VRT, McCreevy, and the Lisbon No Vote

The Lisbon Treaty was rejected by the "newly confident" Irish. "No" voters predominated amongst the young - the most spoiled generation in our history. But then again, Ireland has an unhappy history of referendums... the right to divorce was voted down two-to-one in the grim 80s, for instance. The right of women to choose has also been denied when put to the vote.

Now, it looks like we might be back to the 80s - in economic terms at least - which will make the selling of any Lisbon Two even more difficult.

So how can the EU demonstrate the benefits of membership to Europe's newest sceptics? The simple answer is for it to enforce existing legislation that will directly benefit the Irish public. Gombeen Man has three examples.

1) The Irish Government must be made scrap Vehicle Registration Tax, which sees us paying up to 40% more for our cars as those in other EU states. Gombeen commissioner Charlie McCreevy steadfastly refuses to allow this, despite being in direct contravention of the Treaty of Rome. The EU should face him down now, and at the same time give a practical demonstration that tax harmonisation can be a good thing.

2) Irish people are currently barred from investing in the Prize Bond schemes of other EU countries. The Irish Government denies us the right to invest our savings in this way under gambling and lottery legislation - despite the fact that money invested in the British Premium Bonds, for instance, is a form of saving and is State-guaranteed.

3) Currently, large-scale supermarkets such as Carrefour are not allowed to set up in Ireland - due to lobbying from vested interests who don't want competition that will result in lower prices for the consumer. The EU should insist that this uncompetitive practice stops right now.

Brussels has allowed the Irish Government to wriggle out of its obligations to pass on the full benefits of EU membership to its citizens. This must stop, and the Irish Government must be made comply.

It also happens to be the best way to ensure a decisive "yes" vote in any future referendum.

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Eeeehh... Charlie McCreevy takes the money

Gombeen Nation hasn't showcased a leading public gombeen in some time. So heeeers - eeeeeh, Charlie McCreevy.

Despite trousering a substantial commissioner's salary, McCreevy - along with FF party leader, Cowen - hasn't bothered to read the Lisbon Treaty. McCreevy, who models himself as being some kind of right-wing, free market guru, is frankly a joke in Europe. Despite his avowed support of free-market principles, and his Brussels brief to dismantle barriers to free trade in the EU, he opposes the scrapping of Vehicle Registration Tax in Ireland - which the EU has been trying to get rid of for years. This Irish Government tax means that Irish residents have to pay way for more for their cars than other EU citizens do.

Example, two-seater sports car:

Porsche Boxster, new price in Belfast = EUR 48,000

Porsche Boxster, new price in Dublin = EUR 77,000

Porsche Boxster, new price in Luxembourg = 44,000

Well, reading that, I'm all for tax harmonisation.

It is obvious that McCreevy is not serious about promoting the EU and its aims. In fact, he seems to be set on being as obstructive as possible.

There has been a lot of talk about accountability at EU level lately. How about we start by making commissioners accountable? Rather than seeing the EU institutions as a place to exile errant or incompentent politicians (Flynn, McCreevy, Kinnock, Mandelson), maybe governments should take EU appointments seriously and select high-calibre politicians, who won't be an embarrassment to us in the eyes of the world.

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Ireland says "no" to Lisbon... gombeens rejoice!

So, after billions of Euro funding and cohesion money - which is soon to dry up as the we become net contributors in the next few years - it seems that the Irish have become eurosceptics (a term first coined by the Little Englanders of perfidious Albion).

The Lisbon Treaty was drafted over seven years by member states - much of it during Ireland's presidency - and was designed to make the expanding EU easier to run on an organizational level, given its expansion to 27 member states. That's all it was. Qualified majority voting would take the place of unanimity, so as to prevent one state of 27 preventing the others moving forward. Every country would have a commissioner two terms out of three, instead of every country having a permanent one as had been the case when the EU comprised fewer countries - we have the laughable Charlie McCreevy at the moment. That's all it was. So what was the problem?

While there were some honest, earnest people campaigning on issues of workers' rights - this incompetent Government refused to back the EU charter on this issue - Gombeen Man suspects much of the "no" vote was on unrelated issues. For instance, one group with a Gaelic name exhorted people to vote "no" to "keep Ireland Irish". No problem taking all that "foreign" money though.

Others voted to prevent women's right to choose being introduced in Ireland, others voted to prevent immigration, others voted to prevent their sons being drafted into an imaginary European army. The farmers' leaders belatedly backed it after trying to use it as a bargaining chip to get more money - but too late. Rural constituencies overwhelmingly voted it down as did working-class areas with high levels of simmering racism. People voted against "tax harmonisation". So, do they want to keep paying nearly twice as much for their cars, for instance, as they do in some other EU states? Do they want the "right" to continue to be screwed by "their own"?

The Celtic Cubs were out in force. Spoiled by their parents' easy property equity money (thanks to cheap EU credit) they gloated, their crabby, spoiled, overfed faces puffed up with triumph as they sang songs in Irish celebrating Ireland's step back into the past. A past, the misery of which their cossetted upbringings do not equip them to understand.

It will be interesting to see what happens next. Maybe the coming economic slowdown will rid Ireland of much of its new found arrogance? Maybe the EU will forge ahead with tax harmonisation, with Ireland's voice weakened? Maybe they won't, and the multinationals will go to the accession states offering even lower corporate tax and cheaper labour costs? Maybe, in a two-tier scenario, Ireland will not be allowed unfettered access to European markets, and this will sway the multinationals' hand?

Whatever happens, the "no" vote could prove to be a watershed. Erin go bragh, eh?

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Property Crash and economic slowdown - Part Two

As opined on this site previously, it really looks like the shameless, steroidal pumping-up of the property sector by the Government through tax breaks and shelters for the well-off and comfortable (some of them politicians) - even during the height of that very boom - has ended with inevitable consequences.

You can't base an economy on building houses, and you can't base real wealth on credit. Now it's time those Celtic chickens came home to roost. Luckily for them, it should be a lot cheaper for them to find somewhere to live in the current climate.

For many years now - especially since 2006, when the madness was at its worst - ordinary young working people have been priced out of the market due to properties being snapped up as investments by the already housed and affluent, who have been aided by tax breaks and shelters such as Section 23s which allow investors to write off rental income against tax on all of their properties.

Potential homes have been flipped, bought-to-let, and simply let lie idle in the expectation of capital appreciation (caused by this very same speculative activity in the market). Such nonsense is unsustainable in the long-term, and now the whole shebang is rapidly sinking into its shaky foundations.

An Irish Independent report claims one quarter (ONE QUARTER) of construction jobs are going to disappear by the end of next year. Gombeen Man wonders how many of these will be foreign workers currently paying rent into the greedy pockets of the new Irish landlord class who have borrowed heavily to get into the buy-to-let game?

If 65,500 construction workers are made unemployed (that's the figure quoted), it's fair to assume that a good number of them will be workers from abroad who will follow jobs elsewhere. That's a lot of empty buy-to-lets, is it not? And selling won't be an option for any Paddy Last wannabe rackrenter who got into the game as late as 2006, as their "investment" is now worth less than the sum they paid/borrowed.

Wait now for the unprincipled opposition to start whingeing about stamp-duty (even though stamp duty did not hinder the market in the boom years) and financial bail-outs for stung investors.

James Connolly, socialism, internationalism, and nationalism / Republicanism

"The cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland, and the cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour "

Out of context, not one of Connolly’s most incisive statements - but the one chosen to inscribe the State’s monument to the socialist revolutionary, which stands opposite Liberty Hall.

At face value, it’s a pretty nonsensical utterance; as the interests of “Labour” (ordinary working people engaged in class struggle against their rulers) obviously are not the same as the State’s and the governing class behind it. You might as well say “the cause of chickens is Bernard Matthews, and the cause of Bernard Matthews is chickens”.

In fact, it’s a terrible pity that the memory of the country’s greatest social agitators – who was motivated by internationalism, a hatred of injustice, poverty, the class system, and inequality – has been hijacked by both the State and Sinn Fein, thanks to Connolly’s ill-judged participation in the nationalist putch that was the 1916 Rising.

Connolly was himself a product of the working class. Born in Edinburgh in 1868, he served in the British Army, in common with many of his social background. His own life experiences led him to question the status quo and the nature of the society in which he lived, leading to a Marxist position on the nature of the nation-state and its institutions of oppression. No armchair, academic socialist here.

A founder of the Irish Labour Party, he also co-founded the Irish Citizen Army – an organisation formed to protect Dublin workers from the brutality of the police during the 1912 Strike/Lockout - when they were engaged in bitter struggle with the bosses’ class. This class was personified by bourgeois Irish nationalist and leading advocate of independence, William Martin Murphy; owner of the Irish Independent, Clerys, and the Dublin United Tramway Company.

As a socialist and internationalist, Connolly’s politics were inimical to the nation-state and the narrow patriotism engendered by it; a patriotism that divided workers, whose common ground was not nationality or creed, but class. A student of Esperanto, he hoped the synthetic language would transcend linguistic differences and help unite the world’s workers. Esperanto has since lost its place as a potential lingua franca of the World - a position now, arguably, occupied by English.

Surprisingly – again in today’s context - Connolly saw the Irish Language (Gaelic) movement of his time as a progressive one, opposed as it was to the existing establishment of the day. Though it also counted the likes of Sean O’Casey as one of its supporters, it was primarily supported by petite bourgeois nationalist elements. They envisaged a Gaelic Ireland based on folkish myth, and Gaelic itself as cultural tool to weaken links with Britain, in order to facilitate a nationalist revolution to establish the emerging, Irish, ruling elite.

This is exactly what happened in the aftermath of 1916, and Irish (or Gaelic) is now the first official language of the State, as set out in DeValera’s reactionary 1937 Constitution – despite this having little basis in realty in terms of usage or support. For many years its promotion was pushed by the State with a fervour unseen since British rule, excluding people without it from State jobs and even denying them educational qualifications (see Language Freedom Movement article on Wiki). Connolly’s assertion, however, that 'you can't teach a starving man Gaelic', gives an insight into the pragmatism of his stance of the time.


The reasons for Connolly’s participation in the nationalist 1916 Rising are contested. One school of thought goes that he was demoralised by the defeat of the Dublin workers in the 1912 Strike/Lockout , and thus threw his lot in with the nationalists; envisaging a common front that would first tackle the existing British State in Ireland, leading on to a socialist revolution. Sadly, Connolly did not live to explain his motives, as he was executed by State forces – an act that added fuel to the fire of narrow Irish nationalism, devoid of any social element.

Whatever the reasons, the socialist movement was deprived of one of its leading lights, and a thorn in the side of the emerging Irish ruling class. His legacy has been claimed by socialists, internationalists, anarchists, nationalists, Irish Republicans, and – even more ironically – the capitalist State he despised so much (albeit run by an Irish ruling class, rather than a British one).

The State portrays him as a patriot, Sinn Fein and successive manifestations of the IRA as a nationalist (with the odd bit of socialist rhetoric incorporated when it suits them - though many would contest that the thinly disguised sectarian campaign of the IRA, which included the murder of protestant workers, was contrary to such ideals). Worse, Connolly’s reinterpretation as a nationalist hero has at once defiled and sanitised his memory – leading many potential socialists and internationalists up the blind alley of Republicanism - so making the dawning of a socialist Ireland, united by class, all the more unlikely.

William Martin Murphy would have been pleased.

Gombeen Man

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Bertie Ahern resigns at last

Gombeen Man wishes Bertie (Dig-out) Ahern good riddance, but doubts that his likely successor - Brian Cowan - will offer any improvement in terms of integrity. Note Cowen's U-turn on stamp duty in the last budget - which he had promised he would not alter - after a reported meeting in the Radisson with property developers and leading estate agents before its presentation. Note his recent decision not to close off a stamp duty tax avoidance "loophole" used by developers. More of the same, I'm afraid.

In Britain, politicians resign when they are caught at it. Here, they have to be drummed out of office - and the most worrying thing is that in Ahern's case this has been brought about by the airing of his affairs by the tribunals, and the resultant (and justified) pressure from the press.

Sadly, if Ahern stood up for election again tomorrow, the Irish public would vote him back in.

What does that say about us as a nation?

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Frank Fahey's property portfolio

Gombeen Man has always been sceptical about the continued availabilty of property-based tax incentive schemes - in the form of Section 23s, for instance - that allow investors to write off tax on rental income on their properties. How - even in Ireland - did it make sense to keep them going at the height of the property boom?

Brian "U-turn" Cowen has been talking about getting rid of them for years - but every time Gombeen Man opens one of the Sunday papers he is assailed by pages of property-based tax dodging schemes. So obviously they must have stockpiled them in expectation of the coming slowdown.

It would be interesting to know how many (if any) of FF TDs Frank Fahey's 7 Irish properties were tax-based. Fahey's property interests are great, and also include "part-ownership" of another "22 units here, and in France and Belgium" (Metro March 14th).

Thankfully, the property inflation of the past decade: largely fuelled by well-off investors backed by Government subsidies - in a kind of reverse socialism - has come to an end.

See
http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/2008/03/property-crash-and-economic-slowdown.html

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The property crash and economic slowdown. Reality intrudes at last.

Note: This article was posted under an incorrect title the other day. This is the revised version that replaces it.


In light of RTE revelations on TDs' spending splurge last Paddy's Day,
Gombeen Man was intriqued by Bertie's recent words on the Irish economy. Not for the first time.

Warning of dark days ahead as our false economy slows down - due in large part to his Government's steroidal pumping-up of the property market through tax breaks - it is timely to examine the phenomenon that was the Celtic Tiger before it finally leaves for fresher, meatier pickings.

The earlier part of this country's economic success was largely down to EU financial input in the form of funding and a general opening up of Irish society and attitudes thanks to involvement with the rest of Europe. For instance, we now have contraceptives... unthinkable in the 80s. We now have divorce.

Another factor was the work of the IDA in bringing investment here, by making our Gombeen land the ideal place for multinationals to set-up under a low corporate-tax regime, and use the location to process global profits in a "business-friendly" environment. This, make no mistake - along with the fact that we are an English-speaking nation - is why the multinationals operate in, and through, here. Whatever about the ethics of it all, we do, however, now have employment for anyone who wants it.

The problem is, this Government kept the tax-break idea going by applying it to construction in Ireland long after it was necessary. This took the from of tax shelters for the building of holiday homes, hotels, and houses and apartments in "designated areas". While there might have been some argument for state intervention (isn't that supposedly the bane of enterprise and business) when things were depressed, there was none for continuing with it when the economy took off.

Loathe to see their friends in the construction industry go short of the latest helicopters to transport their semi-literate arses in, the Government kept these tax shelters going right through the height of the property boom. Individuals who benefited were mostly those already propertied and well-off, by allowing them to write off rental income from all investment properties by means of Section 23 tax schemes.

The result? Moneyed, middle-aged, middle-class (upper echelons now, I think) people diverted money into the schemes, at a time of low bank interest rates, and pushed up prices to astronomical levels. Many properties were not even let out, but were bought purely for capital appreciation - which thankfully, has come to a belated end. The others, in the form of buy-to-lets, were let to hard-working young people, many of them building the investment properties they now rent. Another consequence is that many young people - single, cohabiting, and trying to bring up families - are now locked into 40-year mortgages on small, overpriced, shoddily built apartments.

Thank you Fianna Fail. But let's be honest - would things have been any different had there been a coalition led by the other side of Irish Civil War politics?

Probably not. Pity there is no opposition in this country.

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Patricks Day trips for TDs... Is the party now over, though?

Given Bertie's dark pronouncements on the economy, it's probably just as well that TDs celebrated Paddy's Day last year by making enough hay to last them right through the developing slowdown. RTE reports, on information gained through the Freedom of Information Act, that some of them celebrated the feast day of our reptile-repelling saint - ironic, eh? - by splurging €560,000 on trips abroad.

Noel Dempsey, the man who whose failed attempt to introduce electronic voting cost the taxpayer dearly, led the slippery exodus. His trip to California, along with wife and three officials, cost €75,000 alone. Expenditure included €8,000 for a flight - presumably not Ryanair - and €19,500 for chauffeur and car hire.

Seamus Brennan, he who foisted penalty points on an unsuspecting public, bagged an apartment at €1,650 a night.

Gombeen Man will be watching festivities this year, hoping to see some evidence of belt-tightening, given the changed economic climate.

See following article:

Bertie's dark pronouncements on economy


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The Party's over - Bertie warns of dark days ahead for economy

Sorry, this article was posted incorrectly. Please go to

http://gombeennation.blogspot.com/2008/03/property-crash-and-economic-slowdown.html

for the revised version.

Gombeen Man

O'Cuiv's charter for legal obfuscation

Maybe Gaelic is worth learning after all?

The First Notional Language of the country - as enshrined in DeValera's 1937 Constitution - has long been used as tool by some enthusiasts to obfuscate and delay legal proceedings; from fighting TV licence fees on the basis that there isn't enough Gaeilge on TV, to having speeding charges dropped because the ticket was issued in the vernacular, English. Perfectly legally, you understand.

However, the potential scope for evading, delaying and complicating the legal process has been assisted greatly by Eamonn O'Cuiv's 2003 Official Languages Act, which stipulates that public services and publications must be provided in Irish.

Before introducing the Act, O'Cuiv is reported to have told a meeting of Irish Language activists in Spiddal that "The English speakers of the country do not know about the Bill and if they did there is a good chance that we would not succeed in putting it through". They - the Dail TDs - didn't, and they - the Irish Language Lobby - did.

Gombeen Man is not commenting on the specifics of the following case, or disputing the issue of availing of a constitutional right. He is, however, using it as an example of how - due to one of the more reactionary elements of the 1937 Constitution (along with the enshrinement of Catholicism), and the Official Languages Act - a legal case dating back as far as 1990 was still under progress at the Supreme Court last Thursday.

According to a report in The Irish Times (Friday, 7th March), a Ruairí Mac Cárthaigh, of Tallaght, was charged with the robbery of confectionery and chocolate to the value of €11,000 and receiving the goods knowing them to have been stolen, at Suardais Road, Dublin, on May 28th, 1990. He denies the charges and wants his trial conducted in Irish, saying he was raised in Dublin through Irish.

It seems that Mac Cárthaigh had originally sought to be tried by a jury sufficiently fluent in Irish to follow court proceedings, but this was correctly refused by the court on the basis that "most of the population would be excluded from jury service if they were required to have a clear grasp of the Irish Language", and would "be contrary to the requirement that a jury should be truly representative".

So, if a trial is conducted "as Gaeilge", it must be translated to the vernacular for the benefit of the judge and jury, and for any "member of the public who wishes to avail of translation" - as most people would not have a clue what was being said if a trial was to be carried out only in Gaelic.

It would appear, though, that there are two kinds of translation - simultaneous and consecutive. The court had originally ruled to translate consecutively, a decision Mac Cártaigh appealed in 2002 - claiming that the interests of justice could be better served by simultaneous, rather than consecutive translation. So now, 18 years after the original alleged offence (yes, 18 - unless there is an error in the newspaper's report), Mac Cártaigh has been given leave to make a fresh application for simultaneous translation of proceedings in the Circuit criminal Court, on the grounds that an interpretation of O'Cuiv's legislation could give more weight to his argument.

It is obvious that in today's Ireland, with its welcome mix of new nationalities, there are genuine demands on the courts for translation services to facilitate some foreign nationals who haven't yet acquired satisfactory English. Presumably such defendants will have no right to simultaneous translation, because it applies only to the official languages? But surely the basis of the argument applies just as much here, if one form of translation is inherently inferior to the other? If not more so, as such defendants have a genuine need to have their cases translated.

Gombeen Man would contend that there are no Gaelic speakers in the country who are not also fluent in English. So if that is the case, why can't legal proceedings simply take place in that language? The answer, of course, is due to the elevated status of Gaelic in the constitution - aided by O'Cuiv's Act - which allows such obtuse wrangling. So, unless a referendum is called to remove it as the first official language of the State, nothing will change.

And what politician or party would have the courage to call for the slaughter of that particular sacred cow?

For Census figures on Irish speakers, see "Sunday Tribune and the Irish Language Industry"

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Keane has pop at Cork compatriot Miller

That's the great thing about running a site like this - no shortage of raw material. In fact, the problem can sometimes be keeping up with it all.

The good thing, though, is that given prominent Irish personalities' propensity for coming out with plentiful pronouncements of a hypocritical, hyperbolic, histrionic and - erm - bullshitty hue (apologies for ailing alliteration), Gombeen man need never worry he'll run out of stuff to do.

Speaking of which: isn't it ironic that Cork crackpot Roy Keane, ex Man U midfielder and current manager of struggling Sunderland, has placed Corkonian cohort Liam Miller on the transfer list? It's not that long ago that Keane - who once gloated about a possibly career-curtailing tackle he committed on a fellow professional, and engineered his own departure from Ireland's World Cup squad in Saipan - was paranoidly accusing the FAI of dislaying bias against those who hail from his native county.

The perennially underperforming Miller was cited as an example by Keane:

"It definitely doesn't help Liam Miller. If he was (from) further up the country, I'm pretty sure he would be in the Irish squad. I don't just say these things. There's no doubt in my mind that Liam Miller being from Cork certainly doesn't help him." (Irish Times, March, 2007)

Evidently not, Roy. Not even with fans like you.

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Murder of Polish workers in Drimnagh, Dublin

Gombeen Man is sickened and saddened by the murder of two Polish men by low-life skangers in Drimnagh last Saturday night. Marius Szwajkos died last Monday, while this morning in St James Hospital his friend Pawel Kalite lost his battle to survive a vicious screwdriver attack by a group of Mountjoy-fodder teenagers.

It is ironic that honest, decent people who come here to work and contribute to Ireland's economy should have their lives snuffed out by indigenous scumbags who will probably never contribute to anything other than our crime statistics and our social welfare bill.

Gombeen Man extends sincere condolences to the families of the workers, and hope that the police do their job and secure the convictions of those responsible.

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Dustin the Turkey wins Eurosong.

Maybe there's some hope for this place after all?

Dustin the Turkey was cock-a-hoop after being voted ahead of all the other turkeys in Ireland's Eurosong competition tonight - much to the disgust of right-wing politician and Seventies Eurovision warbler Dana, and the man responsible for Boyzone, Louis Walsh.

The two sat po-faced as the public's phone vote was announced. There hasn't been such a shock result since Ted and Dougal raced past the winning post some years back with the equally controversial "My Lovely Horse".

The lyrics of "Irlande Douze Points" include the line "Give us another chance, we're sorry for Riverdance". Gombeen Man thinks it's high time the Irish issued an apology to the world for this prancing orgy of Paddywhackery, which has caused us far more embarrassment than Dustin's plucky entry ever could.

Go on ya good thing!!!

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Is this racist, or just incredibly stupid?

Fianna Fail councillor excuses exploitation of foreign workers.

A Louth County Council member, Jimmy Mulroy (left), who also happens to be an electrical contractor (according to the Indo), has suggested that lowly paid foreign workers in Ireland are "doing very well on Euro 8.50 an hour" - despite this being below the minimum wage.

Mulroy's logic, such as it is, is that pay in the workers' country of origin is lower than it is here. This is a statement that is so inherently stupid - even by Gombeen Nation standards - it hardly needs refuting.

Until Michael O'Leary introduces daily return flights to the EU accession states for the price of a bus fare, foreign workers have to endure the same high cost of living that the rest of us do. Looking at Mulroy's picture (Gombeen Man had not heard of him until now) it's safe to say that he is of a generation, many of whose number had to emigrate in order to find work... imagine the reaction in the 70s or 80s if a British councillor had called for Irish people working in Britain to be paid less than the indigenous workers, using the same reasoning?

Taken in tandem with the recent move of Irish hoteliers to reduce the pay and conditions of their staff, it is fair to assume that exploitation of foreign workers is far from being a rare occurence. But where are the unions? They are in a cosy 'social partnership' with the Government, that benefits cosseted public sector employees more than the workers who need it: those in the free-for-all private sector, many of whom are being exploited by unscrupulous Irish gombeen employers.

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Donie Cassidy urges shift to right.

What does the Fianna Fail leader of that inherently undemocratic body, the Seanad (Senate), do to justify his existence? Not much, it seems, other than blame non-Irish nationals for the deaths on our roads. Yes, it would appear that we Paddies were paragons of good, considerate, safe and sober driving until the foreigners arrived, dragging our standards down into the nearest 'R'-road ditch. Never mind the fact that there are a frightening number of Irish drivers who have never passed a test - including many with full licences who received them in a Fianna Fail amnesty during the 70s.

Donie - for it is he - has called for a speed limit of 80km/h to be imposed on foreign drivers. "I think that there should be a speed limit of [80km/h] put on anyone coming from another country that are (sic) going to use our roads, particularly from destinations (sic) where they are driving on the opposite side of the road". When this selective approach to traffic enforcement - which Gombeen Man is sure may be contrary to the spirit of the EU - was challenged, Donie's retort was emphatic in its unashamed simplicity: "The colour of your skin does not matter if you're dead".

Presumably in a spirit of international and racial reconciliation, Donie went on to suggest that "Maybe in time we should have a look here in Ireland at the possibility of changing and driving on the other side of the road." Stop there, Donie, enough!

Gombeen man presumes that German drivers, despite their generally fair skin, would be hit by the former showband man's new law - though 60-odd percent of their motorways have no speed limit, and their road deaths per head are fewer than ours. He also suggests that the authorities devote more time to reducing road deaths by tackling the real causes: poor roads, drink-driving, an aversion to seat-belts, lack of footpaths in rural areas, and generally bad driving.

Interestingly, road deaths have actually been on a steady downward trend over the years (despite what some media hysteria would have you believe), and some of the credit for this is due to car makers' improved safety features. Included among these are airbags, anti-lock brakes and electronic stability control. The latter option, by the way, is only available as an option on some Irish cars - despite the fact that it is a proven safety feature, as it can prevent a vehicle skidding out of control in critical situations. Why? Because the Irish Government applies its punitive VRT tax even to potentially life-saving automotive technology.

It would be interesting to hear Donie Cassidy's views on that.

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The Misery of Irish Rail.

NOT THE MAYNOOTH LINE

Easing back into the blog after that long poteen-induced lay-off, Gombeen Man is going to brazenly lift a piece from the Irish Times Pricewatch column - which appears every Monday.

It concerns the notorious Dublin-Maynooth line, on which Irish Rail has seemingly been slower to add carriages than the developers have new apartments along its route - a so-called SDZ (Strategic Development Zone).

On his sojourns into the Big Smoke - usually to the Central Bank to change hoards of old money found in long-forgotten hiding places around his whitewashed cottage - he too has been known to use this very line.

Railing against shorter trains

A reader from west Dublin was prompted to get in touch after modifications made to his commuter rail service left him and his fellow passengers squashed like sardines into the carriages daily. "It takes a perverse talent - not to mention a hard-necked disregard for popular outrage - to actually halve the passenger capacity of a given train in the face of spiralling passenger numbers, but Irish Rail have done just that," he writes.

"Last month a new station on the Maynooth to Dublin line opened near the Phoenix Park, at which time Irish Rail made changes to the timetable. Most rational souls might imagine they put on more or longer trains at peak times - but that is not the Irish Rail way. Instead, they employed the revolutionary tactic of halving the existing peak-time trains going through Tara Street." The result is, he says, "dangerous overcrowding and people left stranded on the platform".

He says that the train which leaves Tara Street shortly after 6pm used to have eight carriages but, for the last week in January, "it was a four-carriage affair. The overcrowding is such that it would shock Dart users," he says. He contacted Irish Rail by e-mail last week without much hope of getting a reply and he wasn't far wrong - apart from an automatic "thank you for your e-mail" response, he has so far heard nothing.

"I have always considered my sympathies on matters of economics and politics to be decidedly left-of-centre, but now find myself pining for an Irish Margaret Thatcher to arrive on the scene, privatise the lot, and put the incompetents responsible on the dole," he concludes. While that might be just a little extreme, we do take his point.

We contacted Irish Rail on his behalf, and spokesman Barry Kenny assured us that the trains departing Tara Street in the evenings had not been shortened as a matter of policy as our reader thinks. Kenny said that, on one day in the week our reader is referring to, "a mechanical issue" had led to the number of carriages being reduced from a normal eight to four.

Since then, he said, there have been six carriages on the service leaving Tara Street shortly after 6pm. This was a "short-term" reduction to allow for maintenance on some carriages. Carriages on the Dublin-Sligo line were being upgraded, and once that process was completed, the older carriages would be commissioned for use on the Dublin to Maynooth commuter line. Kenny said that he expected the service to be back up to its full capacity of eight carriages "by the end of February or the beginning of March".

We asked if commuters could expect to see a similarly short-term reduction in fares to compensate them for the increasingly cramped conditions, but the answer was a fairly emphatic no.

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Gombeen Man hasn't gone away, you know.

Gombeen man has not been too active in the Blogsphere of late. This was down to a combination of natural indolence and persistent poteen abuse. This was so bad, in fact, that he had forgotten all about the blog - until a satoriesque, lucid moment upon waking up from a particularly heavy binge of several months.

Suffice to say that Gombeen Man is a strict Catholic, and is giving up the Poteen for Lent, whilst indulging in much guilt-ridden self-flagellation and a barefoot run up the side of Croagh Patrick until the soles of his bunioned feet are cut to ribbons. New posts will follow.

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Is Bono a hypocrite?

Or has Gombeen Man got him all wrong? It seems that he treats his workers very well, as five employees of U2 Ltd "shared almost €18 million in wages last year, the firm's accounts show" (Irish Times).

Wait. Five employees? It couldn't be messrs Bono, The Edge, Adam Clayton, Larry Mullen and Paul McGuinness? We'll never know, as it seems that the accounts don't name the employees. But let's just take the leap anyway, and make that assumption.

Not that Gombeen Man has a problem with jaded rock stars banking money out of proportion to the merits of their artistic endeavors - that's Rock 'n' Roll, after all.

What he does have a problem with is the shameless, continuing, sanctimonious posturing of Bono on the theme of eradicating world poverty and telling us how our taxes should paid. Especially as U2 took their recording and publishing business to the Netherlands when there was a cap put on the Republic's tax exemption for 'artists' - which meant that Bono and Co. did not pay a penny of tax on the millions they got from royalties. No wonder they wanted the media to lay off Charlie Haughey, who introduced the exemption.

It's amazing that this vertically challenged clown gets such an easy ride from the same media and the gullible Irish public.

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Compulsory 'Irish', Big-time.

The following - in green - is from a Gaelgoeir who managed to have a letter printed in the Irish Independent, calling for Gaelic to be made the new spoken language of Ireland... whether we like it or not, apparently.

English football and the Irish language

All those letter-writers discussing why people here support English football teams, not German or French teams (Letters, April 23) are simply, but most sadly, missing the point.
People here support English, not Spanish soccer teams, get hot under the collar about the Manchester United takeover, not the AC Milan takeover.

They read English, not German papers. They watch English not Serbian TV stations.
They emigrate to English-speaking not Spanish-speaking countries and look to London, not Moscow, to solve their problems.
Brendan Keenan, Ecconomics Editor of the Irish Independent has rightly said, 'We would not have the problem (rising sales of English papers here) if we were all Gaelic-speaking'.
He was taking part in a 'Prime Time' special on the sales of English papers here.
We are now in a very strange situation. (Gombeen Man in agreement here).

Some years ago, an English soccer team came to Galway to play against Galway United as a fundraiser.
There were more people from Galway supporting the English team than were supporting Galway United.
A GAA friend of mine told me that a quite a few GAA people, who had no interest in soccer, went to the match just to make up the numbers in support of Galway.
Additionally, the money that is being spent on the Gaeilge effort, E500m per annum, according to recent figures, would be far, far better spent.
Getting down to serious business on the revival of Irish as the real spoken language of Ireland takes just one phone call.
That phone call would be to the Israeli Embassy in Dublin to ask the only nation, in recent history, to engage in language revival. 'Tell us please how do you do it?'
The Israelis did it over two generations, from 1880 to 1930.
And, in view of the fact that they did not have words for things like 'doll', 'handkerchief' or 'ice cream', and we do, we could in one generation become the second nation in recent history to engage in language revival.
An Israeli chap said to me, 'But you Irish did not go for language replacement' as we discussed the contrast between Irish and Israeli language revival policies.
Very simple, but very harsh and most extremely tough.
MICHEAL O BEARRA,
AN SPIDEAL,
GAILLIMH


Gombeen Nation replies:

Micheal Bearra, of Spiddal, seems to be on a letter-writing mission to
convert us all into Gaelic speakers (Letters, October 23rd).

Insultingly defining those who watch 'English' football teams as engaging in
"thick mickism" (how many Englishmen play for Arsenal, Chelsea, and
countless Premiership teams whose make up is undeniably international?), he
then goes on to provide the best example of that with his ludicrous appeal
to 'revive' Gaelic as the 'de facto' language of Ireland. What laughable
nonsense.

Despite the narrow worldview of many Gaelgeoiri, who like to paint the Irish
as a homogeneous Gaelic entity - despite us being a mix of Picts, Celts,
Norse, Normans, Anglo-saxons and God knows what else - only a small percentage of us
really, or want to, speak Gaeilge. Just to fully shatter the illusion
caused by Micheal's Gaelic-green tinted glasses, let him consider the
following.

CSO figures state that 1.6 million people speak Gaeilge on a daily basis. A
figure used by the 'Irish' Language lobby to exaggerate its true popularity
(and no doubt keep their industry going). However, that figure includes
everyone from the age of Three upwards, in an educational system where
Gaeilge is STILL a compulsory subject.

In fact, further study of the Census figures show that only 72,000 people
outside the education system claim to speak Gaeilge on a daily basis: 4.4 per cent of
the population - despite all the taxpayers' subsidies. And how many of
those work in areas of employment where Irish is still a requirement or/and
an advantage?

If anything, rather than calling for Gaeilge to be enforced as the spoken
language of the country; perhaps we should vote to remove its status as the
'first official language' of the country, as such a move would pull the rug
from beneath the feet of Micheal and his language-fascist compatriots.

Referendum, please?

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