Cat Alive and Well in Andrews Office

Barry Andrews was a bit rubbish on Morning Ireland today, though I can’t decide if it was deliberate, or if he was conscious of the fact that things weren’t going according to plan.

I think the problem was with that last simple question – “when you were handed the report illustrating the extent of child abuse allegations against priests in the Cloyne diocese, did you read it it?” Even the way it was phrased, the tone, suggested that the question being asked was in fact “are you a f**king idiot?”.

Or maybe it’s just me. But isn’t that the kind of thing you read anyway? Did he really “not read” it, or is this some bizarre ministerial terminology meaning “I read it, but not in the sense that I can be held accountable for my (in)action following that reading”?

The apparent defence that he was following the procedure that is in place strikes me as strange, whether it’s true or not. Surely there’s more than one copy of this report. Did he pass on the original? Did nobody send him a pdf copy? Does he not own a photocopier? If nothing else, was he not a little curious?

Personally I can’t decide what’s worse. A minister for children who doesn’t feel the need to have a look at this kind of report, and oh, I don’t know, maybe act on the contents… or a junior minister earmarked for greatness who doesn’t have enough basic curiosity to turn a few pages while he’s waiting to pass the buck?

No more… knocking…

I know I’m late with this, but given the week that’s in it, bear with me.

FÁS, mid-mayhem, are pulling the plug on the Opportunities fair next year. According to the report in the Indo, it was a board decision. That board. The ones with the flights and the hair salons and all that malarky.

First off: timing lads, what are ye thinking? No matter what the reasoning, would you not rather stay out of the news til January if you don’t have anything good to say?

But more importantly, at the point where for the first time in as long as I can remember the whole country is aware that FÁS exists and we have a decent idea of what FÁS are supposed to be doing… eh, isn’t that exactly what you’re supposed to be doing?

Surely it would make more sense, if the finances are the reasoning, to sack a few board members (or, I don’t know, cut back on expenses there lads?) and instead of killing the Opportunities fair, big it up to the point where it’s the greatest jobs fair in the history of the world!?

Somebody or something needs to kick a bit of confidence back into the rest of us. And it’s not going to be a boy called Brian.

Celebrating Christianity at Christmas Time

Joy to the World.

Peace to all Mankind.

While you’re at it, love thy neighbour.

As long as they’re straight.

I wouldn’t mind but this man is held up as a beacon of hope, and love, and… humanity.

Yet every chance he gets he preaches hatred.

Sorry, not hatred. Reform. Adjustment. Treatment.

I don’t understand how anyone can defend that kind of comment from the head of a christian church. What happened to acceptance? What happened to everyone deserving God’s love? As long as they follow the rules? Nice kinda love.

It sickens me that this man can stand at a pulpit and proclaim himself infallible while dishing out such obvious incitement to hatred. How is he not up on hate crime charges? And why, oh why, shouldn’t he be?

Talk about killing christmas.

Fantasy land

One of the tabloids has a front page headline of footballer John O’Shea denying that he is gay.

The basis for the headline is the chanting of Manchester City fans at the recent derby game. Which, to be honest, should be proof enough that the ‘accusation’ that he may be gay is a load of rubbish.

But that’s not really the point.

Why couldn’t he just say “eh, so what if I was?”

Admittedly, this would be in a fantasy land where people accepted that, or where men who play sports were able to be straight or gay, which quite clearly doesn’t happen at the moment. I don’t care what the statistics say, there has never been a gay footballer or rugby player in this country. Ask the fans. Or the managers. Or Louis Walsh, since he’s an authority on these things apparently.

So back to fantasy land.

How long will it take for public figures like John O’Shea not to be afraid of the mere suggestion that he not automatically be assumed to be straight?

It almost makes it worse that he had to turn around and starting pointing at his fiancée - Look! A girl! I’m sleeping with a girl! I can prove it!

SO WHAT????

Jon Stewart had a nice little chat with Mike Huckabee about the acceptance or lack thereof of the gay community by the rest of us. If you haven’t seen it yet, take a look on youtube.

Drawing the line

Yesterday Dick Roche had a very bad day.

I’ll be the first to admit that Dick Roche has had quite a few bad days recently, or at least what the rest of must might have seen as a bad day for him. Various occasions when he was wheeled out before, during, and after that Lisbon malarky to be the face we could throw proverbial pies at.

But yesterday was a different kind of bad day. The kind when you wake up, go for your usual morning swim, and end up with a sawn-off shotgun pointed at you. No matter how bad a day the rest of us were having, most of us were lucky enough not to be faced with one of those.

I understand that things have gotten very tough very quickly for a lot of people here. I think it’s equally important to remember that things have been very tough for a lot of people all along. But a lot of the reaction to Dick Roche’s experience yesterday has painted an unfortunate picture of the kind of people we seem to have become.

I don’t think anyone enters “the public sphere” with the intention of having their lives taken over, and no amount of warning to that effect will change that. Equally I don’t think politicians generally begin their careers thinking “one day I’ll be famous, and it’ll be great”. Despite this, we seem to have developed a sense that anyone paid to hold some sort of public position is ours to do with what we will. So no matter how bad things get for them, or how personal something should remain, we take ownership, judge them, cast scorn upon them.

The case of politicians seems particularly extreme.

As I said, I’m not exactly a fan of Dick Roche. Far from it. I have very little respect for his work as a politician. That’s my own personal view, which I’m entitled to, just as the many voters who will likely re-elect him in the future have every right to disagree vehemently with my view. None of that excuses the level of vitriol and, frankly, spite, that has been spat his direction in the last 24 hours. When radio presenters have to avoid reading texts out on air because they are highly inappropriate you know there’s a problem.

The same tends to apply to Mary Harney across the board. She gets an incredibly hard time, and on many levels deserves it – when the focus is on her performance as Minister for Health. But the line is frequently crossed into far more offensive comments being made about her that are entirely out of order, and completely detached from the work she does or doesn’t do.

It’s something we see more and more in certain media, the belief that ‘celebrities’ must forego their right to privacy, and humanity, because they are paid to be subjected to outright abuse at any time of day or night.

I find it very strange, and quite scary.

Yesterday, Dick Roche cancelled his appointments for the day. The official reason given was that he was helping Gardaí with their enquiries. I would wonder why he had to give an official reason. The simple fact is that he was most likely traumatised, and the last thing he needed was to spend the day defending his admittedly shakey performance on Lisbon 1.

Not once yesterday did I hear anybody – anybody – ask,  is the man okay?

Plus ca change

Excuse the blatant absence of crucial symbols in title.

A vox pop on Newstalk’s Eamon Keane show earlier on has ruined my day a bit.

They were talking about the government taking big long holidays, and various ‘members of the public’ were giving their views on the general rubbishness of the government (well, that was the trend anyway).

So the report comes up to one guy, asking what he thinks of the government.

He replies that they’re lazy feckers and he’ll not vote for FF next time around.

So the reporter follows this up, fair enough, asking who he’ll vote for instead.

No, I won’t vote at all. Next time I do vote, it will be for Fianna Fáil again.

Democracy in action. Bravissimo.

If monkeys can write Hamlet…

If you’re planning ahead to Christmas 2009, here’s the perfect stocking-filler: Joe the Plumber’s book.

You couldn’t make it up. He won’t either. Ghostwriter central.

I can’t wait to see how the 2008 US election is recorded in history books in 20 years or more.

Unless Joe is the one writing those books. Which would be beyond scary.

Save Christmas, Music, and… the World…

For a long time now, shows like X Factor and the ‘artists’ they promote have done… bad things… to music, generally. In fact I’m tempted to wholeheartedly blame Louis Walsh for the whole thing, given that Westlife are his fault too.

This year they’ve gone too far.

The winner of X Factor will release a cover of Hallelujah as the Christmas Number One (presumed).

A generation of people will grow up thinking some Louis Cowell creation is the artist who created and performed the definitive version of that song.

This has to be stopped. It has to be.

Take a moment. Sign this petition. Promote it anywhere you can. Possibly send a few emails.

Then consider destroying all audio devices you own, since they’ll be permanently tainted by this travesty in the very near future.

Lisbon 2

Our esteemed Taoiseach will shortly announce that we get to play the Deja-Vu-Referendum game in the near future. All ideological arguments aside, I’m intrigued as to how they’re going to pay for it. And given the mood most people are in these days, particularly those who have lost their jobs or are about to, does it really seem like a good idea to hang €2 million worth of posters on our lamposts for a few weeks?

I’d be interested in some sort of scientific survey of the level of vandalism of referendum posters this time around compared with the last time we got asked the same question.

Anyway…

I can’t help feeling like Mr Cowen is trying to make up reasons to get kicked out of office. I just don’t see the new referendum working, unless they phrase it clearly as “Do you want in or out of the EU” – and even then, if Europe doesn’t stump up for the pig farmers quicksmart who knows how that will go.

The first Lisbon campaign was more than a little nasty – at times Q&A was unpleasant to watch – but the re-run can only be worse. Both sides will become that bit more polarised, and while the main political parties started from a position of strength last time around (which they blew, spectacularly) they are now on very uneven footing. Labour and Fine Gael are waivering on what question should actually be put and the last thing Fianna Fáil need is their apparent allies for the Lisbon Cause turning against them.

The bigger issue is that the No campaign will be strengthened by the simple fact that we’re being asked the same thing again. They don’t even need to talk about microchipped babies and all that jazz. They can invoke basic democracy, and them in FF don’t really have a leg left to stand on.

Whichever way it goes, any money spent on the second referendum can only be described as wasted cash. Money that could have been spent elsewhere – not to mention time, resources, energy. It would have taken very little to get it right first time, and again, even that is fuel for those who opposed Lisbon in the first place and who will now deem themselves to be the moral authorities on Lisbon 2.

Starting fights

There’s a myth in this country that anyone who sits the leaving cert in Irish gets 10% added on to their marks, just, you know, for the craic. DeV threw it into the constitution to make sure that those of us idiot enough to spend hours translating physics text books that were only available in English into Irish before we could start studying them could get into college easier. It’s all a big conspiracy against the ‘real’ people of Ireland, the ones proud enough to proclaim their hatred of their own language and wear that hatred like a badge of honour.

There’s a reality that goes along with that myth though.

The reality of attending an Irish language school in an area surrounded by supposedly ‘upper class’, ‘respectable’ English-speaking schools, whose pupils threaten and abuse you on a daily basis for daring to speak your language in a public place. The reality of never feeling safe passing near those schools or those pupils because sometimes they do attack. The reality that the lie of slapping 10% on whatever your mark is will get thrown in your face when you’re being attacked. One more stick to beat us with, as if that trick was never tried before.

An unreasonable amount of the time, being an Irish speaker in this country (you know, IREland) leaves me feeling like I have to be always on the defensive. Waiting for the latest attack on the language, and by the same token on me as a speaker of that language. It always gets personal, as if I am single handedly responsible for whatever teacher hated forcing the aimsir fháisteanach down your throat. It always gets nasty.

To the best of my knowledge – and I am open to correction here – I have never harmed anyone by speaking the language. I have long since stopped counting the number of times I have been harmed for speaking it. And yet the attacks keep coming, and in the so-called ‘public sphere’ it is considered acceptable, if not honorable, to question me and ‘my kind’.

Yesterday was the 50th anniversary of Peig Sayers‘ death. I’ll be the first to admit Peig wasn’t quite the Britney Spears of her day, but the fact remains she was a vital part of our cultural history. Yet she is mocked and berated and, even, hated. Louis de Paor was on newstalk yesterday speaking about her memoirs and the standard public reaction to having to study those memoirs – the fact that they were looked on as out of touch, too literary, etc. He pointed out the syllabus for English at the same time contained texts that were at least as obtuse, but nobody blames the entire English language for them.

I don’t know what can be done to reverse an entire generation’s active hatred of what should be their native tongue. I do know that passing that hatred on to another generation goes way beyond the realm of being counterproductive. So a little less of the convenient mythmaking wouldn’t go astray.

For the record, students who study and sit their exams in Irish get 10% of the marks they didn’t get.

So if you get 90%, 1% is added. So you get 91%, and so forth. In fact the only way you can get 10% is by getting a straight zero on the exam, in which case that 10% really isn’t going to get you anywhere.

It may also be useful to note that in no Irish-speaking school I’ve ever seen do the pupils dance around at lunchtime chanting “Yippee, we got 10% free!” all day. They’re usually too busy translating books that are only available in English into the language they will spend the rest of their lives defending against irrational, neverending abuse.