Labour Pains

Bertie Ahern will never have any conviction as a politician unless he gets three to five in Mountjoy. On the bright side, the Labour Party's Kathleen Lynch will give him a letter of recommendation for his parole board. Sure, she’d do it for anyone. And that’s what makes me sick.

If you’ve never heard of her, like the wolf in Little Red Riding Hood, or the sheriff of Nottingham, you’ll soon hear of her in song and legend. The TD for Cork North Central wrote a letter vouching for the character of constituents of hers, the parents of a convicted rapist. The son, Trevor Casey, was sentenced on Friday to 13 years imprisonment for the rape and sexual assault of the two teenage sisters of his former girlfriend.

Kathleen's brain must have been totally scrambled. On one level, sending a letter to a Judge who is sentencing a rapist of young girls is stupid, ill-conceived, and insulting. On the other hand it's even worse. It's dangerous, meddling and seditious, and it seriously compromises the separation of the legislative and executive powers of the state and it jeopardizes forty years of progress in women’s rights and the rights of victims of sex crimes.

Given her fame as a pop star Women's Libber and darling of the Irish Left, Ivana Bacik’s silence is notable. Her silence, however, is nothing when compared to the deafening screech of nothingness coming from Labour boss, Eamon Gilmore.

Labour is the oldest party in the state. It’s the one not borne out of the arbitrary lines drawn in the civil war. It has an ideology. It’s the party of James Connolly, Jim Larkin, Michael D. Higgins, Mary Robinson, that guy from the Phoenix Park scandal...okay, so they’re not perfect, but at least they could pretend to know right from wrong.

As usual, there was no demand for Kathleen Lynch's resignation. No public example making. No press conference saying that Labour doesn’t tolerate its TDs being dumb shits. The Labour leader couldn't even manage an angry note scrawled on the back of a beer mat from Toner’s Pub. Everybody wanted the issue to go away, just like Bertie wishes Des O'Neill would vanish.

By behaving like all the other hard-necked chancers in Leinster House, Kathleen Lynch, lobbed a grenade at her own party's already wobbly credibility. The Gilmore gang are now in serious danger of a second rate rehash of Ahern and his ten years of Shyster-ism . Right now, too many politicians behave with the moral instincts of a sewer rat. A Bit of straight thinking from them, before it's too late, might just trick us into thinking they stand for something resembling decency.

Besides, this is a clear moral issue. Do those who committed the worst of crimes deserve to be “got off the hook”? Or should the legal system be let do its work so that rapists will get their comeuppance.

Olympia

The Olympics look as failed as a Ben Johnson dope sample. Fact.

Wrestlemania has more credibility than the Olympics, and unless drugs tests and fatalities are televised there'll be no reason for us to switch off our reruns of CSI. But I've come up with an idea to rescue the Olympics and make us sit up and take notice - let's get the games some much needed credibility and make Hulk Hogan head of the International Olympic Committee.

Desperate times do call for desperate measures. The sheer volume of gaudy glitz and cringe-inducing kitsch that 'Olympics-incorporated' has generated needs the dignity that only a bald fiftysomething in day-glow yellow speedos can give. It's all in the name of humanity's best interests.

The modern Olympic Games are hair-pullingly awful. From the opening ceremony, where athletes dress like low class estate agents to the pointless end ceremony, no-one should watch this rubbish without being sectioned.

It's dire, on and off the athletics track. VIPs attend the opening ceremony in Beijing, the ranks of scumbags and gangsters swell massively. World leaders, with the exception of the Dalai Lama, cozy up to corporate fat cats in the reassuring glow of the Olympic flame. The spectacle leaves a foul taste in the mouth. It's like watching your parents snogging, but with Jimmy Magee providing the commentary.

Past Olympic Games are like a rogues' gallery of disasters in putting mankind's best foot forward. The games of 1920, 1936, 1948, 1968, 1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1996, 2000, and 2004 were all charged with chauvinism, racism, stupidity, opportunism, incompetence and dishonesty. Each one revealed our worst characteristics.

So why can't I despise and dismiss the Olympics, and simply take up gardening for the summer? The reason is, the original intention is unmistakably noble: that people stop being nasty to each other once every four years and do something pure and simple to express the goodness we aspire to - to push our limits and become stronger, faster and higher beings.

Sadly, this Olympic 'spirit' is so brazenly pimped out and debased by the organizers and their corporate playmates, that it shatters the dreams French academic Pierre de Coubertin had, when he organized the first modern Olympics in 1896.

Over a century later, how would de Coubertin have reacted when his countrymen attacked the Olympic flame as it passed through Paris on its way to Beijing? There have been protests everywhere the flame has passed through. But when the French go on the offensive, they do it with gusto. They extinguished the Olympic flame twice, despite strong arm tactics from annoyed Chinese and French officials.

The French love big gestures and make them with flair. Eric Cantona and The Sarkozys support my little hunch about our continental cousins. When the shit hit the fan at Crystal Palace, all those years ago, Eric’s ‘Gallic temperament’ was to blame for doing to a yob, what most of us can only dream of, and left a generation of youngsters with injuries caused by trying to copy his trademark kick.

Twelve years on, the Sarkozys visit London, and Madame Sarkozy appeared from her jet, every inch a playful Marlene Dietrich. The fearsome din of drooling Fleet Street paps scrambling for a front row seat at those photo-calls with the Queen, echoed all the way from London to the mangled Mercedes in the Alma Tunnel in Paris. Royalty as tabloid Gold returned revamped and ravishing.

As big and loud as the protests are, they’re hypocritical, snooty, and wrong. The Olympics don't need to be perfect. They just need to happen. If the world wants the Chinese government to get the message about everything we don't like about them, then let the Chinese have their games. Let them have what they wish for.

We'll just sit back and sip a glass of sparkling, vintage 'I told you so'. We'll have a hearty chuckle when the Chinese leaders go purple with injured pride, just like Hitler did when he tried to hijack the Olympics in 1936 to promote his Aryan racism. His plans backfired spectacularly and the puffed up nastiness of the Berlin Games bestowed on us an icon of poetic justice, America’s black sprinter and longjumper, the great Jesse Owens.

The Munich games saw a hostage drama and the tragedy of murdered athletes. The corporate toadying to Coca Cola when Atlanta, Coke's global HQ, got to stage the 1996 Games made many want to drown the International Olympic Committee in their soft drink of choice.

The odds may be stacked well against the Olympics, but it always finds a way to redeem itself. Its good intentions shine through, justifying its miserable existence. And it does this despite the best efforts of the worst kinds of people. Allowing these corrupt, embarrassing, tedious, sometimes despicable games to go ahead, is the correct and only option.

Munich witnessed the swimming phenomenon of Mark Spitz. Atlanta was the scene of the emotional reconciliation with Mohammed Ali and the USA, 26 years after the former Cassius Clay threw his Gold Medal won in Rome in 1960 into the Ohio River, in protest at the vile racism of 1960's America.

The Chinese can spin the news, control the internet and walk out of meetings where their excesses are highlighted. It's no use. Between Beijing's blanket smog and bloody tyranny in Tibet, the Chinese PR train has seriously derailed.

That's how it is. The Hulkster isn't needed just yet, even though it's appealing. I can't live with the Olympics, but we can't live without them. In the meantime, we can go back to CSI, and have some peace from the routine strangeness of the Olympic rigmarole.

Ristorante Italiano - What's Italian for 'shut up, dumbass'?

I can't adequately express my disdain of lazy commentary, but the world is so often filled with inane, fatuous, trite drivel that ignores the difference between opinion and fact. I read too much of it in the papers every day. So when this absolute dickhead loudly described the Pope in terms of the Nazis, I was well beyond my stupidity quota for the weekend: I felt the most wonderful release when I realised patience with tossers is by no means necessary. Quite the opposite...

I spent the day prancing about town like the boulevardier I wish I was, meeting up for a pint in Neary's with a friend of mine, with whom I had a short story-writing race. We went to my favourite pizzeria, Pizza Stop, which is down a seedy little lane behind HMV on Grafton Street and anticipated an evening comparing stories and talking in lofty terms about our work. How were we to know that the occupants of the table next to us were full of finger-clicking-for-the-waiter's-attention gaucheness? It wasn't as if they had t-shirts to let us know. When their starters came out, one man's man's talk had already intruded our airspace . Then his pasta starter came out as a main course portion. His fingers clicked loudly as he squared up for a fight with a whispy Italian waiter who couldn't stop laughing at the sheer awfulness of this man. Well, there was drama, and 'it's just not good enough' - just short of 'do you know who I am?' No was my silent answer, and my world is certainly better for it.

My friend and I were dumbstruck. We strained to evesdrop, but the place was so small, we kept retreating to our corner with Parmesan in our ears. Their conversation started into the Pope and his predecessor. I could feel my stomach sinking with disappointed expectation. One of the occupants of our neighbouring table was Italian, and our loudmouthed 'Mr. Somebody' was clearly looking to impress him with his witty take on the state of the Papacy. 'We loved the old guy [cue John Paul II impression], but the new guy, we don't like him. He's got SS written all over him'. I knew he was going to say this. I just knew he was going to say something brash, boring and utterly offensive. And what's more, I carry a German bloody passport. 'I don't agree with that', the Italian politely mumbled.

Over at our table, I was incandescent, my friend just looked at me as if waiting to see if I would stick a fork in our neighbour's fat head or cry like a baby with frustration. Unfortunately for the entertainment value of this story, I'm more repressed emotionally than that. Definitely a westbrit, if ever there was one. In our tiny eatery, I got up noisily, banging my cutlery against the plate like my Da would do when I was a kid, before bollocking me out of it for talking back to mum. I asked the manager if there was another table we could sit at, and grabbed our coats before he could say a thing. Their conversation stopped dead in its tracks when we moved down to the other side of the restaurant. Our displeasure had been noted, and I could hear his plaintive 'whaat?'

The current Pope was twelve when the war broke out. He was 18 by the end of it. He is a man of certain conservative views that I don't agree with, even if I do go to church. He was liberal, then got old and with it, very conservative. He was God's Rottweiler for an age and a bit, and then had to play the fisherman once J.P. II's superstar Papacy came to its strange, sad end. And what's more, he's German. In the British and Irish media, that carries a whole load of baggage that makes it too easy for lazy journos and even lazier readers to make assumptions about people.

I wish I had the guts to tell him as such, to reason with him, or simply to tell him to shut up. But, hey, I've better things to do, and our pizzas - the best in Dublin - were getting cold.

Bertie and his rubber duckie

Of all the things Bertie Ahern has been credited with, healing lepers, translating the bible into Icelandic and discovering a cure for Westlife are only a few of the more believable acts from this most improbable statesman. The timing of his leaving was magnificent and all of his own making; he deftly grabbed the news cycle this week, receiving the plaudits and kudos of his peers. Robert Mugabe is also grateful, because our guy’s stolen the limelight, so the least talented liberator in the history of Africa the chance to shuffle off the political stage himself, maybe making off with a few quid and some diamonds. Who knows, but maybe the French will give him a cosy villa like they did when Mobutu left Zaire with all the diamonds.

Bertie saw the writing on the wall. Going was just about the only option, and as the dogs in the street were noticing change in the air, Cowan had to bite his lip harder and harder, hoping not too many Fianna Fáil councillors from some swamp or another would demand Ahern’s resignation ‘for the good of the party.’

This platitude cracks me up, ‘for the good of the party’. Why would anyone want to do anything for the good of their country, when a bunch of greasy county councillors and Neanderthal developers could be there for consideration in the national pecking order? It had been the same thing when Charlie Haughey had been booted out. The party comes first. What becomes abundantly clear is that for someone like me who watches the West Wing each night (I’m on to season 5), nothing in that series resembles in intention or design or manner how Irish politics is conducted: small time turf wars, low politics which, frankly, is embarrassing for it.

And after ten years of Bertie behaving essentially like Ernie from Sesame Street, to Enda Kenny’s Bert, maybe having a Taoiseach for the first time for, well, at least two years, will be a welcome change. To date, Brian Cowan is the only guy in the running. He’s got a different style to Bertie. Hands on, knows his brief, Gordon Brown without the hubris, and wit way more sex appeal. Things are about to change. As for Bertie, Abraham Lincoln said we will be remembered in spite of ourselves, so there may be hope yet for him.

PC Whirl

As Ireland revels in having nearly caught up with the 21st century, man's latest developments bring us one step closer to the clinical 'superfuture' we saw in 2001: A Space odyssey, 1984 and Spaceballs: For what the founders of our state had fought, bled and died for was that we could enjoy freedom's bounty in outlet shopping centres with PC World, Harvey Norman, maybe a Reids furniture place, Woodies and of course, the obligatory KFC (only the hi end ones have Cost-lotta Coffee, and the majority of the great unwashed think ristretto is Italian for 'restrainng order' anyway).

I got a laptop last July, which reminded me that hell is the impossibility of reason. I could be one of those guys sitting alone in pubs that have wireless, because, hey, there's a whole bunch of money to be made by someone demanding solitude and nursing a Cappuccino for three hours, and I wanted in on the ground floor. Initially, it worked like a dream. Until I had to go to a conference where I was in charge of the registration. And guess what? It wouldn't detect the cable, couldn't be charged up and hey presto, I had a pretty big, cool looking paperweight, which looked like someone had taken Darth Vader to a scrap yard, crushed him into a cube, before glossing him with the sauce from a Sweet and Sour Chicken.

I brought it into a computer superstore which will remain nameless as PC World. The IT guy (who really looked like one), wouldn't take it to be repaired. It had to be taken to the branch it had been bought in, he mumbled, like Marlon Brando, with half a Breakfast roll between his teeth. That inevitably meant a leisurely jaunt down the M50 in 1st gear.

It was left in the shop in December. By February, I had their phone number off by heart, several times being 'put through' to someone, before the line mysteriously went dead, as if I was being hung up on. Finally they decided it couldn't be fixed, and I should come in and get a replacement. Even this I had to fight for. It took serious negotiation and more rage than I have ever felt to get it, and at least one employee is seeking therapy from the ordeal. I discovered the man I had spoken to had left, and was at the Customer "Service" Desk for several hours, whilst they looked for, and then fondled, my laptop in the most suggestive manner possible. Suggestive, that is, of their not having a breeze as to why a 29 year old ginger guy was rocking back and forth on the floor of a PC World crying, to the strains of a dance remix of the Birdy Song over the PA system.

I got a replacement eventually, but not on the day I described above. Still, it's all worth it for access to the internet and a solitary Cappuccini (that's like, the proper plural, OK?!).

There is, of course, a little postscript. Last week I got a phone call. "Hello Mr. Morgan , you're laptop's been repaired and is ready to be collected. "

The line went dead again.

I can't see clearly now the rain ain't gone...

When I was younger, I used to say that we should get a giant tugboat to drag Ireland to the Carribean. Even today, I'd be willing take tropical storms in exchange for good weather, strong Guinness and cricket. And after yet another endless, dark and miserable Winter, it'd better happen soon. Things have become such, that my wife has taken the next evolutionary step towards becoming a creature of hibernation, and my work on finding clothes that can be worn without getting sodden by a renegade gang of rain clouds continues.

Furthermore, my balcony is now a makeshift shipyard, and once I find info on Google about building tugs, then there's no going back! Short story race goes well, and the radio show script stays rooted in reality.

He is an Irishman! He remains an Irish-man!!

Easter, it seems, is upon us, and for the life of me I can't find my copy of St. John's Passion by Bach (God knows why - bet he hid it, cos he doesn't like Bach). I have spent the contemplating deciding a few things, a little like Winnie the Pooh after sitting on a log. And like Pooh, my head is full of not very much at the moment.

I went to Kilmainham Gaol on Wednesday, after my depressing encounter with the Royal Hospital, and was enthralled. Why? Because there's nothing sacred in Ireland, and yet places like this loom in the back of our consciousness. The leaders of 1916 were executed here, and many other poor, nameless, unfortunates passed through the old place until it was closed in 1924. What got me though, was the fact that the tour guide, whether by his own eloquence and apparently earnest republicanism, or by my mood that day, swayed me. He managed to bring across something that every person, be they Irish or the New Irish, of which there were many, visiting the place on any particular day should be encouraged to foster: That people sometimes feel a sense of duty which goes beyond self gratification or self preservation.

More telling was the fact that our government's indifference towards our heritage did not stop miraculously at the gates of Kilmainham. Dublin's secular shrine to our violent, tragic, beautiful history has been just as neglected, and would have been demolished in 1960, but for volunteers who fought the good fight and saved the Gaol by the skin of its sad, grey teeth. They felt a sense of duty to do what the government of the day refused to do.

Maybe it's the building, but that's a noble virtue to encourage. So long may it stand!

When you can't see yourself...

Certain things remain constant when it comes to St. Patrick's day. The weather will be as predictable as a drunk squaring up for a fight with a barman wanting to avoid serving him. So, we thought, was the date, but it turned out that the church got into a tizzy because a feast day can't be in the same week as Easter. The confusion was remarkable. Paddy Power was taking bets as to when the parade was on. People were stocking up on tinned shamrock, just in case it never came and the fallout would mean the next Paddy's day might be after some kind of Bord Failte/Vatican sponsored Apocalypse: a haphazard, Mad Max-like Paddy's day, with renegade gangs attacking each other with shillelaghs. As it happened, the catastrophe I imagined was averted when I went to ask in the tourist office. I get a very definite "Monday. It's gonna be great", from a guy with an accent as mid-Atlantic as the Azores. I really wanted him to say "Begorrah", just for good measure.

The big day just didn't feel particularly special. Everyone went home for tea, and the city was calm and clean. I didn't feel it particularly the day before either, when I was in the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Kilmainham. This is a place where Dublin normally make sense to me, and I am reasonably at ease with my Irishness. The Museum is housed in the Old Royal Hospital, which is a gorgeous, and a criminally neglected, part of Dublin's underrated heritage. It looks starkly like a French chateau, which is good, because that's what it was styled as.

I walked through the entrance gate and walked around to the front of the Royal Hospital Building, which overlooks the Liffey valley and stands as on of two towering sentinels as you arrive on the train into Heuston Station below. Whereas the Wellington Obelisk, which stands on the other side of the valley is as imposing as it always was, I discovered that Kilmainham, a more elegant, nuanced structure, has been cut off from the rest of the city by a new development of apartments and offices. My heart sank, because this was a new development by and Irish architect and an Irish contractor, and so it wasn't like you could say it came out of the mind of someone who hadn't a breeze about where it was being plonked.

If you can't knock it, hide it. And its a sorry fact that Dublin people never wanted the building to survive. To some it might be a relic of our colonial past. Others probably don't know it exists and don't even care. In the 80's, they wanted to demolish it to make way for a bus depot. Well, that was then, and Ireland hadn't yet discovered the delights of prefabricated KFCs. The Royal Hospital is just otherworldly, and from the ornamental gardens, you could look down river towards the city and feast your eyes on a view that probably hadn't changed much since the 18th century. It would have to take an act of utter tastelessness to cut off the old building from the city. Maybe it's development, but it seems to be predicated on the notion that development comes at the price of beauty, which has its own, ethereal value. And the banks can't touch it.

Alone it stands, and thank God it does, if only you could get chicken twizzlers in the cafe...

A New York State of Mind

There’s a scene I really like in King Lear, which is on my mind because it’s bloody windy outside and but for the fact that I have to work indoors, I’d probably be outside in my dressing gown ranting on the moors with the best of them. I don’t remember the scene word for word, but it’s the moment when Lear’s inflated sense of himself causes his fortunes to unravel. His youngest daughter, the apple of his eye, Cordelia, says she loves him as much as she does, no more, no less. Her scheming sisters in the meantime are busy buttering daddy up before doing the Shakespearean equivalent of cutting granddad’s tags and leaving him in a park so they can take his stuff. Cordelia is a real I am what I am kinda gal. To the old man, however, Cordelia’s lack of flowery language somehow doesn’t go down too well: she gets the heave ho, and her sisters get everything else, at least for most of the play. She accepts who she is and it’s for the world to accept that, not the other way around. Enter Eric Spitzer, governor of New York, has a surname that means "pencil sharpener" in German. This is certainly appropriate, given that he has definitely been putting his lead in the wrong shaft, as it were. This week, the governor of New York State admitted having used the services of a call girl ON VALENTINES DAY, before doing something way more important, such as going home to his wife, or something like that. The man was on the political ascent, having taken on corporate misdealing as NY’s Attorney General. His reputation as an Elliot Ness-style corporate corruption buster meant that he had the potential go as far as he liked, perhaps becoming the first bald geeky guy to be in power since Anthony Hopkins in Amistad. And at 47, he's the political equivalent of a foetus.

Twas not to be. Spitzer reminds me of an unctuous, sleazy Lear. Lear rejected truth and Spitzer did so for the same reason - vanity. He had the world at his feet, the potential to go further, and instead ended his career in a spectacular belly-flop of hubris, which could potentially damage Clinton’s already ropey campaign to beat Barack Obama to being the first [insert novelty] president of the USA. Furthermore, whereas financial ill-behaviour can sometimes be brazened out, as evinced here at home, or by John McCain’s recent problems, sex is a different kettle of fish, particularly in the States. Bill Clinton nearly went that way, but got away with it because it was essentially a personal matter and the case against him was partisan. Spitzer, on the other hand, was using prostitutes, and will end up paying for it in every sense.

Commuting with Steve McQueen

Waking up in the morning is not simple process. My wife and I have a ritual which begins like a Mexican stand off between reality and our undying desire to be paid for staying in bed. Maybe if we could get on some bizarre clinical experiment for sleeping, could our ambition be fulfilled. Instead, every five minutes another one of about 20,000 alarm clocks strategically hidden around our bedroom goes off until our stubbornness caves in, and we end the beautiful dozing I seem to enjoy more than the actual sleeping. We get up, turn off the other 19,995 clocks and listen to serious radio news about the utter serious nature of seriousness. Eventually I get frantic at 8.10am, when it's clear neither of us wants to be late, but also, we haven't displayed the wherewithal to just leave. Mrs does her makeup, I invent little things that need to be settled, and become more frantic, until finally the collective fear of being late AND GETTING CAUGHT, cause me to grasp Mrs. Morgan's hand and jump off our balcony in the hope we'll land in our car. Given that we don't actually own a cabriolet, this is perhaps foolhardy, but unfortunately needs must.

The thing is, we live in a suburb in the Dublin mountains. Not to be confused with the Alps, it is not very high, and we aren't that far away from things. The problem is, that although the last fifteen years has seen our neighbourhood explode from being a hamlet, which is all it was, to being a regular, bog-standard expanse of suburban tundra. In turn, absolutely nothing has been done about the public transport servicing the area. The two or three busses that do go near us, the 63 and the 44, are so rare, you should do the lottery including those number when you do see one. It's actually easier to drive to the airport on the other side of Dublin, check in, face the humilation of the 'simon says' style of security favoured these days, and fly to London, than to get from our flat to Dublin city centre by public transport.

I'm not just bellyaching for the sake of it, despite appearances. Our daily rituals and panics were played out to the news today that none of the flagship infrastructure projects earmarked for completion this year have met their completion date. In one instance, a project has not even issued a revised completion date. Ministers barely shrug their shoulders, and look sheepish when the issue is brought up. It wouldn't be so bad, but the same newscast mentioned that the Irish economy is likely to lose out on international investment to countries like, Burundi or The Shire or Legoland, because of our pitiful transport infrastructure.

In the meantime, we'll continue our daily adventure to work, a daily homage to the frustration in 'The Great Escape', when Steve McQueen tried to jump barbed-wire on his motor bike to escape the Nazis.

Papa Doc

The event of a great statesman's retirement should be massive: tears, flowers, and plenty of blood on the cabinet room floor. More and more long serving political and public figures instead are being put out to pasture in the most banal and, to be frank, not very interesting way. They name a date after what feels like an eternity of barely spoken speculation, and then leave quietly. No fanfare, not even a pants down table dance in the middle of the UN general assembly. No fun. Tony Blair was one example. He was beginning to act like the guest from hell at a (Labour) Party. Politely cajoling the man into taking his tins of beer and kindly pushing off obviously hadn't worked, and everyone was too scared of him to tell him outright to go take a running jump. So he held off, and Gordon brooded even more, like the curious hybrid of Heathcliff and Gordon Banks that he is, until slick Tony handed over the keys to No. 10.

So when it came to the political demise yesterday of Big Ian Paisley, surely this man was going to give us something more exiting. Long serving politicians on these islands don't come bigger than him, so it's no more than you'd expect. He's like the Queen. Always there, he's been around since the days of Churchill, and his presence is somehow an absolute, like rain.

Nope. Not a sausage. For Paisley, the end came a little more low key. He quit his Free Presbyterian Church, all nice and nearly civilized. Then his son, Ian Jr. resigned for what in the Republic seems absolutely mystifying: he had business dealings with a developer. Bertie Ahern must have nearly choked on his Coco Pops: In Northern Ireland, they'll govern with men they'd have gladly seen off the planet twenty years ago, but dodgy land deals are a no-no. And then it was announced yesterday, he was leaving after an investment conference in May, and that's that. the end. No fire, no brimstone, no 'get stuffed ye Papish scum'. Nothing. In fact, he has a place in his heart for all Irish people, Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter.

Ian could have had a greatest hits tour, gone hell for leather and we'd have had a bit of fun for the next month, instead it seems only Robert Mugabe is willing give us that, and the laughs ain't great there. Chances are, that when Bertie goes, it will be even less satisfying for Political junkies like myself, unless on leaving, his state car is replaced by a Securicor van and some outriders, or a balloon and ruby slippers. Let's see what happens, and try to enjoy the show.

Ireland, and they way we might look at it...

Until recently, I found it extremely easy to ignore the fact that people in Ireland might be unhappy, that the lives people live might be flawed in some way. They are. Such is life. But events in south Dublin over the last week have provoked fury from the public and media, and as I write, not one person has answered for what has happened. 1,000 people, including President Mary McAleese, Justice Minister Brian Lenihan and the Archbishop of Dublin, Diarmuid Martin attended a special memorial service for two men who lived in the south Dublin community of Drimnagh and were brutally murdered last week. The pictures went out showing how Ireland was in solidarity with Poland. Of course we care. And ‘Thank God it was an isolated incident’ as Bertie said, in some inspired sound biting.

Only it wasn't isolated. Two men, both from Poland, allegedly refused to buy some youths alcohol from an off license in Drimnagh. Walking home, they were followed by those youths, one of whom had gone home and returned with a screwdriver. The two men were stabbed in the neck and head respectively and died of their injuries early last week. The reasons are unclear. The Polish community, hard working and often reticent, don’t seem to be the focus of a racist attack, despite reports, that the men were verbally abused as they walked home from the off-license. Thank God, it was an isolated incident.

Many are wondering what has become of our society. The turnout at the memorial service says a lot about how people feel about the event. Then again, the behaviour of our young people says even more, and this reflects more accurately how we interact as a society, as opposed to reflecting our aspirations. A visible minority of our young people are out of control, and some might say that violence is now a staple means of social interaction. As people try to come to terms with this incident, the Archbishop of Dublin has called for a community based “summit” to tackle the increase in violent crimes in Ireland. His suggestion is noble. We must debate, discuss and act upon what has the potential to become one of the defining tragedies of the last five years. Sadly, I don’t think it’s that simple, and the Archbishop's response reflects the difficulty we all have in confronting the issue of violence in our society. All the more frightening is the mess of conflicting, misleading stories and an almost total absence of cooperation to date from those young people who allegedly witnessed the tragedy.

And yet we still seek an explanation. Sociologists might tell you that some people do it to relieve their boredom and sense of isolation. Others do it to exercise some power in their lives over others, like kids pulling the legs off unfortunate spiders. Problematic is that these people aren't the ones who take part in the types of dialogue that Archbishop Martin suggested. They don't recognize their role in society, or the existence of society in the first place .

The killings may not have been racist, but also can’t be explained away as being a freak attack. Maggie Thatcher said there’s no such thing as society. True, when people act as if there is no higher sense of justice. To me it’s like believing in ghosts: if you don’t accept the idea in the first place, then it won’t be there when it should be. The next few days will tell us a lot of where we have come to, and where we may be headed.

Turkey Ahern

The Sunday papers were absolutely fizzing with stories this weekend about this, that or t’other, and the consensus seems to be that apart from carnage on our roads, a third world public transport system and social turmoil, an inert political class and myriad other problems involving guns, drugs and general mayhem, things could still be worse in Ireland. So when commenting on the state of things on our island, Gerry Adams made headlines by pointing out that Bertie Ahern might be displaying the same aptitude for government as Dustin the Turkey, Ireland's favourite puppet. It’s great to see that he is known in the UK, and that Gerry has an appetite for pop culture in other countries. Either that or he wrote all of his script in the sense that professional footballers all write their own autobiographies. I suspect he probably needed some clarification. No, a party hack explains, Dusin is not the wee bloke from "Rain Man", he's a puppet on children's TV, and the line will absolutely get a laugh.

Gerry's analogy, as populist as it was cringe inducing, works in the sense that both like act as if they were fluffy and a bit of a lark. However, whereas Bertie the Turkey is facing the prospect of being told to 'pluck off' by his party, Dustin the Turkey is very much flavour of the month at the moment in Ireland and even has the blessing of Bob Geldof.

Importantly, our endeavour to win back that most coveted of cultural prizes, the Eurovision song contest, is based on a popular vote, which backed this offering over more traditional acts. Not everyone is happy, though, and the reactions in the media suggest that maybe we chose wrong, and that sending our esteemed bird of cultural commentary to Belgrade might demean the event. After all, Dana is upset because she fears this will be the outcome. I didagree. The choice is inspired, and not without precedent.

The Eurovision song contest has for years been the repository of lame acts, moments of sheer genius and the occasional display of amusing disdain at what is as high-brow as a Butlin’s talent show. How else do you explain the Zero Mostel lookalike who won it last year for Serbia? Or Dana International, the transsexual who I reckon was actually Cher who represented Israel (a European country?) Dustin is just part of that. He’s the kid who plays a rude song at a school concert just to see if he’ll get detention or at least a few giggles from his mates. He won’t get douze pointes for Ireland as his song’s chorus suggests, but he might relieve Terry Wogan of the car crash television he has to endure every year. I hope Terry will be sniggering, knowing Dustin probably shouldn’t but there are worse things in this world than a musical novelty act. Bon chance, Dustin!!

Man of Aran

Not only does it rain sideways in the west of Ireland, but as I discovered on my way over to the Tedfest this morning, it feels like a thousand tiny needles smacking your face, as you stand on the deck of the ferry, waiting to cross to the Aran islands from Rosaveel, about an hour from Galway, and a million years from the Celtic Tiger. My brothers and I spent the last our or so making references to any movies to do with being at sea, but Rob being who he is, he couldn't stop help himself and insisted on talking like George Clooney in 'A Perfect Storm'. He even smelled vaguely of cod after a while, which was particularly worrying.

The crossing involved force eight gales, and plenty of green faces. At one stage we nearly lost our youngest brother, Ben, who being hilariously scrawny and no sea dog, was overcome with cabin fever, and briefly confused himself with Noel Coward in 'In Which We Serve': he ran out to the bridge, and hurled abuse at passing German U-boats, until the big one crashed over the port side of the ship. It was close, but we finally dragged him out of the water after much stress and effort. Wasn't a pretty sight though.

All's well that ends well, and the truly hardy ones have made it, such as Pat Mustard the milk float Lothario, and Darren, the avuncular Corkman who has arrived with grey wig and a sparkly blue jacket. Still have no team for the football tomorrow, but we are hoping that some excessive defending could get us all the way in the Craggy World Cup, and perhaps the officials may be open to generous decisions our way. I only hope Ben recovers from his near death experience to play, or I'll be the soft touch the opposition kick up in the air. The next few hours will be crucial...

The best is yet to come...

So this is the week. Daddy has been not alive for ten years, and it feels like ten minutes. We miss ya big guy, and the sense of unpredictability that was so abundant when you were here has been notably absent in our lives, since you left us without warning. I'm also pretty sure Pentel have gone bust, given that no-one buys their green pens anymore. I do wonder what you'd make of being a cultural icon, and maybe you'd be faintly embarrassed, as the committee suggested at footie the other day. Either way, we're proud of you, and we're going to let rip for you this week at the Tedfest. And if anyone else is reading this, drink, dance, laugh and plainly smile with all the childlike joy of Winnie the Pooh for a man whose soul and lust for life outran his body when we needed him a bit longer. Thank heavens for small mercies. Thank heavens we had him at all!

In other news, Rob and I are still working on getting famous. Proper famous, not Jade Goody famous. The radio show project, "Late night with Rob and Don" is taking shape. We want sick humour and good music. And I am doing my work on the novel, biography and some damn fine poetry. I'm going to win the Nobel Prize for Literature by the age of 50. Normally you have to be over 80 to win it, but I'm feeling cocky!

Will keep you posted.

...that I may walk through the Valentine of the shadow of...

I've had this blog in my head over the last few days. Every waking moment, I've been thinking about it's grace, simplicity. Then, my self doubt creeps in and before you know it, I put off writing something new. Again. For the godknowshowmanyeth time.

Last Thursday was of course the great SAINT Valentine's Day, when all the women should be adored and adorned with all manner of trinkets, and all men should by right be scared out of their wits until the lights go out. My particular experience this year was very pleasant, thank you for wondering, and next year, I hope to have an equally pleasant night out with the Missus.

We went to a restaurant in Howth, the next best thing to the south of France in Ireland, without having to go west Cork, and with a more discreet set of Nouveau Riche than Dalkey, who might loudly talk in restaurants about having once used a urinal not two minutes after Bono. The Bono.

Perhaps having lived on Dublin's south side has made me jaded by all that tomfoolery, but Howth is just beautiful. Leaning towards posh, Howth is nevertheless is like a feisty fisherman's daughter who married well and lost none of her charms. At the end of the pier was Aqua, where we had dinner. Gorgeous, beautiful, smoozey Jazz, and my missus was looking as gorgeous as only she can. I said that I had a pleasant evening. Actually, it was wonderful night - we had a blast, and like all good evenings, some truths emerged about ourselves and the other guests dining.

At all the different tables, couples were peering at each other, leering, even sneering, as the waiters did their damndest to make their night as special as possible. The table behind us had a guy whose shirt had been demonstrably ripped from out his pants in an act of defiance, to the lady, who, it must be said, had made an effort. He let his fingers fish around his mouth, each phase of rummaging provoking winces of disdain and hatred, from someone who probably thought that rugged did not mean the same as feral.

But the real joy was the couple two tables down. They could not have been more than eighteen, shiny faces, scrubbed up and startled to be there. The waiters decanted and served their bottles of Miller and Bulmers. I swear they were happy as clams, and in their presence, it was clear we were all like them, all pretending to be grown up, when in fact, we were all in clothes that maybe we wouldn't like to wear normally, and hoping to God our partners would order soup.

I hope that couple remain as refreshing as they were, and are still having as much fun, seven days on.

Tom Lehrer & Cathal O Searcaigh

Ireland has a new craze gripping the public consciousness - it's called 'the great school poetry cull'. Where once line-dancing and incest were national staples, today we, the sohpistimicated, Irish get ourselves into a tizzy about the morality of art.

Recently, TD Tony Gregory called for the lyrics of Tom Lehrer's happy little ditty 'Poisoning pigeons in the park' to be removed from either a textbook. Now, as a would-be writer and (bad) poet, I was rather saddened, since my top five poetic lines includes the wonderful:

'my heart just keeps quickenin' with each drop of strikenin'

Nevertheless, there we go, as cold blooded as Tom, luring unsuspecting poetry books to our bosom, a scissors concealed until it's too late for the hapless creature. Enter Mr. Gregory, as well informed as a dead badger at the bottom of a black sack.

Funny. I had thought lots of people had heard of this song, despite being relatively new (if you are living in 1952). Nevertheless, as enlightened as we are, even we have limits in this society of ours. Poet Cathal O' Searcaigh also got himself into trouble in Nepal, being a little too comfortable with teenage boys than the listeners of RTE's Liveline programme were comfortable with. Imagine Ireland's surprise - a poet in dodgy lifetsyle-choice shock! John Keats to reception please...

Whatever the merits of such hulaballoo, both the case of Lehrer and O'Searcaigh raise to the surface how we in Ireland deal with difference of any sort. Be it a difference of humour or of lifestyle choice, the instinct displayed in public discourse is to remove iconoclasts and their work from the canon of our admissible culture.

Lehrer, for instance, specialises in black humour, which fifty-odd years since it was first performed is still refreshingly dangerous. O'Searaigh writes some of the most extraordinary love poetry today (though I must admit not appreciating him during my Leaving Cert). What both have in common is their outcome. Comedy and poetry, like all artistic endeavour, may entertain. More importantly, however, it should cause you to question your acceptance of the reality as permitted by the mediocrity of consensus.

Worryingly, it seems we cannot accept this for our young people, who mainstream culture would only have exposed to a limited selection of cultural output. Young people are more adventurous than that, no more so than at the untamed frontiers of language.

It would be one more disservice to our society, if we denied them (and the rest of us) the opportunity to explore, debate and hold to account the world we have created for ourselves. This is not possible, if 1950s solutions to unsettling questions are allowed to prevail. Otherwise, we may just all quit and go line-dancing.

Kaliningrad meets Castleknock

"A defunct Irish racecourse and the home of Immanuel Kant - History and how to Survive it"

"Bertrand" Ahern, the great make-up wearing grand-dame of Ireland's nest of badly dressed political vipers, has today claimed that he was not in any way involved financially (though maybe fatally) with UK developer Norman Turner after dealings with him in 1994. According to today's Irish Times:

'It emerged last night that a passport issued to Norman Turner, a businessman involved in the Sonas consortium that planned to develop the Phoenix Park racecourse as a casino, was returned via Mr Ahern's office in August 1994. Mr Turner also donated $10,000 to Fianna Fáil via its chief fundraiser Des Richardson in that year.'

It seems that this is perfectly normal and, sure, his ma was from Cork. This in itself would be enough of a reason for him to have dieu et mon droit tattooed to his forehead, let alone his bloody passport. Unsurprisingly, the opposition parties are howling for his head, whilst also arguing with the junior coalition partners, the Greens, in Dail Eireann, like so many drunken hen parties outside a low-rent nightclub. Shame they hadn't discovered the stomach for confrontation ten years ago, when they could have retained government, and perhaps had a better class of clientelism insinuate its way through Leinster House.

What is striking, is less the abovementioned parliamentary row, than the plan that first aroused Bertie's sense of helpfulness to his Manchester based developer friend. (The new one, not the old one. No, the other one. Left a bit, closer.... theeeere, you go...) The reason this so intriguing, is that it highlights a cultural foible we have - In Ireland, we tend to demolish great houses, fine estates, beloved landmarks and areas of natural beauty. In their place appear much needed five star hotels and "championship" golf courses, car parks, shopping centers and when the state gets involved the odd interpretative centre in areas of natural beauty, so we may organize nature. And sell a few postcards. Putting it more bluntly, we "develop" sites for reasons which are hard to fathom, other than the naked pursuit of wealth by builders.

This requires a certain kind of contempt, for one's heritage, the environment, for your countrymen, for your agreed political system, for social values. In Ireland, this is caused by an intrinsic lack of value being placed in the unquantifiable, in things which may be beautiful, but are not valuable in a one dimensional, mercenary way. Stately home are dismissed as belonging solely to the Anglo-Irish world, to host fuddy-duddy classical concerts: They bear no resemblance to "real" people's aspirations, tastes or needs. These are symbols of our colonial repression, and must be taken down a peg, to suit our needs. In adopting this view, members of the media, political class and the construction industry in Ireland vilify what many Irish feel they have no access to, thus denying them treasures they never knew they had.

It would be mischievous of me to suggest that there is an ulterior motive for adopting this stance, but here goes. Many such houses are bought up by our new, bourgeois elite, who have replaced the Anglo-Irish in the last ninety years, as the chinless classes. So Lissadell House, part of the very soul of our independence, could be bought up by lawyers, who maybe have less right to it as a private home, than the entire people, whose freedom was dreamt of there. It's not their fault. But maybe Bertie and the Office of Public Works should start looking sheepish about now.

This story arose in the wake of a news item in some German news outlets. The city of Kaliningrad, the city once known as Koenigsberg, is to rebuild substantial sections of the old city, where the grave of Immanuel Kant is located. The plan includes the intended reconstruction of the old city fortress, demolished in 1968 by the new occupants of the city, as a "symbol of fascism". I can't figure out why, other than the curious and thosew with family histories in the region will travel there to witness a wonderful, curious, macabre, thoroughly unique human event: one-time enemies reconstituting a city, that, like Siamese twins, is a heart linking two countries for as long as they will exist. No perceived insecurity, no post-colonial funk. It may not be 100% magnanimous - it would be a huge boost for the local economy - but things are heading in an interesting direction.

Uli Hesse-Lichtenberger's Tor! The story of German Football is a bloody good read. It also raises some points about the nature of its subject matter. First, it is possible to misunderstand the football of a given country if you are not part of, or well informed about, the culture. When you delve deeper, you find that the passion Hesse-Lichtenberger displays is based on a form of blind faith in what you may consider historical fact or Tatsache. The English do not necessarily understand the former point, but will get the latter rings more than a few bells.

In the English game, there is a lack of repect for the culture of German football. It is, like English football, packed with passion and pain and not a little beauty. If only they could see it, though. The stereotypes of Germany that one finds in football, although occasionally amusing, are essentially shorthand for what they feel about Germans as they (mis-) understand them.

Some Germans don't get it either. Take one of the most succesful films to be made in Germany in recent years, Das Wunder von Bern (pictured above). The historical event it depicts is a fascinating series of events that tell us of the complexities, the genius and often roaring inepttiude and lack of completeness that West Germany experienced when it attended the 1954 World Cup. The film of the event is a film of the myth, and therefore lacks an appreciation of the complexities of the original story. It makes no mention of the unfortunate rendition of Deutschland Ueber Alles, the abandoned and jingoistic first verse of the German national anthem, or the wider fall out of the win for German society, the tut-tutting of the media at the euphoria that followed. Clumsily, Germans were beginning to stumble towards asking themselves who they were. This is a lesson, I think, that has yet to be drawn from England's own iconic World Cup victory.

Hesse-Lichtenebrger doesn't make this point, which is a pity. But he does display what the film displays. A tacit understanding of the power of those events, and that only the hardest of football fans could not get a lump in their throat thinking of the significance of this occasion. A power and significance recognised in the current Berlin Republic. For me, its the power of football.

The return of the Ginga Ninja

Hello again!

I'm the bald guy on the left, and worried at how I look like William Hague. Still, such is life, and I am left to compare my early appearance with that of a failed Tory leader.

Let me bring you up to speed. My last blog was in 2003. Since then I have made it as a qualified teacher: the zenith of my career was reached this morning when one of my students indicated the city of Mainz on a map of Germany with the corner of his (flying) dictionary. His aim was remarkably true. Sadly, he was not involved in my school's unsuccessful attempt to reach the next stages of the Leinster Junior Cup (Rugby, don't you know...). It seems they were hit by a some sort of gypsy curse: The captain hurt his shoulder, another player chucked the big vom, or so I am told, and most cruelly, they were defeated after leading at half time.

This, however, leads me to my real reason for writing this post. My one true passion, writing, has been rekindled this week. Hurrah! Another attempt to be Nick Hornby, strutting self consciously in Helen Fielding's knickers? Eh, I think not. Life, like literature, doesn't need to be so contrived. My problem with modern popular literature is that it fails to see that coinicdence provides the better scenarios than conscious literary endeavour. The temporary rush of adrelaline in a fourteen year old boy with a book in his hand, an unfortunate fall in a training session and butterflies on an empty stomach indicate that there is absolutely no need for a controlling third party to invent what reality throws up so much more eloquently every day.