We are the galactic spear-chuckers

Remember these images?

These are one of the few remaining uncontacted indigenous tribes left on Earth. They were spotted by planes who scour the Amazon to find where such tribes may be living, primarily with the intention of ensuring that they are left alone.

On first perusal, given the many horrible precedents that exist, especially in the Americas, for what happens when uncontacted tribes meet the modern world, that seems like a sensible policy.

Live and let live and all that.

For this tribe, as for similar tribes in the Andaman Islands, New Guinea and a few other pockets, life is an eternal Stone Age, with no inkling or conception of the huge and developed modern civilisations that surround them, threatening to engulf them.

I wonder about whether stranding people in pre-history is a good thing or not. Equally, this lot didn't seem to be very welcoming to outsiders.

But I also wonder if perhaps the entire human race are in fact the neolithic spear chuckers of the universe.

One of the great questions raised by astronomy and the vastnesses of the known universe it has uncovered for us is that of alien life. With so many opportunities for life to develop elsewhere in the universe, it is frankly unthinkable that this planet would be the sole example of a life-bearing planet.

So, in that case, if the universe teems with life, why hasn't it contacted us? There are a few possible answers: the lifeforms aren't conscious; they are way too far away to get in touch; the universe is huge and we're far out from the galactic centre and perhaps they haven't found us yet despite our radio waves and Voyager.

For leading physicist Stephen Hawking, there's no doubt life is out there. And in a new documentary, he explains why he thinks it might not be benevolent towards us.

"If aliens ever visit us, I think the outcome would be much as when Christopher Columbus first landed in America, which didn’t turn out very well for the Native Americans," he explains.

Which brings me back to my moral conundrum.

We no longer enforce contact with civilisation upon Stone Age tribes because all our previous experience of doing so indicates that it is damaging, in terms of health, well-being, population size, and a number of other measures, to the indigenous peoples involved.

Without any example of a successful encounter between civilisation and such a tribe, we must assume that the reason why life in the universe has not contacted us is not actually because they fear us, but possibly because they fear what impact they would have on us.

Perhaps Earth is little more than a couple of straw huts, galactically speaking. Perhaps our solar system is nothing more than an empty corner of rainforest where no one goes.

In galactic terms, perhaps we are the spear chuckers.

The Pleasure Instinct

I've been reading Dr Gene Wallenstein's book slowly, because I'm not as up on the minutiae of brain receptors and human evolutionary development as perhaps I should.

Likely, neither are you. Hey, we have busy lives, right? So let me summarise part of what he says in this biological study of where pleasure comes from.

The human brain transits information and processes information by way of a massively complex system of biochemical transmitters and receptors.

Different receptors respond to different biochemicals, and hence are known as systems. Some of these biochemicals have cognate chemicals (ie they function the same as the body-built versions) in the real world.

Four systems appear to govern pleasure. The mesolimbic dopamine system is primarily in charge of wanting.

Then there appears to be three systems that oversee liking, the reinforcement mechanism of pleasure. According to the good doctor, these are the opioid system, the cannabinoid system and the GABA-benzodiazapene system.

Yes, you read that right. The human pleasure system rewards us (the liking half of the wanting and liking equation) with natural opioids, cannabinoids and benzodiazapene.

You may have guessed at the real-world cognates of those body-generated biochemicals: smack, weed and your classic tranquilisers.

Is it any wonder that drug addiction is so difficult to treat and so misunderstood by the populace in general, when the human brain rewards itself with substances which can now be bought on a street corner for a few quid in highly potent (if not downright toxic) forms?

But for all the poetry and lyrical words we opine about our human happinesses and the things we take pleasure in, ultimately pleasure comes down to a shot of brain-brewed smack, weed or tranks.

Even if what you're actually getting high on is a beautiful sunset, sex or a bar of chocolate.

There's a sobering thought, eh?

Stop voting like your Grandad did

One of the many problems with the Irish electoral system (whose PR-STV system is pretty excellent) is that too many people vote tribally.

Not tribally like in the headcount that passes for political elections in the North, but tribally nonetheless.

Even stupider is the fact that there is no overriding sovereignty issue dividing the tribes in the South. It's an antique inheritance from the civil war. Why else do people continually vote FF and FG? Primarily because they consider themselves of the respective tribe.

I always find it fascinating when people cut loose from inherited opinion and think for themselves. To this end, the extension of VoteMatch to include Northern Ireland is fascinating.

My results didn't surprise me:
SDLP 51%
Sinn Fein 45%
Alliance 37%
UUP 35%
DUP 28%

What did surprise me what how little I agree with ANY of the parties on major issues. Hence I shouldn't be surprised when half of what the SDLP choose to do infuriates me, and more than half of what the Shinners do.

I'd love to see a version for the Republic. I think probably three-quarters of the electorate might be surprised to find how little they agree with the people they vote for. Perhaps they might even change their voting patterns as a result.

Wouldn't that be revolutionary?

Well, it would beat holding a sit-in with five mates at the Anglo-Irish Bank on a Saturday.

Just can't keep their hands to themselves

French footballers, that is.

As if palming the ball into the net to cheat Ireland out of a World Cup final place was not ignominy enough, the French national soccer team appear to be grasping for ever greater shame.

Two of their most prominent players have just been questioned by police over allegations that they may have slept with underage prostitutes.

Or, as we call them in the civilised world, children.

Anonymous footballer's defence? The all-time classic (well, it worked here in Ireland and we're still waiting for the corrective surgery on the constitution), "I thought she was older."

I wonder how old he thought she was. Older than 27 year old married Muslim Franck Ribery? Older than 30 year old Sidney Govou, father to a five year old girl?

The age of consent in France is, incidentally, 18. The prostitute on at least one occasion is believed to be younger than that. And of course, the concept of 'consent' is highly debatable in a context rife with pimps.

What charming role models the French football team are for young people, altogether.

At this point, they couldn't accrue more negative publicity if it emerged that they sacrifice downs syndrome children to Satan before each game.

Cheats. And now (allegedly) child rapists.

The JC Skinner guide to trekking and camping

1. Backpacks are for poor people and students. Instead of carrying an unwieldy backpack, why not travel lightly and stylishly, bringing only a briefcase into the wilderness instead?

2. Hiking boots take too long to lace up. Instead, equip your feet with a nice pair of blue suede brothel creepers. They may not have quite the same grip when you're scaling rocks, but they are infinitely better looking.

3. Make sure you pack all the essentials for spending time in the wilderness. A hipflask of whiskey provides warmth, comfort, entertainment and functions as a decent insect repellant.

4. When trekking in hot weather, some people make the mistake of stripping down to light clothing, then slathering themselves in sunscreen to avoid burning. This is easily resolved by instead hiking in a full three piece suit with Panama hat, thereby ensuring no skin needs to be emolliated.

5. Make sure to stay up late drinking each night. After all, what is the wilderness for if not for raucous singing that would bring the police to your door in any urban environment? Don't worry about hangovers. Scientific research indicates that they hurt less than hiking across mountains in the first place.

6. Remember there are no emergency medical facilities in the wilderness, especially not in Third World wildernesses. So try not to fall off mountains, drown, pick fights with forest-dwelling freedom fighters or anything else that might lead to a slow and agonising death. On the other hand, poking tarantula nests with sticks and yelling at bears can be fantastic fun.

7. Of course, you could just stay in the nearest five star resort instead.

Volcano cloud closes in - Continent sealed off

Attention: News Editors

Pictures Editors

Transport / Environ Corrs.

Media Invitation

This evening, Micheal Panic-Stricken, Third Deputy Acting Assistant Secretary, Department of Transport, will brief the media after a meeting of the Government Taskforce on Half-Arsed Planning and Iodine Tablet Distribution, concerning the ongoing issue involving the volcanic ash cloud OF DOOM.

You are invited to attend or to send a representative, or are otherwise advised to paint your windows with white paint, and hide under the table or else in a cupboard until the all-clear is sounded," he whimpered earlier today.

"While it is true that Ireland is now sealed off from the civilised world, this is no reason for alarm," insisted Mr Panic-Stricken. "Ye could hide out up North if the dissidents haven't derailed the Enterprise. And the government has worked hard to ensure the continued ferry services from Dublin and Rosslare."

"We understand that many would-be emigrants are concerned that their attempts to leave this moribund, depressed, jobless shithole could be undone by this tragic volcanic disaster. But we are where we are, right under the volcanic cloud OF DOOM, so it's only by reverting to our traditional strengths - exporting people by boat like cattle - that we can ensure the ongoing green shoots of recovery."

Venue: Civil Service Banqueting Hall, National Emergency Co-ordination Centre, Kildare St., Dublin 2.

Refreshments: Tay and hang sangwiches (made with guaranteed dioxin-free pork) will be made available. Out-of-date iodine tablets will be served for dessert.

Last of the last

According to this morning's Bangkok Post, Europe is the last region to recover economically from the global financial disasters of the past few years.

While the US is showing the fabled green shoots, and Asia is en route to booming again, sluggardly old Europe is lagging behind with barely perceptible growth, major unemployment and ongoing banking crises.

And of course, Ireland is one of the weakest economies in Europe, which given the stiff competition from other messes like Portugal and Greece is pretty dire indeed.

The moral of the story is that we are last of the last, likely to still be suffering from NAMA hangovers long after the rest of the world economies are back on track.

It must be remembered that this is a direct result of the failures in government; the blatantly corrupt and incompetent Fianna Fail aided and abetted by the dewy-eyed amateurs of the Green Party.

If we don't hold them to account, and their hangers-on (the parish pump gombeen independent TDs, the banksters, the specudevelopers) they'll only do it all over again, as they've continually done so since the birth of the state.

Frankly, only an injection of backbone and hard work is going to sort Ireland out now, even if we do rid ourselves of the Fianna Fail cancer.

Where is that going to come from? Hardly from the boatloads of Nigerian scamsters and Roma beggars we imported like idiots to parasite off our ailing economy.

The only place it can come from is the greater Irish nation itself - the Irish in America who are sick of being patronised and ripped off by us, the Irish in Argentina still wrongfully denied their heritage by the racists in the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Irish in Britain and most of all the nearly 2 million Irish in the North.

We're going to have to throw ourselves properly on their mercy and ask for help. But only after we demonstrate our own intent to roll up the sleeves and do the hard work too.

Otherwise, we're going to be the last of the last for quite some time.

The definition of delayed gratification

Apparently, the oul fella, who has had a few run-ins healthwise in recent times, finally opened the bottle of rare and exceedingly expensive whiskey I bought him rather a long time ago indeed.

His verdict?

"The best I've had."

My response?

"Can I have some?"

His response?

"Get yer own!"

Napoleon's complex

It shows you how utterly irrelevant feminism has become when short-arsed misogynist Frenchman Nicolas Sarkozy is doing more for women's dignity than that entire movement.

Paralysed as always on the crux of multiculturalist relativism, feminists have said nothing and done nothing for the plight of women across the majority of the planet who remain in illiterate, uneducated, abused, indentured poverty.

Instead, dazzled by their own petty concerns, they have adapted what was supposed to be a liberation movement into a shopping list of entitlements they want the state to pay for, like child care, or their endless quangos.

Meanwhile, the man with the Napoleon complex, the model Mrs and the platform shoes has decided correctly that there is no room for the Muslim full face veil in France.

There is no room for it because it erodes female dignity, despite what some token female Muslims might spout about it giving them freedom from sexualisation and so on. There will always be the house niggers who are happy to support their own slavery. They must be ignored, and Sarkozy has rightly done so.

Let's remember that there is no provision in Islam demanding that this shameful item of clothing be worn by women. Only in despotic Medieval regimes like Saudi or Somalia is it the norm, and even there only because of the existence of drug-crazed militias or morality police to enforce the law.

People are knocking on the doors of Europe all the time. They seem desperate to come here and sample European living. Well, it's long time past that everyone was reminded that living in Europe is not compatible with living in the Seventh century.

Well done, Nicolas. Let's hope the rest of Europe follows suit.

Irish Embassies I've known and loved (and paid for)

I meant to write a post to all the Irish Embassies I've known and loved back when people got their knickers in a twist about our man in Canada getting $11 million to do up his official residence.

I reckoned then as I do now that if people actually knew the opulence of some of our gaffs abroad, there'd be crowds marching with pitchforks and burning crosses towards the Department of Foreign Affairs' HQ at Iveagh House.

One of the embassies I enjoyed the most was the Ambassador's residence in one European country I'm not going to name.

I met the daughter of our chap there on the plane out, and since she was an acquaintance and a nice sort, she invited me round to the official residence. This was fortunate, since my mate who lived in the country had an urgent need of a new passport.

So I belled him on arrival and told him I'd not be staying at his place, and to get his ass around to the residence with a handful of identification, money and some small, square, portrait photos.

We entered via a secure gate and took a private elevator up to the residence. The door opened into a room best described as an indoor football pitch, with angora carpets in each corner, around which were arranged four sofas. That, for the mathematically challenged, is 16 sofas in total.

There was another fellow there, a foreign national though not from the country we were in. He was a pal of our chap and was busy knocking together a joint at the far end of the room. From amid a plume of smoke, he deftly sent the ashtray sliding over the parquet floor towards my sofa.

Our chap greeted me and my mate (and the daughter) warmly with some nice wine. I sat back, supped and inhaled. I had arrived!

That was just the residence. There was an embassy elsewhere of course. Now, Iveagh House would no doubt point to the need for the ambassador to socialise, greet dignitaries, host Paddy's Day piss-ups and so on. But I could simply not get over that football pitch-sized front room. In a city with pretty expensive rents, that gaff cost a mint. And it was rented. And we pay the rent.

Another time, in Africa, I ran into a spot of bother in Mozambique. My problem was that I went on the rampage with some aid workers (the only Irish in the country, apart from some mine owners and the embassy staff) and they told me about this amazing building.

It was built into the cliff overlooking the bay. It was reputedly the most expensive building ever built in the entire country. And it was, of course, the Irish embassy. My problems began when I went out to try and photograph it.

A load of dangerous-looking wide boys with guns were straight out, wanting to know what I was doing. I tried to explain that I was an Irish citizen, taking a nice picture of our embassy. But that wasn't permitted. In short, I was lucky to escape a beating.

A few days later, back across the border in South Africa, I had my passport nicked in Jo'burg airport. I had to head out to Pretoria to get it replaced. Our embassy there was a rented second floor office in a dodgy neighbourhood.

Oddly, it was this embassy that dealt with most of the neighbouring countries. So all the people in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and Zambia as well as South Africa, who were looking for visas to Ireland or trying to get passports on the basis of Irish descent, had to go there.

One lad I met had driven down from Bulawayo (for the fourth time) with documents to prove he was entitled to a passport.

I've never understood why the embassy that did all the work was a shitehole we rented and yet we built the most amazing building for our embassy in a country with next to no Irish people in it.

Our gaff in Paris is notoriously splendid. I met a pissed-up DFA civil servant recently who confided in me that she was one of those who allocated the new third secretaries to their foreign postings.

Paris, she said, is nearly always everyone's first choice. She said she even joked about taking bribes from them, such was the demand to go there. She'd certainly been offered them once or twice in the past.

Rome is also palatial and a soft touch of a gig (except of course when crazy Irish people get slaughtered drunk at weddings and fall into the Tiber, or get mowed down by equally crazy drunk Italian drivers.)

And we have innumerable consulates and embassies in places you'd have to wonder whether they were strictly necessary. Eamon Delaney's book on working for Foreign Affairs in the United States - An Accidental Diplomat - is great on the Chicken and Ceili circuit of those postings.

In short, our foreign embassies and ambassadorial residences are a great racket altogether. The ones we need are underfunded. And there is so much unnecessary waste it's unbelievable in the others.

And let's not forget, it isn't just our man in Canada's gaff we're paying for back here in Ireland. It's all of them, plus the infamous COLA.

Mmm, doesn't it taste sweet!

Don't know about the COLA? It's the Cost of Living Allowance that all of them receive if they're in a country with a higher cost of living than Ireland. Which is pretty much nowhere these days, but needless to say the figures have been massaged to make it look like renting a mud hut in Chad is more expensive than running a mansion in Foxrock.

There have to be questions as to how much of this we can keep paying for. Micky Martin, current foreign minister, is apparently conducting a 'review' of our overseas missions, to decide whether we can close a few and save a few bob.

But when he was Health Minister, he commissioned hundreds of such reviews. Everytime there was a decision to be made, he kicked for touch and commissioned a report into it. That's why nothing happened for years.

So don't expect anything to happen now either. Our chaps in places from Canada to Mozambique will continue to enjoy their football pitch-sized living rooms and their COLA, while we keep stumping up the cash for them.

Aren't we the mugs?

Jail the taximen arseholes

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

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

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

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

And they were at it all around the country too.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Irishness of Protestants

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

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

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

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

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

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

But I think perhaps something else is feeding into this.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rhino-dating the Irish service sector

I've learnt quite a bit this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'd emigrate if I could

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

I couldn't blame him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lemmings led by beards

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The cult of AGW

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

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

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

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

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

Global warming, yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, not again!

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

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

Trevor caught by the Cutting Crew

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

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

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

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

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

Death by a thousand cuts

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

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

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

God only knows what you lot feel about it.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And exactly the same principle applies to the banksters too.

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

It takes a thief to spot global theft

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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