Cowen admits FF responsibility for economy. Sort of.

So somebody from Fianna Fail has finally admitted that its property tax breaks and shelters damaged the economy. Sort of. Brian Cowen is reported by yesterday’s Indo as saying that “governments should never again introduce tax breaks which would make a property bubble possible” and that “property tax incentives in place over the period from the mid-1990s should have been abolished many years prior to his decision to abolish them in December 2005”.

Notwithstanding the fact that Section 23s were still being built long after that date – you can still see the developers trying to flog some of them if you buy a Sunday paper – isn’t that a Damascus moment for Cowen? Or is it just the wriggling of a particularly slimy worm on the end of a hook? It’s the latter – as the next quotation in the piece implies:

“While government shares responsibility for its role in these mistakes, it is noteworthy that many of the strongest critics of the government were silent on these issues prior to the crisis and indeed were proposing measures such as the radical reduction or abolition of stamp duty which would have made the position much worse.”

“Some responsibility”? Bloody hell, should that not read “all”? They were the government after all, and they did introduce the tax measures in question. Fianna Fail also slashed capital gains tax, another move which guaranteed to inflate the property market. Cowen does, however,  have a point about the relative silence of the media and many opposition politicians while the bubble was crazily inflating.

Despite Cowen’s, and other government ministers’, assurances at the time that Ireland’s property market inflation was based on sound fundamentals, it was obvious to anyone with a brain in their heads that an economy could not be based on, and sustained on, ever increasing property prices. You didn’t need to go to economics school for that, just high-babies. The silence from the mainstream media (with notable exceptions such as David McWilliams, who was dismissed as a crank and a killjoy) was remarkable.

Now, I don't have a list of TDs' and councillors investment properties at my disposal (assuming it would be possible to collate a reliable list on the subject) but I would say such a list would be revealing. It would be similarly interesting to sift through the capital asset investments of media commentators. I know it sounds very cynical – not to mention analytically simplistic – but how come all these people, who are considered intelligent and are not usually slow about holding forth on all manner of other topics, were – for the most part - so quiet?

And on that very point, just a week or so before I went on holiday, some RTE property guru, from one of those programmes that encouraged gullible idiots to “buy! buy! buy!” was advising people selling property to “hold out” for their prices. I think the longer they hold out, the less they will get.

If anyone expects property prices to return to the levels of 2006 anytime soon, they can forget it. That money was never actually in the economy in the first place. That’s why we have had Nama imposed on the dopey, docile Irish public. That’s why the country is in the mess it is, and no amount of upbeat talk by Tom Parlon or Goodbodys is going to change that.

Another thing. When countries such as Poland, Latvia and Lithuania joined the EU, only three states opened up their doors to them with regard to their labour markets. Ireland, the UK, and Sweden. As far as I am aware, workers from these countries will be allowed to work in the rest of the EU states from 2011. That’s next year.

That will give such workers far more attractive options than Ireland, which could have interesting consequences for our buy-to-let investors and the Irish property market in general.

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The future's not so clair...

Do you ever read those thrashy mags such as “Take a Break”, “Chat”, “Love It!”, “Full House!”, “Real People”, “Pick Me Up” and the like? If not, presumably because you feel they aren’t sufficiently high-brow for your sensibilities, you are missing out. They are great, they really are. We’ve got a stash of them here on holidays with us.

Now I’m not talking about the celebrity ones – wouldn’t be interested in those at all – but the ones that feature allegedly true scandal stories from “real people”. Mothers having it off with their daughter’s new hubby (usually called Darren) on the wedding day, then the pair of them - the mother and Darren - shacking up together before the confetti has blown out of the churchyard. It’s always a church wedding, and it’s usually financed by a 20-grand advance from The Loan Company.

Then there are full-page adverts flogging “collections” from the Franklin Mint or some such. Tacky plates or trinkets and “gold plated” rings with big farthings on them, which presumably double as knuckle dusters if someone spills your pint down the pub. Another one, from the Diamond Discount Centre, features an awful-looking ring containing “24 diamonds” for 99 quid. I don’t do jewellery myself, but that sounds a bit cheap for 24 diamonds. Real ones, I mean.

Then there are stories about “psychic dating”, where two charlatans – I mean clairvoyants – who happen to be “twin flames” (lovers in a “past life”, apparently. They’ve been together a year in this one) tell hopefuls who’ve handed over the requisite readies that they are going to meet their “soulmate” very soon, and that Aunt Aggie has confirmed the validity of this prediction from beyond the grave. One woman at a “psychic speed-dating” session, Rachel Spencer, had “tried everything to bag Mr Right, with no luck”. “I’ve been single for six years”, she reveals, then goes on to tell us she avoids even speaking to anyone who is “a Gemini or a Sagittarius”. Is it any wonder, love?

This is very tenuous, I know, for a Gombeen Nation blog (so you must think I’m getting very desperate) but there is an Irish connection here. Real People has a “Mad World” column, consisting of “mapcap stories from around the globe”. One of the stories is about a clairvoyant by the name of Una Power, who took 98FM to an employment tribunal for axing her psychic phone-in show. “I was stunned”, she told the court, “this came completely out of the blue”.

So much for looking into the future, eh?

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Beethoven, culture and Corrie

The concepts of “culture” and “popular culture” have cropped up on the blog before. And I suppose that “culture” is anything that is still “popular” after the substantial passing of time (purely on its own merit). Like Beethoven.

Excuse me donning the pretentious arty-farty critic guise here, encouraged by a few holiday riojas, but I am reading “Beethoven the Universal Composer” by Edmund Morris, and it’s really quite good.

I had always imagined that writing a symphony would be a pretty daunting project, but was nonetheless stunned to learn that Ludwig’s second contained 1,925 separate ciphers on its opening page – equating to music that lasted no longer than 15 seconds. Then throw into the mix the fact that the man (who had perfect pitch) was battling deafness - on the way to losing his hearing completely by the time he’d written his Ninth Symphony (the Ode to Joy part of which is now the EU anthem) – and it is truly, humiliatingly, stunning.

That was on the roof earlier. Then there was Coronation Street later this evening. If you watch it – and I do – you’ll know there’s a character in it with a touch of the Annie Wilkes of “Misery” fame about her. In recent episodes she more or less held hostage a gossipy, interfering, nosey, short-arsed little bollocks called Norris Cole in an isolated cottage in Bronte (or Brunty) Country. He eventually escaped and lived to tell the tale... something he’s quite good at.

Anyway, he was sipping half an ale (a half!) in the Rovers when he shot out of the pub the millisecond his captor arrived on the threshold. “He always leaves skidmarks whenever I appear”, she observed. You would probably have to see it and know the characters to appreciate it, but it was classic comedy.

So what is culture? Real, living, unsubsidised culture?

It is culture that transcends national boundaries. Just as Beethoven’s work was good enough to gain an appreciation beyond Germany and Austria (for much of his career he was based in Vienna) and is now world culture. Just as football – as the majority of the Earth understands it – is a game appreciated in every corner of the globe. Just as Corrie has an audience way beyond Weatherfield. Something that no amount of subsidies for Ros na Ruin and the like will ever achieve.

And why? Because they have universal merit, they are truly part of all our cultures.

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Thoughts of home

I don’t usually buy the Sindo, but it’s all they have here in this corner of Spain. Anyway, it’s always nice to catch up with the latest shenanigans, scandals and corruption at home. Makes you enjoy your holiday all the more, I find.

So what have we got? Gerry Ryan slipping off the mortal coil, leaving a €300,000 tax bill behind. A “market gardener” from Swords leaving €3 million in his will (oh to be self-employed in Ireland. As soon as I get back it’s down to the Tech for some horticultural evening classes). Mary McAleese, our esteemed president, running up €1.2 million in expenses over four years. Rumours of Lenihan being forced to call an early budget to address the public finances. Pyramid-scheme fruadsters who continue to live lavish lifestyles, whose activities have yet to warrant an interview by the Garda. Where’s that Wolfe Tones CD, begob? I’m getting homesick here.

You can only take so much news from home, so thankfully, the apartment we’ve rented does not have RTE. I’ve been able to keep up with the important news though, such as Leeds United being promoted and Norris escaping the clutches of Mary in Coronation Street.

Then there was the British election. Great to see the BNP humiliated, losing all 12 of their council seats and getting nothing on a national(ist) level, after fielding some 300 candidates. Nevertheless it’s worrying that over half a million people voted for them. Not so great to see the Tories elected, but at least whatever power they hold will be tenuous. And can they be much worse than Gordon Brown’s Labour anyway? Speaking of whom, when IS he going to naff off?

And what about that Shinner who scraped in by four seats? A salutary vindication of that party’s old “vote early and vote often” policy, if ever there was one. Then there was the truly incredible spectacle, to Irish eyes, of a politician being voted out after an expenses scandal (piffling compared with anything you would get here), with Jacqui Smith, ex home secretary, being told to sling her hook.

And on that theme: a very welcome ” bye-bye” to Peter Robinson. The DUP might very well count some prize bigots among its support, but at least they would appear to have standards of some sort.

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Things that go bump. The relentless advance of the road safety industry.

The car must think it’s a clear-cut frying pan/fire case. Villamartin, near Torrejeiva, must be the speed bump capital of Spain. Actually, make that the bump capital, as the place is resplendent with potholes that would sink a medium-sized tank. Add in speed bumps that would dwarf anything you might see this side of Darndale – or Everest – and you get the picture. You’d nearly need a team of sherpas to get from one side of the place to the other.

And what’s the point of speed bumps anyway? If you care about your car’s nuts and bolts you will slow down to a crawl for them, only to find there’s some idiot right up your arse taking them at the same speed as the rest of the road. This is true – I have experienced it many, many times.

So what do you do? You crawl over the speed bump and floor the accelerator to get to the next one, where you slam on the brakes to keep your distance from the oblivious tailgater. The funny thing is, speed bumps lead people who care about their cars to run their engines at higher revs. Speed bumps also pose a hazard for emergency vehicles – ambulances in particular.

Then again, some people seem to drive at the same speed all the time, regardless of whether they are on a motorway, driving through a village, going a past a school, or going over a speed bump. Surely one of the most important skills of driving is tailoring your speed to suit the conditions?

It seems that a whole industry has formed around the issue of road safety, despite the fact that road fatalities are at historically low levels. This is because cars are safer and more of them are now equipped with electronic stability control (despite the Irish government taxing the life-saving technology and leading to some manufacturers dropping it from models destined for sale in Ireland).

Another thing is that our roads are becoming safer, due to the increasing numbers of motorways (the safest category of road) despite the protests of crusties, druids and middle-class tree-huggers for whom the safe commute to and from work every day is not a priority.

But the more these people get their way, the more they will be wrongly “vindicated”. They will attribute the decline in road deaths – for the reasons explained above – with their introduction of speed bumps, ridiculous 30 k/mh speed limits, and speed cameras with this decline – which was happening anyway.

For a perfect example of this dishonesty, one need only look at the Dublin Cycling Campaign website (I won’t dignify it with a link – you can search it if you want).

This group supported Dublin Corporation’s imposition of a 30 km/h limit on the city’s quays to save the lives of pedestrians and cyclists. And I will point out at this juncture that I am a pedestrian most of the time.

Anyone who knows Dublin will be aware that it is impossible to do 30 km/h when it is busy with pedestrians, cars, motorcycles and motorists. So it is absolute nonsense. Our lazy coppers will only use this limit to bump up their conviction quotas early in the morning and late at night.

And here’s another reason why the Dublin Cycling Campaign will claim Dublin Corporation’s speed limit to have been instrumental in “saving lives” a few years from now - totally incorrectly.

The fact is that 25 pedestrians and cyclists died in Dublin city centre since 1998. Only one involved a private car. Two involved motorbikes. One involved a taxi. The really telling statistic is that NINE pedestrians/cyclists were killed by juggernauts (which have since been banned from town) and FIVE were killed by a bus that mounted the pavement on the quays. The others are unclear, but I can think of at least two who where killed by police cars.

Please refer to this post when the Dublin Cycling Campaign and Dublin Corporation are trotting out their statistics in a few years’ time.

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A place in the Sun

I am the blogosphere’s Victor Mildrew. You know how I give out (and with some justification, I believe) about Ireland? Well this place is as bad. Nearly.


Spain seems to be a country that’s only half-finished. Well, at least in the touristy bit where I am at present – a place called Villamartin south of Torreveija – or Torraheny as it is sometimes disparagingly called, due to its past popularity with Irish people eager to get into debt to buy a “place in the sun”, or escape the attention of the Criminal Assets Bureau.

It’s an awful kip altogether, and at the minute it’s blowing a gale and the place is swathed in enough featureless stratocumulous to render the most enthusiastic cloud spotter unconscious with boredom (exept for a brief Damascian break in the clouds that lasted the time it took to take this picture).  Sorry, I’m doing a Victor again. I don’t believe it.

Anyway, it’s interesting to observe the proliferation of half-finished developments, and the number of houses and apartments sporting “se vende” signs (only occurred to me today that’s where we get the term “vendor” from. Or from the Latin root, at least). The pic above is typical, and was taken just a few minutes walk from where I am staying.
I was in Carrefour, Torreveija, earlier today (it’s a big supermarket of the kind not allowed in Ireland due to vested interests) and heard a few Irish accents, but far more English ones of a certain vintage – older people who had retired here. I suppose many of these people had been on holidays to Spain earlier in their lives and had the idea that they might develop the concept by selling up at home and actually come to live here.

Thing is, a holiday is a bit different to living in a place. Chatting to a few of them (as in previous holidays) you can’t help notice that the “blah blah blah... BUT we’re glad we came here” is a recurring one. Thing is, when you’re sixty-fi ve-plus and have sold up everything you’ve worked for at home and have no way of reversing your decision, you’re going to say that, aren’t you?

Another thing. When you get older, the chances of having a heart attack, a stroke, cancer or whatnot are increased. So the chances of saying a lasting goodbye to a loved one in a hospital where standards of care are actually lower than they are in Ireland or Britain is greatly increased. Then throw into the mix the fact that you can't actually communicate, in any meaningful sense, in the adopted country of your dotage (most retirees here can't, in my experience). “Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye”, as the song goes.

Maybe the changed economic circumstances in Ireland - and Spain - will mean many Irish won't have that place in the sun to look forward to on retirement.  And perhaps that's no bad thing?

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A change is as good as a rest.

Welcome to Gombeen Nation, coming to you from the south of France – holiday time! All this new-fangled technology is great altogether, and I’ve got the newly acquired laptop plugged in and connected up in our little Premiere Classe motel room in the vicinity of Bordeaux.

These things are the business, they really are. €40 for a room, whether there are one, two or three occupants, and a brekkie when you get out of the scratcher for €4.80 a head. OK, it’s not the Four Seasons, but you have everything you need, including en-suite, parking, TV and - of course - inclusive wi-fi. I’m beginning to sound like a budget Bill Bryson here.

Nice drive down from Cherbourg, where we got off the boat at 1pm. 708 kilometres/460 miles in less than seven hours with four stops for coffee/bladder needs. Not bad eh? Try doing that in Ireland... if Ireland was big enough.

The ferry crossing was very smooth, and it’s great having your little cabin and your own bit of space... and we’re not talking knee room here. I’d rather spend 18 hours in a boat with that than be elbowing my way onto one of Mick O’Leary’s crates any day. But it’s horses for courses, I suppose.

Speaking of comforts. One thing I hadn’t noticed before – and call me a naive townie if you will – is the transporting of live animals by lorry. There were four of these juggernauts (each one a double-decker) as we were boarding the boat, and the noise out of the poor buggers inside was awful. Now, I’m not a veggie, but nor would I beat a trail to Elliot and Son butchers every day either – a Big Mac and a Findus burger and a steak once in a blue moon would be about it. But you have to wonder if it’s strictly necessary to transport live animals over long distances and 18-hour ferry crossings on top of each other so people can chomp something, the origin of which they are blissfully unaware?  It seems like unnecessary suffering... I mean, can they not grow cows in France?

We’re continuing on down to Spain tomorrow, and hopefully there will be no more disasters there this year. More about that anon.  And now that Gombeen Nation has gone techie all of a slap, the blog will continue as per usual. 

You know, given the property-based implosion of the Irish economy, Spain might seem like a home from home for the next three weeks.

But hopefully, at least there will be a bit of sunshine.

David Curran and the killing of Marius Szwajkos and Pawel Kalite in Drimnagh

The first sign of Spring in the Irish Times letters page is usually the cuckoo calling, or some such. In real life, however, it is more likely to be when your train, on the way back from work of a bright evening, is pelted with stones by skangers. Welcome to Ireland, and Dublin in particular.

Sadly, Dublin is chock-full of skangers, and they perpetuate down the generations. If you were to ask me to go into how it happened – and I might do in another post – I’d say it’s because the Irish, in general, were encouraged down the generations to breed, pure and simple, without any further consideration.  Remember, contraceptives were banned – even in the Eighties – without a doctor’s prescription.

The other thing is the social-welfare dependent underclass we have created. Sorry, I know I’ll be called a right-winger and a neo-con for saying this, but it can’t be a good idea to reward people with housing and benefits on the basis of the number of kids they pop out. It can’t lead to responsible parenting, can it?

Let’s face it, there is a real problem here in Ireland, and we have to see why it is occurring. And you don’t have to tell me about our piss-taking, parasitic professional classes who have it all sewn up: our doctors, consultants, dentists, lawyers, bankers, politicians, publicans, teachers, gardai and all the rest. I know all that.

But how can we breed people like David Curran?  Charged in court with the murder, at the age of 17, of two Polish nationals who came to Ireland to work?  This scumbag, by his own account, spent the day in question drinking vodka from 10am, stealing a moped (which he said contained a screwdriver), “being present” when it was set alight, took 15 “tablets”, drank “six or seven” alcopops and smoked “seven cannabis joints” before ramming a screwdriver into the skulls of not one, but two, human beings that very same evening?  Two human beings who had come to this country to work.

Assuming that the toerag’s testimony is true, what kind of society have we created that produces such people?  How could he sustain his "lifestyle"?

What’s wrong with this place? 

See also Murder of Polish workers in Drimnagh, Dublin. Gombeen Nation, February 2008

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Overheard in Dublin

People often remark in the comments section of the blog on how godawful a place Dublin is.

You know the story.  The skangers, the trigger-happy criminals, Dublin Corporation, the Dail, the litter, the druggies, the buggies, the crappy public transport, the awful, congested roads, the dreadful drivers, the high cost of living, the shiftylazy coppers, the weather, the general grottiness, and whatever else. And speaking as someone whose parents, his parents’ parents, and his parents’ parents’ parents were all from Dublin city, I find it very hard to disagree if I’m honest.

You’ll have heard of the book “Overheard in Dublin”? Basically it’s an annual (and highly successful) compilation of various snippets of clever conversation and Behanesque wisecracks our capital city’s denizens are inherently predisposed to utter. Supposedly.

Well, I was walking across Butt Bridge today and was treated to one such example of deliciously witty Dublin dialogue. For some reason, there is always a large gathering of tracksuit-clad individuals standing around that part of town and down along the nearby Liffey boardwalk.  I don’t know what they do, exactly, but they always seem to be in the throes of some very dramatic and animated conversations/transactions.  Maybe they are homeless and get turfed out by the Powers-That-Be to wander around and get up to things, or maybe they are just excitable – I don’t know.  In fairness, they’ve never actually bothered me, so I’ll leave it at that.

Anyway, as I ambled past a cluster of these characters one of them suddenly lifted up his trackie top to reveal a very blotchy, spotty back. Now, I wasn’t looking, but he was standing just a few yards in front of me so I couldn’t help but notice. I then observed that an accomplice was earnestly engaged in using the index finger of either hand to squeeze one of the numerous carbuncles on Lifted-Trackie-Top’s back.

Evidently, I had chanced upon some quaint grooming ritual, and had only time to avert my eyes before I heard the immortal, eloquent words: “Naaww, I’m norrrable teh geh tha one. Dere issin a head on ih yeh”.   Lovely.

The tourists should consider themselves lucky. What other European capital could offer that?

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Eamon “The Don” Dunne, Dublin criminal, downs his last pint.

Few will mourn the death of Eamon “The Don” Dunne, who passed away in a predictable manner last Friday at the Fassaugh House, Cabra, when two masked men walked into the pub and shot him eight times in the head. Evidently they weren’t taking any chances.

Today's papers claim that the gangland boss and drugs baron had ordered at least 17 murders since 2005.  Many of the victims were fellow gangland rivals or associates, but also included young apprentice plumber, Anthony Campbell, who was shot dead while fixing a radiator in the house of criminal rival Martin Hyland in 2006.  Another innocent victim was 28-year-old mother-of-two Baibe Saulite, murdered by a hitman provided by Dunne on behalf of her estranged husband. (Sunday Tribune).

It seems “The Don” was involved in several beatings and tortures too, and was a hated figure even among fellow criminals who resented the police attention his unrestrained killing attracted.  A thoroughly despicable character then.

Interestingly, "The Don’s" name came up once before on Gombeen Nation, back in October of last year, when the Evening Herald reported that three plain-clothes gardai based in west Dublin were arrested on suspicion of passing information to the criminal.  The arrests followed an earlier raid on a uniformed garda who was found in possession of a shotgun at this home, allegedly taken from an evidence room at a Garda station.  

The Herald report said that a file had been prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions, yet today’s Sunday Tribune mentions only that “internal Garda enquiries are under way to determine how successful he was at corrupting gardai”.

It is unlikely we have heard the last of Dunne, just yet.

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Hitler, his bodyguard, and Irish folk music.

Most of you will know that yours truly comes in for a certain amount of criticism from some quarters for not being Irish enough. You know the spiel - not showing a great enough appreciation for “Irish culture”, blood sacrifices, and all the rest of it. 

Well, apologies.  You see, despite being very much Irish – I regret to say I had no choice in the matter – a lot of that malarkey seems to have passed me by, and the very sight of a jigging dancer or the faintest drone of an uileann piper is enough to set me  retching.  My detractors tell me that this is caused by self-loathing.  I'd say it's just loathing.

Mind you, I’m sure there are Scots who feel the same when they see a bunch of half-wits strutting around Edinburgh in their kilts on rugby days, and I’m sure there are others who would flee for the top of Ben Nevis at the slightest hint of a bagpipe skirl. And when is the last time you saw an English person morris dancing? In seriousness, I mean?

You see, I don’t think that the Irish ability for embarrassment is sufficiently developed as yet… maybe that’s why we keep on making eejits of ourselves over and over again for the amusment of the world?

I’ve always thought the old trad thing to be very po-faced and joyless, anyway.  I once looked at some clips from an RTE archive programme showing some “session” in progress in the 50s (or maybe it was the 80s?) and you’d swear they could have cracked nuts with their arses, they seemed so uptight.

Of course, nobody did po-faced, joyless and uptight as well as Adolf Hitler and his band of Nazi chums – great folklore enthusiasts, incidentally.  You can’t imagine many smiles being cracked at the Nuremburg rallies, can you? Heads, maybe, smiles no.

But apparently the Führer had a great appreciation of Irish music, and if the following piece from the Daily Telegraph has any (unlikely) basis in fact, he was so begeistert by a bit of diddly-dyddely that he sacrificed one of his Leibstandarte bodyguards for a visiting Irish musician to rest his pipe-playing posterior on.

See below (big thanks to Paul for sending this one in).

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Adolf Hitler would not have debased a Nazi stormtrooper for the sake of Irish folk music

By Guy Walters, Daily Telegraph, April 19th, 2010


Not a week goes by without some exciting new revelation about Adolf Hitler. Most of these “findings” are complete JH (junk history), and this latest example takes the whole pack of biscuits. According to an exhibition chronicling 120 years of Irish folk music in and around Dublin, Adolf Hitler supposedly ordered an SS man to act as a seat for a visiting Irish piper called Sean Dempsey. According to the story, “Hitler… ordered a hapless storm trooper to get down on his hands and knees so Mr Dempsey could sit and perform astride the man”. Dempsey then played a “haunting air” that quite moved the Führer, who presented the musician with a gold fountain pen.


I don’t believe a word of it. The idea that Hitler would have debased one of his elite guard to act as a seat strikes me as being extremely unlikely. There are lots of things about Hitler that are bizarre and outlandish, but when it comes to stories such as these, bring your salt cellar.

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 Anyway, true or not,  that is a vision that will stay with me forever.

I'm just glad I didn't have to listen too.

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Heyday - call for a general election

Gombeen Nation is on the campaign trail again, so thanks to T for bringing the following to our attention.

Most readers of the blog will have had it up to here with the Fianna Fail-led government that has been in power for far too long, and has saddled us bankers' and developers' debts for decades to come.

Somebody has set up a Facebook campaign to get Brian and Co out of the Dail's most potentially damaging seats  -  see the video above and the link below.

Now, while I'd be sceptical about the power of a Facebook campaign to effect any kind of meaningful change  - and would never underestimate the potential of the Irish electorate to vote the same shysters straight back in come the next election - it's still worth supporting, I think.  

Worth a beep or two, anyway, if you see them about.

Saturday April 24th 2010 - Call for a General Election
http://www.facebook.com/generalelection

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Irish to be laboratory bunnies for electric cars

Forget about the Germans, who claim to have invented the car. The Americans too, who say something similar. Disregard the French, the British and the Italians, all with their impeccable motoring heritage. Then there’s the Japanese, with their cutting-edge automotive technology. They are all in the ha’penny place in comparison to Ireland.

You see, Irish governments have always been highly innovative when it comes to the subject of motoring. Or, more accurately, they have always been highly innovative when it comes to devising ways of taxing Irish motorists, who pay far more to buy, run, tax and insure their cars than most other Europeans. But that’s where the Irish expertise on motoring ends.

Funny then, that energy minister Eamon Ryan thinks that we - ahead of the automotive manufacturing nations that actually make the vehicles - are somehow qualified to blaze a trail in electric car technology. You see, it looks like we are all to be volunteered as laboratory bunnies, with Ireland becoming a “testing ground” for the electric car (along with that other famous motoring nation, Portugal). “Bunnies” is the operative term, of course, given that we are talking about motor cars propelled by Duracells.

Of course the airy notion is that all our electric cars – and Ryan envisages 10% of them will occupy road space by 2020 - will eventually run on wind energy. In the meantime, however, they will work on electricity generated from fossil fuels – or imported from nuclear power stations in Britain. So they are as green as a peat bog.

The fact is, we are very lucky that electric cars are so crap, because if everyone went out and bought one, then plugged it into the mains, the national grid and the ESB would go up in a big puff of acrid, electric smoke quicker than you could say “AAA”. But that does not stop our tin-pot politicians from letting on that we are world leaders in a technology that’s about as high-tech as the old Scalextrix set I had as a kid.

Some manufacturers have been working on electric cars for years, but even so, most of them only have a claimed range of about 160 kilometres. Most have to be left plugged in overnight to achieve full charge from the mains – and try doing that if you live in an apartment in town – and most will take about half-an-hour to achieve 80% charge from the so-called “fast” chargers being rolled out… and that’s assuming any of the chargers are unoccupied and available. The truth is, if you tried to go any distance in an electric car, your nerves would be in absolute tatters by the time you arrived at your destination…. assuming you did.

Today’s Sunday Times claims that Richard Tol, research professor at the ERSI, believes that Ryan is “taking too much of a risk by investing so early in an “infant” technology”, pointing out that “other alternative fuel options, such as hydrogen, are also in development and that it could be 15 years before the winner emerges”.

I’ll hold off until then thanks, and not even a Tesla Roadster with a 0-60 time of 3.7 seconds would tempt me into its sterile embrace. What’s the point of that if you are going to conk out and be stranded a few miles down the road? In the meantime, I think leccy cars are best left to those who want to feel smug, and have something to talk about at cocktail parties.

And Eamon Ryan, of course.

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Government bail-out for mortgage holders?

It’s not too difficult to imagine the following…

LETTER TO BRIAN COWEN FROM A PROPERTY INVESTOR

Dear Brian. 

I was one of the Celtic Tiger go-getters who drove our economy when we were the envy of the world.  I was a risk-taker. A mover and shaker. A free-marketeer. A wealth creator.  And not just for myself, but for Ireland in general.

Some would say I was greedy, now that the zeitgeist has changed and we are all wise after the event, of course. But wasn’t it Michael McDowell, when he was your coalition partner, who said that greed was good?  Or was it Margaret Thatcher?  I get confused sometimes.

Then there were all the tax breaks your government had on offer, courtesy of that economic visionary Charlie McCreevy.  You see, as the self-employed owner of a small business, I never did agree with the principle of paying tax.   So I took advantage of a few of your government’s numerous property-based tax shelters to minimise my exposure.  I must introduce you to my accountant if things ever pick up again – he knows a trick or two!

To cut a long story short, Brian,  I built up an impressive portfolio of investment properties over the course of our unprecedented boom, many of them acquired through interest-only mortgages. At one point I was a millionaire several times over (on paper, anyhow).  I loved reciting my list of apartments to my friends, over a nice meal in Rolys, as we discussed the market and the next up-and-coming areas.  Clondalkin was one, I remember.  Halcyon days indeed!

I had all the trappings.  I used my property portfolio as leverage to get finance for a lovely Aston Martin DB9, and I traded in the E-Class every year on the same basis.  Those registration plates say so much about you.  Image is everything in the world of the entrepreneur!

But I did some good for society too.  I provided employment for two people in my once bustling coffee shop, and it might have been more but for the minimum wage.  I provided accommodation for our expanding labour force, and made sure that as much money as possible was coming into our economy by upwardly revising my rents every year, kicking out anyone who wouldn’t stump up.

Now, Brian, it’s all gone awry.  My investment properties have plummeted in value, I can’t rent them out, and the DB9 has been repossessed.  Now I am reduced to driving around in a 06 Merc, and I’ve had to take the boys out of St Andrews.

It’s not that long ago that one of Fianna Fail's greatest-ever thinkers, Bertie Ahern, was saying that the boom could only get boomier, and I didn’t doubt him.  Who would?   In short, Brian, I think your government led me, and others like me, astray.  You led us to believe, along with all those economists, that things could only get better. 

Your party has been very kind to the bankers and the developers, so what about the little man/woman like me?  We are the deserving cases, as we drove the whole shooting match.  We were the ones on the ground, making it happen. 

There has been considerable discussion in some quarters about the possibility of a bail-out for hard-pressed mortgage holders.  I hope you give such suggestions serious thought, and consider those of us who have multiple mortgages.   I think it is only right and proper.  After all, aren’t we the most hard-pressed of all?

There’ll be a vote in it for you.   Again.

G. Reed.
Dalkey.
Co Dublin.

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The RTE Angelus - for whom does the bell toll?

Religion should be a private matter, and unless you happen to live in Iran or Saudi Arabia it should not be an intrinsic component of state control. As far as I am concerned, you can believe what you want – whatever coping mechanism gets you through life is OK by me.

If you believe that taking a sick relative with strong religious beliefs to Lourdes might give them a psychological boost to cope with their illness, go for it.  If you think going to Alcoholics Anonymous and placing your recovery in the hands of a higher power will cure you of your addiction, don’t let me – or anyone – else stop you.

If your life won’t be complete until you visit Mecca, the Wailing Wall, or the Holy Lands, by all means factor the trip into your travel plans. But it’s your business, and your business alone. The only thing I would urge you not to do is go out killing people because God told you to. It won’t stand up in court.

Which brings me to the Angelus. We all give our money to the state broadcaster, RTE, whether we like it or not. When RTE is taking our money it does not ask us about our religious beliefs (if any). It does not ask if we are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sheiks, Jainists, Buddhists, Taoists, or any of the other religious franchises I might have missed. It does not ask if we are agnostics or atheists.

Therefore RTE should cease forthwith broadcasting the Angelus twice a day. It can then do one of two things: It can alternate time for all of the religious beliefs present in Ireland today, and allow humanists, agnostics and atheists a daily two-minute promotional slot too, or it can leave religious – or otherwise – reflection to the individual in their own time.

I don’t think any of us need to be reappraised of the dangers inherent in affording too much respect, prominence and influence to any church in state and public affairs. RTE’s Angelus harks back to a time when the Catholic Church had far too much of that - when its grip on public affairs was strangulating. It’s time it went.

There are two questionnaires at the URL below through which you can have a say on RTE’s programming and the service it provides (one appears to be more in-depth that the other, but either will do). Alternatively, you can email them at the address below that. You pay enough for your license fee, so you might as well have your say.  Submissions are open until July.

RTE Public Service Statement

yourviews@rte.ie

A big thanks to C for bringing this to the attention of the blog.

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Matthew Elderfield: going Gah-Gaa over Quinn?

Matthew Elderfield, who was appointed Irish Financial Regulator head in January, must be wondering what he let himself in for.

The country is hoxter-deep in financial ordure because of cronyism, clientism, and the unhealthy relationship between Fianna Fail, the construction industry and the banking sector. All dubious factors that the regulator of the time failed to address, resulting in ordinary people being saddled with debts, via NAMA, that the banks and developers will probably never fully pay back.

Elderfield’s brief was to organise a new, tighter ship; a financial watchdog that would sail a steady course, avoid the rocks and the sharks, prevent the whole economy ever being lost at sea again. Assuming it is ever fit to sail again, that is.

Now we have the Quinn Group fiasco. Under Elderfield's new watch, the Regulator has found it does not have enough reserves to honour all the insurance policies it holds. It is heavily in debt - despite Quinn’s claims that it is “profitable” – and owes €600m to bondholders and €700m to the banks.

According to the criteria required by the Financial Regulator, Quinn Insurance does not make the grade. It does not fulfill the basic requirements to operate as a seller of insurance, it is technically insolvent.  So, given the background of the mess we are in, and the lax standards of the past, the only option is to call in a permanent administrator, which Elderfield hopes to do tomorrow (Monday 12th April).

But lo! We now have various interest groups requesting that the regulator turn a blind eye to Quinn’s financial problems. Last week there were protests in Dublin and Cavan, where the GAA stuck its hurley in, with the Cavan County GAA Board chairman asking for “those in authority” to “take a holistic view of the impact that this decision [appointment of a permanent administrator] could have for County Cavan and the Quinn Group”.

A “holistic approach”, I ask you?   I think he means "a nod and a wink"… and look where that got us before. There is even talk of Anglo Irish, a bankrupt bank whose debts have been nationalised, buying out Quinn’s bondholders for €550m and injecting €150 million to deal with the company’s solvency issue. Bearing in mind that I probably have more cash reserves than Anglo has, that means the Government is thinking of using our money to bail out Quinn too. Our only hope is that Elderfield holds firm, and slaps them down. If that fails, we’ll need to look to EU competition law to be saved from our own gombeens.

It’s not that long ago since we had Mary Harney on TV telling us that we were economically closer to Boston than Berlin. That we were an open, business-friendly, laissez-faire economy – unlike the“socialist” economies of mainland Europe with their state support and subventions. If laissez-faire principles are applied, Quinn should go to the wall. As should have the banks.

Wonder what Harney is saying now?

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Toyosi Shittabey Memorial March, Saturday, 10th April

The family and friends of Toyosi Shittabey are organising a memorial march this Saturday, 10th April.

It will start at the Garden of Remembrance (top of Parnell Street and O'Connell Street) at 2pm, and continue to the Dail.

You should be able to see a scrolling PDF with all the details below.  If your browser does not show it, the details above should be all you need to show your support:




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Can you hear the master race? Fascists get it all wrong... again.

Thanks to F, an anti-fascist reader of the blog (and long-suffering Liverpool fan) based in England, for the following gem.

It’s a bit of a departure, insofar as the topic is not directly concerned with our gombeen little land, but it gives a unique insight into the confused thinking of one the BNP’s leading lights, Bob Bailey, who is the racist party’s organiser for the British Elections.  The British National Party is one that would-be Irish fash look up to longingly (see BNP and Irish racists - more in common than they'd like to admit   and would-be Irish National Party ), so this says it all really.

It seems that Bailey phoned up BBC London in a right lather, having heard that the broadcaster planned to run a report on the BNP expelling gay people from the party.  Now, the fash might well have a reputation for being rabid homophobes - as well as rabid bigots in general -  but it seems the BNP leadership is trying to play down its attitudes to “that type of thing” at the moment.

So Bailey was there shouting the odds at the BBC employee at the other end of the phone “We know you’re running it [the report] and we want a right to reply!” Despite repeated denials from the puzzled Beeb researcher, he continued his accusations.

Eventually the researcher went off to check with colleagues, who were equally bemused. Finally he/she came back to the phone with the answer.  The BBC were doing a report on two gays being expelled from a B&B  -  not the BNP.

So Bob’s hearing is as clear as his thinking, then.

With role models like that, eh?

See full article: Vote no to the BNP

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Racist killing of Toyosi Shittabey in Tyrellstown

Today's papers report that the death of Toyosi Shittabey in Tyrellstown may have been motivated by racism.  The fifteen year old, a talented footballer who played for Shelbourne’s youth team, was walking home from the swimming pool in Blanchardstown with friends when they were subjected to racial abuse by two scumbags in the Mount Eustace estate.

According to the reports words were exchanged and Toyosi’s group walked away from the scene, but the abusers, aged 23 and 38, went into their nearby house to fetch a knife and followed the youngsters in their car.   The young lad, known as “Toy”, urged his friends to walk away again but was stabbed in the heart by one of the scumbags.  Paul Barry, originally of Pearse Street, has been charged with manslaughter - which is puzzling in view of the pre-meditated nature of the attack which seems more like murder to me. 

“It was a racist attack.  He was a lovely happy-go-lucky boy”, a neighbour is quoted as saying in today’s Sunday Tribune report, which describes Tyrellstown as a middle-class housing estate with a “sizeable African community”.  The Sindo says the area consists of  200 households which are "50 per cent foreign nationals and 50 per cent Irish".

Referring to Tyrellstown as a middle-class estate is somewhat fanciful.  Indeed, the Garda have expressed  concern about tensions in the area and an official from its  Racial and Intercultural Office is working there.   It is one of many boomtime developments that shot up in the Dublin 15 area with no thought or planning.  Situated somewhere between Mulhuddart and Hollystown it has – in common with many new estates in the area –a large population of New Irish.

This blog has highlighted racist attitudes in Ireland before, both overt and concealed, and unless there are serious efforts made on the part of our rulers to integrate our new arrivals, and educate sections of our indigenous population, there will be serious trouble ahead. 

A prime element of racism and bigotry is ignorance, so it makes sense to address this issue through the medium of education.  And the best form of education is inclusive, secular (or, at least, multi-denominational) and one that integrates.

Educate Together is the only organisation offering such schooling in Ireland at present, but it is currently confined to primary level, to the best of my knowledge.  I understand that the group plans to move into secondary education in the near future.

I have no kids, and have no connection with Educate Together, but by my reckoning this is the way to go.  After all, this is about all our futures - together - and it might just eradicate the insularity, stupidity, ignorance and bigotry that robbed Toyosi of his young life.

Anyone interested in starting a new school group can express their interest here. 

Educate Together Start-up Groups

Gombeen Nation would like to extend sincere sympathy to the family and friends of Toyosi.

PS.  It has been brought to the attention of Gombeen Nation that a Paul Barry was previously charged under Section 2 of the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act (see comments), after a stabbing on Pearse Steet in 2001.  See Race attack on Pearse Street

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Irish pubs open on Good Friday - but don't expect beer

"Oh it's-a lonesome away from your kindred and all

By the campfire at night we'll hear the wild dingoes call

But there's-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear

Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer"

Verse from “The Pub with no Beer” (Dan Sheahan/Gordon Parsons/Slim Dusty)

You don’t have to go to the Australian outback of the Second World War era to find a pub with no beer. Simply come to Ireland on Good Friday for a comparable “lonesome, morbid and drear” experience.  But it's not something Bord Failte like to shout about.

Thanks to the continuing influence of Catholic Church “values” in our supposedly secular republic, all the pubs in the country are forced to close on this day. Or at least not sell any alcohol. Here’s that phrase again, and the letters that compose it are practically worn away on my keyboard: Where else would you get it?

Some Limerick pub owners managed to get a partial exemption on the grounds that a big rugby match in the city constituted a “special event”, but the rest of the country will be dry… apart from the fact that people will be getting hammered on crates of beer and spirits in their living rooms, of course. I’m doing it just out of principle.

Far better, anyway, than sitting in a pub with no beer. It seems that some Dublin publicans will be opening their doors today, even though they will not be selling any alcohol. If you want to look at the match on the big screen you can go along to one of these and pay over the odds for soft drinks, and ingest stodgy pub grub. I’ll stay where I am, thanks. But looks as though there is a belated effort by some of the country’s vintners to oppose the archaic and sectarian Good Friday ban on selling alcohol.

And none more so than a Donal Nooney of Killimore, described on yesterday’s “Last Word” as a Galway publican who plans to defy the ban and open regardless – taking on the Catholic Church, the Garda, and the head shops. Hmmm. Sounds very dynamic for a publican to me.

Now, what was yesterday's date?


Matt Cooper, Last Word audio clip, April Ist



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Nama, Lenihan, and Fianna Fail play "fast and loose" with the economy.

“The detailed information that has emerged from the banks in the course of the NAMA process is truly shocking. At every hand’s turn our worst fears have been surpassed.

Some institutions were worse than others. But the fact is that our banking system, to a greater or lesser extent, engaged in reckless property development lending. In too many cases there were also shoddy banking practices. The banks played fast and loose with the economic interests of this country.

Yes, our previous regulatory system failed abysmally and it is right that the role of the regulator, the Central Bank and the Government is now the subject of independent inquiry. But the fact remains that senior figures in Irish banking made appalling lending decisions that will cost the taxpayer dearly for years to come…”

Brian Lenihan, 30th March 2010. Statement to Dail on the first transfer of banks’ bad loans the National Asset Mangement Agency

Here is our finance minister, Brian Lenihan, sounding as though his party, Fianna Fail, had nothing to do with the country’s economic collapse. But then again, you’re always more likely to get a “cupla focal” from our political masters than a “mea culpa”. 

See below excerpts from a feature on Government property-based tax breaks that appeared in the Sunday Business Post of May 8th, 2005, one year before the peak of the “boom”.  They demonstrate how Fianna Fail played "fast and loose with the economic interests of the country".  It would be interesting to have accurate and complete figures showing the number of ministers and their friends who availed of the schemes.  Exclamation marks in brackets are mine, and need no clarification.

The most popular scheme - and generally the most successful - is Section 23.   With Section 23, you get tax relief on the capital used to construct, refurbish or convert rented residential accommodation in a tax-designated area. The price paid for the site does not qualify for tax relief. However, as the site usually represents between 5 and 20 per cent of the cost of the property, investors can write off between 80 and 95 per cent of the property purchase price against rental income earned from property within the state.


For example, if an apartment costs €200,000 and the site cost €20,000, the Section 23 allowance would apply to capital of €180,000.   One of the advantages of the allowances is that they are not restricted to property bought under the Section 23 scheme. It can be written off against an investor's rental income from all properties located within the state. (!!!!!!!!)


Section 23 relief is only available if the property is first let by an individual under a qualifying lease (!!!!!!!!). It must continue to be let for ten years from the date of the first letting…. Section 23 relief is currently available for rural renewal, town renewal, living over the shop, integrated urban renewal, student accommodation and park and ride schemes.

Section 50 operates in the same way as Section 23 but relates to qualifying student accommodation. “There's very strong demand for Section 23 schemes,” said Marie Hunt, director of research with CB Richard Ellis Gunne (!!!!!!!!). “Section 50 is not seeing the same demand because there's a bit of caution there as to whether it's a good or bad scheme.”


Finance
Typical investors in tax-designated properties will borrow 90 per cent of the property price and pay a 10 per cent deposit. In some cases, a smaller deposit may only be required. Interest-only mortgages are generally considered as the most efficient way of financing an investment under Section 23 or Section 50.

Investors use rent from the property to fund the interest on the loan and can then use their tax break to pay off the loan or make another investment elsewhere. (!!!!!!!!)

“Typically, investors in these schemes have a number of other properties and they're looking to grow their property portfolio,” said Aiden Murphy, a partner with Horwath Bastow Charleton. (!!!!!!!!)  “To allow the rents to materialise for the properties, they go interest only for the first few years and once the rents are flowing through, they pay off the balance of the interest on the loan.” (!!!!!!!!)

Interest-only mortgages are useful for covering the shortfall from the rent on investment properties, according to Michael Dowling, president of the Independent Mortgage Advisers Federation (IMAF). (!!!!!!!!)

According to Dowling, a two-bed apartment in Smithfield will normally yield maximum rent of €1,200 a month. “There's no way this would cover repayments on a €450,000 mortgage,” he said. (!!!!!!!!)  “However, typically, anyone buying under Section 23 has rental income from other investment properties - many of which have little or no outstanding mortgages. Investors can use rent from these properties to offset any shortfall on the new property.” (!!!!!!!!)

 Murphy [says that], a lot of today's investors are more sophisticated and use interest-only mortgages to manage their rental cashflow more efficiently. (!!!!!!!!)
The interest on variable rate interest-only mortgages can range from between 3 to 4.3 per cent APR for investors, depending on the lender and broker, your relationship with the bank (!!!!!!!!), and the amount being borrowed.

Capital appreciation
Although rental income might not cover the mortgage repayments on a Section 23 property, capital appreciation and tax allowances usually make such investments worthwhile. (!!!!!!!!)
“Investors really have to discipline themselves and put aside the tax break for a moment,” said Ned Gladney, director of OSK Tax. “All of the common sense rules apply regarding location which is one of the things that people often ignore because they get blinded by the tax relief.” (!!!!!!!!)

Holiday homes
If choosing a tax-designated holiday home for investment purposes, it's important to choose a property with good rental potential. “Before investing in a holiday home, you must look at its location and its value as a destination,” said Aiden Murphy from Horwath Bastow Charleton. “For example, examine the amenities and activities on the site and the actual size of the resort. You would normally need a certain minimum number of units in the resort to cover your loans.” (!!!!!!!!)

Footnote:  A lot of these schemes are now ghost estates, or holiday developments blighting the landscape.  GM.
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Sligo driving test rates pass out rest of the country

Having trouble passing your driving test? If you are a serial failure when it comes to (legally) discarding the L-plates, help is at hand in the form of Sligo’s driving test centre which boasts a 67.1% pass rate.

In contrast, Dublin’s Rathgar centre is one to avoid if you want to retain any remaining tatters of positive self-esteem you might still possess. Hard-line examiners in the leafy Dublin suburb pass only 30.6% of candidates, according to a report in last Sunday’s Tribune.

Of course if you live in, say, Dublin and have to drive to Sligo on your provisional licence, it will mean having to take to the motorway with your L-plates on full view. But sure who cares about that? Anyway, you can always just put them in the glove compartment and whip them out when you get to the test centre.

What’s more, if you really are such a disaster that you even manage to FAIL in Sligo, I’m sure nobody there will bat an eyelid when you head back to the car for the long drive home. Just be careful.

And let me know when your test is taking place and the route you’ll be taking on the way home.

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Irish Blog Awards 2010

The Irish Blog Awards bash takes place this evening in the Radisson Hotel, Galway. It’s a big event, and one that is taking on an increasing relevance even in the eyes of the mainstream media who will be well represented there.

As readers will know, Gombeen Nation was chosen as a finalist at the event, and is up there in the last five vying for the title of “best political blog”, along with the likes of Slugger O’Toole, Jason O’Mahony, Tuppenceworth and Irish Election. That’s accolade enough for me.

So let me say a big “thanks” to all the judges (120 of them) who took the time not only to read the blog, but some of whom gave it their seal of approval. Blogging is a pretty solitary – some would even say sad – activity, so it’s good to know that there are people out there who think it’s a worthwhile one.

The great thing about doing a political blog in Ireland is that there’s always plenty to write about, and while Gombeen Nation is not about party politics, it probably would subscribe to the old punk belief (as expounded by Tom Robinson) that politics is simply about everyday events that affect our lives.

I won’t be there in Galway tonight – not until the day when we can have mysterious, silhouetted, live video links with voice-overs to maintain our anonymity for reasons of health, safety and maybe an overblown sense of our own relevance.

But that day can’t be too far away.

Have a good one.

PS.. thanks to  Digital Revolutionaries, political blog sponsors.

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The BNP and Irish racists – more in common than they’d like to admit.

A reader of the blog sent me a recent report from the Sunday World claiming that the fascist BNP (British National Party) was looking for budding Irish racists who shared its own twisted values - taking localisation into account, of course.

The report asserts that the BNP attempted to make contact with “the recently formed” INP (Irish National Party), with one British fascist spending three “frantic” days searching for it in Dublin.   However, as it appears that the INP currently exists only in the confused mind of its would-be leader, David Barrett, it was a mission that proved impossible.

The article states that an undercover reporter spoke to “BNP activist Paul Ryan” who revealed that the party was interested in getting a group it could work with in Ireland.

Possibly thinking of the days when BNP members were as likely to beat up Irish people living in the UK as any other minority – and probably still are  - Ryan admitted that his organisation “had a problem with Irish people in the past” but was now “open to the idea of a similar party in Ireland…  regardless of whether we are of Celtic or Anglo Saxon stock, we face the same basic threats to our heritage, culture, identity and ultimately our future.”

Funny. During my nine years working in the London of the 80s and 90s, I was struck – not literally, mind  – by the number of BNP members with distinctly Irish names.  And that’s just in the BNP...  never mind the waves of human settlement over the generations that resulted in your present-day Londoner.  So the idea of an “Anglo Saxon” or a “Celtic” race is every bit as fallacious as an “Aryan” race.  

So, as well as peddling their exclusive, insular definitions of "culture" and "nationality", the fact is that British and Irish fascists have a lot more in common than they would really like to admit.

Social Darwinists, eh.  When will they ever evolve?

See also:

An anti-fascist day out in London, Part One

An anti-fascist day out in London, Part Two

The Metro, the Poles, and Irish racism


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Limerick publicans challenge (sort of) Good Friday drinks ban

I had Morning Ireland on earlier while gulping down a few coffees in readiness for the rigours of the day ahead. 

 One feature concerned attempts by Limerick publicans to lift the Good Friday drinks ban in time for the Munster v Leinster rugby match taking place that day, arguing that the game constituted a “special occasion”, and was therefore exempt. 

The case is up at Limerick District Court today, where vintners' representative David Hickey hopes to secure a six-hour exemption for 60 of the city’s publicans.

It seems stunning, to me, that the powerful publicans’ lobby has not taken a case before on the grounds that the drinks ban is unconstitutional, full stop  -  representing, as it does, the values of one particular brand of religion in a modern Ireland of many (and no) religions.  Perhaps the many publicans who sit on local parish-pump cumanns are eager not to compromise their patriotic, traditionalist, Catholic credentials by making such a challenge?

To further illustrate the continuing interference of the religious in secular affairs in Ireland, the monks of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal will hold a vigil outside Thomand Park on the day concerned, arguing that Catholics attending the match are compromising their faith.

 You’d think, in the current climate, they might consider it prudent to keep their heads down, wouldn’t you?

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Pope Benedict's Pastoral Letter to Irish Catholics

This weekend, in every Catholic church throughout the land, Pope Benedict’s “Pastoral Letter of the Holy Father to Catholics in Ireland” will be read from the pulpit. Those of us who won’t be present can, however, rely on the miraculous intercession of the World Wide Web.

See PASTORAL LETTER
OF THE HOLY FATHER POPE BENEDICT XVI TO THE CATHOLICS OF IRELAND

The letter contains 4,674 words, but says nothing of any note. There is an apology, but El Popo could hardly say he wasn’t sorry for his organisation's cover-up of child abuse and its active role in moving the perpetrators to fresh pastures where they could find new victims to abuse.

There is a lot of talk about “forgiveness” in the letter. Thing is, I – and many of you, I imagine – grew up in an Ireland where there was very little Christian forgiveness, and even less tolerance. An Ireland in which the Church’s values and mores were inflicted on everyone, believers or not. An Ireland in which people were even denied contraception and divorce.

The Catholic Church inflicted its vision of official morality on all of us, and denied us basic rights - even as its representatives were engaged in, and were covering up, the worst kind of sins (to use its terminology).  They even ran/run the majority of our schools.  And since when was it ever a good idea to entrust vulnerable children to the care of sexually frustrated priests, nuns and brothers sworn to an unnatural life of chasity?

Then again, none of that is surprising in a so-called "republic" based on a constitution beginning with “In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority . . .”   And no prizes for guessing which organisation was charged with dispensing that authority?

I couldn’t care less what the Pope, Ian Paisley, the Ayatollah or Reverend Moon says - but I did read Benedict's mealy-mouthed apology out of a fascinated curiousity.  From what I can see, the Church seems to blame “growing secularisation” in Ireland as being at the root of its problems.   Now that depends, I suppose, on what it sees the problem as. The actual abuse itself or the fact that it was found out.  See extract below: 

“4. In recent decades, however, the Church in your country has had to confront new and serious challenges to the faith arising from the rapid transformation and secularization of Irish society. Fast-paced social change has occurred, often adversely affecting people’s traditional adherence to Catholic teaching and values. All too often, the sacramental and devotional practices that sustain faith and enable it to grow, such as frequent confession, daily prayer and annual retreats, were neglected. Significant too was the tendency during this period, also on the part of priests and religious, to adopt ways of thinking and assessing secular realities without sufficient reference to the Gospel. The programme of renewal proposed by the Second Vatican Council was sometimes misinterpreted and indeed, in the light of the profound social changes that were taking place, it was far from easy to know how best to implement it. In particular, there was a well-intentioned but misguided tendency to avoid penal approaches to canonically irregular situations. It is in this overall context that we must try to understand the disturbing problem of child sexual abuse, which has contributed in no small measure to the weakening of faith and the loss of respect for the Church and her teachings."

"Canonically irregular situations"?  The fact is, it is only due to "increasing secularisation" that the scandal of clerical abuse was ever uncovered at all.  It is only through "increasing secularisation" that  the scandals of Ireland's Magdalene Laundries and industrial schools were officially exposed and  retrospectively condemned.  

People knew about these things at the time but they were too stupid, too cowed, and too in awe of the Catholic Church and Official Ireland orthodoxy to do anything about them.   Just as when instances of clerical abuse were reported to gardai on rare occasions, they chose not to act. In the cases of the laundries and the industrial schools gardai (police) actively condemned young lives to them.

And can we really be expected to believe - those of us who base our beliefs on rationality - that the people sitting in Leinster House and on local councils thoughout  the land at the time had no idea what was going with regard to all or any of  these scandals either?

So let us not "forgive", and let us not forget, the role of the State and its agents in all of this.

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Sean Fitzpatrick arrested on suspicion of Anglo Irish Bank “financial irregularities”.

I don’t know if any of you look at Father Ted? I think people from outside Ireland labour under the misapprehension that it is a comedy, rather than a faithful portrayal of Irish life. There’s a running joke in the series, where Ted has embezzled money intended for a Lourdes trip for sick children. Any time the issue is brought up he tries to defend himself by claiming that the money was “just resting” in his bank account.

In real life, the Irish authorities are remarkably tolerant of political and financial corruption, and the great Irish public usually increase their votes for politicians found guilty of it. To be honest, I don’t think that would even have happened on Craggy Island.

I was watching the 9 O’clock news this evening, and the phrase “financial irregularities” cropped up several times. But when you think about it, Ireland is run on financial irregularities. Question is, how many perpetrators have ever been brought to justice? I can only think of Lawlor and Burke… both on foot of the tribunals.

Now it seems that Sean Fitzpatrick was arrested this morning on suspicion of “financial irregularities” at Anglo Irish Bank, and has had his detention extended by 12 hours for further questioning.

Fitzpatrick was chief executive of the basket-case bank from 1986 until 2005, when news of secret loans taken by him from the bank emerged. Loans totalling more than €87 million, which remained hidden from the auditors for over 8 years.

The taxpayers have already (involuntarily) put €4 billion of their money into Anglo, which was nationalised in January 2009. It is expected to post the largest-ever losses in Irish corporate history later this month, so that figure might as well be one of Bertie’s blank cheques. Commentator Fintan O’Toole says it could be as much as €30 billion.

Given that the bankers, politicians and developers have restored us to our proper place as the basket case of Europe, the Irish ruling class should really have no option but to make examples of members of the elite who engaged in corrupt practice and helped bring the country to its knees.

That’s not to say more arrests and investigations will take place because of any new-found sense of indignation and disgust among our rulers at the low standards in Irish public life, but simply because international investors and bankers will expect it.

But that’s only being logical. Let’s see what really happens.

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