Turning up the heat on Michael Moore?

Published today in The Guardian, this article probably tell it like it is in making a Michael Moore mockumentary.

Fahrenheit £40m: armless soldier sues Moore for using his image in anti-war film
· Veteran says film wrongly showed him as war critic
· Lawyer claims footage was used without permission

Dan Glaister in Los Angeles
Friday June 2, 2006
The Guardian

It's a powerful moment in Michael Moore's anti-war film Fahrenheit 9/11. A young American soldier who lost his arms in a helicopter explosion is describing his injuries. The soldier, Sergeant Peter Damon, says he feels like he is being "crushed in a vice". Painkillers, he continues, "take a lot of the edge off of it".

The scene follows a clip showing the Democratic congressman Jim McDermott criticising the Bush administration's conduct of the war in Iraq. "You know, they say they're not leaving any veterans behind, but they're leaving all kinds of veterans behind," the politician says.

It bolsters the anti-war sentiments of the film, suggesting that Sgt Damon and others were abandoned by America's political leaders after sustaining horrific injuries in pursuit of a conflict about which many developed doubts.

But now Sgt Damon is suing the man who he says used footage of him without his permission and distorted his words. He never met Moore, or anyone from his production company, says the former soldier, who is claiming $75m (£40m) in damages for "loss of reputation, emotional distress, embarrassment, and personal humiliation".

Sgt Damon's wife is seeking an additional $10m in damages because of the mental distress caused to her husband.

The interview which appears in Moore's film was conducted by a prime-time news programme, NBC's Dateline, for a report about a new painkiller. The NBC report ends with the words: "These men, with catastrophic wounds are ... completely behind the war effort."

In his lawsuit, Sgt Damon alleges Moore misrepresented his words to make it appear he was critical of the war. He "agrees with and supports the president and the United States' war effort, and he was not left behind", he states.

"They took the clip because it was a gut-wrenching scene," Sgt Damon told the New York Post. "They sandwiched it in. [Moore] was using me as ammunition ... I was complaining about the pain I would've been having.
"I just want everybody to know what kind of a guy Michael Moore is, and what kind of film this is," he said.

Moore's film, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2004, became the biggest-grossing documentary in history, taking $222.5m at the box office worldwide.

Sgt Damon's lawyer, Dennis Lynch, said he had been struck by the soldier's story when he met him at a St Patrick's Day parade. "You see a man that has lost both his arms, is obviously disabled, a man that supports his country and the policy in Iraq, and you hear about his name and image being used in a manner that is contrary to everything he believes in. There's a lot of harm been done. Michael Moore took my client's good name and reputation and defamed him using WMD - weapons of mass defamation."

Mr Lynch said he had tried for more than a year to settle the complaint, but Moore and his lawyers rejected any negotiation. "We didn't just rush to court with this," he said.
Sgt Damon, 33, knew nothing about his appearance in Fahrenheit 9/11 until a friend of his in hospital greeted him one day with the words: "Hey, movie star".

The soldier did make a subsequent appearance on camera, but it was in the anti-Michael Moore film Fahrenhype 9/11. Addressing Moore through the camera, he says: "You know you've lied in making this movie. You know you lied in my case, you know you lied in a whole lot of other cases."

"I was ecstatic when I saw that he was suing Michael Moore," said the Farenhype 9/11 director, Alan Peterson.

Neither NBC nor Moore obtained a release form from Sgt Damon giving permission for them to use his image. NBC is named in Sgt Damon's lawsuit, as are the producers of Fahrenheit 9/11, Miramax and LionsGate films and companies involved in the distribution of the film. None of the companies would comment on the lawsuit. Moore did not return messages requesting comment.
According to Peterson, Sgt Damon's experience is typical of the subjects in Moore's films. "We went through Michael Moore's film and looked at the people he interviewed and asked them if they felt they had been fairly treated," he said. "More often than not they didn't know they had been interviewed for the film."

Peterson said others might well come forward with claims against Moore. "It wouldn't surprise me if this rippled through Michael Moore's other films," he said, "because his modus operandi hasn't changed. Michael Moore and Miramax made a ton of money off these people. It will be interesting to see how the courts view that.

"I hope it sends a message to film-makers that we have to be careful. The idea that there is objectivity in film-making is ridiculous.
"I hope this helps people understand that when you watch something you have to be aware of where it's coming from."

Re-trying Derry O'Rourke?

Derry O’Rourke, the former national swimming coach, was convicted 8 years ago of raping 12 under-age girls who were in his charge as a swimming coach.

A caller to RTE’s Liveline today said she had been sexually abused by Derry O'Rourke. She said that he was prosecuted on sample charges for the offences against her, but that he had, in fact, also abused her on many other occasions.

In that situation, could O'Rourke now be charged with new offences for other specific assaults on this woman, other than those which were the sample charges in the original case?

If this is possible, could it also be a mechanism to re-try other offenders who are now being released? The use of such sample charges rather than an exhaustive list of every criminal act is quite a common procedure.

Retrospective Legislation

As the statutory rape debacle rumbles on, we are constantly reminded by the legal eagles that any new legislation cannot be made effective retrospectively.

Yet in 1994, then Minister for Finance Bertie Ahern introduced an amendment in the Finance Act which eliminated a benefit-in-kind tax liability for Ken Rohan* and made that tax change effective retrospectively to 1983!

So Mr Ahern can create retrospective legislation to facilitate an important party supporter but he can’t do it to protect young girls from sexual predators?

I’ll bet that if a constitutional referendum was held in the morning to reverse both those positions, it would be passed by an overwhelming majority of the public.

* Rohan's palatial home, Charleville in Enniskerry, was furnished with expensive antique furniture and objets d'art which were owned by his company.
The Revenue Commissioners had assessed him as having incurred a benefit-in-kind liability, reported at £1m+, for the private use of these company assets. Rohan was disputing the liability.
It was reported in the media that Rohan's accountants actually drafted the relevant section of the 1994 Finance Act which relieved him of any possible liability and backdated the relief to 1983. At a later date, it was confirmed by Govt that Rohan was the only individual in the country to claim relief under this special and unique provision.

Footnote: The first two paragraphs, without Ken Rohan's name, were published as a letter in the Irish Independent. Presumably Rohan and the rest of the text were rejected by the legal eagles.
However, I also sent this to Matt Cooper of TodayFM who wrote about the tax break in the Sunday Tribune over 10 years ago and he advises that he'll be writing about this in the Sunday Times. Also, Diarmuid Doyle, current editor of the Sunday Tribune has responded to say he'll use the topic this coming sunday.

The Wind that shook the Barley

Congratulations to all involved in the making of The Wind that shook the Barley, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes, and well done Minister John O'Donoghgue for his concern for the feelings of Fine Gael.

However any Fine Gael misgivings will probably be nothing compared to the feelings of the men and women who fought on the anti-treaty side if they could see endemic corruption and unbridled arrogance that were to become the hallmarks of the party which was the political inheritor of their principled struggle.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent.

Industrial School Scandal

In her Irish Times Opinion piece of 27th May, Breda O'Brien has raised an important aspect of the child abuse scandal. She writes: "I feel shame that Irish society dumped so many children in industrial schools and could not have cared less what happened to them."

The abject failure of governments, State agencies and the extended families of inmates to monitor and protect those inmates should be opened up for discussion. The power of the church is used as a cloak of invisibility for all the secular bodies and private citizens who failed in their duty to these children. These include the media - what exactly were Radio Éireann and the newspapers doing?

Tonight with Vincent Browne on RTE Radio 1, apart from demonstrating the risk involved in seeking to defend or mitigate the role of the Christian Brothers, last week illustrated the unusual form of false memory syndrome suffered by most commentators and many of the public.

A former inmate of an industrial school described being fed "goody", a mix of warm milk, bread and sugar. His interviewer expressed horrified disbelief that such a mixture could be fed to a child. Yet in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, this same dish was well known in ordinary households throughout the country. It was fed to children who were ill and perhaps had difficulty in keeping food down or, indeed, as an occasional treat. In our nouveau riche society, we seem to be living in denial of just how shallow are the roots of our prosperity and how differently ordinary people lived in earlier, less affluent decades.

This type of interview, by commentators who look through the prism of 21st-century experience without any apparent knowledge of the wider societal norms of the time, serves only to increase the sense of injustice of people who were indeed victims of a system which lacked humanity - but in a country which was poor and also had very different attitudes to how children should be reared and disciplined. It wasn't always so rosy beyond the industrial school wall either.

The sexual abuse of children was totally inexcusable. But the automatic categorisation as "abuse" of spartan living conditions, tough disciplinary regimes and an absence of affection might benefit from a comparison with conditions outside the institutions at that time.

We might also follow Breda O'Brien's example and accept our share of the collective shame for what was done and what was not done, rather than dumping all the blame on the convenient whipping-boy that is the Catholic Church.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Times.

Statutory Rape 2

Following the Supreme Court's decision that a plea of "reasonable mistake" is now a possible defence in cases of statutory rape, it opens up the whole area to widespread abuse of teenage girls.

If a boy/man meets a girl who's having a drink in a bar, disco or night club, surely he now has a prima facie defence against any charge of statutory rape that might subsequently arise.

The very fact of her being served alcohol could credibly lead him to believe that she has passed the first test of age required by the state and that she must be at least 18 years of age.

No-one believes that there aren't thousands of under-age teenage girls drinking in such premises every weekend and clearly alcohol may well increase the likelihood of further excesses.

Footnote: Read by Pat Kenny on his RTE radio programme.

Statutory Rape Law Overturned

The Supreme Court decision striking down that part of the Statutory Rape Law which relates to girls aged under 15 years raises some interesting challenges for the lawmakers. While the court’s decision leaves unchanged those elements of the law relating to girls aged 15 & 16 years, it is inevitable that this whole legal area will need to be reviewed and reformed in its entirety.

In today’s Irish Times, legal affairs correspondent Carol Coulter reports that there have been 54 prosecutions for statutory rape “in the past few years”. In that same period (2-3 years?), there have been doubtless been several hundred babies (perhaps thousands) delivered in state-funded hospitals to young women who would have been under the age of 17 at the time of conception.

According to the current law, in each such case the girl has been the victim of statutory rape and a prosecution of the child’s father should have automatically followed. Quite apart from the fact that, according to all relevant surveys in recent years, thousands of teenage girls under the age of 17 are having sex, most without becoming pregnant, the disparity between the number of teenage births and prosecutions for statutory rape suggests that interpretation and enforcement of this law has, in the past, been flexible in the extreme.

While the current laws have primarily been aimed at protecting young girls from predatory, older males, the changes in society over the years, particularly with regard to sexual activity among teenagers, will make the framing of suitable legislation a very interesting and challenging exercise.

Watch this space.

Corporate Bicycle?

It has been confirmed today that Babcock & Brown, an Australian investment house, have finally tabled their long-awaited €2.4bn takeover bid for Eircom.

If Eircom is taken out again by investment bankers, the company will surely deserve a reputation as a corporate bicycle.

Public Service Reform

Jack O’Connor, President of SIPTU, claims that the Government’s badly botched decentralisation scheme has now put at risk the union’s willingness to conclude a new social partnership agreement. However the damage is probably much worse than this.

There is widespread evidence of the urgent need for major reform of the public services. Whatever Government is elected next year needs to take on the outmoded work practices, absence of accountability, demarcation disputes, salary relativities etc which have ham-strung delivery of value for money service from a relatively well-paid and highly secure sector for far too long.

It is also clear that SIPTU, and other public service unions, regards that secure and well-paid employment of its members as the primary function of both the public service and the semi-state companies, rather than delivery of service and value for money to the public. While their members may not legally own the means of production, they certainly possess the next best thing - the means of disruption, and there’s no doubt about their willingness to use it, officially or unofficially, as witnessed by the recent train strike.

The serious damage caused to industrial relations in the public service by the crude political stroke of including decentralisation in the 2003 FF/PD budget will make the task of achieving meaningful reform all the more difficult.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent & the Irish Examiner.

Replica Jersey Solution?

Good to hear that the real Munster supporters in Cardiff last weekend could be identified by the Bank of Ireland logo on their jerseys, while those wearing jerseys bearing the Toyota logo were clearly just blow-ins.

Unfair perhaps, and Toyota won't be pleased, but could this line work when little Johnny comes looking for the new Man Utd, Chelsea or Liverpool replica jersey?

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent & the Irish Examiner.

Spanish Civil War revisionism

The death last week of Michael O’Riordan (1917 - 2006), former General Secretary of the Communist Party of Ireland and veteran of the Spanish Civil War has been widely reported in the media, with many tributes paid to his fight against fascism in Spain. The Republican side on which he fought included the powerful communist and anarchist factions and was supported militarily by Stalin’s Russia.

In the 1920's & 30's many idealistic young people in the West had joined the communist party, unaware of the repressive totalitarian reality of Russia and later communist states. It's worth remembering that in September 1939, 6 months after the end of the Spanish Civil War, the Germans and Russians carved up Poland between them - the Russians invading from the east, 2 weeks after the German invasion from the west. In November 1939 Russia followed this by launching an unprovoked invasion of Finland. In spring 1940, the Russia murdered approx. 25,000 Polish prisioners, mainly army officers, professionals and academics, in an effort to wipe out the Polish ruling classes. That was a full year before they themselves were attacked by the Germans in 1941.

On the other side of the equation is General Franco and his fascist regime, which ruled Spain till his death in 1975. The Nationalist side was supported by Germany, whose Condor Legion was responsible for the bombing of Guernica, immortalised in Picasso's painting.

People routinely talk of fascism and Franco in the same breath as Nazi Germany. Yet this is quite misleading as Mussolini was not anywhere near the Hitler league and nor was Franco. The extreme form of fascism which emerged in Germany under the Nazis was off the scale for most supporters of fascist philosophy, which was enjoying wide support throughout Europe at that time. Sadly, anti-semitism had been rife in Europe for centuries and was not at all confined to supporters of facsism. For example, UK fascist leader Oswald Mosley could have successfully run for mayor of Limerick.

When France surrendered to Germany in June 1940, 15 months after the end of the Spanish Civil War, Franco did not join the Axis powers even though, at that point in time, it would have seemed like an ideal opportunity to join the winning side without having to engage in any actual fighting.

The Spanish Civil War was a bloody affair with atrocities routinely committed by both sides. The revenge killing of prisoners was a regular practice on both sides, many old scores were settled when towns and cities fell to either side. Liberals now attribute all the blame to Franco's Nationalist side, but the Republican's were not far behind. Almost 7,000 catholic clergy, including 283 nuns, are recorded* as being murdered by the Republican side. This anti-clerical pogrom, mainly the work of the marxist POUM and the Anarchists, began with the election of the "Popular Front" centre/left government in February 1936. Indeed, the failure of that government to stop the looting and burning of catholic churches and monasteries and the murder of clerics was one of the major factors which triggered the civil war. The former "establishment" became fearful that they were seeing the emergence of a full-scale revolution and the tumbrils would be coming for them too unless they took pre-emptive action.

All of which leads me an obvious question: from the end of the civil war in 1939 to Franco’s death in 1975, how did the lives and liberties of ordinary Spanish citizens compare with those enjoyed by their counterparts in the Soviet Union in the same period?

Could it just possible that, for the Spanish people, the right side actually won?

This "musing" should be provocative but isn't intended to promote fascism as an acceptable political ideology. There is no certainty that the communists would have attained a political ascendancy in Spain, but Poland and Finland provide proof that aggressive expansionism was on the Soviet agenda even before the outbreak of WWII. There are far too many liberal commentators who look back at the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War through rose-tinted spectacles and whose own musings on the topic go unchallenged.

* Source: Historia de la Persecución Religiosa en Espana (1936-1939) by Antonio Montero Moreno

Weapons on Maths Instruction

At New York's Kennedy airport yesterday, an individual later discovered to be a public school teacher was arrested trying to board an American Airlines flight while in possession of a ruler, a protractor, a setsquare, a slide rule, and a calculator.

At a press conference this morning, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said he believes the man is a member of the notorious al-Gebra movement. He is to be charged by the FBI with carrying weapons of maths instruction.

"al-Gebra is a dangerous cult with square roots in our communities," Gonzales said, "who seek solutions by means, medians and averages, while sometimes going off on tangents in a search of absolute value. They use secret code names like 'x' and 'y' while their leadership is referred to as the 'unknowns'. The FBI have determined that they belong to a common denominator of the axis of medieval, with coordinates in every country."

The Gonzales press release added that "there are 3 sides to every triangle, as the Greek philanderer Isosceles used to say. But with right on our side and an acute awareness of the danger, no lead will be too obtuse to escape our notice as we cover all angles in this investigation.”.

Commenting on the arrest, President Bush congratulated the FBI and added "If God had wanted us to have better weapons of maths instruction, He would have given us more fingers and toes."

Arsene Whinger

Is Arsene Whinger trying to win the coveted 2006 “sorest loser” title? Jose Mourinho will be getting worried.

Following his ill-judged and bad-tempered verbal assault on Tottenham’s Martin Jol, Whinger’s post-match comments after defeat by Barcelona last night have earned him bonus points which may well clinch the title.

Not for him a gracious acceptance of the outcome, but rather an accusation that Barcelona had the added assistance of the referee in achieving their victory. His main complaint against the referee was that Barcelona’s Samuel Eto’o was offside when he scored the equaliser.

Let’s examine the main turning points in the game and assess who was the main beneficiary of material refereeing decisions (trivial mistakes like wrongly booking Thierry Henry for a perfectly legitimate tackle may be irritating, but it had no real impact on the outcome of the match).
(1) Jens Lehmann was correctly sent off for tripping Eto‘o in the 17th minute, but the goal scored by Giuly for Barcelona was disallowed and a free-kick outside the box awarded. The sending off was correct but the referee should have allowed the goal to stand.

(2) Puyol was incorrectly penalised for an Eboue dive and, from the resulting free kick by Henry, Cambpbell scored for Arsenal.

(3) Larsson deflected the ball into the path of Eto’o who scored the equaliser for Barcelona in the 77th minute. TV replays showed that Eto’o might have been very marginally offside. Opinion was divided on this, but all commentator’s agreed that no-one would blame the linesman for making such a marginal call.
Except, of course, Arsene Whinger.

National Rail Strike

Unofficial strike, my arse!

Two Cork-based train drivers refused to take out new trains last Monday morning, triggering a supposedly unofficial strike that closed down much of the national rail network for 2 days.

Yet the first contribution from the SIPTU spokesman was to lay the blame on Iarnrod Eireann for the problem, saying that the union had warned the company that feelings were running high in Cork about the introduction of the new trains while certain unrelated matters were still under negotiation between the unions (SIPTU & NBRU) and the company.

The 2-day strike is estimated to have cost the company in excess of €1m and disrupted the travel plans of over 70,000 passengers. Yet there hasn’t been a word of criticism of the drivers action from the union representatives, despite the fact that many other non-rail workers were severely inconvenienced by the disruption.

There is a huge ongoing investment in public transport - both rail and bus. Not just in new track, rolling stock and buses, but also in the creation of Priority Bus Corridors in Dublin and other cities. The impact of these bus corridors is to severely reduce the road capacity for private motorists as existing traffic lanes are commandeered for exclusive bus use.

Is this investment strategy wise if no enforceable guarantees are available that the public will not be held to ransom by wildcat strikes which are blatantly tolerated, even if not formally approved, by their unions?

Strong disciplinary penalties, up to and including sacking, should be the fate of those who take unofficial but highly disruptive industrial action. The unions need to endorse this approach.

A&E debate

Monday’s RTE’s Prime Time did a major undercover documentary on the state of A&E Departments in several hospitals. Some patients were featured who subsequently died, one within days, from their illness.

It was followed by a panel discussion on RTE’s Questions & Answers, which included representatives of the various medical groups, politicians and Professor David Drumm of the HSE.

Overall it was a fairly balanced and positive debate, but you could still detect the individual and powerful vested interests who work within the hospital system, notably the Consultants but the Nurses won’t be too far behind.

I detected a certain satisfied smugness among the consultants in the front row of the audience as the heat from the earlier Prime Time documentary was reflected onto Minister for Health Mary Harney and Professor Drumm. You get the sense that as more heat is generated by the media, the consultants (and the nurses) see the opportunity of catching more of the money that will be thrown at the problem. Professor Drumm revealed that the 4,000 Junior Hospital Doctor's earn, on average, €50k+ p.a. in overtime alone - so they have no financial interest in changing the system. They're not alone in being major financial beneficiaries from the additional money put into the Public Health System in recent years.

The reality is that none of the medical and nursing professional groups is willing to acknowledge that they themselves are a major part of the problem. Each tends to blame the other and/or the system. The internal politics in the hospitals would match anything you’d see on “Yes, Minister”. The inability of management to "hire & fire" allows individuals and groups to play silly games without fear of punishment. The wider public services must be riddled with and hamstrung by this type of nonsense.

It's also far too easy to blame hospital administrators for the problems in A&E. How can they reform a system where the various interest groups are so powerful and clearly refuse to co-operate or volunteer changes in their own work practices? If a succession of Government Ministers have failed to achieve movement with these powerful vested interests, how could we expect a lowly Hospital Manager to do so?

Footnote: An abbreviated version was read by Pat Kenny on his RTE radio programme.

Paisley & DUP Hypocrisy

The DUP is highly critical of the assembly link between the UUP and David Irvine of the Progressive Unionist Party, because of his association with loyalist paramilitaries.

I think it is worth recalling that, in 1981, Dr Ian Paisley was responsible for assembling 500 men in military formation and paramilitary dress, each holding aloft what was claimed to be a valid gun licence. This was clearly aimed at communicating to the world that he had at his command an organised group of armed men should the need arise for military action.

In August 1986, Peter Robinson led a 500-strong loyalist cross-border incursion into the village of Clontibret. The clear objective of this exercise was to demonstrate to northern nationalists and the people of the Republic just how vulnerable were their communities, particularly in border areas, should large-scale sectarian fighting break out.

In November 1986, Rev Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Ivan Foster founded Ulster Resistance which, Dr Paisley warned, was not for "the faint or half-hearted", and pledged that the group would use "all means which may be found necessary to defeat the Anglo-Irish Agreement". At an Ulster Resistance rally in Belfast's Ulster Hall later that month, leading DUP members Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Sammy Wilson (now a DUP MLA & former Lord Mayor of Belfast) donned red berets while flanked by men in military style uniforms.

Yet Ian Paisley and the DUP have always denied any association with, or responsibility for the actions of the various Loyalist paramilitary organisations which have been responsible for some of the most savage murders in Northern Ireland over 30 years.

W.B. Yeats wondered if he carried any responsibility for the 1916 Rising when he wrote:
"Did that play of mine send out
Certain men the English shot?"
Have Dr Paisley & co ever harboured any similar concerns about just how clean their own hands may be when it comes to the atrocities committed by loyalist paramilitaries?

Footnote: A slightly abbreviated version published as a letter in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent & the Irish Examiner.

FCUK

The French Connection fashion group has issued its third profit warning in 18 months, following poor sales in the first 4 months of the current year which are actually running at a lower level than last year.

I suspect they're FCUKed.

Myers move to the Indo

We'll never forget you, Jimmy Myers.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Times. Bitchy?

The Sex Industry?

The alleged downloading of child pornography from the internet by a judge of the district court has caused a sustained political and legal furore in this country. There are no allegations, as far as I’m aware, that he was actually involved in other paedophile activities.

Contrast that with the lack of political reaction to recent reports about missing non-national children who may have gone into "the sex industry" and women trafficked illegally into the country for the same purposes.

The “Sex Industry” is the term coined by self-anointed liberals and the media to impose their new amoral orthodoxy on us. The term clearly seeks to sanitise and normalise activities such as prostitution, pornography, lap-dancing etc.. It is now presented as part of the entertainment industry.

But just what type of "work" would a child be doing in the sex industry? Surely this should be described as "molestation by paedophiles"? Similarly, trafficked women have usually been abducted or deceived and taken from another country to Ireland, where they are forced into prostitution through threats and violence. Surely that constitutes "kidnapping and rape"?

The term “Sex Industry” may be appropriate where these activities are engaged in between freely consenting adults. But let's call a spade a spade when it comes to the violent criminality of much of this sordid business. And let us demand immediate and robust legal action against those who profit from this shameful 21st century slavery.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Times, the Irish Independent & the Irish Examiner. Also read by Pat Kenny on his RTE Radio programme.

Heart of Darkness

I’m not always a big fan of Vincent Browne’s journalistic techniques which tend to demonise his targets, or of Mary Raftery who writes a weekly opinion column for the Irish Times and produced the “States of Fear” documentary for RTE, which dealt with alleged child abuse in state industrial schools run by religious orders.

On 3rd May Mary Raftery was a guest contributor on Vincent Browne’s nightly RTE radio programme. The topic under discussion was the current position with the state redress board set up to provide victims of abuse in these institutions with the opportunity to tell their stories in a non-confrontational forum and also to award compensation from the state for their suffering, partly funded through the overall settlement agreed a couple of years ago between the state and the religious institutions.

In the course of the discussion, a text message was received from a man who said he’d been in a Kilkenny institution where a four and a half-year old boy had been “sodomised to death”. Browne invited the message sender to contact the programme by phone or email and a short time later the man came on air by phone.

The man started to relate how this small boy had been sodomised so badly that his entrails were hanging out. As he spoke his firm voice dissolved into a tortured shriek of pain and anguish.

Then he would recover his self-control until the questions from Vincent would cause him to revisit the horrific memory of this small child, when he would once again dissolve into a searing shriek of pain.

It was truly shocking. I suspect it had more impact on listeners like myself than any number of tribunals or media reports could ever achieve. I couldn’t listen to it - I had to physically leave the room and listen from the hallway where at least the volume was somewhat reduced.

I hope that poor man has someone who's looking after him now.

One in four

Why do people wrongly accuse the Government of inaction?

As soon as Colm O'Gorman was unveiled as a PD candidate for the next election, Environment Minister Dick Roche announced plans to challenge one-in-four voters at the polling booths.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent & the Irish Examiner.

Constituency Work

Jim McDaid TD has done us all a favour, perhaps inadvertently.

His announcement that he has returned to a full-time medical career and will not be standing for re-election next year seems to have taken everyone by surprise.

It’s clear that party colleagues, the media and his constituents had all failed to notice that he was no longer fulfilling the functions of an elected, highly paid public representative.

This raises the question as to what exactly is the value of the much vaunted “constituency work” so often cited as the self-imposed core function of our TDs. This activity is clearly motivated by self-interest, maintaining the profile of the TD and fending off potential challenges, particularly from party colleagues, come election time.

The McDaid case suggests that the absence of all this activity would have little, if any, detrimental impact on our lives.

It is clear that many areas of the public service need a radical overhaul if we’re to get value for the large sums of public money we spend on it. The Dail would be a good place to start.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Examiner

Colour blindness

Concerns about census questions relating to colour seem to mirror the recent anti-racism campaign which suggested that we should all be colour-blind now that we’re all “Irish”.

The reality is that Irish people have always been inquisitive, it’s part of the native charm. In rural Ireland, if you’re white with red hair and freckles they’ll ask you where you’re from. If you’re anything other than “a neighbour’s child”, you’ll still be categorised as “a blow-in” until you outlive those who remember your arrival.

People from other countries have interesting backgrounds and cultures that we should be asking them about. Of course, the tone and tenor of the discussion should be friendly rather than threatening - but I’m sure that when it’s the former it’s quite welcome.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Examiner

The curse of Emmerdale

All the talk of Chernobyl as we approach the 20th anniversary of the accident, coupled with concerns about dwindling oil supplies and global warming, suggest that the human race will probably be extinct within the next couple of centuries.

In perhaps a thousand years from now, aliens will finally discover an Earth with many overgrown physical remnants of human existence but no representatives of its civilisation left to greet them.

You can imagine their archaeologists exploring ruins, burial sites etc and speculating on what caused the final extinction of the human race.

Then somewhere in England a time-capsule will be found which provides the definitive reason for the disappearance of the human race. A corroded video tape of Emmerdale is finally decoded and alien anthropologists are unanimous in their conclusion: in-breeding.

The Poet's Rebellion

The 1916 uprising is sometimes referred to as the Poet's Rebellion.

This suggests that perhaps the old adage should be modified to "The pen is mightier with the sword".

Lie down with dogs and you'll get up with fleas.

On RTE radio yesterday, Michael McDowell, Minister for Justice, admitted he had his arm twisted by PD TD Mae Sexton to decentralise the headquarters of the Prison Service and its 158 staff to Longford town in her constituency.

Coupled with the decentralisation antics of her PD colleague Tom Parlon, this is further proof that the PDs are as capable of gombeen politics as their government allies Fianna Fail, with whom many of their members obviously swim in the same gene pool, at the shallow end.

The PDs like to see the current government arrangement as a coalition of the upright and the bent, evidenced by the behaviour, before the last election, of Michael McDowell when he urged voters to return the PDs to power with Fianna Fail, on the basis that Fianna Fail could not be trusted to govern on their own.

Well we’re now seeing the proof that power corrupts even PDs, and McDowell is learning the truth in the old adage that if you lie down with dogs you’ll get up with fleas.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner.

Who guards the guards?

Driving from Dalkey to Dun Laoire this afternoon at about 3.20, I spotted a garda car (reg. 02 D 61715) illegally parked near Glasthule - on double yellow lines with 2 wheels up on the pavement.

The two gardai were further down the road, putting a ticket on Peter Caviston's illegally parked blue merc outside the Eagle House pub.

Surely the gardai are supposed to observe the law while enforcing it?

I'd love if there was some way of giving them a ticket but they'd be sure to get you back!

Trouble at Mass

The concelebration of mass at the Augustinian Priory in Drogheda on Easter Sunday by three Catholic priests and a Church of Ireland rector seems to be causing some consternation among the hierarchies of both churches.

My simple understanding of the main issue arising from this mass is the opposing view of each church on the Eucharist. While catholics believe that the body and blood of Christ are actually present in the Eucharist, through the process of transubstantiation, protestants believe that the Eucharist is purely symbolic.

The catholic church has long accepted the Anglican congregation as legitimate christians. Presumably this also implies an acceptance that Protestant church services would have Christ’s blessing.

So here’s the question that is puzzling me.

If Christ is present in the catholic Eucharist, why would he not choose to be present in the protestant version also, even if protestants do not believe him to be?

If, on the other hand, belief in his presence in the Eucharist is an essential prerequisite to his actual presence, and therefore the missing ingredient, then surely a catholic taking protestant communion will, through his belief in the presence of Christ, actually achieve that result? And, of course, vice versa for a protestant taking catholic communion.

How to dismantle a time-bomb?

Background

Pensions Time-Bomb

Hibernian market research 2005:
· 69% still have no pension cover
· Rising to 75% for private sector workers

Pension Affordability
To fund a comfortable retirement at 60 (two-thirds of pre-retirement income) a 35 year old needs to be putting aside a minimum of 20% of their salary every month, and increasing contributions as they get older.
For example, at 60 a retirement fund of €100,000 buys an annual income of €5,340 but at 70 it buys €7,480. (Source: Hibernian)

However, most Irish people prioritise house-purchase over pension provision. The house-price inflation over recent decades means that funding both a mortgage and an adequate pension plan simultaneously is beyond the financial reach of most wage/salary earners. This becomes even more challenging if the cost of rearing and educating a family have also to be taken into account.

At the same time, the concept of “a job for life” in the private sector has become largely a thing of the past. In addition, those companies which do fund employee pension plans are moving to “defined contribution” plans rather than the traditional “defined benefit” plans.

This means that the retiring employee is exposed to the vagaries of the investment markets and the performance of the pension fund managers. But, more importantly, their pension benefits are no longer linked to their final salary but rather to their salary averaged over the term of their employment - typically from a relatively low starting point to a maximum at the finishing point.

Demographic Trends

• Number of people aged 65+ set to double over the next 25 years.
• Numbers in long-term care set to go from 84k in 2003 to 144k in 2031 and 203k in 2051.
  

2005 ESRI study (2063 sample size)

Over 80% felt it “very important” to be able to stay at home as long as possible.
Only 7% wanted to move to a nursing home or hospital.
a) 4% felt that individual should pay
b) 42% felt Government should provide full funding
c) 54% felt cost should be shared between individuals and Government*

* however, when the level of individual contribution was quantified for Option (c), this support fell off rapidly. At only €8 per week (€400 pa), this option was now rejected by two-thirds of those who originally chose (c).

60% of respondents were “definitely opposed” to older people re-mortgaging or signing up to equity-release schemes.

Estimated home-ownership among over-65s (incl. those with mortgage)

Ireland, USA, Australia = 80%

UK, France, Italy = 66%

Germany = 45%, Netherlands = 40%

Possible Solution

Irish people enjoy one of the highest levels of home ownership in the western world and it will remain the number one investment priority for most people.

It is an entirely logical and highly commendable aspiration - it provides security of domicile in old age and, as mortgages have generally been cleared by retirement age, the avoidance of rent provides a significant boost to the disposable income of such retirees.

Given that “the family home” will be the largest asset most of us will own outright, what is missing is a trusted mechanism to allow people the option to release the equity in their homes should they need it, while still enjoying the use of their home “in perpetuity”.

Proposed Mechanism

1. The Government introduces a scheme whereby it purchases the family home from the owners at market value.
2. The vendor is granted a “lifetime lease” at a rental cost linked to some published rate such as Euribor. (The potential rate may be capped to provide financial security to the tenant.)
3. The lessee (s) is clearly identified and the lease is strictly non-transferable.
4. The lease is terminated by (a) death of the lessee or (b) vacation of the premises by the lessee for a period exceeding 12(?) months.
5. Surviving heirs have “first refusal” on purchasing the property, using the same valuation mechanism originally employed at (1) above.

• Having the Government as Landlord should remove much of the concern felt by elderly people about long-term security of domicile which may attach to existing equity-release schemes.
  
• Item (5) above should re-assure vendors (and their heirs) about what constitutes “market value” and that unfair advantage is not being taken.
  
• It will also permit the home to stay in the family should that be the desire of the family.
  

Funding the Scheme

The primary capital funding of the scheme should come from the National Pensions Reserve Fund (currently valued at €15bn+). In essence it would be investing, on a commercial basis, in the Irish Residential Property Market.

When a sufficient stock of houses had been accumulated (e.g. 2,000 units with a cumulative value of €1bn) these could refinanced through a secondary mechanism.

Secondary Funding Options

A “Securitisation”-type approach

The freehold of the housing stock could be sold off in large blocks (e.g. minimum 100 properties or €40-50m value) to long-term investors e.g. banks, pensions funds, private investment consortia etc..

The terms of the sale would ensure that the landlord/tenant relationship between the Government and the original vendors (and their heirs) would be unchanged by this arrangement.

Unit-Linked Funds

In time, it should be possible to sell on the investment to the general public through the mechanism of Unit-linked Funds.

In the early years there would obviously be liquidity issues, as the turnover of purchased properties would initially be very low. It would probably take 15-20 years for a cash-flow equilibrium to be established - balancing between houses purchased and vacated houses sold.

However, in time this would cease to be an issue and, in any event, companies such as Irish Life have been selling highly-illiquid commercial property funds to the general public for decades - so valuation and encashment mechanisms clearly exist.

There are a number of possible knock-on benefits that may derive from this particular funding option:

Investment Buyers are provided with an alternative property vehicle. Such a vehicle should be attractive as it spreads the risk among a large number of properties.
The knock-on effect might be to reduce the level of “investment” activity in the New House/ Apartment market and take some of the heat out of price rises.
It would also allow “ordinary savers” to become investors in the property market without having to take on the burden of mortgages, managing properties etc..

First-time Buyers would be able to invest directly in the housing market, without seeing the buying power of their savings diminished as the rate of increase in house prices rapidly outstrips the interest earned on savings.
This might reduce their “panic buying” of properties in order to get on the property ladder.
Which, in turn, might also contribute to taking some of the heat of house-price inflation.

One aspect that needs to be considered is the gearing effect of a mortgage. It should be possible to provide either public or private finance to allow FTBs invest in housing through the Unit-linked mechanism, should this be desirable in the public interest (potential impact on house prices).

Main Barriers to success
1. Cultural attitudes to “owning one’s own home”.
2. Desire to leave the house to the family.
3. Attitude of potential inheritors.
4. Risk of family (or others) manipulating elderly parents in order to realise their inheritance early.

Possible Solutions?
1. A Government-guaranteed lifetime tenancy agreement in their own homes might convince many older people to cash in their equity in order to improve their quality of life. Clearly a role here for a sustained education and marketing campaign.
2. Vendors can always manage the cash received as frugally as they wish and/or can distribute it as they see fit. The "first refusal" option for heirs to repurchase the property should also help.
3. Potential inheritors will display a wide range of reactions, ranging from benign disinterest to naked greed. Other than pointing out to them that they too will, in time, be able to benefit from the exercise of the same option, it’s hard to see what reassurance can or should be offered to them.
4. Part of the overall process should be a step to ensure, as far as it is possible to do so, that the vendor is acting of his own free will and is capable of understanding the implications of the transaction.

The Potential Prizes

1. Dismantling the Pensions time-bomb for up to 80% of the population
2. Providing funding for quality long-term care for the elderly.
(The State should not be expected to pick up the financial burden of such care in circumstances where the elderly person is the owner of significant property assets. Such an approach should allow for better state funding of care for those who are not in a position to fund it themselves.)
3. Helping to achieve a “soft-landing” in the residential property market
4. Giving First-time buyers a chance to get on the property ladder without crippling themselves financially.

How the Rising and Casement fell victim to Murphy's Law in Kerry

This article is published today in the Irish Examiner. I’ve reproduced it because it appeals to my revisionist bent and my longstanding dislike of kerrymen.

“How the Rising and Casement fell victim to Murphy’s Law in Kerry”
By Ryle Dwyer

At the 1975 Munster football final in Killarney the much-fancied Cork team were being hammered, and many Cork supporters began to bail out early. A Kerry supporter shouted at them, “Leaving early, can’t take ye’r beating!” One of the fleeing Cork crowd shouted back: “What do ye mean ‘leaving’? Ye bastards, ye left Casement on Banna Strand!”

In the midst of all the hype about 1916 the story of what happened in Kerry has been largely overlooked. It was a weekend in Kerry during which Murphy’s Law ruled. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The Germans arrived in Tralee Bay on Thursday in the Aud with an arms shipment for the Rising, but there was no one there to meet them. At the time the only person in the area who knew about plans for the Rising was Austin Stack, the local brigadier of the Irish Volunteers and head centre of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. On Good Friday three men were sent from Dublin to seize a radio transmitter in Caherciveen and set up a transmitting station in Tralee to get in touch with the Aud. Two of them were drowned when their driver took a wrong turn and drove off the end of the short pier at Ballykissane.

Some later contended that this tragic accident undermined the whole Rising, but it really made no difference whatsoever because even if they had got the transmitter and set it up, they would not have been able to contact the Aud, which had no radio. Leaders in Dublin had changed the date on which the Aud should arrive to Easter Sunday after it had sailed, so the Germans had no means of contacting the ship. Roger Casement set out from Germany on a submarine with that information, but it had engine trouble and had to return to port, so vital days were lost on getting another submarine. It arrived in Tralee Bay in the early hours of Good Friday while the Aud was still waiting impatiently for a signal from the shore. As Casement and two colleagues were coming ashore their boat capsized and they were thrown into the water. Casement was suffering from malaria and after being soaked, he was in no condition to walk the six miles to Tralee. The other two went for help, but he was captured before the help arrived.

The Germans were convinced that Casement came back to Ireland to take part in the rebellion, but he was really trying to prevent it. “The one hope I clung to,” he later told his solicitor George Gavan Duffy, “was that I might arrive in Ireland in time to stop the Rising.”

When Casement was brought into the RIC barracks in Tralee he was put in the billiards room and a fire was lit for him. Head Constable John A Kearney sent for a local doctor, Mikey Shanahan, who was known to have Sinn Féin sympathies. Shanahan was allowed to see Casement by himself. Kearney knew the prisoner was Casement. The head constable hoped Casement would identify himself to Dr Shanahan and have the local volunteers rescue him. Before the doctor left the station Kearney showed him a photograph of Casement saying he was the prisoner. He wished to make sure that Shanahan would tell the volunteers the RIC knew who it was holding.

But Stack pretended not to believe the doctor. He insisted that the RIC had only arrested a Norwegian sailor. Meanwhile, Kearney invited Casement up to his residence for a meal. “I would love nothing better than a good steak,” Casement said when asked what he would like to eat. Kearney’s wife went out to purchase steak from a local butcher because they had no meat in the residence as it was Good Friday. She cooked him the meal, and Kearney sent out for some Jameson whiskey for the prisoner. Before bringing Casement back down to the billiards room, where he was left unrestrained with the front door unlocked so that a rescue party could just walk in, the head constable told his wife to keep their children upstairs as he expected the volunteers to rescue the prisoner.

Casement asked Kearney to send for a priest. Fr Frank Ryan was summoned from the nearby Dominican Church. In Fr Ryan’s presence, Kearney asked Casement: “What do you want with a priest? Aren’t you a Protestant?” Kearney then left Fr Ryan alone with Casement, who identified himself and asked the priest to get a message to the volunteers. “Tell them I am a prisoner,” he said, “and that the rebellion will be a dismal, hopeless failure, as the help they expect will not arrive.”

The priest was taken aback. He had come on a spiritual mission and had no desire to get involved in this kind of politics. “Do what I ask,” Casement pleaded, “and you will bring God’s blessing on the country and on everyone concerned.” Then “after deep and mature reflection”, Fr Ryan realised that “it would be the best thing not alone for the police, but also for the volunteers and the country, that I should convey the message to the volunteers and thereby be the means through which bloodshed and suffering might be avoided. I saw the leader of the volunteers in Tralee and give him the message. He assured me he would do his best to keep the volunteers quiet.”

One can only imagine Stack’s state of mind when Fr Ryan told him that Casement wanted the rebellion called off. He was supposed to be the only person in the area to know about the plans. Now he was being told about it by a priest who had no involvement in the movement. What was worse, Fr Ryan told more than Stack that Casement wanted the rebellion called off. “I also told the head constable of the steps I had taken, and my reasons for it, and he agreed with me that it was perhaps the wisest course to follow,” Fr Ryan noted.

At this point Kearney sent Stack a message that Con Collins, a friend arrested earlier in the day, wished to see him at the RIC barracks. Paddy J Cahill, the deputy brigadier, advised Stack not to go, or at least make sure he had nothing incriminating on him. Stack handed over his revolver and supposedly checked his belongings to ensure he had nothing else of importance. When he was searched at the RIC station, however, he was carrying a massive bundle of letters from people like Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly, Bulmer Hobson and a circular from Eoin MacNeill urging the volunteers to resist forcefully any attempt by the Crown authorities to suppress or disarm them. He was promptly arrested.

Stack later wrote to his brother, Nicholas, that he was carrying “a large number of letters, ie, fully 20 or 30 letters, I imagine”. The count at the barracks was 52 letters. Somebody might carry that many letters in a briefcase, but has anyone ever carried that number on their person.

One must ask why was Stack carrying so many letters when he went to the barracks? With things obviously going so badly wrong in relation to the plans for the rebellion, it looked suspiciously like he wanted to be arrested so that he would be in custody when the balloon went up?

It is about time people began examining the record for what it was, not what it should have been.

Teacher Union Amalgamation?

The media is full of talk about the possible amalgamation of the 3 teacher unions, but my old maths teacher could tell you that ASTI INTO TUI won’t go.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner.

Promoting the Irish language?

If the relevant Government Minister should be a champion for Irish as a living, vibrant language, could you choose a worse representative than Eamon O’Cuiv?

The man is a throwback to the 19th century Victorian era.

He has always seemed to be about 30 years older than his calendar age in demeanour and dress. His speech, both in tone and content, is dull and pedantic lawyer-speak. I don't know him but he gives every impression of being a charisma-free zone.

One must assume that it’s only Fianna Fail loyalty to the de Valera lineage that has him in the Dail.

1916 Proclamation

Over the centuries, thousands of revolutionary and political proclamations, declarations and manifestos have been issued in countries all over the world.

I doubt if you'll find one that isn’t full of high-flown rhetoric and promises of better times to come, or one that was actually implemented after a successful revolution or election.

So why do we treat the 1916 Proclamation with so much more reverence than we would the Election Manifesto of a modern political party?

I suggest it’s because the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation were fortunate. They were executed and thus saved from having to engage in the often sordid politics of the real world in attempting to deliver on their promises.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner.

Grand National Blues

I backed 3 horses in the Grand National today - each-way bets on Innox @ 16/1 and Juveigneur @ 36/1 and Hedgehunter @ 13/2 to win.

The two each-way horses fell at the first fence, while Hedgehunter finished second.

Net return = ZERO.

Then I got a text message from my friend “smug git” to tell me that he’s backed the winner and the 3rd placed horse.

Can it get any worse?

Ryanair's Fear of Flying

YESTERDAY, the Ryanair website listed 80 flights into and out of France, which were cancelled because of the threatened general strike. It added: ‘Ryanair sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused by these flight cancellations.’

About 12,000 passengers would have been forced to make alternative travel arrangements. Presumably about 50% of these were attempting to get home from a trip abroad.

This was in addition to the 27 flights cancelled on the previous two days for the same reason, added to the complete cancellation of all Ryanair’s French flights on March 28.

While other airlines, including Aer Lingus, succeeded in meeting their obligations by flying their French routes on March 28, my wife and I were stranded when our return Ryanair flight from Biarritz was cancelled without warning. We were obliged to return the following day with Aer Lingus from Bordeaux, incurring about e500 in incremental costs for accommodation, meals, train and air fares.

Michael O’Leary likes to portray himself as fearless. But Ryanair’s fear of flying, stranding its passengers abroad while its competitors continue to meet their responsibilities, exposes him as gutless.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Examiner. A variant was published some days later in the Irish Independent.

Crocodile Tears?

The tourist dipped her hand in the water and raised it to her sweating brow. Rivulets of cool water ran from her fingers and, trickling down over her eyelids, caused her to blink momentarily.

At that moment, the crocodile struck, his powerful jaws snapping shut across her torso, instantaneously crushing her ribs, arms and spine. She made no sound, other than the whoosh of air expelled from her collapsing lungs.

In one continuous movement, the crocodile flipped his catch over into the water and drove her underwater in order to drown her. She offered no resistance whatever as he held her at the bottom for several minutes.

Then, satisfied that she was dead, he carried her back to his private meat-safe when he wedged her under a submerged tree-trunk, with the intention of leaving her to marinate for a couple of days.

Even though there would clearly be little eating on this skinny cadaver, the crocodile was beside himself with excitement at his catch. He couldn’t wait to tell the lads that he had caught that most elusive of the “Croc’s Big 5”, the very rare albino ape.

Save the whale?

The old whale said her final farewells to the other members of the pod and turned to ride the incoming tide onto the nearby beach. She had simply grown too old to keep up with her extended family and it was time to die. She had chosen to beach herself and die without struggle, rather than face death by drowning. She had enjoyed a long and happy life and accepted her inevitable end with equanimity.

Reaching the beach, she settled comfortably on the sand as the tide ebbed and allowed her mind to wander, recalling fondly her mother, her youth, her own children and great feasts of krill enjoyed in the southern ocean.

Her reverie was interrupted by an unfamiliar sound and she wearily opened one eye to see if she could identify the source. A small dog was jumping up an down beside her head and barking loudly, while its owner was running down from the nearby dunes to examine this large piece of unexpected flotsam.

Soon there were dozens of humans swarming around her tired body. Some throwing buckets of water over her, others digging trenches. Soon, pulleys, ropes, slings were being erected around and under her and a tractor appeared which somehow became connected to her tail.

As the tide rose, she realised with horror that she was being towed backwards into the water. She attempted to use her tail to shake off her assailants, but quickly realised that she was too weak to counteract whatever mechanism was pulling her backwards. “Moby Dick” she cursed, “ are they trying to drown me? Have they no humanity?”

Soon the heaving mob had, with the aid of the tractor and the tide, moved the whale off the sand and out into shallow water where she could manoeuvre herself, albeit feebly. As she turned reluctantly seawards, she could see them punching the air, hugging each other, shouting exultantly in celebration of her now inevitable fate.

On the beach a TV crew was busy interviewing the local Green representative who talked about the need to protect these beautiful animals, extolled the efforts of the local population and hailed the success of this particular rescue operation.

As he spoke, the camera panned across the celebrating crowd on the beach and the bay beyond, to the point where the whale was slipping slowly beneath the surface to drown.

Footnote: On April 29th 2006, 3-ton pilot whale was successfully refloated from Inch Beach, Co. Kerry.

Crap advertising advertising crap

There are three ad campaigns running on radio which really annoy me and suggest lazy or no research by the advertising agencies involved.

The first is the campaign aimed at getting people to pay their TV license fee. It labours under the illusion that there is some major social stigma or embarrassment to being prosecuted for not paying the fee. There isn’t.

The second is the series of ads encouraging us to complete our census forms so that planning for future needs for schools, roads and other public services can be as effective as possible. Given the state of the national infrastructure, you'd have to ask what they've been doing with the result of all earlier census operations.

The third is supposed to be an anti-racism campaign but it only succeeds in sounding incredibly stupid. The bottom-line is that we’re all supposed to become colour-blind now that we’re all “Irish”.

The reality is that Irish people have always been inquisitive, it’s part of the native charm. In rural Ireland, if you’re white with red hair and freckles they’ll ask you where you’re from. If you’re anything other than “a neighbour’s child”, you’ll still be categorised as “a blow-in” unless you outlive those who remember the fact.

The reality is that people from other countries have interesting backgrounds and cultures that we should be asking them about. Of course, the tone and tenor of the discussion can be either friendly or threatening - but I’m sure that when it’s the former it’s quite welcome.

Niall Toibin has a great joke about the CIA attempting to infiltrate the IRA in order to use their contacts with Ghadaffi to gain intelligence. So they train their best agent to speak perfect Irish in all the regional dialects. He visits pubs, ceilis etc all over the country but fails to make contact with any IRA people. Finally, having a pint in Kerry and speaking perfect gaelic, the barman compliments him on “speaking great irish for a yank“. The CIA man is stunned and asks the barman how he'd guessed he’s a yank. “Sure aren’t you as black as the ace of spades” comes the response.
Niall has probably had to retire that joke, though there’s nothing racist about it.

The cost of cost management

Just back from a short-break in Biarritz with the missus, which was extended involuntarily by one day because of the Tuesday 28th March general strike, in protest against the French Government’s new youth employment policy. This caused all Ryanair flights to and from France be cancelled, through no fault of the airline, leaving us stranded.

Ryanair’s drive for efficiency and cost control means that their operational objective is to fly all their planes every day on scheduled services, which results in a lack of any spare capacity when a problem arises. Coupled to this, they generally serve airports where there are no other carriers flying to foreign destinations and their flights average 80%-90% occupancy, even in the off-season.

The net result is that, when they have to cancel a flight, there is usually no other carrier serving that airport who can be used to substitute for the cancelled flight. Then, because all their flights are at least 80% full already, it will take a minimum of the 4 subsequent Ryanair flights to clear the backlog.

At airports where they have only one flight daily, or perhaps only one flight every second day, you can see how a stranded passenger might be stuck for several days. Ryanair only fly to Biarritz every second day, so having cancelled the Tuesday flight, their next flight was Thursday and our chances of getting on that were slim enough.

Luckily, we managed to book flights with Aer Lingus from Bordeaux for Wednesday afternoon, which involved getting the TGV from Biarritz to Bordeaux. The train journey took 2 hours and the TGV hit a maximum speed of about 60 mph - what a con-job!

All told, I reckon the delay resulted in extra costs of about €500 - between accommodation, air-fares, meals and train fares. It’s coming out of the wife’s house-keeping unless I can get it back off the travel insurance.

Children's Hospital Proposal

Noel Smyth's proposal to build the new children's hospital at Newlands Cross was the subject of a deeply sceptical interview on RTE's Morning Ireland today.

This prompted the thought that the ideal solution might be to move RTE to Newlands Cross and build the children's hospital on the Montrose campus, whose proximity to St Vincent's Hospital and excellent transport links would make it an ideal site.

If nothing else, the inconvenience to RTE personnel would be a bonus.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Times (without the final sentence).

Healthcare - we're paying on the double

If I'm involved in a road accident, brought to A&E by ambulance and end up in the ICU for a week, most, if not all, of my medical bills will be covered by my PRSI contributions. I will receive exactly the same treatment as if I had VHI cover.

If, however, I tell the hospital that I have VHI cover, then VHI will be billed for several thousand euros for my care.

In effect, I will have paid twice for my hospital stay - both through the tax system and through my VHI membership.

VHI should only be billed for extra benefits for their members e.g. private or semi-private rooms, extra consultant time, queue-jumping for elective surgery etc.

Then the annual subscriptions paid by VHI/BUPA members would be very much lower, and many more people might be able to afford to take out cover.

Children's Rights

There was a time when adoption was thought of as a means of providing children for childless couples.

That position is now reversed and the function of adoption is to provide parents for children who, for one reason or another, are effectively parentless. In other words, consideration of the needs of the child is paramount.

This is enlightenment in action, it constitutes genuine progress in social thinking.

Now consider this: There was a time when children were expected to be conceived and born within a married relationship, and this was, traditionally in this country, the situation in the vast majority of cases. A woman having a child “out of wedlock” would be socially stigmatised and so would her child.

“Shotgun” weddings were not uncommon as people took responsibility for their actions, sometimes less than willingly.

Nowadays, about 35% of the 60,000+ Irish children born each year are “out of wedlock” and many of these are born outside of any long-term relationship or commitment of the child’s parents.

It has become socially unacceptable to express any reservations about such births. Indeed, it is decidedly non-pc to express anything other than the heartiest congratulations to the mother, the father if he is known, and the grandparents.

This is supposedly enlightenment in action and many people seem to believe that it constitutes progress in social thinking.

Yet consider the needs of the child and contrast this line of thinking with that which now applies to adoption. Why should we accept a lower standard of consideration for the rights and needs of children with their natural mothers or parents than we do for children with adoptive parents?

Children are neither playthings or companions to alleviate boredom, pets to provide unconditional love or mere fashion accessories to be paraded in public. Nor, dare I say it, are they just another example of "a woman's right to choose". They have a right to expect love, security, care and consideration from both their parents. It is a major commitment over an extended period of many years.

The fact that marriages and other long-term relationships can, and all too frequently do, break down is no justification for society to abandon the fundamental moral requirement for a parental commitment to the provision of the best possible family environment for children, before bringing them into the world.

Unmarried parents of children must take responsibility for the consequences of their own voluntary actions.

And taking care to avoid the hyprocrisy and stigmatisation of the past, the rest of us must not be intimidated by the new amoral orthodoxy from saying so.

The paradox is that current welfare rules discriminate against unmarried parents cohabiting, when it should be doing the exact opposite - subsidising them to do so for the benefit of the children.

Cosy Cartel?

The media like nothing better than lambasting what they see as cartels in business. Thus banks, insurance companies, estate agents, doctors, lawyers etc etc have all come in for negative media coverage on a regular basis.

Imagine my surprise this week to discover that Ireland’s two largest dailies, The Irish Independent and the Irish Times, have both chosen to increase their cover price by 10 cents, to €1.60.

Both papers have effectively charged the same cover price for several years, matching each others price increases within a matter of weeks, if not days.

Pure co-incidence, I’m sure.

Consenting Bedfellows

Government ministers have launched what is obviously a co-ordinated attack on the alternative coalition, seeking to highlight policy differences between Fine Gael and Labour. They’re even writing letters to the newspapers on this topic.

But the current government is surely proof that no gap is unbridgeable in politics.

The Progressive Democrat/Fianna Fail administration might well be described as a coalition of the upright and the bent, but the parties seem to have had little difficulty in cohabiting for the past 9 years.


Michael McDowell’s intemperate and personalised attack on Richard Bruton today followed hot on the heels of his outrageous comments to John Gormley in the Dail.

It’s clear the Government is feeling the pressure from the proposed Fine Gael/Labour alliance and has decided to have its ministers attack the opposition at every opportunity.

However, the sight of a Minister for Justice behaving in such an unbalanced fashion should not be seen, or tolerated, in a democracy.

Salvation & Betrayal in the same instant

Well thank God Cheltenham is over for another year - and I just managed to get out alive.

I backed War of Attrition @ 12/1 last Monday and he got me out of jail yesterday. I watched the race at home with the wife, who knew well which horse I’d backed.

My nag was looking good at the second last, but Hedgehunter began to close ominously as they came to the last. As they jumped the last almost together, imagine my surprise when a great shout of “Come on, Hedgehunter” issued from the couch beside me! That’s loyalty for you! Or, as Albert Reynolds would say, “that’s wimmin for ya!”

So, only two winners from 14 bets over the 4 days - War of Attrition @ 12/1 and Brave Inca @ 19/10 - but luckily they were my two biggest, though still modest, bets.

Two more Irish winners yesterday, War of Attrition (15/2) and Whyso Mayo (20/1) brought the Irish total for the week to 10 winners from 24 races over the four days. Yet most Irish punters will have lost money because many of these were the less fancied of the multiple Irish entries in almost every race.

And there’s 3 rugby matches to bet on today, plus the outcome of the 6 Nations and the Triple Crown. No wonder we're all exhausted.

Punter's Purgatory

Thursday was another bad day for the punters and a great one for the bookies. The 9/2 favourite won the first and a 100/30 joint favourite won the second, but after that the bookies cleaned up - winners of the next 4 races were priced at 8/1, 14/1 , 33/1 and 50/1 respectively. Only one Irish winner - Kadoun @ 50/1 in the last race when Irish punters had already been cleaned out - again.

My big hope Golden Cross, backed @ 12/1 in the main race of the day the World Hurdle, was beaten a head and should have won. He was backed down to 5/1 2nd Fav and I thought he had it won on the run in from the last, but he was definitely impeded by the eventual winner, My Way de Solzen.

If this was any major flat race, not only would there have been a steward’s inquiry but Johnny Murtagh would have lodged an objection to the winner for taking his ground.

Anyway, that’s 10 bets and only one short-priced winner in 3 days. The wife’s housekeeping money is shot to hell. So here’s today’s bets - so far.

Triumph Hurdle - Turko @ 14/1
Gold Cup - War of Attrition @ 12/1 and L’Ami @ 16/1

Wish me luck. It’s looking like Spam sangwidges for the next week unless we hit gold today!

Sustaining Progress, my arse!

Tuesday’s launch of the joint Fine Gael/Labour proposal to clarify the respective roles and responsibilities of both ministers and civil servants and also to set ministerial performance targets is to be welcomed as a putative step in the right direction.

However, Wednesday’s announcement by the Civil Service Arbitration Board that the out-sourcing of any function carried out by full-time public servants, e.g. driver testing, is banned under the terms of “Sustaining Progress” suggests that a far more wide-reaching and fundamental reform of the management of the public service is required.

At a time when Government was waffling on about the benefits of bench-marking - the improved flexibility, efficiency, value for money etc, some idiot was agreeing this incredibly restrictive clause in Sustaining Progress.

Who will take political responsibility for this? No-one, as usual, I presume.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Irish Independent and the Irish Examiner.

Bookie Heaven

Irish Winners at Cheltenham to date.
Day 1
Champion Hurdle - Brave Inca 7/4
Wm Hill Chase - Dun Doire 7/1
Cross Country Chase - Native Jack 7/2
Day 2
Sun Alliance Hurdle - Nicanor 17/2
Sun Alliance Chase - Newmill 16/1
Coral Hurdle - Sky’s the Limit 11/1
Champion Bumper - Hairy Molly 40/1

Even with 7 Irish winners from 12 races to date, most Irish punters are now skint. This is because most of those winners were the less fancied horses in races with several Irish runners.

Yesterday was a bloodbath for punters, with no favourites winning. Indeed, only one winner was priced at less than 10/1. A William Hill spokesman on radio this morning said that they if the bookies had been allowed, in advance, to pick the winners it could hardly have been a better day for them. He estimated that bookies made about £50m profit on yesterday’s Cheltenham card alone. He shed some tears for the punters, but only because they’ll all be a bit short of cash to bet today and tomorrow.

I’ve had 8 bets to date and only one winner - Brave Inca @ 19/10. Today, I’ve only backed two horses to date - and may not back anything else until tomorrow - but I’ll probably be tempted.

Ryanair Chase: Sir OJ @ 9/1
World Hurdle: Golden Cross @ 12/1

I’m not holding my breath.

Media Watchdog

The BBC’s weekly Watchdog tv programme has been a well known consumer champion for many years and, while I don’t watch it regularly, I would suppose it to be reasonably fair and balanced in its exposure of suppliers of goods and services which fail to meet expectations, as well as the occasional complete chancer.

I was interested therefore when, at the end of last night’s programme, a long judgement from Ofcom was read out. Ofcom is the independent UK agency which investigates complaints against the media.

Ofcom had upheld a complaint by Erich Reich of Classic Tours about an item concerning his company which Watchdog had featured - broadcast on 7th December 2004.

It seems to have taken 15 months for Mr Reich to get some form of public retraction. How many viewers would have bothered to stay tuned as the text of the finding scrolled up the screen, accompanied by a low-key voiceover? How would this compare with the number of viewers in December 2004 who made a mental note never to use his company?

I went to the trouble of looking him up on the internet and, thankfully, his company seems to be still in existence. He’s lucky, because Watchdog would undoubtedly have damaged both his reputation and his business.

This is typical of the approach of media - a major “exposé” turns out to be incorrect and results in a small apology printed on an inside page, weeks or even months later. In the meantime, the damage to someone’s reputation has been done.

It seems to me that a fairer approach, where substantial damages have not been paid, would be to make available to the aggrieved party the same amount and prominence of media space as was allotted to the original article or programme. This space to be used as the recipient sees fit, as long as it avoids libel etc.. So it might be used to rebut the original story, or to promote the recipients business or any other cause or topic s/he chooses.

Colin Farrell keeps it up.

Good to see that Colin Farrell, Ireland’s cultural ambassador to Hollywood, is keeping up his usual standards. He’s embroiled in a legal battle with former girlfriend Nicole Narain, Playboy’s Miss January 2002, about a 14-minute amateur sex video they made together.

She wants to sell it, he‘s trying to stop her. It’s probably because Colin’s been telling people he can “go all night” and a 14-minute video won’t exactly support that claim to fame.

This story is reminiscent of the famous sex video made by Paris Hilton with a boyfriend, which is widely available on the internet under the subtle title “One Night in Paris”. Joan Rivers has the best line on that one. She reveals that the Hilton parents were shocked and horrified by their hotel heiress daughter’s porn video, because it was shot in a Marriott Hotel room.

Cheltenham Hell

Yesterday wasn't a great start to the festival - Sweet Wake was many people's Irish banker and it was heavily backed but easily beaten.

Thankfully I backed Brave Inca @ 19/10 which took the bare look off my bookie account - but some of my horses would have been better off running at Shelbourne Park.

Today I've backed (so far)
Sun Alliance Hurdle: Denman @ 6/4
Sun Alliance Chase: Commercial Flyer @ 6/1
Champion Chase: Moscow Flyer @ 11/4 - now available at about 6/1.

Cheltenham is a metaphor for one of the great perils of western life - paralysis by analysis:

We're bombarded on all sides with information, tips, whispers etc.. - media, friends, pub-talk, our own opinions. Much of it is uninformed, most of it is conflicting.

Radio, TV, newspapers - every correspondent becomes a racing pundit this week and every race has several potential winners - often 10 or more - if you listen to the "experts".

You'd be better off to just get the morning paper, make your own mind up and then just watch the actual race on the TV. That way you'd hopefully end up backing just one loser in each race and you might even manage the odd winner.

As in many other areas, we have too much choice, too much money, too much "information", too many opinions to consider, too much time to think about it, coupled with a fear of making a wrong choice that will cost us money and/or be derided by our families, friends, colleagues etc..

Cheltenham Heaven

Shares in Paddy Power Bookmakers have risen sharply in the past couple of weeks as the stock market anticipates the bookies having a very good Cheltenham this year, naturally at the expense of the punters. Last year was a tough one for Paddy Powers with a lot of heavily backed Irish favourites winning.

This year, several prominent ante-post favourites e.g. Kicking King, Best Mate, have failed to make it to Cheltenham while others such as Moscow Flyer and Hardy Eustace have not demonstrated good form in their recent races. Beef or Salmon is ante post favourite for the Gold Cup but has never looked like winning the race in the past. In fact, I don’t think he’s ever won outside Ireland.

As always, Irish punters at Cheltenham will roar home any Irish winner. The problem is that we’ll have several runners in each race and it’s often one of the less fancied, least backed runners that actually wins. Patriotic fervour and empty pockets too often go hand in hand.

Day 1 - Tuesday 14th March 2006

It’s only 9.30am, but already I’m on the following horses for today’s racing:

Supreme Novices Hurdle: Sweet Wake @ 3/1
Arkle Chase: Accordion Etoile @ 6/1 and Don’t Be Shy @ 9/1
Champion Hurdle: Arcalis @ 14/1
Wm Hill Chase: Korelo @ 12/1

I’ll probably lay off some of the Arcalis bet on Betdaq, the horse should start at 6/1 - 7/1, and have something on one of the fancied Irish nags. Picking the right one will be the challenge.

I have to look after my mother this afternoon. I hope she likes watching racing on the box.

Vincent on the road to Damascus?

In this week’s opinion piece in the Sunday Business Post titled “Let us forgive those who trespass against us”, Vincent Browne sought to strike a balance in the debate, mainly driven by the media, of the cases of disgraced judge Brian Curtin and obstetrician Michael Neary.

Vincent posed the following question: “Why is it not allowable to acknowledge that, in spite of the wrongs persons have perpetrated, they may also have done good in their lives otherwise?”

In response one might reasonably ask Vincent who he thinks this question should be addressed to and does he ever review his own output?

Using his multiple media outlets (The Irish Times, The Sunday Business Post, Village Magazine, Tonight with VB on RTE radio 1 etc.) Vincent is himself a one man demonising machine, vilifying and castigating those who he disapproves of, disagrees with or simply are available to alleviate his boredom or his need to indulge in a little bear-baiting to keep himself and his listeners/readers awake.

A few mirrors around the house might not go amiss when Vincent is looking for culprits in his tale of forgiveness foregone.

Footnote: Published as a letter in the Sunday Business Post and in Vincent Browne's own Village Magazine, to give him his due.

Wasting Garda Time

The Sunday Independent’s lead story this week was a report about the abuse of state cars by prominent politicians, including the president. State cars with garda drivers are routinely used to drop children to school, do the weekly shopping, transport families to race meetings, collect pizzas etc etc.. Money is no object when it’s coming out of the public purse.

On Sam Smyth’s Sunday Supplement show on Today FM, Minister for Education Mary Hanafin explained that the role of the gardai is not primarily to drive govt ministers but rather to provide personal protection. She cited as justification the murder of Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh in September 2003, who was stabbed to death while out shopping alone.

It is very easy to get used to the trappings and privileges of power and politicians like Minister Hanafin will always be able to come up with glib answers to justify their own excesses. Mussolini was shot but I don’t think the lady wears a flak-jacket.

The use of state cars should be confined to state business and garda protection only provided to ministers with sensitive highly sensitive portfolios such as Justice. It would do ministers no harm at all to have to endure some of the daily grind the rest of us put up with.

Crime & Punishment

The recent spate of gang-related shootings has sparked a heated political and media debate about the length of sentences served by those who commit serious crime such as murder. The do-gooders are quick to point out that harsher sentences have little or no deterrent effect on criminals. The point they seem to miss is that prevention rather than deterrence is the objective - the longer they're locked up, the less opportunity they have to commit crime.

What really pisses off Joe Public is where someone commits a serious crime while out on bail or on early release from an earlier prison sentence.

Here's a recent case that will undoubtedly have Joe Duffy's phones ringing:

On Friday 10th March 2006, Ian Horgan was sentenced to 8 years in jail for raping and killing Rachel Kiely. Though charged with rape and murder, he had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and not guilty to the rape charge. The jury found him not guilty of murder but guilty of rape and manslaughter.

Horgan had originally been convicted of rape and muder in June 2002, but the conviction had been overturned in December 2004 by the Court of Criminal Appeal who ordered a retrial. Horgan was released on bail pending the retrial.

Having been convicted at the retrial, Mr Justice Barry White sentenced Horgan to 8 years in jail on each count, with the sentences to run concurrently. He acknowledged that Horgan had already spent 4.5 years in custody since November 2000 and said that this was the equivalent of a six-year sentence. Consequently, the judge suspended the last 6 years of the 8-year concurrent sentences he was now imposing. This means that Horgan now has less than 2 years to serve in jail.

This calculation of 4.5 years served being equivalent to a 6-year sentence assumes that the prisoner had earned remission, commonly termed “time off for good behaviour”. However, before passing sentence the judge was made aware that Horgan had been convicted of burglary, assault and possession of stolen property in 2005, while he was out on bail pending his retrial for rape and murder.

If that constitutes “good behaviour”, meriting a calculation of remission on time already served, then the law really is an ass and I’m a chinaman (if you’re allowed use that expression in these politically correct times).

Political Marriage

Joe Higgins is a very impressive Dail performer on social issues, but his Marxist economic policy is a proven failure worldwide. Mary Harney is a principled champion of free-market economics, but her PDs seem overly biased in favour of those who are already able to help themselves.
I’ve often thought that a political coupling of Joe and Mary might produce a very interesting policy baby, so imagine my excitement when, at Leader’s Questions in the Dail yesterday, Mary Harney, standing in for the Taoiseach, told Deputy Higgins that he would “make a very tasty meat sandwich”.

I'd favour a Left/Right administration as a way of seeking to achieve the right balance between economic and social policy, so perhaps an alternative coalition line-up of FG, Labour & PDs might be ideal way to make up the necessary numbers.

Naturally it would require all the parties (and personalities) involved to have the political will, and mutual respect, to make the compromises required. You'd almost have to keep them all away from the media, who'd be more than happy to speculate on all the political and policy fault lines - real, imagined and potential.

Two of the most important functions of Government are (a) how it raises money and (b) how it prioritises the spending of that money.

In my hypothetical administration, the PDs would have the Finance and Industry & Employment briefs, charged with taking the lead on economic and competitiveness policy. Labour would hold the high-spending social departments - Health, Education and Welfare (and prhaps one other cabinet post) and would be responsibile for taking the lead on formulation and implementation of social policy.
FG would have most of the rest, but Enda Kenny’s main role would be to act as a strong executive chairman of the cabinet, needing to be both glue and grease in order to hold the disparate team together and keep it moving forward. John Bruton surprised many observers in his term as Taoiseach of the rainbow coalition, could Enda Kenny pull off the same trick?

Political coalitions are inherently unstable, but I suggest they’re preferable to the polarising administrations you risk getting in “winner takes all” elections/systems e.g. Bush in the US and Thatcher in the UK.

Politics & Religion

Jon Snow of Channel 4 News has been reporting from Iran this week. His many political interviews have been notable for the civil tone and content of the questions, a marked change from his normally robust domestic UK style.

But his greatest deference is reserved for the mullahs, whose theocratic input to the Iranian political system is treated with the utmost respect.

It could not contrast more starkly with the ridicule and scorn heaped on Prime Minister Bush or President Bush by the UK media for daring to make reference to their own personal faith.

Of course it’s sheer hypocrisy, but you get away with that in a democracy.

Is there a doctor in the house?

The 'doctor-only' medical card was introduced in 2005 to help low- and middle-income families, who wouldn't qualify for a full medical card under current income criteria. It was estimated that up to 200,000 such cards would be issued, and Mary Harney, Minister for Health fought a major battle with the Irish Medical Organisation to get the scheme off the ground.

However, several months on, only a couple of thousand people have applied for these new cards.

This very low take-up of the “doctor-only” medical cards suggests a major systemic problem in the way rights and benefits are delivered in this country. It surely can’t be a lack of demand, given that your local GP might well charge you €50 for a 5-10 minute visit to the surgery.

I believe the self-interest of politicians lies at the heart of the problem, with (at least) two key flaws in the system.

Firstly, TDs have voted themselves large allowances to run “constituency clinics”, at times and places of their own choosing, instead of adequately investing in professionally-staffed information and support services at local level. These TD clinics should more accurately be termed “re-election offices”. The funding for these clinics should be diverted into well-advertised advice bureaux - there should be one in every medium-sized town.

Secondly, far too many rights and benefits are categorised as “discretionary“. This often means that those most in need fail to receive them, while those who do apply often believe they might need the local TD to pull some strings on their behalf.
TDs do nothing to dissuade their constituents and will happily claim credit for any positive outcome, regardless of whether they’ve made any representations at all, or simply passed on an application form.

Those who don't know their rights, who don't vote and who are generally unable to advocate on their own behalf are the main losers here - yet they should, in fact, be the sector of society which is the focus of a disproportionately high level of resources.

It should be a priority of the next Government to eradicate these deficiencies and abuses, but will the self-interest of politicians win out again? I'm not holding my breath.

Footnote: A version of this published as a letter in the Irish Times and the Irish Independent.

1916 Commemoration

Rather than a military parade down O’Connell St, the 1916 commemoration would be better marked by the formulation of a new “New Proclamation" for 21st Century Ireland.

The Government constantly reminds us of the success of the economy, but seems incapable of setting out any vision of what might constitute a successful society. The middle-classes are pre-occupied with property values, while the super-rich have declared themselves non-resident, at least for tax purposes. We are increasingly becoming an economy rather than a society.

The process of drafting a new proclamation would require a broad and robust discussion on the shape and needs of a modern Irish society, with the objective of creating a document which enjoys wide national acceptance and which can function as a “moral compass” to guide our elected politicians and ourselves in years to come.

Such a proclamation would include our aspirations for dealing with the national question in the much changed political and economic circumstances in which we now live, in the process "decommissioning" the more emotive language and violent solutions of the 1916 version.

A new proclamation should also set out the vision for the role of the Republic in the wider world, dealing with such thorny issues as immigration, neutrality, Third World role etc..

It’s highly likely that such an exercise would end in failure, with a consensus vision proving impossible to agree. But it would be far from wasted effort if it opened a wide-ranging debate on where, if anywhere, we are going as a society, rather than an economy.

Footnote: Published as a letter by the Irish Times and the Irish Independent.

Dublin Riot

Sinn Fein may not have been officially involved, but were they provisionally represented?

We had a riot in Dublin on Saturday to prevent a couple of hundred unionists/loyalists from parading from Parnell Square across the city centre to Leinster House.

It’s ironic then that up to 10,000 unionists were in Dublin the following day and there wasn’t a hint of trouble. Most of the Northern rugby fans down for the international against Wales would be of the unionist political persuasion. They come down for every international and shout as loudly for Ireland as their southern counterparts. I'm not sure that they join in "The Fields of Athenry". There's never a sign of a row.

It’ll be interesting to see what impact, if any, the use of Croke Park has on northern ticket demand next year, when our 6 Nations home matches will be played there. The GAA has long been regarded up North as “the sporting wing of the IRA”.

It’ll also be interesting to see what impact Croke Park has on their view of the GAA. Gaelic football is referred to in some unionist circles as “bog ball”. Will the ultra-modern stadium with its fantastic facilities cause them to reconsider some of these long-held prejudices?

I’m not holding my breath, particularly if the Northeners get mugged by the Northsiders and their cars are stolen or torched. Jones Road is a long way from leafy, middle-class, cosmopolitan Ballsbridge.

McDowell and control of the media

In his column in today's Irish Times - a strong response to Michael McDowell’s recent lecture on the role ofthe media - John Waters states that “there is no duty imposed on the media to educate public opinion; no duty to uphold the constitutional rights of the citizen to protection of privacy andreputation; no duty to protect freedom of expression.”

If this statement applies to RTE, what is the function of Public Service Broadcasting in Ireland, for which every household in the country is levied with an arbitrary tax, known as the licence fee?

Later in the column, Waters differentiates between the BBC and RTE on the basis that RTE supplements its licence fee income with advertising revenue“garnered from a marketplace in which the national broadcaster competes with privately-owned media.”

Is this intended to justify RTE participating in a “race to the bottom” in pursuit of ratings and the advertising revenues which such ratings attract?

The reality is that RTE is the “broadcaster of record” in this country. We, the public who fund it through our licence fees, have a right to expect very high standards from RTE e.g. no hidden agendas, no political bias, well researched analysis and balanced presentation. If RTE doesn’t believe that this is its role, can I have my licence fee back, please?

In his farewell address, US President Eisenhower warned that“we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence,whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

That warning might well apply to the media today.