Kevin Myers /Celbridge developement

The following from K. M.'s ,I.I. 16/4/08 :
"A fate is being proposed for the pleasant little town of Celbridge which is so monstrous , so implausable ,so fatuous . that it could almost come from one of Swift's ghastly ,satirical fictions about human conduct .But this is not satire nor is it fiction ,though Swift would recognise it as a towering example of utter Brobdingnagian (? sic ) folly.

Celbridge lies along just one side of the Liffey , and its spine , paoallel to the river , is a predominantly Georgian main street :and appropriatley so .
Jonathan Swift would often journey to Celbridge , to calm the passionate yearnings of his inamorata , Vanessa , at one end of the main street. At the same time at the far end of the same street , Speaker Conolly was erecting what is now the greatest surviving Palladian mansion in Ireland , Castletown : and roughly midway between Vanessa's home and the entrance to Speaker Conolly's great house , Arthur Guinness was later to start his first brewery .
Now there are very few exports that are known around the world . The tale of Gulliver's Travels is one , and the name Lilliput exists in just about all languages . In this creation Swift invented the literary form of the traveller arriving in a country which is so similar yet utterly different . Celbridge was never Swift's home , but , as a regular visitor , it was where he first heard Irish spoken . Indeed , the concept of Lilliput might well have had its spiritual genesis in this modest Liffeyside town , where the contrasting worlds of Hiberno-English and Gaelic cultures met .
It was certainlt the home if one other great international Irish brand . Arthur Guinness , Celbridge- born and bred , opened his first brewery in the town while still in his 20's .
As we all know , in time he moved his business to Dublin , and thence to the world . Not only did he start Irelands greatest company , but he also begat , perhaos Ireland's most distinguished family , who down the generations have contributed more to this country than any other .
Arthur and Jonathan could return to Celbridges main street today , and recognise it still ;they could walk up the drivway at its eastern end , where Jonathan might admire the finisjhed Palladian splendours of Castletown , which he saw building during his visits to Vanessa .
But if Kildare County Council , and a company called 'Devondale' (where do Irish developers get these absutd cod-English names from ?) have their way , our two visitors from the 18th century will be able to see the house and the gardens ans the entire town , on the north side of the Liffey dwarfed and violated by a vast new extension to Celbridge , fronting on to the southern riverbank beyond .
The school of architecture which seems to have inspired the proposed Celbridge New Town is the M50 Orbital:a jumble of characterless , bland , concrete blocks , only suitable for lining a motorway .Some of these blocks are eight storeys , made taller still by the greater height of the far bank .

This hilariously named 'town centre 'is said by the planners to be an 'organic' development :but the 'o' word is another meaningless piety of our times. New Celbridge is as organic as DDT : in other words mere modernistic cant and developmental humbug .
Its one thing to build factories and shops near Celbridge : quite another to create ludicrous juxtapositions , a narrow river's -width apart. On the Liffey's left bank , Lilliput , on the right , Brobdingnag . On one side , naturally brewed Guinness on the other Milwaukee industrialised lite . Here stands Sir Edward Lovett Pearce's great mansion , with its majestic francini ceilings of Castletown : and there overlooking it , lies a hideous chunk of the LA beltway .
Of all the travesties perpatrated ion the name o9f progress , this surely must be the grimmest :for Castletown House was the first test of independent Ireland to recognise , restore and cherish its pre-independence , unionist legacy . And the man who was the pioneer of this was Desmond Guinness , decendant of Arthur . So the new,post -independence tolerant Ireland was born in Celbridge , and its great declaration of intent was the Palladian mansion which Desmond rescued from ruin 40 years ago .
Well if Kildare County Council and Devondale have their way , visitors to Castletown will soon be able to drive down a tidy little Georgian street , overlooked by huge office blocks . Then they will enter the splendid traffic jam outside castletown , caused by the new bridge which is to connect the new and the oldtowns .
Yet this horror will not have been done in the immediate post -independence Ireland , when ignorance and naivety allopwed many terrible things to be done , but by our new , enlightened Ireland , which in Celbridge once recognised the glorious legacies from the past and now knowingly chooses to over power them with brutal modernism.
Yet , I must be missing something . For tragically , incredibly , Kildare County Council ,has already zoned the 98-acre site for commercial development .
Furthermore , the creation of a Burbank -like Retail Mall and Industrial Park at Celbridge also has the surrort of all sitting TDs in Kildare and most of the county's councillors . That notwithstanding , if you share my horror at the perfectly monstrous proposals for the town , you have until April 21 , at the very latest , to lodge your objections. "

Democracy now?!

Recently the media were summoned twice within a period of ten days to press briefings at Government Buildings . The journalists , or The Fourth Estate as they are sometimes called , dutifully turned up , firstly to record the resignation of our current Taoiseach and then to record the 'beatification ' of his successor .Of course they were referring to the leadership of Fianna Fail also ,but we were effectively being told that this was our incoming Taoiseach .
Some of the journalists seemed to be there , on both occasions ,just to ask easy-peasy questions apparently to avoid hurting anyones feelings , in fact some seemed to 'tee-up' their questions to suit the known agenda of the recipient .

About a year ago the party now in power recieved 41% of the vote at our General Election . From this base they cobbled together a rag-bag coalition who have become our Government , but very much under the thumb of Fianna Fail
This Government has introduced , benchmarking for all public servants , notably referred to by Senator Joe O'Toole ,as an ATM (he was addressing teachers , but this applies to all public servants ).
This Government are now presiding over 1000 quangos ,they have increased the number of 'junior'ministers and of course the Taoiseach has made liberal use of his power to appoint fellow travellers to that most undemocratic of all bodies Senad Eireann.
Then we have our President , who was not elected the last time but 'nodded through' for a seven year term by Dail Eiteann ,
With all these people and their families , staff , and cohorts and with benchmarking (including the now almost unheard of Defined Benefit Pensions ) for public servants , this Government may have a permanent built-in majority in future elections simply based on the largesse they have passed on to those listed above .And considering so many of new tax-paying workers do not have a vote .
We are hearing mutterings recently about a reform of the public sector . Will this happen ? We have only to look at the farcicle response to Charlie Mc Creevy's DECENTRALISATION gimmick.
So maybe we can't go too far wrong by voting 'yes ' to Lisbon , the Eurocrats cannot be any less accountable than our present 'leaders' and anyway if we do happen to vote 'no' , we will just be told to do it again until we get it right , as with the Nice referendum.