingham Forest and Aston Villa all claimed the European Cup. Other teams like Ipswich and Tottenham claimed the UEFA Cup.

Even Everton and Alex Ferguson's Aberdeen won the Cup Winners Cup. Europe simply couldn't compete with the British footballing juggernaut. The only rivals they had were each other.

Then came Heysel. The facts of Heysel, despite a number of different investigations, remain unclear. But what is certain is that UEFA approved a delapidated and dangerous stadium for the 1985 European Cup final.

Then local police, who swiftly lost control of the Juventus and Liverpool fans flooding to the game, allowed overcrowding to develop to dangerous levels in some parts of the ground. An hour before the game, trouble began between the two sets of fans.

It is believed by a number of eye-witnesses that members of the infamous Chelsea Headhunter gang were responsible for initiating the violence from within the Liverpool crowd. Whether this is true or not, the trouble began in the Liverpool end.

Then the wall collapsed, and in the aftermath, 39 people died, mostly Juventus fans but including one Irishman Patrick Radcliffe. UEFA made sure the game continued despite the deaths, but once the game was over, they made Heysel - which was in part their own fault for choosing a deathtrap for a European final - the excuse to throw all English teams out of Europe.

It was a popular decision with clubs from other countries. They felt they might stand a chance of winning something again. English clubs were banned from European competition for five years, and Liverpool six.

While occasional trouble still marred the terraces in Britain in the Nineties, it was nowhere near as bad as the hooliganism had been only a few years before. Sporadic, occasional terrace or post-match scraps would occur, but nothing remotely like on the scale it had previously.

But following a series of studies, the removal of terracing and the creation of the Premiership, soccer violence became extremely rare in Britain by the time that English clubs were permitted back into European competition.

And so to this season, and why we should be concerned about Manchester United. Last night, in Rome, Manchester United fans fought with Italian police in and out of the ground. No doubt, the London press will highlight harassment of fans, claim the police were heavy-handed, point out how local 'ultra' Roma fans attacked and targetted the poor English.

I'm sure this will occur, because that's exactly what happened the last time that Manchester United fans were involved in trouble abroad. When was that, you may ask? Less than two months ago, actually, when again Manchester United fans were involved with clashes with police, in France on this occasion.

Now, once again British teams are becoming dominant in European competition. Liverpool winning the Champions League, Arsenal making last season's final, Chelsea perennially in the semis. Even clubs like Middlesborough and Celtic reaching the UEFA Cup final.

As the Guardian's Paul Doyle has astutely pointed out, such is the financial dominance of English teams that, more even than during the early Eighties, English football dominance in Europe is set to become the norm.

So, when Man United's fans get into trouble on the terraces with police in two different countries in two months, I start wondering what the common denominator is. And the answer is, of course, Man United's fans.

And then I think back to how Heysel was used as an excuse to break English dominance of European football competitions, and I wonder how many more terrace rampages from United's band of travelling thugs it will take before UEFA decides to ban English teams in Europe once again?

Update, Friday 6th: And now we have Spurs fans rioting in Seville in Spain, and it has emerged that UEFA chief Michel Platini wrote to every FA in Europe last month in strong terms warning about violence being the poison that is killing football. How long before English clubs get banned? One more incident? Two?

The UDA

The Ulster Defence Association is a loyalist terror group, founded in 1972 at the height of the Troubles.

In the Eighties, the UDA and their various proxy names (UFF etc) killed only two Republican paramilitaries, but over 100 innocent Catholics in Northern Ireland.

Many of these killings were done in collusion with the RUC and the UDR, the official, British government-sponsored agents of justice in Northern Ireland at the time.

The UDA is heavily armed, and engages in internal feuding as well as internecine feuding with the UVF, largely in turf wars relating to the profits of drug dealing and racketeering in Northern Ireland and Scotland.

The UDA is a proscribed organisation, of which membership is a criminal offence. Despite a promise in 2005, years after the IRA disarmed, to 'consider their position', the most recent Independent Monitoring Commission report highlights that the UDA continues to be involved in organised crime, drug trafficking, counterfeiting, extortion, money laundering and robbery.

So can anyone please explain why it is that UDA leader Jackie McDonald can be seen shaking the hand of Hugh Orde, chief cop in Northern Ireland, yesterday without feeling the cool clink of cuffs around his wrists?

Can anyone explain why it is that the UDA - a criminal organisation that refuses to ceasefire or disarm - is set to receive £1.2 million pounds from the British government, despite openly refusing to even consider handing in their weapons?

The pictures of McDonald grasping the hand of the leading policeman of the land is reminiscent for many people of recent times when innocent Catholics were murdered by the UDA with the RUC's blessing.

It rubs salt in their open wounds when they see police and unionists attempt to lie about those crimes, and seek to pour scorn on Nuala O'Loan's report into collusion.

But the sight of paramilitary leaders, whose followers are known to be active criminals and known to be armed to the teeth, not only walking the streets freely but shaking hands with our 'reformed' police force leader and then actually receiving millions of taxpayer pounds to do so makes me sick.

Oh, did I mention that this particular drug-dealing, Catholic hating, tooled up, bigoted piece of filth Jackie McDonald is also great and old pals with our own gullible and unelected president, La McAleese too?

More airline industry scumbaggery

Following hard upon Ryanair's kind offer to bill its customers twice for flights they already had bought and paid for, now it looks like Aer Lingus are getting on on the act of treating their customers like cash cow cattle.

From tomorrow, they intend to charge customers 3 euro just to reserve their seat on flights to the UK and Europe.

Then in May, once the charges have been established, they intend to hike the costs to 10 euro for pre-booking in the first five rows and 15 euro for pre-booking exit row seats.

But the killer in relation to these new stealth taxes is why Aer Fungus are doing it. To extort their customers? Of course not. To maximise unearned profits? Absolutely not.

They are introducing these charges "in response to customer demand." Okay, hands up everyone. Who rang up Aer Lingus and said, "Wouldn't it be great if you charged me a completely unjustifiable fee to book my seat on the plane?"

Anyone?

Didn't think so. It's just your national airline behaving like grasping scumbags, not unlike their 'rivals' Ryanair. And then lying about it by telling us that somehow, we all asked to be charged more for this nonsense.

This is on top of them charging for baggage like Ryanair, and then hiking that charge within a mere two months by 25%.

The National Consumers Agency are bleating about this, of course. But what we really need is an airline regulator with teeth to tell these thieving, scumbag airlines where to shove their never-ending list of bullshit charges that inflate the advertised cost of an airline ticket from, in one instance I bought, 1 cent up to well in excess of 50 euro.

Still cheap at the price? Not when you consider the squalid conditions of checking in or landing at Dublin airport, not when you are continually disturbed throughout your flight with trolley dollies trying to sell you shit like scratchcards that no one wants, and not when the plane lands miles, often even a country away, from the advertised destination.

You can't always get what you want...

Okay, they wouldn't let me near Heather Graham, so I'm back.

I see some foot-dragging going on in Israel over the Arab League plan for a lasting peace settlement in the region.

Beleaguered Israeli leader Ehud Olmert, who faces a lot of criticism at home for losing a war with Hizbollah last summer, is quite right to describe the plan as revolutionary, even though it amounts to pretty much what the Arabs offered in 2002.

The difference between then and now is that in 2002, the intifada was at its height, whereas now there's an elected Palestinian government.

The deal on the table for Israel is simple, as most good deals are. Return to the 1967 borders (ie keep the land you stole in 1948, but not the extra land you've been stealing since) and you get normal relations with all your Arab neighbours.

Israel might rather hogtrade for a bit of land around Jerusalem and various settlements in the West Bank, but they ought to give these up and accept the deal on the table. It's the only solution for a lasting two-state settlement that might allow Israelis to normalise their society and live in peace in their region at long last.

The Arabs want to see the right of return, ie all the Palestinians in refugee camps since 1948 be allowed to return to where they were expelled from within Israel. That would obviously undermine the Jewishness of the theocracy, so they don't want to agree to that.

One solution might be to take some of those arms-dealing and diamond industry profits sloshing around Israel and put it into a compensation fund for the refugees, to help them build new lives outside of refugee camps, possibly within a Palestinian State.

You can't always get what you want, as the song goes. Israel will never get a better offer than this, and the Arabs won't be able to force them on the right to return while America props up the apartheid state.

But as we've found in Northern Ireland, if everyone takes a leap of faith and compromises a bit, you just might get what you need.

A solution for the Holy Land after nearly six decades is finally with everyone's grasp. Let's hope they take it.

Heather Graham

has been spotted in Belfast of all places! I'm there!

Normal blogging services will be resumed later this week.

Mind where you walk, you dozy crooks!

Here's some quality bit of research done yesterday by Fine Gael. Basically, they uncovered the fact that the Dublin councils paid out a mammoth 15 million euro in a four year period to people who tripped and fell on the footpath.

Now, have they paved Dublin with minefields when I wasn't looking, or does this sound like another compo tidal wave to you?

The worst part, or best depending on whether you're a member of the Law Society or not, is that half of that money went to solicitors.

This isn't the first example of the current government shovelling money at our learned friends in the Four Courts, of course. The tribunal payouts have made multimillionaires of many legal eagles, or as I prefer to refer to them, tax-sucking parasites on society.

Interestingly, the Dublin councils managed to spend a mere 17 million euro on street repairs while ponying up almost the same amount to people claiming compo. Seems a poor return, doesn't it?

I recall there was a road in Turf Lodge in Belfast that during the Eighties was known as the most dangerous street in the world. Not because of any Troubles-related violence, but because of the number of local residents who had claimed compo off Belfast City Council after going arse over tit on the pavement.

No matter how many repairs were done, it only took a crack on a single slab (one that might occur mysteriously overnight, after some local lads had passed by with a sledgehammer) for the locals to be fighting each other to hurl themselves to the ground as they walked over the crack.

Far be it from me to suggest that anyone in receipt of compensation from the Dublin councils in relation to footpath falls were in anyway claiming illegally. But Dublin pavements are simply not minefields.

Watch where you're walking in future, you dozy crooks!

Divided loyalties

In these days of erratic international football results either side of the border, who is a good Northern Nationalist to support?

On the one hand, we have Stan the Man's merry brigade of wasters, scraping past the mighty Wales and San Marino with all the aplomb and grace of a hippo on ice.

Nary a Northerner among them of course. Which might indeed be the problem.

On the other, there's always Lawrie Sanchez's green and white army, casually wallopping four past the oppo, stuffing teams like England and Spain for fun.

But could a good Nationalist truly consider supporting a partitionist team, even if their football association is the original one on the island, given the crazed Loyalist backing the team gets at that bastion of mutual understanding, Windsor Park?

The answer to this question is, as it is to so many of life's questions, Cliftonville FC. The oldest soccer team in Ireland, and one which despite its non-sectarian origins, claims the hearts of most Northern Nationalists, given the long-lamented departure of Belfast Celtic to the annals of history and Derry City to an even more distant and fabled location, the League of Ireland.

So in honour of the Red Army, I give you this recent team talk from before their successful County Antrim Shield victory this season. Special thanks to Missing Neighbour for smuggling the video camera into Solitude.

Losing the war on drugs

If there ever was a war on drugs, I can only assume that it was fought in order to secure cheap and easy access to illegal drugs for all.

If they fought against the proliferation of 'recreational' drugs, then they have badly lost, a long time ago.

It doesn't matter how many 'Just Say No' campaigns you run, or how many Colombian fields you napalm when illegal drugs are now freely available in rural primary school classrooms, as I became aware of last week.

At that point, if not many years before, you've lost the war.

Anyhow, if there still is some sort of a war on drugs, then the battlefield is about to shift, at least in Britain, where leading medics and scientists have sat down and examined the potential negative effects of twenty different recreational drugs and ranked them for how much damage they cause.

The results aren't surprising to me, but no doubt they won't make a lot of anti-drugs campaigners very happy.

Top of the list? Why, heroin and cocaine of course. Now heroin you can understand. Nasty smelly junkies with their lives in a mess. Of course heroin is poison. But cocaine? Trendy, upmarket, middle class cocaine?

Surely some mistake. Let's look at how they conducted this 'survey':

* They asked a group of 29 consultant psychiatrists who specialise in addiction to rate the drugs in nine categories.
* Three of these related to physical harm, three to the likelihood of addiction and three to social harms such as healthcare costs.
* The team also extended the analysis to another group of 16 experts spanning several fields including chemistry, pharmacology, psychiatry, forensics, police and legal services.

So basically, it's about as comprehensive and scientific an examination as you can get. And yup, cocaine is one of the worst there is. Bad news for marketing executives, catwalk models and Ulster paramilitaries there.

But there's even worse news for the alcohol and tobacco industries. Alcohol was ranked as the fifth most dangerous commonly used recreational drug in Britain, and tobacco the ninth.

Let's just pause and ponder that for a moment. When you abuse alcohol, it is more dangerous than smoking. It is more dangerous than addiction to amphetamines. Think about that one next time you go binge-drinking on St Patrick's Day. It's not a pleasant realisation.

But what about that dangerous gateway drug cannabis and all its scarily potent skunk variations? What about ecstasy, the pill that kills?

They clocked in at 11th and 18th place respectively.

In other words, smoking fags is worse than smoking pot, and a good ecstasy pill is better for you than either.

So to summarise, two of the most dangerous drugs of abuse are currently legal, while much more benign substances are banned.

If the war on drugs had ever been really about saving lives and people's futures from drug dependency, then surely we lost it back in the early 20th century, when alcohol prohibition was lifted in America and cannabis and most other more benign substances were banned.

Then we lost it again when we permitted big tobacco to keep selling their cancersticks, despite discovering the health risks they cause and the fact that they are extremely addictive.

The experts in Britain are to be applauded for applying the rigours of the scientific approach to a subject that for too long has been placed beyond debate by those who sought to demonise drugs as a cause of all society's ills.

But they aren't telling the kids anything they didn't already know.

For every kid like Leah Betts who died on ecstasy, there are literally millions who didn't. Who danced their asses off and went home sweaty and happy.

For every time some pompous suit or judge has lectured about how cannabis is a gateway drug, the highway to dopefiend hell, there are literally millions of people who puffed a joint, munched a spacecake and listened to some music, rather than reaching for a heroin needle and a gun to mug someone with.

And everytime someone watched an older relative wheezing in the pulmonary ward of a hospital, their lungs rotted by carcinogenic tobacco, or fell victim to a raging drunk incapable of reason who beat them, raped them, robbed them or mowed them down in a car, those people realised what the really dangerous drugs are.

It's time to reclassify our opinions on drugs. Then reclassify the drugs themselves.

Tobacco should be banned. Being drunk should in itself carry a legal penalty. And cannabis, LSD and ecstasy ought to be legalised with the sort of caveats about heavy machinery and driving that currently apply to alcohol.

And that's not just my opinion. That's got the latest scientific research backing it up, which is more than the 'Just Say No' brigade have.

Press the freedom button

Some people are surprised at how little television I watch. I'm a bit like my local boozer, which has a telly in the corner, but it has a little sign underneath it that reads 'News and Sport Only.'

Basically, down the pub, the box goes on if there's a big game on, or for the Six-One news. All other times, it rests in blissful silence. I've adopted a similar policy.

This doesn't mean that no telly gets watched in our house. My other half is still an addict, and after a hard day's graft, like so many people, she likes to sprawl on the sofa and zone out in front of the goggle box.

I've long since learnt to either leave the room or ignore the prattle of the box in a zen-like fashion when she's watching.

This is not to say that there aren't things I might like to watch. But generally, those are few and far between. They tend to be documentaries about nature or history, or movies I haven't seen.

But the annoyance of having a programme broken up by hard-sell advertising, or on at an odd hour, simply doesn't suit me. So if I want to see those documentaries or movies, I simply go and rent them from the video store or download them (in an entirely legal manner, when available, of course!)

My objection to television is a scientific one - research has linked TV watching to everything from childhood obesity to attention deficit disorder and autism among kids. Leaving your child in front of the boobtube is not the easy alternative to childminding you might have thought it was.

And for adults, the effects of television are just as baleful. Television watching causes insomnia, stress, indolence, obesity, and it doesn't educate, despite what its makers might tell you.

So dangerous is television to health that doctors are now being advised to monitor their patients' viewing habits as part of a general health check-up.

Television is anti-social, ruins public gathering places and the art of conversation, and erodes children's ability to create their own playtimes. It is the ideal tool for advertisers, short of beaming ads onto the inside of your eyelids, as the audience will mindlessly sit in front of their sales pitches for hours upon hours without moving.

It's time to turn off the demon in the corner of the room. Time to reclaim your leisure time and do something useful with it.

When I was a nipper, there was a TV programme on BBC during school holidays called 'Why Don't You...?' It was aimed at encouraging slothful kids out of the couch and outside to do something with their time that was useful. That impulse seems to be too ironic and subversive for contemporary TV producers. The programme was dropped years ago.

There is an organisation aimed at encouraging more people to free themselves from TV slavery. They are called White Dot. Ironically enough, I came across them on the television. They once used the media format they abhor to broadcast a documentary about the evils of television watching.

One of the exercises they suggested to the viewing public was so potent it has stuck with me, affecting my own viewing patterns and indeed my life as a whole. I urge you to try it yourself.

Get a shaving or make-up mirror and position it on top of your television so that when you sit in your favourite chair or couch, you can see your own reflection.

Then turn on the telly and start watching.

Wait for a moment of high drama, the sort of screaming match in the pub that soap operas love to portray, and look up suddenly from the screen to the mirror. See what you're doing while these imaginary people are living life in top gear.

Or turn over to a nice holiday show. When Kathryn Thomas is skiiing down the alps or scuba-diving in the Seychelles, look up from the box to the mirror and take note of what you're up to.

After a day or two with the mirror on the TV, you'll soon realise that a small cohort of actors and presenters are living a wonderful life which your indolence is paying for. By sitting in front of the box immobile, you facilitate the adverts and the funding that pays for their fantastic careers and existence.

While you, meanwhile, are doing nothing more than vegetating on your couch as life passes you by.

When that sinks in fully, you'll start watching less television, becoming truly discerning about your viewing, and eventually you'll be only turning it on to catch up with the news.

And many hours of your day will open up to you suddenly. In this time-precious world, you'll have freed up more hours in the day than you know what to do with.

So use your life. Write a novel, dig the garden, go for a walk, meet some friends for a pint, take up a hobby, or go to evening classes and learn a new skill or language.

Just as no one yet said on their deathbed, "I wish I'd done more overtime at work", no one is recorded to have said "I wish I'd watched more telly" either.

Join White Dot. Press the freedom button to turn the goggle box off, and reclaim your life today.

Redefining the English language

I'm getting well annoyed by continual attempts by various lobbies to redefine aspects of the English language to suit themselves and their narrow agendas.

The latest stunt comes from those obesity-peddlars McDonald's, who are apparently so miffed at the usage of the word 'McJob' that they want to change it.

Of course they want to change it. The word, which has been current for decades, is understood to mean a crappy, low paying job with few decent conditions and little security in an appalling fast food or other menial environment.

Which is extremely apt, since those are exactly the sort of jobs generally on offer in McOutlets.

But Guardian writer Brian Whitaker has uncovered an attempt by the corporation to redefine the word, as it is apparently insulting to restaurant staff. No it isn't. It's insulting to the corporation. It's the wages and conditions offered by the corporation that are insulting to the staff.

This comes hard on the heels of Israel's continual attempts to redefine anti-semitism as meaning anti-anything Israeli or Jewish. No, anti-semitism is a bigotry against semitic people, as the word clearly expresses.

And obviously Israel would love to change that meaning, since their defence forces, by way of continually terrorising and murdering the semitic people of Palestine, are the biggest anti-semites on Earth.

They've sought to change the meaning by getting sympathetic (ie Zionist) academics in America and elsewhere to write ponderous and dubious essays redefining anti-semitism to mean just what they want it to mean and not what it actually means.

They cleverly plugged into the whole Politically Correct movement for redefining language in order to achieve this. But it's still rubbish, and merely a slimy attempt to eradicate the Zionist responsibility for the bloodbath that is the Middle East.

Languages grow organically. Let people who speak a language decide what words mean, not narrow lobbies with political agendas.

Ever since the homosexual community successfully redefined the meaning of the word 'gay', it has been tempting for other lobbies to seek to put their own sheen on the language.

Don't let them. A McJob is still a McJob, no matter what McDonalds say, and anti-semitism is still bigotry against Semites, bigotry like nicking their land, killing their kids and stealing the money that they're owed.

Happy Paddy's Day

Happy Paddy's Day to all Irish people everywhere, both fake and real, and especially to the Irish international rugby team, who are on the verge of claiming their first Six Nations Championship today, and to the Irish international cricket team, who are on the verge of claiming a historic one-day international victory over test giants Pakistan.

Good luck to both the rugby and cricket teams today. Hope you do Ireland proud.

Edit: And a Belfast touch judge in Paris has given the championship to France by gifting them an inconclusive try. Shame. Good luck to the cricketers, who are storming the Pakistanis at the moment.

Further edit: Pakistan are 132 all out. That's a stunning display from Ireland. They've given themselves every chance of taking a huge scalp here.

I beg to differ

As I chow down on my lunchtime smoked salmon bagel, it's probably not immediately apparent how sympathetic I am towards people suffering very deprived circumstances.

But I am. There have been times I've had little or nothing to my name except debt. There have been times between work when I had to get three days of meals out of a couple of quid and some old cans of beans.

There's even been the odd night I've found myself with nowhere to stay, though I've only ever had to crash outdoors once.

So in real ways, I can empathise with the sort of people you see in the centre of pretty much every sizeable Western European town, the bummed-out grubby faces crouched against a wall, clasping a paper cup.

If I don't smell drink, I'll often hand over a bit of change to them, though I'm well aware that it makes more sense and gets more done to give the few quid to the Simon Community instead.

However, just because I understand how close most of us are to being on the streets ourselves (only three paychecks according to one survey) doesn't mean I think it should be legal to beg.

Which, since this morning, it now is in Ireland, thanks to a madcap ruling by Mr Justice Eamon De Valera (undoubtedly a relation of old Bignose).

The 1847 vagrancy act, a Victorian legal relic from the British statute books, had its section relating to jailing beggars struck down after it was challenged by former student Niall Dillon, who presumably had fallen on hard times.

The result is that it is now legal to beg in Ireland.

I am still trying to get my head around the idea that legalising begging is necessary because it being illegal was an infringement of people's right to self-expression. How is begging a form of self-expression? Surely it's harrassing strangers for cash, which is really annoying not to mention intimidating for the alone, elderly, female, or infirm?

So while I'm all for initiatives to eradicate poverty, and remove the desperate deprivation many people find themselves in, giving out carte blanche to all and sundry to come and beg on my doorstep has to be the stupidest move I've ever heard of.

There are great reasons for begging being illegal. If you're skint and can't beg, you try to get off your backside and find paid employment. But if it's free and easy to beg, then why not do that? Beats working for a living, after all.

It's no secret that many of those currently begging in Dublin city centre are organised into gangs and a significant livelihood amounting to thousands of euro a day is being gained by one begging gang of East European extraction alone.

Methods to extract cash from the public include irritating a child so it constantly wails, 'selling' the Big Issue and asking for more than the cover cost, following people along the street with hand outraised, grabbing people as they walk past, and other even more intimidatory and unsavoury practices.

Giving money to a beggar doesn't solve their problems. It merely ensures they'll still be begging tomorrow. The Indian ad campaign against begging pictured above is particularly acute. Basically, begging is not acceptable and we all need to push people out of begging, not out of our way.

And obviously, legalising begging only pushes people into it.

Let's hope that the Government will be as quick to respond to this gap in the law as they were when they accidentally legalised grooming children for sexual abuse earlier this year.

Man plans, Cod laughs

There's something fishy about this. Apparently, codfish in the North Atlantic are dying out.

Well, no shit, Sherlock. My fishmonger could have told you that. Cod used to be a staple in poor households that couldn't afford meat, even the cheap cuts. Nowadays, fresh cod is rarer and more expensive than smoked salmon.

But according to the wonks behind this study, it's nothing to do with the fact that we've had half of all boats in Europe out dredge-netting the region for cod for the past forty years.

It's global warming. Isn't it always global warming?

But if it was global warming, then why aren't the cod being found further north, up by Iceland?

This EU-funded research neatly sidesteps blaming overfishing by the European fleet for devastating cod stocks. And anyone who believes its thesis that we haven't wiped out cod simply by eating too many of them will be prepared to let the same boats overfish the next species.

Global warming is becoming a cover story for all sorts of other nasties. It's a classic example of vested interests hijacking the environmental banner for their own reasons.

An ancient Jewish saying has it that while man plans, God laughs. Well, if we plan fish stocks and fishing rights on the basis of this type of junk science, then the last laugh's on us. Apart from the cod, who we'll have eaten to extinction by then.

By the way, that picture of the man with the fish above? That's the size a cod is supposed to grow to. When was the last time you saw a cod that size? When was the last time you saw a cod, full stop?

Gambling is a mug's game

Gambling is a mug's game.

Paddy Power didn't announce record profits for the umpteenth year in a row due to the amount of cash he's giving away, you know?

Nevertheless, gambling gets more and more popular every year. Now, I have an unusual perspective on gambling. I once worked as a professional croupier. I used to see all sorts come through the doors of the casino, blinded by the neon lights and the sheer James Bondness of it all.

And this in a sleepy South of England town! Most would leave a few hours later, down a few quid but having in many cases enjoyed themselves. After all, if they'd kept their punting to a certain level, they'd have spent less than they might have otherwise in the pub, and at least they wouldn't be waking with a blinding hangover the next day.

But there was always one or two who couldn't let it lie. A former soap star used to drive up to our casino in order not to be spotted in the plush London clubs. He'd regularly blow most of his not insubstantial wages on a single Saturday night.

He could've and probably should've been down the Ivy or some other West End glamspot, trying to score with vampy wannabes and sipping Cosmopolitans. Instead he was up with us, in the quiet hush of a regional casino, handing over his hard-earned.

The saddest case was a little old lady who'd come in every Friday evening with a plastic bag full of used notes. We used to wildly speculate on where she got the cash, which often topped three grand.

She never left till the early hours, and usually with virtually nothing left. Her game was roulette, and the little ball just didn't seem to favour her one bit.

One day, I was in a distant part of town, hoping to hook up with a guy who was selling some concert tickets. I stopped off in a little corner shop to buy some smokes and there she was, behind the till. Throughout the shop, the shelves were mostly empty.

She looked sheepish, and I couldn't meet her eye. Clearly, she was losing the shop's take on a weekly basis. I bought the smokes, attended the concert and then left the job within a couple of weeks.

I used to play poker long before it was online or popular. My friends, even my acquaintances, won't play me anymore, even though it's very likely they'd take my money these days, as my interest in the game waned in indirect proportion to its popularity. I haven't played much since they started televising it and sticking it online.

But I used to like the game. It's a cold hard mix of luck and skill. And it's beautifully karmic, unlike most gambling.

If you've got a lot of chips in front of you, somewhere across the table, someone you know has lost them. You've got to be able to look them in the eye and accept that, even as you have to look them in the eye and accept it when they've got the chipstack and you're the one on your uppers.

Back in 2000, a pal and me decided to find out could we make a living as professional gamblers. Not at poker, but by punting on sports mainly. We reckoned we knew as much about the games as the odds layers, and had a good eye for a decent bet.

We kept detailed and accurate accounts of all bets for a year exactly. At the end of it all, I was up about six hundred quid, my pal back around four hundred. We'd actually done the bookies out of a grand in cash!

However, when I worked out the hourly rate of income, ie how many hours had I spent reading, researching and thinking about my bets that it had taken to make that six hundred quid, it soon became apparent that gambling would never replace going out and earning a living.

Then a couple of years afterwards, I was in a pub in Rathmines, (South Dublin for the uninitiated), and met a bloke who worked as an odds setter for one of the big bookmaking firms. He told me, in tedious detail, about the form, home life and personal circumstances of even youth team members of Irish football teams.

He had to know that detail in order to set the odds, and he wasn't the only one employed in that capacity. A few times a week, he and his peers would gather and argue the toss over every soccer and GAA game, discussing likelihoods of certain players taking the pitch and so on.

It quickly became apparent that I'd never know as much about the games I had a punt on as the guys laying the odds. In other words, I'd been pretty damn lucky back in 2000.

So it seems to me, having been both sides of the table and lived through it without losing my shirt, that gambling is a mug's game. I'll still go out and stick a few quid on a football game that I'm attending or watching on telly, just to heighten the interest as it were.

But I've long dispensed with ideas of making money out of the passtime. I never frequent card clubs or casinos now, don't play any poker, and crucially I bet buttons rather than serious amounts of money.

I view stories of people suffering from gambling problems with dismay. Medical research shows that gambling is as potent an addiction as cocaine. I consider the development of 'super-casinos' in Britain as short-termist and highly dangerous. I'm very concerned about the proliferation of card clubs and online gambling in Ireland.

But I wouldn't ban it. It's unbannable. Gambling would only go underground, back to the shady criminal class who once oversaw all punting. Instead, I place my few quid on the odd game or event I have an interest in anyway, and permit lady luck to do her best and worst, safe in the knowledge that the rent is never at risk.

If only everyone could obtain the same perspective on gambling, I'd feel a lot better about giving money to and taking money from the bookies.

People sometimes ask me for tips, as if I have any great insight into the wheel of fortune from having spun it professionally for a while. I don't generally offer any, because I don't want to be anyone's enabler.

But just this once, I'll mention a bet I've placed. I think the odds are good, and I think it could come off. But if it doesn't, please don't blame me. And whatever you do, don't chase your losses if it or any other bet you place loses.

The SDLP are being priced at 2/1 to retain their 18 seats in the Stormont Assembly elections this week. I think those are generous odds. I've put some pin money where my mouth is. We'll know on Thursday if I'm up or down. But either way, it's just a bit of fun.

After Thursday, when the results are all in and the parties sit down to decide whether to go into power sharing again or not, that's when the serious business begins. And if ever there was some future event I'd love to influence, it's that one, not any bet I've ever made.

If you have a gambling problem or if you thing you might do, please click here.

Who said Americans were stupid?

Aussie broadcasters reveal the true extent of the average American's idiocy and lack of knowledge of the world.

Q. Which countries are in the axis of evil?
A. California, New York, Florida, Mississippi...

Watch and weep!

Irish Bishops condemn Israel

Congratulations to the delegation of Irish bishops who yesterday called on the EU and Ireland to review their ties to the apartheid state of Israel, after concluding that the Zionist regime had turned Gaza into little more than a large prison for the indigenous Palestinian population.

I hope that when they address their concerns to An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, they will be listened to. I hope also that their meeting with Ahern will result in a severing of trading ties with the regime, which was accurately described by the Bishops as conducting an injustice upon the Palestinian people.

Injustice is a very mild word for stealing someone else's homes, systematically killing them and herding them into large open air prisons behind huge walls (see above and here), harrassing them as they try to move about and work in their own land, and denying them access to their families and medical treatment when they find themselves on the 'wrong' side of such illegal barriers.

The illegal Israeli regime, which has long survived only due to being propped up by American money and weapons, is always quick to denounce those who condemn the horrors they perpetrate as anti-semitic.

In fact, they are the true anti-semites, as they steal the land from the Semitic Palestinian people and allocate it to fake Jews imported from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia to serve as soldiers and service industry underclass to the Ashkenazi elite.

It is high time, as the Bishops have said, that the people of Europe stand up and denounce this shoddy, apartheid regime and the genocide they are seeking to commit on the Palestinian people.

And it is high time that our own government showed some leadership in this regard by severing ties with such an abhorrent entity.