Politics,what else!

The recent General Election is still having serious repercussions....nobody wants the PD's ,not even the PD's....newly elected government gone into exile....now Pat Rabbitte has pulled a fast one on Brendan Howlin thereby losing us the two most experienced leaders for the Labour Party and half the opposition clout , in one stroke....and whatever happens at the Mahon Tribunal, Bertie will once again emerge as the 'white-haired' boy,....the litany of disasters will continue...and those who re-elected Fianna Fail (41% of the electorate ) , will still believe they did the right thing.
In the meantime Gordon Brown has confidently taken over the reins from Tony Who?, calmly dealing with a succession of potentially serious problems, whilee our crowd of gombeens can't even get our newly privatised national airline safely off the ground...
Thats the difference between reasonably intelligent politicians and a collection of greedy 'cute hoors'whose only motivation is their own personal (and family ) advance ment.Consider the following quote from' The Cosgrave Legacy',by Stephen Collins:''in the 1961 general election Fianna Fail lost eight seats while Fine Gael gained seven.It was a good performance by the Opposition party but a majority of theIndependents ,who held the balance of power, decided to support a continuation of the Lemass Government because Fine Gael and Labour had both set their faces against coalition at this time.'' That was 46 years ago but as far as Irish politics is concerned it could have been yesterday......nothing really changes....not even the family names(except where marriage names are involved)
At that time in Fine Gael a Cosgrave has just taken over from a Cosgrave,a Dillon had followed a Dillon ,a Barry had followed a Barry,a Costello following a Costello etc ,and thats only the Fine Gael party.
In our incoming Dail we have at least two families with 3 siblings each ,sets of brothers ,cousins ,husbands and wives,uncles and aunts and overriding all this we have the historical connections, DeValeras,Lemasses,Collins',Lenehans,etc,.etc.etcetc...ad nauseam...
Oh yes we live in a democracy alright,but if you don't inherit a safe seat or if one is not shown the right path, the decendents of these same people will still be in power in another 50 years.

A.C/G.B.S.

In the Spring of 1935 a group of people assembled in , what was then, the offices of the BBC in London.They were a committee formed to advise the Corporation on the correct pronounciation of 'spoken English'.There were 6 or 7 people present,a bishop,a few academics,a scientist ,writers ,etc.
Two of the people who were there , probably the youngest and the oldest,were Alistair Cooke still in his twenties at that time and already known as a foreign correspondent,English-born and based in the USA,and George Bernard Shaw,in his 79th year,writer,Irish-born,and based in the UK.
At that time the BBC announcers all spoke with what was called a public-school accent ,(public schools for some reason was the definition given to what we would call private schools).but the purpose of the committee was not to define accent but pronounciation.Shaw was described as being irascible in his old age,probably what we would now call an angry old man (Victor Meldrew of 'One Foot in the Grave'fame.)Shaw was chosen as chairman of the committee and of course had the casting vote on pronounciation.Shaw began almost immediatly to maintain that Dublin was the 'only place on earth where one could hear ''pure spoken English''.
The committee appeared to have had great fun with words such as lieutenant ,which was pronounced on BBC as lefftenant but in the US as loo-tenant, and Marylebone,(Marry'bn) and then there was canine, which all the committee, except Cooke,agreed should be pronounced can-ine,and Cooke said should be pronounced cane-ine as in America.Shaw agreed with Cooke,because his(Shaw's) dentist pronounced it cane-ine.One other of the committee said to Shaw ,''Then your dentist must be American''.To which Shaw replied:''Of course he is ,how else do you think I have all my teeth at my age?''
I wonder where I could get a good,unpretentious,biography of Shaw.I've read a lot about him but nothing by him except some of his letters to the London Times when sparring with Arthur Conan Doyle following the Titanic disaster.
Alistair Cooke describes how he last saw Shaw that day in 1935: ''At the end I see him leaving Broadcasting House on that late spring morning,a trilby shading his crinkled eyes and white beard ,his hands deep in a top coat ,marching with his wide tread down Regent Street,occasionally looking over his shoulder for his bus ,then deciding the day was balmy enough for walking all the way home.He might pause in one of the leafy London squares to sit on a bench and eat his delicious mid-morning lifesaver of a parsley sandwich.Then on down the Strand to the river and up to his apartment in the Adelphi and reunion with his only friend, wife, companion,Charlotte Payne-Townshend''........

Stocks 'n Shares

Boom! Crash!Crunch!(and possibly),Bounce!
It may appear to be the action ''sound-effects'' from a Batman cartoon but in fact these are , unfortunatly, words that are appearing on the banner-headlines of the financial pages in our newspapers.
They tell us that the boom is over(darn , I missed it , again).,that the crash is a possibility,that the credit crunch is biting and the temporary recovery after the intervention of the Federal Reserve was only a ''dead- cat bounce'',( poor, old, Bonny has a lot to answer for...)
So,Guys 'n Gals ,as Jimmy Saville used to say , where do we go from here?
For starters, I'm already confused.Where for example did all those billions disappear to?If a companys' shares were worth ,say,100 units (any currency)at the beginning of June and are only worth ,say, 75 units now,the 25 units has not just disappeared into thin air, somebody must have sold @100 and somebody must have bought @100.So all we need to find out is , where did the guy who sold @100 put his money?........ How did I get into this quagmire?

Anyway it surely proves how we really are living in a Global economy and we are all in it together....whatever it is, and the market never stops.Besides anyone with a bit of savvy must have known that eventually things had to cool down...but I still don't fully understand how the housing market in the USA ,has managed to have such a devastating effect on the world economies.Did the banks and other financial institutions that were buying the 'packages'of credit not actually look inside the packages to see what they contained, (remind me never to accept a 'package' from a financier ,next Christmas....)

Sport

A newspaper leading- headline , declaring something like''Price of Tomatoes to Increase'', would seem to be a little over the top , but a headline in todays newspaper , which reads ''Rugby Player Injured in Rugby Match'', would appear to be in the same category,and the sub-heading,''For the Second Time '',makes the article even worse.

What has happened to our sportsmen since professional sport became big business?The greater the money involved the more 'wimpish'these players are becoming.Of course we are all learning , as usual, from the Americans. American Football seems to consist of men (at least I think they are men) ,dressed in head-to-toe protection gear, running after or with a ball before taking a 'breather'following all the exertion

I played hurling once and I can still remember this big fellow from the opposing team charging towards me with his hurley raised above his head (now illegal),the tin re-inforcement,wrapped around the shank ,glinting in the sun and his frightening gap-toothed grin......yes I played hurling once.Of course it was dangerous but it was also fun and the best team usually won and if not there was always a next time.
Professionalism and the litigation-culture, that goes with it, is killing sport from the participants point of view.We will eventually get to a point where sportsmen will be togged out in the equivelant of medieval suits-of-armour,clanking arount the playing fields and crying out in fear if an opponent approaches them with a tin opener.
As for Roy Keane,and his comments on the wives and girlfriends of his players,and where they should do their shopping,he is not and never will be an example of what a real sportsman should be ...its great that Sunderland is doing so well and we can also hope that the newly-Irish-acquired Peter borough United (POSH) ,bought for £1,will do as well, (it's shield includes the crossed -keys of St.Peter and its slogan is 'on this rock'.......not a lot of people know that...

Summer

What a pity ,.........the requests for schoolteacher appointments have started to appear in the papers,a sure sign that summer is over.Where did it go ? It seems only a few weeks ago that we were making plans for all the places we were going to go ....all the things we were going to do...somehow each planned adventure assumed that the weather would co-operate and scorching sunshine would be a background to our outings...

But, literally,every cloud has a silver lining, with all the rain we have had here in Ireland since the beginning of our summer (it is now the 17th of Aug and we have had rain every day since the 1st of June) I never remember this country looking so GREEN...we seem to be having a lot of different wild birds visiting us this year also (if only we had more cash-paying human visitors) and people seem to be in good humour...except of course when I visit the supermarket and the lady before me decides to reach for her purse only after all her shopping has been carefully tucked away,and then I'm told that I have to wait 4 minutes for my credit card to be verified..... ..anyway thats another story...apart from that everyone seems to have accepted the weather....I can hardly wait to see what our Autumn,Winter has in store....

Aer Lingus/Shannon

I was prepared not to like Dermot Mannion, the new chief executive of Aer Lingus, but listening today, to his strong defence of the decision to move their base from Shannon to Belfast , has caused me to change my mind.

Originally ,I thought he was, effectively, a Government appointee, who would cave -in as soon as the going got tough, but , as in many , many,(is the spacing alright , Robert ?)...other instances I was wrong.It's not really a case of the decision being right or wrong commercially, but the fact that having made it, (the first really important decision made by that company as a private organisation) ,Mannion is sticking to his guns despite the massively negative reaction, from almost every side,except , of course , Belfast, and the usual cowardly reaction from An Taoiseach....silence...(hoping it will be interpeted as ...leadership).

Now, today, two more moves in the game , Michael O'Leary,the Ryanair guy,whose company owns 25% of Aer Lingus is in Shannon, stirring the s**t, saying: 1. that he wants an E.G.M. to be called, and : 2. that if the Government (i.e.Bertie), wishes he will throw in his 25%with the Government's 25%,which combined with the Employees 12%,will enable them to reverse the decision.
The other action today was that by the Aer Lingus pilots to call a 2 day total strike to show their opposition to the move.

Being a suspicious person at heart, I actually believe that there was some political involvement in the original decision, but all the more credit to Mannion if there was, as he is now taking full responsibility for the move...

As for the rest of them,politicians,the pilots,the other Aer Lingus staff,they have all contributed to creating a well-fed monster while A.L. was a semi-state company (pretending to be a real private company),with every perk imaginable as far as free travel,pensions,working conditions,pay ...and of course trade union involvement in the day -to- day workings of the company.
We , the travelling/tax-paying public thought all that was over...it will be if Dermot Mannion's will prevails on the issue and O'Leary goes back to beating-up his own passengers....
(Robert ,get a copy of today's (14 th Aug ) Irish Independent and see the letter from yours truly.....not on above subject)

Corrections & Clarifications/Haiti

It happens from time to time that a particular newspaper can print a serious mistake and, obviously, have to correct it as soon as possible.
For example ,when Queen Victoria visited Dublin in 1900 a newspaper report was supposed to have included the following sentence:''The crowds cheered as Queen Victoria pissed over O'Connell Bridge.''We must assume that this was a genuine error and that the correct wording should have been;''The crowds cheered as Queen Victoria passed over O'Connell Bridge.'',and that the correction was printed ,with appropriate apology a.s.a.p..
If nowadays a publication prints something like''man murders his mother ''and the following day prints a correction saying that it should have read''man accidently kills his cat '' or a headline like ''World To End Tomorrow'',is followed by a correction,'this should have read':''Price of Tomatoes to Increase'' we would certainly expect such a correction or clarification from the publication.
The following appeared under'' Corrections and Clarifications'' in todays Irish Times:''In the review of Alessandro Baricco's book on Homer's Iliad last Saturday,it was mistakenly stated that Achilles was the son of Peleus.Peleus was his mortal father.Achilles appealed to his mother,the goddess Thetis,asking her to intervene on his behalf with Zeus against Agamemnon.'' ....Oh my God ...sound the alarm....!!!....ring the Fire-brigade!!...Stop the presses!!....and all this time we all thought that Achilles' was ????who ( or should it be whom?)
?
What a load of pretentious tripe?Who would have been upset if that correction had not been made?The writer of the article?The author of the book????Or some group of anonymous civil servants, with time on its hands , that bothers to read such articles ?


Haiti is beginning to come into the news again,now that the new secretary general of the United Nations ,Ban Ki-moon has visited there and assured the Haitian government that the U.N. will stay there, until their mission is accomplished,in line with that governments wishes.
Improvements over the past number of years include;Kidnappings in Sun City running at 100 per month ,6 months ago,...have stopped,,800 gang leaders jailed.following the U.N. Stabilisation Mission 6 week action and inflation dropped from 40% ,3 years ago,to 8% now... at last some good news .....

I'm only joking....

Having just read James Downes' article, in the morning paper,I realise that Ahern is not the ''most cunning,the most devious ,of them all'' but in fact probably the best dead-pan comedian since Jack Benny.
The more we think about Bertie's carry-on during the past year the more we can see how he,and his insiders ,are having great fun at the general public's expense.
First of all we had his comment when his money meanderings became public.Where did the money come from,we the public,via the media ,asked?How did he answer?He told us that the amounts suggested were ''off the wall''.It turned out that this statement was actually true,except that he meant the money was ''off'' his friend( Michael) Wall.
Then when he was forced to acknowledge monies received from other friends ,he came up with ,not just one but two Paddy Reillys,throwing in the distinguishing nickname ''Paddy the Plasterer'' for our further enjoyment.,and , as if that was not enough,guess where he gave a press briefing ,on the following day.?...BALLYJAMESDUFF (if you don't believe that ...check it out)??Yes ,of all the towns, in all the world, Bertie turned up in Ballyjamesduff.
Next we had the famous ''Princess Diana'' interview,tears and all..that has already been well covered,telling us all sorts of personal details that no one had asked for .

And now the crowning joke (or as Krusty the Klown would say ,the best material) ;having been pilloried, by some, for his obvious intention to stuff the senate with as many of his cronies, as, barely legally, possible;comparing Ahern to Caligula, appointing his HORSE to the senate,Bertie appoints his HARRIS............

Why does all this remind me of (I think it was called ),the WEENY WEENY BIRD.?This bird had the ability to fly 'round and 'round and 'round in ever decreasing circles and eventually disappearing up its EOGHAN HARRIS........

Senator Eoin Harris

So it has happened ,the great payback has taken place,Bertie has paid off yet another one of his mates.
Now we know why the change in the tone of Harris's articles immediatly before the General Election.
Harris, is now, the first ,truly ''Independent '' senator in that undemocratic body .
To hear him defend it ,on his first RTE interview after his ''election''(yes ,believe it or not thats what the interviewer said ,''election'') was truly disheartening......

(Robert , remember the advice given by the wise man to the young journalist ''never take favours from a politician'',to avoid being compromised...this does not seem to apply in this country,even to well respected journalists ,who are long in the tooth.Harris has taken his sinecure and disgraced his profession.... )

Its just as well Bertie does'nt own a horse....

Where theres money there's dirt.

To come up with a new tax is probably the ultimate dream of any government .I am not even sure that the Deposit Interest Retention Tax introduced by the Irish Government was original,but the way it was used certainly was .
The idea of D.I.R.T. is to skim directly off a person's deposit account, tax on the interest on that account ,at source.It is the appropriate bank's,or other financial institution's legal responsibility to do so .
In the Autumn of 1999 an inquiry was set up by the Oireachtas to enquire into the operation of the tax scheme since its inception.This was named The DIRT Inquiry.The body responsible for carrying out the inquiry was the Public Accounts Committee(P.A.C.)The committee's chairman at that time was the late Jim Mitchell of Fine Gael.Those asking the questions were,Pat Rabbitte (Labour),Denis Foley (Fianna Fail),Sean Ardagh(FF),Bernard Durcan (FG) and ????.
The inquiry was televised live on TG4.I had just recently taken early retirement and was able to sit in on most of the proceedings.
What came out ,in the course of the inquiry, was that many.many bank branches were involved in systematic collusion, with their better- off customers ,to avoid the customers liability for DIRT by allowing the chosen people to use an address ,on their bank account ,which put them in the catagory of non-resident ,thereby exempting them from liability for DIRT
Every Bank in the country was apparently involved.It also turned out that even those in high ranking positions in business and government, knew what was going on.Senior Civil Servants such as, the head of the Revenue Commissioners,the Governor of the Central Bank ,were called. as were the chairmen of both AIB and Bank of Ireland,current and former Ministers for Finance(in fact we at one stage had the brothers Quinn,Ruari,in his capacity as former Minister for Finance,and Lochlann in his capacity as Chairman of B.of I. appearing on seperate days).

These people all sat around a large table being crossed examined by the above inquisitors,and directed by the PAC chairman.NO LAWYERS.
It was the best television I have ever seen.I who had been paying a total of 55% tax on my income..if I exceeded my agreed overdraft in the bank,I paid £3.50(referral charge on EACH TRANSACTION ....
Some of the comments made were worth recording ,for example the Governor of the Central Bank(I think it was Maurice o'Connell)said that although they were aware(anecdotally?)that this was going on if he kicked up a fuss this might cause international(legitimate non-residents ?)clients to lose confidence in Irish banking,I think the expression used was ''don't rock the boat''.Also one of the inquisitors ,had himself,a non-resident account.One of the former Ministers for Finance, AlanDukes ,used a similar argument to the Central Bank man, when asked why he did not include changes in his budget when he became aware of the scam.However the same Mr. Dukes had no problem, in the same budget, eliminating the PAYE tax allowance for children.

What was the outcome of this report?Who was punished?What action was taken by successive Governments to prevent this happening again?Apart from more Fianna Fail tax amnesties.Nothing..This was an INQUIRY(or was it an ENQUIRY!!!!,.what's the difference?) stupid ,nothing was ever intended to happen.

I'm...really,really sorry I didn't keep a video tape of those proceedings....