Ryan Condfidential

The story of 150, 000 boys and girls abused in the care of the church, supervised by the state, has been described as a holocaust of sorts. I find the notion distasteful, but they do share a common bond. The cowardice of ordinary people to do the right thing.

Whilst some will demand pots of money from religious orders, and whilst Diarmuid Martin does his best say what needs to be said, much of the outcry over the report ignores the fact, that we, our elected officials and our civil servants failed to hold the church to account, as was our duty. We failed to get beyond parochial defensiveness when the failings of our industrial schools was exposed by outsiders, irrespective of their pre-eminence in the field of childcare. We failed every child and woman and man who was ever sent to places that Dickens would have lambasted a century before.

Ireland is at a low ebb. The economy is in tatters, our morale is rock bottom. People are scared and leaders are doing nothing but grin offensively from posters or fast tracking passports. In the midst of that, you can be guaranteed we will be told not to dwell on the past, not to examine who we are and who we were, to repress what cannot be repressed.

We have never defined ourselves beyond crude caricatures, a reaction to the London Illustraed News showing us to be dressed monkeys. We never came to terms with the famine, with colonialism, with the Great War or with our movement from the apron strings of Britain to those of Rome.

It's more than just about money. It's about looking at our true selves and the ugliness of our national soul, gnarled by decades of self deception and complacency.

Liverpool and why I hate my football club

I'm a Liverpool fan. have been since I made the decision in 1985 that, according to the copy of Shoot from 1974 that we had, that Steve William' kit was just a little to stupid looking for my liking. that said, it was still a close call. I think I regret the decision, and I'm going to tell you why.

Since before Michael Thomas buried Liverpool's ominous 1989 season, I have had my heart broken more times by my football club than all the humiliations of asking girls out in my teens ever could. First it was John Aldridge having his penalty saved by Hans Segers, the first penalty to be saved in an FA Cup final, then it was Souness replacing Kenny Dalgliesh, and replacing a team of genuine beauty with one as pretty as the face on Paul Stewart's head.

if you're married to a club, then mine has been a loveless marriage, until those frilly tarts in Arseenal started pirouetting around Highbury to the tune of Thierr Henry's sexy football ethos, I didn't know how to get turned on about football at all.

And then last night it happened again. Goal after goal, they couldn't find the killer punch, or learn how to outwit ARashavin or the supply he had to the goal.

The bottom line is: I want the Premiership. I want to love my club again!

Budget - not just the sound a car makes when hitting a pothole

I spent the last few weeks paying a little game. The game was to try to predict what the government was going to do in the budget. I had to give up, unfortunately, due to one inalienable fact. The third generation Fianna Fail aristocracy running the country are SO incompetent that it's hard to know what they're going to do.

And so it was today. After the sideshow regarding locking everyone, including the members of the press, into the Dail chamber, Brian Lenihan (the second) set out his second budget, because his first one was, frankly, bollocks.

What was the aim of the new budget? What was its purpose? Mainly to look tough. They want to look serious and credible. Some things were interesting: the nod to social democracy in the shape of one year's free pre school for all children in other times could have been visionary, but it wasn't placed in the context of a broader social programme.

Setting up a toxic bank was interesting, but will it restore confidence in our banks, or will it be seen as a sop to developers who borrowed more than they could repay?

And did the government sufficiently grab the state's finances by the scruff of the neck and amend for how the government frittered away record tax receipts over the last decade, whilst doing nothing to stop banks from lending to any gobshite and pumping up a property market to the point of disaster.

George Lee said it didn't add up. They spoke of having a five year plan. I watched the whole thing and saw no such plan. I hope they're right and I'm wrong, but I'm gonna keep wearing my pre-browned recession trousers just in case.

Spamalot!

It says a lot when the spam in your email reflects the economic shlamozzel we live in. Spam during the boom years was all about cosmetic surgery. Have a nicer nose, bouncier boobs. Well, all booms go bust as badly as a doctored bust can go boom. Bubbles burst and now my spam folder today bore such cheery opportunities as 'foreclosed homes' and 'filing bankruptcy?'. It's like looking at the world through the eyes of the PM of Iceland, YongBron Coewenstottir.

Thanks to this junk everyone can make sense of the crisis in Lehmann's terms...

Waste Not want Not

Many people recycle. I do. Germans and people who are forcibly made to wear Birkenstocks do. Most American sitcom writers do but don't admit it. And yet there are two good reasons why it's bad for you. One, there's no value any more in rubbish as a commodity. Fact. The price of waste collapsed like Jabba the Hut in a marathon stair climbing contest. Second, it's bloody dangerous.

I destroyed myself this morning going into my back room to find things to stuff my car with. In the end, I nearly perished. My legs got trapped under three tons of jumbo sized milk cartons, and no one could hear me call for help, as Styrofoam became lodged in my mouth. After I was eventually rescued by a St.Bernard dog and a news crew, I nearly sliced my finger off, washing the inside of an empty tin of fruit salad.

Another great piece of recycling is Madonna, queen of the reinvention, who's apparently now a cougar. Our Lady of the Fishnet was snapped with Jesus de Luz, a 22-year old product of the model breeding program in operation Brazil, ever since Mengele visited there after the war. The world media savoured pictures of the pair. Not even The Sunday Times could resist the entitling their snap with the obvious 'Madonna and Child'.

Madonna is not Michael Douglas, nor is she the nonagenarian squillionaire peanut-in-a-wheelchair, who Anna Nicole Smith married. Perhaps, and I'm just putting it out there, there might be a double standard here. Madonna is a woman, but she has every right to a mid-life crisis as any man, including engaging in near comical flings with unfeasibly young people, who have none of the life experiences she might have.

Her right to a life notwithstanding, it won't stop people mocking her. Let's hope she never gets a comb-over and a Porsche!

This week, a video!

As an experiment, I'm going to try to not only blog in writing, but from time to time, I'm going to use the wonderful gadgets on my laptop in order to present my notions and ideas as they come out of my mouth, sometimes after gestating in my brain. Uploading pictures would take too long and take up too much memory, so instead, I'm going to do it this way. Sometimes writing on the internet is like shouting your name in a dark cave, where only bats and Facebook stalkers will here you, but I hope that even the bats will take notice and enjoy my stuff.

That's not to say I'm not going to let you away so easily. Enjoy my video, it's a bit of fun more than anything else.

I leave you with this thought. Can a man get by on less than €2 million a year in these hard times?

Winter of Discontent....

Our huskies are dead. That's right, I took a hatchet to the bastards. I had to look into their big, brown, vacant eyes and somehow detach myself as the grim deed was done. It was necessary and totally humane. For us. We were cold and hungry, and their meat and fur helped nurture what was left of my wife and I on our trip home at the end of an arduous week. We had been camped out on the M50 for much of the last three days, and before that, we were forced into the purchase of said huskies from a dodgy looking Eskimo following our near fatal expedition on the N7 out of Castledermot. Cars slid and slipped, vans hilariously got stuck head first into holes like Winnie the Pooh. Buying our snow-hounds seemed a good bet as a glacier formed rapidly from Carlow to Dublin. South Leinster looked like the Baring Straights, though we couldn't see Russia from our house. It turned out to be just another panic buy.

Instead of venturing forwards with our new dogs, however, we turned back and went home; took a mad, bad and definitely sad trip on public "transport" the next day and found that the weather was, like manflu, not so much bad as it was messy.

All because a few county councils couldn't have been arsed gritting the roads, thereby risking our already fairly peeky looking economy as 9% of us stayed at home (not including the near 400,000 who have nowhere to go in the morning anyway).

Maybe it's stay at home telemarketing for everyone. It's better than waiting for the powers that be to do up a recovery plan and grit the damn roads!

I'll get by....

This is the first time in about a week that I've had the time to post anything on my accursed blog, accursed, that is, because I use rude words in disbelief that I don't write enough on it. There's only so often you can get indignant enough about the country to write, without having to resort to a cocktail of Pepcid and gin to keep the show going. Ireland has been mentioned in the same breath as Iceland by Jose Manuel Barroso, and not because of our innovative music industries.

Iceland is run by corrupt inbred weirdies who look like they escaped from Royston Vasey, so being likened to them in any respect I don't think is a good thing in any way. did I mention they're also inept? Just saying....

Amid the current turmoil and Brian Cowen's grossly offensive, "It's my country and I'll fuck it up if I want to" rant, and the utter contempt shown to the our parliament in fixing the unfixable, Sebastian Barry went under the national radar, winning the Costa Book Prize, the old Whitbread prize. No fanfare to speak of. Yes, the Irish Times reported the win, duh! They would. No one else however saw fit to really mention it or its significance, beyond the fact that he won and the cash prize he received(quel surprise). Why?

We Irish have a contempt for success and particuarly for intellectual discourse. Successful writer? not interested. Don't read anyway. Why would you, sure? Reading won't soup up your Subaru Impreza, will it? This malaise is not limited to Barry's literary success. It's the very reason why the political classes are incapable of dealing with our current crises - they're ignorant, illiterate and arrogant. Cowen's abovementioned rant is just one example of this. There are plenty more that you can no doubt think of yourself.

So as writers go unaknowledged and tough decisions go unfaced, we get to sit quietly and watch the sun go down on our glory years, whilst being beaten over the head with a fraying Chloe Handbag and a copy of the Irish Times property Section.

Irregular Regulator

The Financial Regulator has decided to retire early. After doing the career equivalent of being Brezhnev's body double after the great man died, Paddy Neary finally jumped ship. An internal report gave his office a good kicking for its handling of the Anglo-Irish Bank "let's allow executives to hide loans from everyone, which is eeeerily like criminal activity (allegedly) but isn't, because they were going to give the money back, honest" scandal.

Well, that's about time he went, isn't it. He fell honourably on his sw...I mean, he put his hands up to his ultimate respons...Well, he saw it com...

...He took early retirement rather than risk being sacked and humiliated. How brave! His office did nothing to prevent bankers behaving recklessly with other people's money. Officials under his command instead alternated their activities between updating their Facebook pages and burying their heads up their arses. His office wasn't up to the job of regulating Neary's private sector buddies and the blame was placed not on him as the F.R., but on lower level types, who failed to pass on warnings of the Anglo shenanigans to the top dogs in the Financial Regulator's office. "I'm going, but it was the underling's fault" is the message of his departure: The buck stopped somewhere near reception.

He'll no doubt be rewarded for his essential negligence with a cosy state pension and without censure or reprimand officially blemishing his Resume. Wonderful that he had the foresight to avoid that disaster.

There is something even more galling to note about this. Aside from witnessing the cowardly sneaking off of an official who did some disservice to this state, not one thing will be learned from the sorry episode. The banking sector, now in free fall, will once again be allowed to behave like kids in a sweet shop the next time things are good. Which will again hamper efforts in the struggle with Ireland's underlying economic vulnerability and our essential greed.

If he fancies, Neary has one option to while away his newly found free time. He could get a part time job giving out dole money, though it might be stressful for him. The queues for his counter would be massive. Sure it'd be easier than winning the Lotto!

Hot Lisbon Action

We will be doing another Lisbon Treaty vote. As I write this, I can hear Brian Cowen's loud, fevered scribbling of a plan on the back of a cigarette packet to get the blasted thing passed - with as few casualties as possible. Will it work? Yes, despite his best efforts!

This is the second treaty we fucked up the first time out. He and his predecessor couldn't get Nice passed on the first attempt despite facing an opposition of racists and headbangers. This motley crew included a tree hugger imitating Peter Tork of the Monkees and a Nazi midget who thought a European treaty on the administrative structures of the EU would cause a rash of mass abortions and black masses, populated by blacks.

Nevertheless, it happened again. Bertie bolted and Cowen campaigned as convincingly as Pete Postlethwaite playing Giuseppe Conlon could convincingly portray Lara Croft. Lisbon was a treaty advocated by babykillers and Euro-Imperialists, they said, and a great plague of locusts would come and devour our crops and and and and...
The truth is, that Lisbon is about the ADMINISTRATIVE STRUCTURES of the EU. Nevertheless, Cowen couldn't make that simple point, and didn't get it passed.

Si here we go again. We are presented with (cue fanfare) a set of declarations, non binding, and which have absolutely nothing to do with the treaty. There's statesmanship for you. The actions of the government speak for themselves. Lisbon has been a grade A farce, and this while we may need to go play it old school with Brussels, getting out the begging bowl, looking pathetic.

While the country's burning to the ground, we saw the great man Cowen doing what you'd expect a latter day Nero to do. Last Thursday, after his great press conference where no plan was proposed to save our economy, he was singing carols with the Civil Service choir.

You Gotta Work!!

I'd love to work in an office in Ireland. They're places where boys and girls dress up in their parents' clothes and play grown ups for six hours a day, before running away to be the children they really are. You'll see many and most such office monkeys in the wild, their shirts hanging out of their pants, trainers clashing with cheap black work suits, whilst bags of crisps and messy pints get passed around sticky pub tables. It's not all fun though. Ministers are going cap in hand to jittery multinationals. This could be the Cretaceous period for this species, after the asteroid hit. Now they're forced to do a perverse re-enactment of every bad western, where the employer shouts "Dance!" and the office monkeys have to dodge a hail of bullets.

Having done a little snooping around in a Dublin office last week, I copped the real reason for their imminent doom. They dress so badly, that sartorially more evolved cultures are pulling out of Ireland in disgust. I saw some humdingers: Footballers' haircuts on top of tight fitting suits last seen in Goodfellas and which have since infested the formal section of River Island. Girls turn up at 9am Monday to Friday like a cross between Flamingos and Sister Wendy, teetering in heels in no way meant for anyone but Ru Paul. It's no wonder that foreign bosses are confronted with a choice: invest in gift vouchers for H&M or pull out altogether. The cost of the former would simply bankrupt any firm on earth. Look at Dell: being American, investing in the dress-sense apocalypse in Dell's native Texas has practically bankrupted the company. Investing in threads for their Limerick plant would push them over the edge.

Clearly this is a critical moment in our economic history and needs must when the sling-back hits the fan. Having watched Law and Order, I'm clearly qualified to enforce a new regime. After all, there are fashion crimes so heinous, that they must be investigated by an elite group, the Fashion Victims Unit. These crimes go all the way to the top in our society. Just look at Mary Coughlan. She's as dainty as Jonah Lomu, as stylish as Jackie Healy-Rae. It was only a matter of time before people saw her fashionista status was simply an invention of hacks, shell shocked by back to back episodes of Sex and the City on DVD.

You can, however, help defeat this great threat to our society. Frog-march a shabby looking loved one into Massimo Dutti. Flights to Milan are cheap - why not book one for some lady who thinks trouser suits were meant for people other than Marlene Dietrich. Beat your husband the next time he wears a brown, diagonally checked shirt with a pink, striped tie.

This is your task. Our economy needs you. It's your patriotic duty! Dress to impress!

Branded a Sicko!

What do Conor Lenihan and Russell Brand have in common? A lot more than you think....

Brand has the persona of a hybrid Lenny Bruce and Albrecht Duerer. Conor Lenihan is the Fianna Fail's Cumainn clown. Lenihan branded Leo Varadkar a fascist in what has to be the most tedious and embarrassing media 'row' to happen in this country in aeons. The remarks were made during a debate on what is actually an important issue, namely cuts in education. Lenihan made a reference taken to be about Varadkar, complete with Nazi style salute to cap it off.

Brand, as you know, unless you've had the blessing of total sensory deprivation over the last week, is responsible with Mr. Jonathan Ross for a prank voicemail message on actor Andrew Sachs' phone, leading to both being treated in the media furore in much the same way large black and white animals are smacked about in a Badger baiting contest. They made references to Brand's relationship with Sachs' granddaughter.

What Conor Lenihan's fascist jibes and Brand's idiotic and possibly illegal prank have in common is that neither was particularly funny. Similarly, both rows have lead to questions about what we deem to be in good or bad taste.

I don't think it's in good taste to call someone a fascist. I also don't think it's in good taste to leave offensive messages on someone's phone about what you've done with their granddaughter. I also don't think it's in good taste to be distracted by these pathetic sideshows when central Africa is on the brink of genocide for the second time in as many decades.

For both rows, there's the same response to be made. If you don't like Russell Brand, don't go to see him. It worked to get rid of Bernard Manning,thank God. Similarly, Brand has not said or done anything his peers have not already signed off on. Is it right to make sleazy jokes about your sexual conquests? Is it right to crack wise about the Holocaust? Maybe not, but sometimes comedy can reveal truths that other art forms don't reveal. If a minister repeatedly says things which make you want to slice your tongue off to distract you from the pain of the embarrassment he causes, then don't let him back into Leinster House at the next election. He has not earned the right to rub shoulders with statesmen....

...Sorry, that last line was in particularly bad taste, as it didn't reflect reality at all!

I find neither Conor Lenihan nor Russell Brand terribly clever or amusing. Neither politics nor comedy are enjoying a golden age right now, and real genius is thin on the ground. I choose, therefore, to avoid them, let them on, and hope someone will, as Andrew Sachs suggested, "do better".

Don Giovanni

There were a few scary moments where international football wasn't on the telly, but we're okay now with the world cup qualifiers under way. There's been talk of resurrection and renewal from a few different quarters, but do we have it? Is any of the Tra-hype worth the ink? Answer: no.

We were not going to Tiblisi, which was good. Shorter flight, less of a chance of being brutally murdered. Instead the Georgian away fixture was being at a neutral venue. Surprise, surprise, since Georgia is the wobbly pub table du jour, upon which America and Russia are doing some retro 80's geopolitical arm-wrestling. Instead, it all happened in Mainz, Germany. Admittedly there's an irony in using the term 'neutral', given that Germany is in NATO and Mainz near several US bases, however irony has never been a FIFA strong point.

The buzz was far from deafening, however. Despite the relative closeness of the neutral venue to us - Mainz is barely an hour from Frankfurt airport - it didn't seem to enthuse people to march arm in arm to Dublin airport to watch a festival of football.

The fact is, that unless people have an interest in history and culture, the reasons for going to Mainz did not include a guarantee of passionate football by a group of men who want to play for the pride and honour of their country. The spirit may have been willing, but the bodies weren't following.

Previous fixtures under Trapattoni haven't given that much cause for comfort. For example, I attended the macabre spectacle of Ireland v Serbia at Croke Park. We arrived late and left early. The place would have had a bigger gate for a ladies minor football semi-final. Those who did attend had clearly worked as extras in the film "Awakenings": the bestial awfulness of the game sent the rest of us into a coma as well. Despite our best effort to get a few songs going - no one wanted to join in for a few bars of 'You're not really Russians' to the tune of 'Guantanemera' for the benefit of the Serbs - there was a serious feeling of being underwhelmed and uninterested. Things did not bode well, and the display in Mainz demonstrated a similar lack of energy.

Admittedly, not everyone was lacking animation. Trapp is 69, and has more verve and passion than any one player on the pitch in a green jersey. Even the score, 2-1, suggests a job done with some efficiency but not much else. There's an awful lot of convincing still to do.

So, it's on to Montenegro, the latest country to dump Serbia, and yet another young country whose infancy is troubled. For all of that, however, we can't seem to stuff these teams, despite the genuine administrative and logistical obstacles on their own paths to glory.

Whilst other teams from Europe's developed footballing world, such as Germany, can stick six of the best past minnows, we're left scrapping it out with teams that, frankly, have no tangible reason to put up a serious threat to us, and we've been at this since the McCarthy era, if not even earlier. Trapp has merely brought stability, but self-belief, even flair have yet to materialise.

Another bout of underachievement on Wednesday may drive the excitable Trapp to distraction, which is the fans can relate to. We're already distracted, by reruns of Southpark.

Bijoux Carleau

I want briefly to mention a thought that crossed my mind yesterday. Carlow's population is just shy of seventeen and a half thousand people. There is probably one home furnishing store for every two families (or so it seems). All have reduced prices to the point that proprietors are nearly giving you cash and one of their children in order to encourage a shift of their stock: sales that reek of 'last ditch effort'.

The answer to this is simple: Noone has any money, their stock is shite and everyone has everything they need anyway.

What do you think this means for the out of town shopping malls which are still insisting on mushrooming around the edges of a town for whom the word bijoux might have been invented?

Just a thought.

What did they do with our money??

I’ve always thought there’s something scary about Fianna Fáil in power. Long before I got wise to the notion of endemic corruption and incompetence, Fianna Fáil were the worrying shower who’d turn up at a state shindig and look like knives and forks were used not for consuming food, but for picking wax out if their over-hairy ears. Then they got in 1997, and declared that everything was fantastic, and let the good times roll!

Some years ago, at the height of the boom, I was at a barbecue in the former Stasi stronghold of Wandlitz, where those loyal to the East German Secret police were rewarded with plush villas, whilst everyone else was sitting in small flats with mullet hairdos. During what turned out to be an extremely drunken night, a German fellow asked me a question that to this day sends a shiver down my spine: ‘What did you do with our money?’ I regaled him with tales of the Luas, the BertieBowl™, of decentralisation and other, apocryphal tales of state wastefulness.

Now that our state’s tax take has a hole about the size of a small country, that’s a question I’m redirecting to Leinster House. What did you do with our money, Brian?

Well, all good things come to an end, but if the last eleven years are like anything, then it’s like the three night bender on the heel of payday. You think you’re amazingly wealthy, so let’s go nuts. Afterwards, you go to your ATM because you need to get a burger and a cure, only to have the scary green words “insufficient funds” flash in your face, taunting you, ‘cos the homeless guy tugging at your trouser leg has more savings in his paper cup than you have in your current account.

Maeve Higgins has the best analogy for our current problems, of the child who spent all their pocket money in one shop. Well, there won’t be any more pocket money until they've earned it. I think Brian Cowen’s pay, and that of his hench-people, should be withheld, until the mess we're in is cleared up. God knows what Mary Coughlan will do for a new pair of slingback Manolos. Knowing how things are, and how long it’ll take to fix things, the next time you’re at the hole in the wall, the guy who’s tugging at your trouser leg will probably be Brian Lenihan.

Euro 2008 - an apology

I would like to unreservedly apologise to anyone who read my previous blog on the future of German football. Any similarity between the German team I described and the one that showed up in Vienna last night was purely coincidental.

I would further like to say to any Germans who may stumble across this page, that you should write to your MP, get out on the streets and start petitions for the banishment of Per Mertesacker, Christoph Metzelder and Philip Lahm to a country far less pleasant than Germany, but which for their own torture, will behave like a creepy imitation of the Heimat: remaining in Austria is the only way to properly torture them for their cretinous antics against a Spanish team which was far superior.

Then again, the Leicester Celtic under-12's C team would have played both sides of the park. The only winner last night was King Juan Carlos of Spain for his "Jim Robinson from Neighbours" impression. uncanny....

Mediterranean football - balls to it!

Euro 2008. Quarter Finals. Italy versus Spain. The pundits said it would epitomise the ballet of modern football. It turned out to be garbage. Spain went through on penalties, and they did so possessing a set of principals only slightly more attacking than their Italian counterparts, whose game is as negative as it is morally and tactically bankrupt. Not long before, Portugal went out to Germany. France never turned up. The teams of the south, who claim to set the standard for beautiful football, are on the wane. Infuriatingly, some pundits are like stalkers in their obsessive love for Mediterranean football. The sooner they get help, the sooner they may see positive, attacking football is also found north of the Alps. And no amount of tired clichés about German football are going to hide it.

During this European Championship, southern European football went on trial, and Christiano Ronaldo has been the first prisoner marched to the scaffold. Behaving like a play-acting, narcissistic arsehole, he does as much for football as out of season oysters do for encouraging bulimics to keep their food down. The fans of Man United know this by the shabby way he has treated them in his move to Real Madrid. So when Portugal got knocked out of the Euro 2008, I punched the air, wishing he was Patrick Battiston to my Toni Schumacher. When watching Germany versus Portugal, one thing was clear. Germany has a hard task ahead to earn unqualified credit for a new style and attitude that confounds and irritates British pundits. And after the Turkey match, it proved impossible. They’ll always prefer the likes of Ronaldo.

What bothers me is not his skill. He’s got oodles of it, that’s for sure, but I have two problems. One is his dreadful attitude to the game. He spends half a match querying, barracking, harassing officials, then walking away like a petulant schoolboy when being reprimanded for unprofessional and unsporting conduct.

The second problem is watching football with UK commentary. British commentators are so pathologically smitten with Mediterranean football. They don’t look past the fact that it’s long been no more than hype: no style bar some dodgy haircuts, and definitely no substance. Even the BBC, following the epic semi versus a resilient, brilliant Turkey, could have had the decency to say that truly, this was a game for attacking teams, and Germany was one of them, as inventive and frantic upfront as they were wobbly at the back, pound for pound as good as the Turks. No new analysis, no good will.

Typically, there’s mention of the traditional German style – mechanical, efficient, bla bla blah. So when David Pleat admitted that the England team lacked the flair of the Germans, I nearly fell off my chair with laughter. The reality was that Germany played at times with skill and panache. Not that this fact should be surprising. Michael Ballack plays for a top English team. He can do just about anything, from skilful play on the deck, to wreaking havoc in the air. All of which has been improved by thankless trips to Middlesboro and elsewhere. Between Ballack, Jens Lehmann and Thomas Hitzlsperger, there’s a decade’s worth of experience playing in Britain. They know the best and the worst of the English game. A new, positive German game is infused with the running, passing style the Premiership displays week in, week out.

The one player who incorporates old school and new school Germany is Christoph Metzelder. Bearded like Manni Kaltz, he has the heart warming presence of a Bond villain. When he wasn’t steaming with adventure down the middle of the pitch, he was happy kicking lumps out of Portugal players, who were themselves busy lashing out at German players when goal number three found the back of their net. Germany wasn’t blameless in sticking the boot in, no way. The petty chicanery of continental football was there for all to see from both sides.

ITV’s coverage in particular is geared towards casting Germany and Germans as footballing hate-figures. They could play the sexy football of Arsene Wenger and it wouldn’t be good enough, because British pundits don’t see the ooh la la frills of southern European football. German goal number one is the prime example: a goal from nowhere, created in space no greater than Paris Hilton’s waist size, crossed to seemingly to no one, when Bastian Schweinsteiger, tracking the creators Ballack and Podolski on the far side, swung in towards the near post to kung fu-kick the ball into the back of the net. The flair is there, but the commentators were unconvinced. They just saw it as a freak.

When the German team clung on at the end, the whole game was won on grit and determination alone. All the same old stereotypes we’ve heard before were rolled out.

German football has changed drastically in the last five years, reverting to their classic style of the late sixties, embodied by the glorious 1972 team that stuffed England at Wembley. Similarly, Portugal is reverting to the thuggery of 1966, when they all but ended Pele’s World Cup, and could have ended his career. Things always come full circle.

There’s the odd shade of injury time doggedness from Germany, that’s been around since the 1930’s. Still, I prefer that to the childish antics of Ronaldo’s camp, referee-hectoring, Ronald Koeman-style lack of sportsmanship. That, frankly, football can do without. He may have skill, but he’ll never be a great player with that arrogant head on his shoulders. Thank God he’s leaving United. I can hate them a little less next season.

The final will show the truth about football in Europe. That messy as it is, at least Germany have tried their best to have a go. Spain has been underwhelming, and were involved in the most tawdry, tiresome game of this tournament against the discredited Italians. The pressure is on them to show their mettle, just like the media will sweat if their blind spot for good football is put to the test.

Watch out, Sammy's about!!

I tired this morning of Lyric FM's ultra soothing strains of 'Queen for orchestras' laced with Prozac or whatever it was. As I was weaving through the traffic, I had a mental picture of Nurse Rachett in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, her steel blue eyes sharpening as she calls for medication time. Cajoling the inmates of Ireland Mental Hospital into consciousness, I flicked over to the news, which was it's own peculiar medication time, with some very bitter pills to swallow: Take one lost Lisbon treaty (which was eminently winnable for any competent government) followed by the bitterest pill of them all. Sammy bloody Wilson is Norn Iron's environment minister. God help us all, the chief lunatic has the running of the asylum!

Apart form the fact that I bet he can't even spell the word 'environment', it seems that our boy Sammy has a novel idea for Norn Iron's econonmy - let's take in nuclear waste from around the UK in exchange for what he calls 'high paid, high tech jobs'. Very environmental. The jobs in question, it obviously never occurred to him, mount up to the same as being high risk, high paid rubbish dump attendants. Not only will the waste be pretty rank, but it won't stop being fatally toxic ... ever. So unbelievably dangerous and bad is radioactive waste, that when Rapture comes, the Almighty himself will come down with a bad case of radiation poisoning, and the Apocalypse will have to be postponed until his recovery.

Hang on a sec - maybe he's on to something...

...No, on reflection, he's not. He's out of his bloody mind.

It's not surprising that a government official in Ireland comes to a position he neither has an aptitude for nor interest in. Ireland has a great tradition of putting unsuitable people into unsuitable positions of power, particularly in environment and heritage. This is where ministers for years have taken a nickels and dimes attitude to things they should be more mature about, e.g. Tara, the Luas, Wood Quay back in the 70's - the mac daddy of all environmental policy disasters to face our capital.

What is clear is this. With Sammy Wilson's particular brand of madcap policy initiatives, if a China Syndrome doesn't kill us all first, then at least he'll be synchronising the North's policy making idiocy with that of the South - Irish unity is on the way. Thanks to the D.U.P!!

Unnatural Habitat

Habitat’s closure of operations in Ireland last week had zero fanfare. Not so much as a fart from the saddest little trumpet in the world. There was just a simple notice on the door of Habitat’s bloated flagship store on Dublin’s College Green, which informed customers that trading had ceased. There was no special help-line for the one and a half million billion slightly pushy well-to-do ladies, who now have one less place to drag their bored, slightly embarrassed partners around. I bet the men were quietly punching the air though, now that Saturdays will be less one other completely boring, utterly vapid obstacle to watching football on the telly.

Habitat is the glamour club – the Spurs ca. 1989 - of interior furnishing stores. So when its closure in Ireland failed to cause hysterical national mourning, I was so shocked, I spilled my vanilla latte all over my gorgeous DKNY shirt, covering my freshly waxed chest with second degree burns and a vague smell of burnt milk. Instead, you could feel the country exhale with relief that times are finally changing: Bertie is gone, and good riddance, and so are the shiny distractions of his culturally vacuous times. The arrival of Brian Cowen as head honcho means that for the first time in a generation, we stand a chance of finding ourselves again, and not before our souls have been completely sucked out of us by the UK high street cloning project that we've been involved with for the last age.

There were, however, a few thirtysomething wannabe yummy mummies sitting on the curb outside the entrance, clutching their ageing Fendi handbags, the stitching coming undone like their feeble new-monied minds, as they sobbed into grande Cappuccinos the price of an Italian football bribe from the filthy, overfull McStarbucks across the road. Morale is low with these label monsters: Their Fake tan is peeling like wall paper in an old folks home and their Mastercards have burst their limits, in much the same fashion as their once swanky Guess jeans. No-one told them that Cappuccinos make you fat and even if you did they wouldn't believe you. Within minutes, the riot police were able to disperse them efficiently, luring them down dark alleys using knock-off Marc Jacobs sunglasses as bait, then bundling them into the back of a cattle truck for processing.

I'm delighted it's gone, though, and not just because I was stupid enough to pay a million Euro for a Chinese lantern I could have made with some Kleenex and straws. Habitat was a place that had about as much class as a B&Q-store rampaging on a cocaine binge. Habitat flourished on business drummed up by pandering to our worst instincts of fetishistic consumption. Their stock was overpriced, over-hyped, and worth a fraction of what they demanded, all in the name of lifestyle shopping. And we were the gobshites, blinded by our own vanity, for buying into that lifestyle in the first place.

The decade and a bit that is bookended by Bertie Ahern’s tenure as Ireland’s leader gave us plenty to reflect upon, but absolutely nothing substantial. A lot of dumb show, embarrassing melodrama at the tribunals, the odd bit of excitement. The one golden moment of history in Norn Iron owed its momentum to Tony Blair's 179 seat majority in Westminster, rather than Bertie ineffectually shambling up to Stormont. In short, Bertie achieved nothing substantial, because he wasn't a politician of substance. And his only gift to us domestically was a divided society and the economy, which is slowing down rapidly.

The fact is, however, that the the Celtic Tiger never existed anyway. It was just a myth cynically dreamt up in the rush to spin Ireland into being like Britain in the 80’s, all brash and tripping with on a dangerous cocktail of hubris and credit cards. The truth is most people are fighting to make ends meet. The truth is, that somewhere during the last decade we confused expense with success. That's why Habitat closed down, and that's why it's a sign of better things to come.

So to all the temporarily hard up, maturing Terenure Totty, worry ye not - a brighter future beckons! IKEA is on the way – classy, straightforward and affordable. A bit of substance after bloating yourselves on the pre-dinner breadbasket you were looking at during the Ahern years. Admittedly it’ll be on Dublin’s north side, but at least if you take off your blinkers, you’ll learn to keep it real about what you’re doing and who you are.

The same is true of our leadership. Cowen, is IKEA. Clever, pragmatic, he can stand up to be counted when it matters. Bertie never did that. Not because he was some masterful politician, but because he had absolutely nothing to say for himself.

Consumption has always afflicted Ireland. In the forties, it was the name of a disease of the lungs that ravaged our In the naughties, it was the frenzied purchasing of any old shite we could lay our label-craving hands on.

Times are gonna be tougher, but they'll be more satisfying than we realise, and we’ll be better off for them.

Austria's Life of Lies

Austria wants to avoid attention at all costs. Austrians want privacy. We know why from the case of Josef Fritzl, who created the bleakest hell for his daughter Elisabeth for 24 years. And when it takes courage to confront the truth about child abuse in our society, I'm not surprised that most of Austria doesn’t have the guts to face up to its most sinister secrets.

The neighbours say they noticed nothing, knew absolutely nothing. How could nobody have noticed this tragedy unfolding: A man kept his daughter locked up in his basement for 24 years, where he raped her on a regular basis, and who fathered seven children by his own flesh and blood.

Even his wife, the 68 year old Rosemarie, believed his tall and terrible tales: They brought up three of the children he had conceived with their daughter, after Fritzl claimed their daughter joined a cult and was unable to take care her kids. Austrian social services, a tragicomic cousin of the Keystone Cops, also swallowed his bizarre claims about their daughter, and let him adopt the children without any real investigation. No alarm bells, no questions, not even a peek at his ID card. Everything went at face value. Attitude soundproofed the screams coming from beneath Fritzl's home.

Like a lot of places in central Europe, Austria claims to have a sense of family and community. Safe, friendly, peaceful, open, civilised. So how could this monster go unnoticed for 24 years? How was this possible? Every report says that nobody saw or noticed anything unusual. Not even a previous conviction for attempted rape, not even a conviction for arson could point to the reality about this outrageously evil man: both had been deleted from his records. Official memory had conveniently lapsed, letting him off the hook.

So the jackal Josef remained a well thought of man. One neighbour said of course he was a good man, his garden was so neat. So was the basement, from the pictures we have all seen. Hell can be a very tidy place.

The same thing happened two years ago, when Natasha Kampusch escaped her decade of imprisonment by a paedophile, David Priklopil. He cheated justice by jumping in front of a train. Noone noticed him before, when he resembled a normal, civilised person. The neighbours didn’t know and didn’t bother to find out more about the unusual man who lived among them.

It’s not unusual for Austria to ignore its darkest truths. But they do it for the convenience and they always have. Austria lied about its enthusiastic collaboration with their countryman, Adolf Hitler, for decades after the war. They ignored their own sins, when they were anything but the Führer’s ‘first victims’, as they cynically characterised themselves.

They knew nothing, which everyone else on the planet knew was rubbish. This, like with the Fritzl and Kampusch cases, can only be said with brazen dishonesty or spectacular self delusion.

I don’t believe for a second that people didn’t notice anything. No-one can be possibly that naive. Official Austria is full of cowards, who abandoned the young of their country. It filters its way down through every level of society. The reflex is to ignore delude, deceive, explain away.

Further soul searching, if they bother to be brave, will reveal much, much more. Maybe redemption might be possible, but don't hold your breath.