Wagons Wesht...

PD: Right, I'm ready ready ready, ready to run!

DM: The Dixie Chicks, eh??

PD: What can I say, I like the cut of their jip! Some candidate somewhere in the shticks is also probably playing Long Time Gone out a megaphone system in between appeals for a number one vote, so chalk it down to nostalgia.

DM: Well we had Jennifer Murnane-O'Connor of Fianna Fail driving her Battle Bus...hatchback round our estate with a very large loudspeaker calling for Carlow to have a university. It was like The Last of The High Kings around here...Really it resembled the German capitulation in Downfall, though...

PD: I think you can tell a lot about a constituency based on the wagons used to convey The Message. A hatchback in Carlow, august university town that it is, is one thing, but in Donegal you need a tractor

Case in point.

As for Kerry...what's the name of that thing John  Wayne and Maureen O'Hara were corting on in The Quiet Man?

DM: I think it was heavily censored lust, no? A love of Shamrock Rovers and ginge? I love the fact his name as actually Marian...

PD: That's interesting actually because Marian Finucane's real name is John.

DM: It all makes sense: and they both sound the same too: "Now Noel Whelan, will ye take em to Missouraaaa*wheezes*"

It was pulled by the only Green party member in Kerry. The trapped him wit the promise of organic Latte. Dead giveaway in Chiarrai.

PD: Ah, Noel Whelan, he's like what you'd get if you crossed an expert statistician with Springfield's education strongman Leopold. It looks like Kerry are going to elect two Healy-Raes this year, their numbers are good and as this attempt at Bohemian Rhapsody proves, vote management is being well thought through. Is this the renaissance for drink driving we've all been waiting for?

DM: are you LOCAAAAAL? Arthur Spring seen blacking out some of his teeth for the last week's canvass...But it does bring us to the big question: who the hell is going in and what's going on with all the polls. Which are plainly insane....

PD: A Labour guy who does something as notiony as run a smoothie bar would need more than that in Kerry these days mind. You're quite right though, the polls are bizarre like the lyrics of New Zealand's finest pop song  I mean, in Kerry Martin Ferris is apparently in trouble (and not in the usual way) yet in Clare Sinn Fein look likely to win a seat, where they've not been strong since DeValera was dressing up as a lady to break from prison.

DM: That was purely a comfort thing, Dev was always more of a coulottes kinda gal...it got worse with the conflicting reports as to how much Labour will be destroyed next Friday, though one local of Joan Burton's constituency, who was by no means antipathetic towards Labour said she was in big trouble. So it must be true...

PD: This local, It wasn't Leo Varadkar was it?

DM: Now that you mention it, the blond wig and boots didn't sit right...

But of I could offer Joanie some last minute advice:  stop referring to Inda as 'a certain special/important/doe-eyed individual. You will get this reaction:

PD: At last, a viable definition and use of Fiscal Space!

DM: *grabs bucket and pulls to face* Thanks Paddy *wipes chin* But speaking of fiscal space, and made up numbers, Mary Lou had the best line claiming to Ivan Yates that SF's numbers weren't plucked out of hers or anyone else's arse...

PD: "Has Gerry Adams being hiding poll numbers up his hoop for over forty years?"

DM: That would explain his eerie smile...So any predictions at this late stage, other than a lack of political leaders who want to go on Sean O'Rourke?

PD: In fairness, you'd be mad to go on with Sean, Destroyer of Distressingly Crafted Messages. Hmm, let's see...I predict leather jacket catalogue model Eamon Ryan will win in Dublin Bay South, a constituency which sounds like it does the best carvery this side of the M50. I predict Sinn Fein will win 7 out of the 18 Border seats but Gerry will resign, the party leadership to Mary Lout or Pearse, the best beard title going to Padraig MacLochlainn. I predict Galway West's count will last until the next election. And I really think it's only a matter of time before Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow get together again.

DM: Yip. I just dread to think which Irish politico will do a Gwynneth adn claim to have the rear of a 22 year old pole dancer...

PD: f you download TDer.ie you might find out...

DM: AS for the rest, brace yourself, because by next week, I think a few more of the over 60's could be culled. And if he's not careful Enda wil be dictating/asking Frank Flannery to write his memoirs earlier than he thought...

PD: I agree. Enda really has to shape up or the only thing he'll have successfully recovered is Fianna Fail.

DM: Sad but true. They're four points off and despite RTE's protestations yesterday, FG's message ain't hitting home. unless he's a sleeper, placed in FG by JAck Lynch. And 'Fiscal Space' was the trigger phrase...#mayonchuriancandidate

Worse yet, Labour TDs are very much hitting home, as in this time next week most of them will be staying in watching Jeremy Kyle in their slippers. Mind you, it's a bit more civilised than the Dail anyway...

Paddy & Don's National Conversation

In February 2016, friends and wiseacres Paddy Duffy and Don Morgan wanted to take their comic chops and political interest and provide the sort of sharp, rolling election coverage that other places just can't reach...but they were both had a lot on.

So last weekend, before Big Gerry Adams demonstrated where Chevy Chase, Steve Martin and Martin Short had been hiding out all this time, and Lucinda Creighton got tough on crime, Don (a new father and barrister in the making in Dublin and Carlow) and Paddy (a hotshot author and TV producer in London and never Carlow) decided to get creative, and decided to take one half hour a week out of their weekend on Google Hangouts (sure nearly worth the tax bill alone!) to make sense and make gags out of the most significant election in Ireland since at least the last one they had. This is their story:

Duhn duhn...

PD: Well Don, we're finally there. The moment I've been waiting for for years. It's finally upon us!

DM: *Shivers nervously*

PD: Shivers? You mean you're not looking forward to Gilmore Girls reunion?

DM: What Eamon gets up to to earn a few bob is his business, but making skin flicks is right out...

PD: I think Alan Kelly has the monopoly on the "Labour getting screwed" genre anyway. Now Don, fill me in on this. I left to go work in England the day after the last election. I heard about young Alan Kelly's election on the radio while heading to the airport. How has he become the Supermacs Francis Urquhart in the space of my five year absence?

DM: Whellllll....You may recall Big Phil was moved upstairs to Brussels after his bang up job in Environment, and then he was there. The inspiration to one of the least inspiring Irish rap songs of all time in the Labour Firmament. What could possibly go wrong? Thusly we watched him make big claims on housing, water, probably pylons... and at each turn he was nixed. Best bit was his run in with aged political pugilist and my father's erstwhile mealticket, Michael Noonan. Which he lost, like a fight between Mike Tyson and Fievel Mousekovitch.

PD: You know, that makes so much sense. He's the latest regeneration of Ireland's long unofficial Ministry of Being An Asshole. That would explain why he's trying to rock the boat against Joan Burton so much, who he should know is more than capable of doing that herself. I imagine the Parliamentary Party will resemble the cast of Lost by the end of the month.

DM: Lost is indeed the operative word, though I would expect two further words to appear in conjunction with the Labour Parliamentary Party: House Private.

PD: So where do the Jed Bartlet appreciators and Frank Cluskey beard fetishists go now? The Social Democrats? The Greens? Emigration?

DM: Well the painful screaming match that was last Thursday's TV3 Debate was never going to feature in the West Wing. Maybe Season 5. That one was rubbish.

PD: I have heard about the debate alright. Which mercifully is not the same as hearing it. By the sounds of it it was like some Jon Cage piece where seven tracks play at once. That's the great thing about being in London, not even Vincent Browne's voice travels that far.

DM: Lucky you. It was painful unless you watched it numbed by wine. Which this writer may have resorted to. You asked about the SOCDEMS and Greens?

PD: Do they stand a chance of getting anything other than broad benevolence and #3 preferences in your leafy suburbs?

DM: They are only fielding something like 15 candidates. In my registered constituency of Dublin-Rathdown, which is addled with bourgeois guilt, they didn't run anyone. I mean, even Labour's Alex White is barely canvassing. It should also be pointed out that Fianna Fail, which once ran two poll toppers in that constituency is now only running one, a lady of 71 years who beat off Seamus Brennan's son. For the nomination.

PD: Oh yes, the chocolate lady, right? Is that how desperate FF are to get seats? "Vote for us and we'll give you sweeties?"

DM: Yip: How does she get to work? In her LIR Jet - GEDDIT???

PD: You joke but a private plane is probably the quickest way to get round south Dublin at rush hour. Forming a government looks like it'll be a similarly slow crawl, My current prediction at the minute is Enda Kenny wins his second, defaultiest term, propped up by Fianna Fail, with Gearoid the leader of the opposition consisting of 735 microparties.

DM: That's it: the only futuristic thing is the sound of 'microparties'. I would also think that if they do get in it'll be endgame for the civil war parties: the greener FF members will scuttle over to The Bearded One, whilst those who went to college and hate poor people will go to FG.

PD: Can you imagine a world without Fianna Fail?

DM: MMMMMM *strokes beard contentedly*... As for forming a government, it's never good when people mention 'Belgium' in a conversation about, well anything tbh, but in particular long periods of caretaker Endaships.

PD: Belgium? Fianna Fail in power? This is music to a chocolate impresario's ears...us becoming more like Belgium wouldn't mean us having to bring Phil Hogan back would it?

Mara *whispered in the tones of CJH*

Poor PJ: In a week when interesting men were busy disappearing, he left in good company. No feeble attempts at spurious claims of being Irish -"And tell me this, I believe Bowie's mother was from Waterford" asked one radio presenter, as if pushing the boundaries of gender politics and identity as well as innovating pop music could only come from one of the Deise.

Mara was 100% Irish and  played his role of urbane bon viveur as well as he did that of political operative. My memory is of him the Unicorn Restaruant of the early 1990's, a memory Sam Smyth echoed on the radio this morning. But that world no longer exists.

I wanted to make one small point which frustrated me all day. When in the reports, Scrap Saturday came up for discussion, not one reporter was able to distinguish the fictitious relationship of Mara and Haughey on Scrap with that of the real life relationship of two remarkable men. They failed to understand that the former was not an attempt at faithful depiction of the latter. Though my old man and Gerard Stembridge, also remarkable men, know this far better - and I claim no window into artists' let alone men's souls - yet it would have seemed pretty obvious even for someone with less than an undergraduate education in English, that this was a comic creation, even more so, one created to caricature a persona of Haughey the imperious megalomaniac; a persona the real Mara helped to fashion.

In fact, it was Mara who made a point years ago that the Scrap creation was akin to the work of Gerald Scarfe, rather than anything. Not that becoming a household name is anything to be sniffed at, and he certainly didn't. Even more so, that that fame came from a satirical radio show a quarter of a century ago is in itself worthy of comment.

Not a bad feat. Shame not everyone in Irish public discourse is as perceptive as Mara. He knew, God rest him.    

Dermot: Things I've noticed on his birthday. With thanks to Rob.

This is all my brother Rob's fault. It really is. Not the heart attack, not the years of frustration and pseudo-control freakery as you don your tinfoil hat and say goodbye to someone you know and watch their memory float off, like a balloon, into the public ether to be guided off course by the winds of public memory. What's Rob's fault is his posting of a picture with a familiar face smiling as only he could, though never in public. Not until today. And that went viral, on the old man's 63rd birthday.

So here are some things I've noticed from trawling though the Internet as I punctuate the day's work.

1. Outage is not a word. I don't know what they experienced in Turkey today, but it wasn't that. More evidence of the Irish Times' descent into madness and decadence.
2. Estranged was a word ascribed to my parents. They were separated, and they were strange (both living and dead - no mean feat), but they were great friends. Also no mean feat.
3. Wikipedia is still shite. My father's birthday was indeed today, and scrolling down some comments, one person confirmed the birthday was wrong, as they had checked it on Wikipedia. This, despite the fact that the man's middle son had posted a picture on the correct date. Its power to persuade despite every iota of reason contradicting it is indeed frightening.
4. 63 is still younger than Kenneth Williams when he died. For that matter, it's still young.

The other is that despite officials Ireland's amnesia of my father in public discourse (I notice Bernice Harrison in the Irish Times, historically a paper which could be quite ambivalent towards him, praising the excellent Irish Pictorial Weekly as if their edge were unseen in the annals of Irish broadcasting; this, despite work like Scrap Saturday similarly causing ructions among RTE defamation lawyers.), two inalienable facts remain:

That death is relative, and he is still held in great affection.  He has, in the oddest, most post-modern way, never, thankfully, gone away. Struck down, he became more powerful than any of us could have imagined.

The power of affection can be a deeply humbling experience.

Thanks Rob. Happy birthday Pops.

Schloenwitz, March 6th 1945, The Russians and a Love Story of Chance

This is a week for anniversaries. For remembrance. Like Proust, I have eaten something yummy. Whilst the late lamented Marcel ate a Madeleine, my memory food was a Lidl nougat egg. Just Now. Literally. And I was surrounded, not for the first time in my life, by ghosts. This is their story.

The German side of my family originated from a village called Schloenwitz in Pomerania. Nowadays it is part of the north western corner of Poland. But up until the cards fell against them at the Postdam Conference, it was their home, the home of the Garmatz family. Today, seventy years ago, they were given thirty minutes to leave their village by the advancing Russians or face almost certain extinction. This is a tale of choices. 

It happened that the Russians had begun to advance on German territory since the Christmas of '44 or thereabouts and news had already spread of the manner of the Russians' approach. They were, in the words of Sheriff Bart in Blazing Saddles, 'open for business'. Where they didn't loot, pillage, burn or rape is where they didn't happen to be.  In propaganda pieces they spoke of massacres, of Nemmersdorf; the ensuing panic and the many thousands - millions they would become - who would go on the Treks to safety, if at all possible. 

At this stage, March 1945, the Russians were engaged in ferocious battles with the remainder of the retreating German military. Ten kilometres from my grandfather's village was Schievelbein, birthplace of Rudolf Virchow, 19th century pioneer of modern surgery. About the size of Carlow, it was gobbled up in a pincer movement by Marshall Zhukov's troops, on their irresistible march towards the west, Berlin and the Elbe river. 

The pastor of Schloenwitz would take his life, as would his wife and daughter. Amid the chaos, the villagers were given orders to leave. There is a family legend about today, seventy years ago. The villagers had packed their carts with what belongings they could, the family Garmatz included. Once they had, my great grandmother, a small woman, Elisabeth, nee Popp, insisted she wanted to go back inside and sleep off the stress, but surely to God, there was no time. Meanwhile, her husband, Willy, a respected elder of the village, came to confront the local Nazi official who had outlined the escape route he wished the villagers to take. The route would have taken them directly into the arms of the advancing Russian forces. Willy knew this and argued for an alternative. Even at this late hour, the Nazis were not amenable to reason. Yours was not to reason why, be it this route or any other edict. Willy nevertheless stood his ground. I suspect if he was anything like his son Rudolf, at this stage a guest of the Americans in France, he would have been dryly derisive of the local Nazi, budged not an inch and rolled his 'R's like a good Lutheran Pomeranian farmer might. In the end, they split, and the Garmatzes, another family, their horses and two French prisoners of war, sent to work on their farm, set out to dodge a human and military tsunami. They ventured away from the Russians, moved north-west, towards Cammin and the Baltic coast. They advanced, as my grandfather Rudolf relaid to me, 'unter schwerem Beschuss', under heavy fire, towards the west, Schleswig Holstein, and a village called Kaltenkirchen, an hour north of Hamburg. 

They survived despite the bombardment, the misery and fear. The family legend goes on: those who followed the Nazi didn't, engulfed by that red sea from the east. 

Two things arose from this day, seventy years ago. The first was that my family would never live, love, die or farm the land that had been theirs since before the end of the Thirty Years War. Willy would become a frustrated man, living in his small house in Kaltenkrichen, replete with plans for a farm never to be seen again. Two people from that day survive: my mother's cousins, both infants at the time, their father already killed, their childhood to be shaped by this and all other calamitous events of that time.

The second thing to happen included an encounter with another family, the Nawrots, who had been housed in the same refugee camp. Their home in inner city Hamburg was destroyed by the allied bomber squadrons, in the firestorms of Operation Gomorrah. Having run from a ball of fire, 20 year old Ingeborg would run into the arms of Rudolf Garmatz, freed, and having found his way from France to this refugee camp and, by chance, to her. He wrote once that he didn't want to live in her dreams but live in her life. She wrote that he should return some overdue library books, and some other, unpublishable stuff. He obeyed, and they lived, very much in love, in each other's lives for 44 years, until her death in 1992. He even wore a top hat for her on their wedding day in 1948. That's how my grandparents met - Not a bad way to end a war. 

We are in our family, my mother, uncle, brother, cousins are all the products of this day, March 6th 1945.   

1945, von Weizaecker and learning from history...

The following was published in November in the GDI Bulletin, was intended for teachers, but some of it seemed timely following the news this morning of Richard von Weizaecker's death. His passing has been disgracefully cursory in the German broadcast media so far. 


When Bundespräsident Richard von Weizäcker addressed the Bundestag thirty years ago next May, he distilled the great truths about 8th of May 1945. “Der achte Mai”, he said, “war ein Tag der Befreiung”. Every five years, the symmetry of 1945 allows us not only to never forget the twelve years of the Hitler regime in Germany, but to return to a year which throws up exciting, uncomfortable and necessary topics which we as teachers of German can address to great effect.
One of the components of the senior German syllabus is one of cultural competence. And yet frustratingly, whilst the Alltagkultur of German speaking countries is recognised, the history of German speaking people is overlooked. This is a great pity, as for teachers of German, there is a compelling case for German history being part of what we teach.

To that end, 1945 allows students, all aware on some level of the significance of the year, to delve into four powerful digits and discover what life was like at this moment in time. Some teachers might use Ernst Jandl’s poem 1944/1945 as a useful starting point, before delving into other aspects of the year the war ended.

That year was eventful to say the least. 1945 was the year of the Dresden Bombings, captured in Kurt Vonnegut’s classic novel Slaughterhouse 5; the Flüchtlingstreks of some 12 million Germans from east of the river Oder, whilst at one stage seen to be politically suspect to discuss, can and should be discussed in its proper context: Europe as the year, as one British veteran pointed out on a BBC documentary, the year the people of Europe were on the move.

1945 was also the year of the final defeat of the Wehrmacht and the disintegration of the Nazi regime; Of Stunde Null and the moment when Germany, technically, ceased to be; when civilisation wended its way to the defining moment of the last half millennium: The Holocaust.
Discussions can and should inevitably lead to Auschwitz. And that is important. Whilst the moral and factual aspects are again well known, a learner of German should know about what ordinary Germans knew, how they struggled to acknowledge the true scale of genocide committed by on their behalf by many of them. For many families this was a time to bury terrible secrets, as seen in Tomi Reichental’s excellent recent documentary about one of his captors.

The ‘deep brown stain’, as historian Harold James refers to it, tarnishes the Germans sense of collective self. The years which followed, certainly the decades after World War Two, lead to decades of prevarication, dishonesty, denial and the struggle with what ordinary Germans has endured, and reconciling that with what they had perpetrated. For every lie, however, there was a truth that would out. The consequences of 1945, the unholy mess of that year, from military defeat, mass starvation and migration, to demagoguery and unprecedented genocide, make this a year which stands on its own merits as a unit of learning; One which can be done with great ease with colleagues in other subjects.  

Resources are plentiful. It is a great tribute to this country that the Holocaust Education Trust receives as much public support as it does. The Goethe Institut and other institutions have also touched upon individual aspects of this tumultuous year. Online, the BBC has many fine documentaries which can be used, as is true of the German public broadcasters like ZDF and ARD, many of which are readily found in specific archives. For those who wish to ditch watching amusing clips of dancing cats on YouTube can find programmes and films which can be didactised easily enough. All one needs, as always, is time.

The reality is, that the outcomes of examining 1945 in the language classroom is not only to create a departure from familiar territory – of itself a good reason to take this on – but also allows students to analyse, speculate, describe past events and make critical evaluations, all the while using constructions and vocabulary which students will require at senior cycle.

To be perfectly honest however, if there were one overriding reason for using this year in our classes it is because it is the morally right thing to do. Racism is still with us, ignorance is still in our own society ‘es hört nie auf’ as Günter Grass wrote at the end of Im Krebsgang.

In my own classroom I have used on multiple occasions the words of Bundespräsident von Weizäcker on the 8th of May 1985, the most significant speech I would argue of the Bonn Republic. His appeal to the young act as the learning outcomes for students of this year and what it signifies:

“Die Bitte an die jungen Menschen lautet:
Lassen Sie sich nicht hineintreiben in Feindschaft und Haß gegen andere Menschen, gegen Russen oder Amerikaner, gegen Juden oder Türken, gegen Alternative oder Konservative, gegen Schwarz oder Weiß. Lernen Sie miteinander zu leben, nicht gegeneinander.
Ehren wir die Freiheit. Arbeiten wir für den Frieden. Halten wir uns an das Recht. Dienen wir unseren inneren Maßstäben der Gerechtigkeit.
Schauen wir am heutigen 8. Mai, so gut wir es können, der Wahrheit ins Auge."

This is an activity we can all share in, 70 years on from the most resonant year of the 20th century.  

An Absence of Isms: When exactly did 'terrorism' become mere 'terror'?

We live in a world of without ideals. The world gets viewed through a prism without -isms. As the French go for a wee stroll through the Place de la Republique, Francois Hollande hopes the locals don't use it as an opportune moment to clobber him over the head with a rolled up copy of Charlie Hebdo for being the most disappointing leader of any republic since Richard Cromwell. 'Tumbledown Dick' (a useful moniker for the current Monsieur President), is a symbol, to my limited understanding, of the failure of republicanism in England. This despite the best efforts of the beneficiaries of the aforementioned failure, the House of Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, to aid the cause.

Later on, during a march to reaffirm French national unity and reiterate traditional French values of liberté, egalité, fraternité, the politicians of Europe will be at the forefront of that march: Hollande, Merkel and himself from Castlebar. What each has in common is that none of these figures actually stands for anything. They are symbols of the dull muddling through, that takes precedence over inspired thinking. In such a world, language changes and adapts to suit the needs of the people using it. The media, being platforms of communication using language, provide the discourse and mediation. What is unsettling has been the supplanting of ‘terrorism’ over the last years with the abridged word 'terror'. Bush 2 (not a fan of sequels at the best of times, but this was a doozy) embarked on a 'War on Terror' following the 9-11 attacks. This week again the Paris attacks, replete with hashtags and anodyne debate, was branded the Paris Terror Attacks, the BBC leading the charge to change the meaning of words and concepts through subtle change. 

So what? Close enough? Not at all. Terror is an emotion, a feeling; a sensation when in a place of danger, in peril, like when you are about to be cornered at a party by someone whose entire conversation will consist of what point on the public sector pay scale they're on and your wing-person has mysteriously vanished to find drink. Or hide in the loo. 

Terrorism, however, is part method, part ideology. Was Bush engaging Navy Seals to clear the Bogeyman from under his bed or seek out the perpetrators of an unprecedented attack on the US by zealots who used terrorism as a means of furthering their warped viewpoint? Or both? Similarly, the real terror of an attack on the freedom of speech, which the attacks of Paris come to symbolise, is the fuzzing at the edges of language and the truth it tells. To allow inexactitude renders free speech useless. When an –ism here or there is abandoned for base feelings; unformed emotions that are to be mediated and groomed, and to be done in the fuzziest and scariest of ways through official discourse.   

Whatever about the merits of satire, a concept we in Ireland sporadically toy with before deliberately confusing it with silly voices, it has at its core the bravery to say exactly what you mean in all its savagery. The writers and cartoonists of Charlie Hebdo, like Jonathan Swift, like TW3, like the late lamented Scrap, and Martyn Turner all have in common the ability to use language exactly.

This is the bravery to say what you mean using language in its exactitude. In a world where unequivocal ideology has attacked our vague little world, it should be met with the power of clarity.

The Nelsons

Since Mandela's demise, I've been wondering about what a noble name Nelson is. So in memory of President Mandela, and all the other great Nelsons, I thought I'd list as many great nelsons as I could...


Nelson Mandela. or Mr. Madiber, as he was called ironically in the Guardian today
(Horatio) Nelson. Not even he expects anything of England next year...
Nelson Rockerfeller
Nelson Eddy
Nelson Munz
Willie Nelson
Nelson Kadogo, a character mentioned in a Not The Nine O'Clock News skit
Nelson the Elephant. Post op. Deed Poll. Nuff said.


In descending order of greatness. Bar the last one. That takes guts. And a big trunk...

Advent 1: Conducting Christmas

It's Advent. Ad  - bloody  - vent. Some will be trying to filter the music and sparkly bits with a futile telepathic ad (-vent)blocker, but not me. I love it. This is my time. The reasons are simple, but they all boils down to the soundtrack.

For the next month we get mugged by Mud, nagged by Noddy and Slade (I know it's Christmas, you nerk...) as we wait for the coming of a saviour. For me, musically, anyway, that's Händel. His Messiah may have been premiered in April, it may be ubiquitous without us really understanding it, but Christmas (in Dublin, anyway) would not be Christmas without it. And Advent is a time to wait for goodness.  





Which leads me neatly onto this. Looking for a decent version of the not-quite-as-well-known-but-actually-better-part of the Messiah, 'Worthy is the Lamb', I stumbled across a familiar name: Otto Klemperer. He conducted that version, and struck a chord with me, ahem. He did some of his best recordings in old age, conducting Wagner's Flying Dutchman in Abbey Road at the same time the Beatles were figuring out how to fit a sitar into a pop tune, and whether or not decorating Ringo's kit would give him hay fever. He was old and tweedy, but he had rock n roll sensibilities. His version of Wagner's maritime epic is so choppy, you need to clear the seaweed out of your ears after each listen.



It's a truth we don't tend to acknowledge in classical music - mainly because most people don't concern themselves with it, but the personality of a conductor is essential to the personality of the music.Go onto Youtube and find out. Music may soothe the savage beast, but rather then soothing it should rattle.

You may not make it to any of the places they'll play Händel, you may not have the reddies or the inclination, but do go onto YouTube, google the 'Messiah', and while you're at it, add 'Klemperer'.  And turn your speakers up to 11. 

Master of Disaster

"Let me make it absolutely clear", sniffed the Master, mascara running like oil slicks from behind her over sized shades. "That money was not a top up of any sort, I earned every penny, fair and square. I was seeing private patients and, well, sure you know yerself, they were professional fees."

Well, that's okay. No problemo, Masta. All good. It's always a relief when the health and welfare of babies and mothers is under the watchful eye of someone whose work practices are more akin to Lionel Hutz doing shoe repairs in his legal practice than solemnly acting to manage two thousand people in a manner akin to James Robertson Justice in the 'Doctor at...' films of the 1950's.

Double jobbing was not of the invention of anyone in the HSE today nor indeed the upper echelons of the wider civil service. They found the Enormous Trough of the Mighty when they got to Hawkins Street, sure it wouldn't have been even thought of to not stick the snout in. But they are in good company. Other famous double jobbers include:

• Walter White: Chemistry teacher and Meth dealer. I'm only at season two, but he seems really cool...
• Oskar Schindler: Humanitarian and not-very-talented- munitions maker. Nice chap. 
• Dudley Moore in the film Micki and Maude. Married two women and got them pregnant at exactly the same time. Following his bigamy and deceit being exposed, he ended up babysitting all of his children after.
• Eoin McNeill: Academic, Minister and member of the Boundary Commission. That went swimmingly, didn't it?

It wouldn't be fair to mention anyone still alive or not fictitious, because that'd be rude. And that's the height of our worries in these times of crisis.

With hospitals fatally running over budget, the vast majority of the elderly not receiving their necessary treatments to which they are entitled, and maternity hospitals, Holles Street included, being grotesquely under resourced in man-power, facilities and the wherewithal to effectively care for the most vulnerable people at the most vulnerable times in their lives, now's the time for senior management in the healthcare system to be doing what someone in the twittersphere charmingly referred to as "nixers".

They clearly haven't enough to be doing, and be jaysus, that three grand a week just isn't cuttin' it...

November 9th 1918, 1938 & 1989

November 9th - a day that has become like Heine's triple curse: the date for Germany's turning points. Below Brecht's poem 'An die Nachgeborenen' and its English translation from 1967, reprinted by Harpers in 2008. Read. Remember.

I

Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!
Das arglose Wort ist töricht. Eine glatte Stirn
Deutet auf Unempfindlichkeit hin. Der Lachende
Hat die furchtbare Nachricht
Nur noch nicht empfangen.

Was sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!
Der dort ruhig über die Straße geht
Ist wohl nicht mehr erreichbar für seine Freunde
Die in Not sind?

Es ist wahr: Ich verdiene nur noch meinen Unterhalt
Aber glaubt mir: das ist nur ein Zufall. Nichts
Von dem, was ich tue, berechtigt mich dazu, mich sattzuessen.
Zufällig bin ich verschont. (Wenn mein Glück aussetzt, bin ich verloren.)

Man sagt mir: Iß und trink du! Sei froh, daß du hast!
Aber wie kann ich essen und trinken, wenn
Ich dem Hungernden entreiße, was ich esse, und
Mein Glas Wasser einem Verdursteten fehlt?
Und doch esse und trinke ich.

Ich wäre gerne auch weise.
In den alten Büchern steht, was weise ist:
Sich aus dem Streit der Welt halten und die kurze Zeit
Ohne Furcht verbringen
Auch ohne Gewalt auskommen
Böses mit Gutem vergelten
Seine Wünsche nicht erfüllen, sondern vergessen
Gilt für weise.
Alles das kann ich nicht:
Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!

II

In die Städte kam ich zur Zeit der Unordnung
Als da Hunger herrschte.
Unter die Menschen kam ich zu der Zeit des Aufruhrs
Und ich empörte mich mit ihnen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Mein Essen aß ich zwischen den Schlachten
Schlafen legte ich mich unter die Mörder
Der Liebe pflegte ich achtlos
Und die Natur sah ich ohne Geduld.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Die Straßen führten in den Sumpf zu meiner Zeit.
Die Sprache verriet mich dem Schlächter.
Ich vermochte nur wenig. Aber die Herrschenden
Saßen ohne mich sicherer, das hoffte ich.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

Die Kräfte waren gering. Das Ziel
Lag in großer Ferne
Es war deutlich sichtbar, wenn auch für mich
Kaum zu erreichen.
So verging meine Zeit
Die auf Erden mir gegeben war.

III

Ihr, die ihr auftauchen werdet aus der Flut
In der wir untergegangen sind
Gedenkt
Wenn ihr von unseren Schwächen sprecht
Auch der finsteren Zeit
Der ihr entronnen seid.

Gingen wir doch, öfter als die Schuhe die Länder wechselnd
Durch die Kriege der Klassen, verzweifelt
Wenn da nur Unrecht war und keine Empörung.

Dabei wissen wir doch:
Auch der Hass gegen die Niedrigkeit
Verzerrt die Züge.
Auch der Zorn über das Unrecht
Macht die Stimme heiser. Ach, wir
Die wir den Boden bereiten wollten für Freundlichkeit
Konnten selber nicht freundlich sein.

Ihr aber, wenn es soweit sein wird
Dass der Mensch dem Menschen ein Helfer ist
Gedenkt unsrer
Mit Nachsicht.

I
Truly, I live in dark times!
An artless word is foolish. A smooth forehead
Points to insensitivity. He who laughs
Has not yet received
The terrible news.

What times are these, in which
A conversation about trees is almost a crime
For in doing so we maintain our silence about so much wrongdoing!
And he who walks quietly across the street,
Passes out of the reach of his friends
Who are in danger?

It is true: I work for a living
But, believe me, that is a coincidence. Nothing
That I do gives me the right to eat my fill.
By chance I have been spared. (If my luck does not hold,
I am lost.)

They tell me: eat and drink. Be glad to be among the haves!
But how can I eat and drink
When I take what I eat from the starving
And those who thirst do not have my glass of water?
And yet I eat and drink.

I would happily be wise.
The old books teach us what wisdom is:
To retreat from the strife of the world
To live out the brief time that is your lot
Without fear
To make your way without violence
To repay evil with good –
The wise do not seek to satisfy their desires,
But to forget them.
But I cannot heed this:
Truly I live in dark times!

II

I came into the cities in a time of disorder
As hunger reigned.
I came among men in a time of turmoil
And I rose up with them.
And so passed
The time given to me on earth.

I ate my food between slaughters.
I laid down to sleep among murderers.
I tended to love with abandon.
I looked upon nature with impatience.
And so passed
The time given to me on earth.

In my time streets led into a swamp.
My language betrayed me to the slaughterer.
There was little I could do. But without me
The rulers sat more securely, or so I hoped.
And so passed
The time given to me on earth.

The powers were so limited. The goal
Lay far in the distance
It could clearly be seen although even I
Could hardly hope to reach it.
And so passed
The time given to me on earth.

III

You, who shall resurface following the flood
In which we have perished,
Contemplate –
When you speak of our weaknesses,
Also the dark time
That you have escaped.

For we went forth, changing our country more frequently than our shoes
Through the class warfare, despairing
That there was only injustice and no outrage.

And yet we knew:
Even the hatred of squalor
Distorts one’s features.
Even anger against injustice
Makes the voice grow hoarse. We
Who wished to lay the foundation for gentleness
Could not ourselves be gentle.

But you, when at last the time comes
That man can aid his fellow man,
Should think upon us
With leniency.

–Bertolt Brecht, An die Nachgeborenen first published in Svendborger Gedichte (1939) in:Gesammelte Werke, vol. 4, pp. 722-25 (1967)(S.H. transl.)

posted 2008 on http://harpers.org/blog/2008/01/brecht-to-those-who-follow-in-our-wake/ 

I've been married to Liverpool FC since 1985. I could have been a self respecting fan of Southampton, by dint of being impressed with a pic of Steve Williams in a shiny Admiral made kit in a Shoot annual we got from a neighbour now long since departed. But no. Liverpool were for me. It was a marriage made in heaven until Wimbledon and that penalty against Wimbledon.

Mesut Oezil. Really.

Since Arsene Wenger went Arse-ways and look what happened: I've been having a football fling with that French floozie in North London. By floozy I mean of course more Madame Pompadour, but watching L'Arsenal is like going to the ballet. Even on a bad day they'd rather lose pretty than win ugly. More Joan Fontaine than Julian Dicks. 

I'll be rooting on in a stripy shirt and a string of onions around my neck, munching on Currywurst, in total-aestheto-football-ecstacy. 

Sorry 'Pool, you broke my heart too many times. And that's before even mention Paul Stewart... You'll always be my club, but you're warned...

Throw the Booker at them.

I'm writing a book. Yes, I can confirm that I'm going to take all my unfinished ideas, baseless bragging from my early twenties and finally get it together. It will be a mammoth epic of 34521 pages, its plot complex and clever, based around the blueprint for traffic management in and/or around Junction 13 of the M50 in the run up to Christmas Eve. I'm also hoping to have it finished by next Tuesday. Despite its length, complexity and thoroughly unrealistic completion date, not to mention my chronic inability to finish colouring a book let alone write one, I still stand a better chance of winning the Man Booker prize than Colm Toibin.

Although Toibin happens to be the greatest creator of fiction we've produced since Bertie Ahern's legal team at the Mahon Tribunal, the great man is in danger of becoming the Ivan Lendl of international literature. Unless judging committees for book prizes stop infusing their decisions with the cruel pleasure of deliberately overlooking a man whose persistence, let alone talent, deserves to be rewarded, Toibin's only comfort will be when he wins the Nobel Prize. This of course will be soured by the BBC calling him British, and you just can't unring a bell.

Given his perceptibly shabby treatment by Booker, Toibin's next novel will be called "The Testament of Colm" and will consist of: one slightly scrappy looking jotter page, drenched in a tin mug of Pernod, with four words scrawled in regularly interchanged order over and over again: when, prize, give and sodding.

Schürrle not!

Years ago I went to see Swan Lake and I can remember two things - the disappointment that the dancers didn't sing  - it looked like God sat on the remote and hit the mute button - and the raw athleticism of ballet. It was wonderful, and it didn't look all that complex either. It was simple moves done well. Cue a dreadful football match and Andre Schürrle.

Say what you like about the Irish team, chances are you have. Nonetheless, they looked an awful lot less embarrassing (and embarassed) than every previous game during Trapp's tawdry stint as Irish coach, when they were clunky, fearful and losing. They were respectably rubbish. Oddly, though, Germany weren't much better. They gifted two soft goals, and one which was every bit as poetic, every bit the contradiction to the German character. Andre Schürrle balanced a ball as if it were a bubble in danger of bursting, turned himself carefully and planted it with the grace of the White Swan into the Irish net. Eat your heart out, Natalie Portman.

Even in the most pedestrian of things, you can find a little beauty. Germany does simple things well. The tale of Germany's football resurrection starts with a man in the German FA getting into his car, driving across Germany and doing clinics in close ball skills in every backwater he could find, where there was even a suggestion of football being played. The likes of Schürrle came out of that. A simple plan gave rise to the poetic.  

To steal a line from Yes, Minister. the match may have been a dunghill, but it grew a beautiful rose. Shame it was against us...

Little Boy Blue (-shirt) and Labour's Love's Lost

Last weekend's Seanad vote reminded me why failure is weirdly rejuvenating for Enda - Every time something goes wrong, his indeterminate middle age recedes to display a little boy in daddy's suit, pretending at grown ups. Really it's quite sweet.

Like all children, he didn't want to admit that he got it wrong, in all humility. And like all childish things - he tried to break up with 29 FG Senators, who got an electorate less responsive than Ariel Sharon plugged out to explain in no uncertain terms that breaking up is hard to do.

This'll get awkward when they keep turning up, persistently giving him gifts, like a gun rack for their 'anniversary'. Not having a need for a rack, not possessing a gun or guns for that matter, poor Enda will have to keep smiling through his buachaill grin until he looks again like a man of indeterminate middle age clothed in Enda's very own suit.

Meanwhile Eamon Gilmore. Nuff said, really. My wife and I once went to lunch with Michael D. and by the end he had me volunteering to canvas for Labour. No really, it's not a joke. Still waiting for the punchline nevertheless.

Meanwhile, here's footage from FG's first day back in Leinster House; Upper House undemolished.
   

Love/Hate and Wagner: What the Seanad Debates Showed Me

In the process of wondering about Wagner, and the coolness of Black Dog by Led Zeppelin on Love/Hate, I had an image of lovable psycho-scalawag Nidge sitting in the place of Brian Hayes with John Crown giving out ad nauseum, before Minister Nidge-Weasel launches into his speech about not giving a toss about any of them ("I don't give a shit about any of them...I love Trish, n' all, but...").

There he's sat in the Seanad chamber, our Minister (sorry...JUNIOR Minister. By the way, why is minister even capitalised?) telling John-Boy Crown he likes to lick himself at night. Cue the outrage and the pompous defending of comments in the subsequent non-news cycle. You wonder why they would abolish the Seanad.

I still believe in its current form, the Seanad's one redeeming feature is it has the possibility of circumventing the parish pumpery of the lower house. By allowing panels of candidates to be elected by varied interests, like the colleges, you give an in to politics for the voices in a society instinctively suspicious of the educated as Ireland. The Seanad is, however, only as good as its members, and this is no golden age of parliamentarians. There's no WB Yeats or Mary Robinson sitting in those smurf-arse blue Bargain Town dining room chairs.

Sending Hayes in to rile the few Senators present with his iPad and his street-style 'tude has its own delicious irony. He's no Yeats and he's definitely no Robinson. What he represents in politics is the piggy for whom one end of the trough used to be as good enough as the other. When he wasn't good enough for his constituency, where did he find safe harbour? Hayes obviously doesn't think he needs them anymore. All trapeze artists think they don't need the net until they half way down and wondering what will stop them smashing into the dirt.

If politics is a theatrical Gesamtkunstwerk, then Hayes is Alberich in Das Rheingold: he's renounced love and will steal their gold. The Rhein maidens, who I assume are Fidelma Healy-Eames and Ivana Bacik in blondie-Fraeulein wigs, are warbling their distress to Pat Kenny, who in this case is Wotan, having the giant Denis build him Valhalla in a Dublin 2 office block behind a Sally Army hostel. The production is only marginally worse than this year's Bayreuth, and the score's been switched with a Big Tom chord book.

I want my money back. I love politics 'n' all, but...

Big Dave

Sen. David Norris is a giant. He's brave, he's fearless, he's eccentric as a stoat wearing tapshoes and a Glengarry, and he's been the reason why watching Oireachtas report when draining the last of your eight cans of Dutch Gold turns out to be a viable alternative to CSI.

This month, Sen. Norris has been taking on the political Goliath that is Enda, but who intellectually anyway wouldn't be David's equal by a very long shot. His "outburst" against first-term TD Regina Doherty may have been choice in terms of language and it may have gifted Enda's vanguard of radio rentamouths a sideshow to distract from serious charges regarding FG's attitudes to government. But the question still begs: has FG gone mad altogether on power, when they can force through votes on abortion and Seanad abolition, but can't seem to get their fingers out on banking regulation, debt relief, tackling the mortgage crisis, local government reform or the high price of Bruce Springsteen tickets? 

FG seems to have confused getting into government with a mandate to exorcise about eight decades of not being loved enough. Will this all work out though? With a vote on the Seanad in the offing, flawed language and poor law as it may be, according to Sen. Norris at least, it could still all fall apart from Enda. If the upper house survives, he'll have a chamber full of very vengeful blueshirts waiting in the long grass. Break out the popcorn, so, and enjoy what may be a bloody spectacle. Someone else will sort out the country, I'm sure.

For your entertainment, Norris' best bits from the last month on Enda and the notorious Regina monologues. Enjoy! 

On Enda...

On the Regina monologues...

A Day Well Spent...

The vote on the Protection of Life during Pregnancy Bill is a big moment for many. For me, it's a new low in our public discourse and our body politic. It’s an honest opinion, so if you like it, fine, if not, that’s your fine too. I respect your opinions irrespective of what it is, so please respect mine:

A civilised society should have debates, where argue your case, weigh up the merits of all opinions, make a decision and then go home. It’s not bad thing to be pro-choice. It’s also not a bad thing to be deeply uncomfortable with abortion and decide you’re against it. Both sides have valid arguments.  If the last nine months are anything to go by though, we are anything but civilised, let alone a society. The people, who suffer, meanwhile, are manifold. Here are a number of things more pressing than the current grotesque show on display this morning in Dail Eireann, and what I believe the debate around abortion has revealed so far.

According to the CSO, 87,100 people left Ireland in 2011, of which 91% were under the age of 25. You can extrapolate from the total sum, which have emigrated since the economy imploded in 2007 and 2008. The country is in penury and every working person, public and private sector, has been put to the rack, vilified for earning a living or blackmailed into accepting ever poorer working conditions. Sure, what else can you do – there’s nothing else out there. It’s an easy lie to believe, and we do, and are scared to believe otherwise. We're victims, we have no choice. Sure, no one would believe us anyway.

Yet we wonder when the banking crisis, which is the cause of our travails, will finally elicit visible outrage. The tragic fact is that it may not, whether through snobbery (if you see a Republican Sinn Fein flag at a protest, many would be turned off joining it – but short sighted product placement is what they love to do, our political groups, though I never recall seeing a pic of Jim Larkin holding a Dr Pepper at a street protest) or through fatalistic apathy. The case has not been convincingly made for outrage. If it had, the streets would be full. Those who want it otherwise must try harder to convince people who are jaded and worried in a real and day-to-day way.

After five years, a banking enquiry has not met – or rather, no investigation has taken place that has been either the impetus for justice in the face of our ruin or the template for a reformed banking system that will serve the needs of our society. The tittle-tattle of the Anglo tapes has simply shown what we already knew about Drumm and Co. and the ineptitude of the authorities to front up on big promises to get to the bottom of what happened in our banking system.

Childcare is nearly totally unregulated and it costs more to send your child to a crèche than to the poshest of private schools. Not once has this been addressed, neither the cost of provision nor the quality of worker in this area. This was supposedly an election issue as far back as 2002 and yet still lingers unpleasantly. Parents, who might otherwise choose a different life, have been penalised for having children at all, who by the way, will be paying off our mess. A sector of our economy and our society exists, where working with children is below working in a supermarket on the economic and social food chain, despite the onerous responsibility those working in the sector face and the importance a good, well trained childcare worker has for the wellbeing of our children.

Our children are forced through a dysfunctional education system that is top heavy not only on religion, but an industry-led agenda that treats the formation of young minds, one of the greatest tasks of mankind, into the creation of unthinking worker bees; stymies creativity and curiosity, eschews intellectual rigour or active citizenship – education, where every little helps, and education helps very little to stop our economic and social rot.  The economic consequences are clear for this, far more damaging, however, is the thinness of our intellectual fabric. So much for reaping the benefits of the good years.

We can’t get 4000 homeless off our streets; we can’t stamp out the drugs epidemic destroying not only urban but also rural communities, where the plays of future John B Keanes will be reworked via the horrors of an Irvine Welsh novel. Yet we can afford a debate about abortion.

This is the Ireland of 2013. These are pressing issues. Faced with such pressure, who can blame people ill -equipped and unqualified to take on these challenges but to retreat into fantasy.

Abortion is still a hot-button topic, thanks to a tragic accident, the cause of which is likely a failure of procedure, by extension a failure of leadership. The ensuing discussion has long since diverged from an initial question of adequate care and clear guidelines for medical professionals to one which neither resolves those questions nor will resolve the real, intractable ethical questions around abortion.   

Meanwhile, Ireland festers unnecessarily in the sunshine.

To each person animated by the abortion debate I ask you this: if you really care about life, on either side of the debate, why aren’t you putting your anger and passion into something a damn sight more important than a row about the very existence of abortion in this country? Accept that people’s circumstances are not always black and white – not every woman has a choice and not every abortion is about exercising a choice like a consumer. It's time to find a common ground.  Every woman who has experienced the tragedy of miscarriage, of complications in pregnancy, or rape, or incest or even dumb luck has their plight cheapened by an insulting knockabout that should have been resolved a generation ago. For that, we can thank our public representatives, elected and unelected. This debate that would have been resolved when I was in my early teens had it not been for the near criminal negligence, laziness and procrastination of politicians who were so ignorant, they thought the X-Case was a sci-fi cop show.

To every one of the 166 paid gobshites in Dail Eireann on either side of the debate on abortion, to every activist who’d rather spend their days outside a dead toff’s former 18^th century shag pad-turned doss house for the culturally inbred and intellectually disadvantaged, I ask you this: why can’t you have a simple, civilised conversation with each other about the provision of health care that doesn’t include emotive language, crude stereotyping of the other side and their arguments, that doesn’t reduce the death of an unborn child or of a young woman into a pantomime that insults not only the dead but also the living.

We would be deserving of better, if we didn’t seem to accept it so readily.

@gutenmorgan