So, we have an ex-Finance Minister and current Taoiseach (that’s Irish for incompetent buffoon) who claims that in accompanying Sean Fitzpatrick in 18 holes of golf and an 18 course dinner he never once discussed the malaise at Anglo-Irish bank. If you accept that barely believable premise then the question is – why the fuck didn’t he discuss the situation? Or more importantly, why didn’t he wrap a five-iron round Fitzy’s neck for breaking our whole economy? And nice to see Fitzy’s old friend Drumm backing him up.
Watching the hubris coming from the Peter Griffinpress conference this evening has made me angrier than an All Black hooker accused of a headbutt. Its bad enough that he, Bertie and the previous inept idiots as Ministers for Finance ran a coach and four through our economy but now he has the audacity to say that his budget and his four-year plan must be passed before he will even think about seeking a mandate from the people.We should be the ones to decide what sort of budget we are going to suffer. Nothing that Griffin has done or said has been in the “national interest”, it’s all just to keep him and his party of nepotistic crooks in office.
Fianna Fail have treated us like dirt for too long now and its time we stood up and gave them a good kicking. They should be forced to go if they won’t do it voluntarily. As we seem to be heading back to the bad old days of the 80s, lets at least bring back the anger and energy that was evident in Toxteth and Notting Hill when Thatcher was destroying her country. For too long the citizens of this state have been passive victims of a Progressive Democrat/Fianna Fail philosophy that has just about destroyed everything good about our society. We need new political thinking in this country but that means we, as citizens, have to play an active part. Its time to reclaim what we’ve lost and if they won’t go gently into the good night maybe its time for an old fashioned riot…
If anyone can be bothered, Morgan Jones, is having a silent and peaceful protest outside the Dail at 12 noon on Thursday 25th. Personally, I would be inclined to bring a big stick and a bag of rocks but maybe we start silent and build up to something a bit stronger. As Shane Hegarty put it: Brian Cowen appears to be playing a political game of chicken. And we’re all passengers in the car.
General Melchett is at it again. The braying minister for Flooding, Inappropriate Building Schemes (FIBS) and taking Willie O’Dea’s place as government lackey doesn’t think we need an independent inquiry into last November’s floods that decimated large parts of Cork, Carlow and Kilkenny. He’s not convinced that “pointing the finger” is the best way to go even though an Oireachtas Committee report found a complete lack of leadership when it came to reacting to the floods.
Here’s a finger that can be pointed at the pretentious prat and the rest of his World War I type generals -
It was probably Harold Wilson, well known pipe-smoker and adulterer, that said, “a week is a long time in politics”. But even ‘Arold would have choked on his Kendal Dark Shag at the goings on in Irish politics in the last while.
First we had George ‘Glee’ Lee deciding that his all-singing, all-dancing skills were being wasted in the chorus line of Enda’s Entertainment Troop. George is currently appearing at a church near you in the lead role of Jesus Christ, I’m a Celebrity Economist, Count Me the Fuck Out of Here.
Then we had Deirdre de Niqab Burca, with an uncanny inability to connect with an electorate, posting one of the most poisonous resignations since Roy Keane deserted in Saipan. Poor old Deirdre, can’t even be recycled to Europe.
Next was the armour-plated moustache that underwent a very close shave because of Boyle’s law tweet. Willie just couldn’t keep it up anymore and went off quietly into the night. Yeah, right, he did more moaning than a Trinity graduate on Frontline.
Finally, it was Trevor Sargent, busted down to private. The former ex-leader of the Greens proved that the Minister for Horticulture was the biggest cabbage of the lot.
And what would Wilson have made of this sorry lot? He probably would have asked Captain Mainwaring, “do you think thats wise?”…
Remote Control
With a bit of luck the Government will miss Gabon’s reform of Civil Service lunch breaks. It’s interesting that in what is supposed to be a knowledge economy that there is such a reluctance to have Civil Servants avail of teleworking. The Department of Finance claims that it is too expensive to equip our homes with office furniture and that there are health and safety issues (our houses become more deadly if we work there, apparently). And there is also a concern about remote linking to Departmental computer systems. However, if we really want a flexible work force equipped to deal with the demands of a fast changing society then we need to look at this type of working. Taking the last few days into account I wonder how many civil and public servants availed of annual or flexi leave to avoid battling the elements to work. At least if they had the option of teleworking they would have been productive.
End Credits
It’s always sad when people who we respect have to take their leave but the last week saw two of my particular (and peculiar) favourites take their final bow. Michael Dwyer has been one of the more interesting and knowledgeable film critics of the past 25 years or so. I remember coming across him first in the In Dublin magazine many years ago and when he established the Dublin Film Festival with Myles Dungan. While I might not have agreed with everything he wrote I did admire his style of writing and the way he supported the film industry in Ireland. He was particularly good at interviewing film makers and the last time I saw him was at the 2007 Dublin International Film Festival when he presented Gabriel Byrne with a Volta and the following interview was fascinating. Dwyer set the bar for critics and he will be sadly missed although Daniel Day-Lewis said during his eulogy that he was relieved that Michael Dwyer never got round to seeing ‘Nine‘.
Another who turned his last sod was the landscape gardener John Cushnie. Cushnie had been part of Gardeners’ Question Time on BBC Radio 4 for the last fifteen years. GQT is a typically English institution, combining wisdom with wit and eccentricity. Cushnie could be forthright in his opinions but he had a wicked sense of humour and wasn’t afraid to send himself or his fellow panelists up. As a working gardener he had a real insight into the struggles of the (extremely) amateur genus.
Bow the Knee Biffo is a creationist. He’s also a master of spin – at a time when we are dramatically cutting our aid to Africa he is patting himself on the back about the work we are going to do to help prevent climate change in the third world. We would have been better served if Biffo had pointed out the inadequacies of the Pope’s response to the Ryan and Murphy reports of 2009. In fact we would have been better served if Biffo had just kept his big mouth shut.
We are all individuals
Bit of a kerfuffle over at Twenty.
One story that the Government tried to bury on Christmas Eve eve looks like growing legs. The decision to reverse the pay cut given to top civil servants is up there with John Bonham having one more for the road. The idea that these well paid servants of the people had been hard done by in having their bonuses removed last year is laughable.
For a start, I don’t recall any of these mandarins not receiving a bonus, certainly all the top management in my Department always got their bonuses regardless of output of their various Divisions. As well as that, the bonus was supposed to be performance related but I don’t recall any criteria being applied by which performance could be measured. I’m sure there is a Department of Finance circular detailing the criteria but life is too short to be reading their bullshit.
The mainstream media is slowly turning its attention to the story. Scary Carey in the Times had an unusually well-written piece that actually addressed the issue and managed not to mention any of her auctioneer/county council family members – a first for her, I think.She hits the nail on the head when she says that this is all to do with saving the pension arrangements of the top rank in our public service. And who could bet against the Government reversing their own pay cuts when the Dail finally gets round to reforming politicians expenses?
What the reversal actually boils down to is that the top management of civil servants will take a pay cut of about 4 per cent. That is almost half of what I am being hit with (6.5% from this week). Yet, I will be expected to do more work this year due to the amount of people who have retired in the past four months (my Department will lose 20% of its staff) while our top management will not have any extra burden on their shoulders.
There isn’t much public support for civil or public servants at the moment but over the next few months we are going to witness a considerable reduction in the level of service delivery from the public sector. This will not be our fault but you can be sure that Cowen and Co will spin it, with the cooperation of most of the media, that we are the ones to blame, yet again. It’s just a shame that we aren’t more militant in this country, otherwise that shower of inept wankers in the Dail would be cowering like dust mites in front of a Dyson.
This blog has been an intermittent affair but the recent booze-fuelled break has meant that I’ve been even more remiss in updating than a government press secretary. So what happened over the past couple of weeks?
Apparently, Brian Lenihan will soon start to lose that unbelievably black hair due to the interference in his private life by TV3. There has been a lot of pontificating about the decision by Halligan and her mates to give the Minister a deadline to inform his family about the seriousness of his illness before broadcasting an ‘exclusive’ on December 26th. There are a number of issues with this story that are a bit puzzling.
First of all, looking at the timeline, it would appear that the Government Press Office knew about the illness before Lenihan’s family and called on the major media outlets not to publish the story until the Lenihan family had been informed. This just goes to show that there is a very cosy relationship between the Government and news media. Why should news of this magnitude not be reported? It is a significant piece of news because a serious illness may have an effect on the ability of Brian Lenihan to do his job – one of the most important jobs in the country. Surely, to avoid the sort of mess that has occurred, the Press Office or Brian Lenihan should have issued a statement once the family had been informed – and I assume the family would have been informed very soon after Lenihan was given the news.
The second puzzling element is that TV3 gave Lenihan 48 hours to tell his family before broadcasting the news. Why wait? If TV3 thought the news was important then they should have reported it immediately.
What really has me scratching my head is the amount of comments in the so-called serious press about the “terrible” invasion of Lenihan’s private life. Once again, Irish journalism trips around the periphery of a subject without getting to grips with the important aspects. The Irish media, with a few honourable exceptions, has become a mere reporting and PR machine and the lack of any serious investigation into Irish politics and society in the past decade is something that should make Irish journalists stop and ponder. The likes of Gavin’s Blog, Maman Poulet and Public Inquiry seem to be doing more to uncover what is going on in our state than any of the mainstream media outlets.
Another aspect of this issue is the fact that Lenihan has no problem getting treatment at the Mater Private Hospital. It’s great that he can afford to have private treatment but I wonder how he feels as other patients or would-be patients suffer as the public hospital plans to close down beds and reduce services. As Minister for Finance, the decisions that Lenihan takes has a direct impact on the most vulnerable in our society. Fianna Fail and Mary Heartless have spent the past ten years or so trying to destroy what could have been a very good public health system.
There is no surprise that when Lenihan chose to address the nation that he picked RTE to broadcast the interview. This is not just because of the crass report from Halligan at TV3 but also because RTE have become the Government broadcast agency. This is the same station that chose to issue an apology to Brian Cowen because it reported the story about those pictures smuggled into the National Gallery.
Just when you thought that things couldn’t get worse. We’ve had paedophile priests protected by their bishops, rapists hailed as heroes and Roddy Collins coming back to bury manage Cork City. Now we see NAMA – the Batmobile of the finance minister – will be run by a selection of heavyweight idiots, most of whom were involved in getting us into the economic mire that we’re in. Here are seven of the illustrious appointees, no doubt on salaries and expenses commensurate with their abilities.
Arthur Frank Daly: Chairman of the Revenue Commissioners from March 2002 to March 2008. He was formerly Accountant General of Revenue and Head of Strategic and Business Planning. Obviously the strategy and planning involved aping the policy of Nero and fiddling while the economy burned.
Eilish Finan: the former Chief Financial Officer of AIG Global Investments. Would this be the same AIG that US taxpayers had to bail out to the tune of about $185m? Should be used to pissing our money up against the wall then.
Michael Connolly: a former member of the Bank of Ireland senior management team and member of Financial Services Ombudsman Council. So, double the experience of being part of a completely useless and fucked up organisation. Welcome to (more of) our money.
Peter Stewart: Managing Director of O’Donovan Stewart & Company – firm of chartered accountants and a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland. Director of a broad range of companies including a bank and an investment intermediary company regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. The key word in the last sentence is ‘regulated’.
Brian McEnery: senior partner in Horwath Bastow Charleton specialising in corporate finance and Corporate Recovery – and has experience in dealing with the Corporate Enforcement and ODCE aspects of insolvency cases. National adviser to the INHO (Irish Nursing Home Organisation) – should be used to fleecing looking after old peoples money.
Willie Soffe: Chairman of the Dublin Transportation Office and former County Manager of Fingal County Council. Isn’t it great that we can get around Dublin so easily now?
Stephen Seelig:Advisor in the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department. The bloke who said, “The drafting of the determination of ‘long-term economic value of bank assets’ is masterful. It is both sufficiently specific and sufficiently vague to allow appropriate flexibility. I hope you can retain this language.” This bloke has a bright future, unlike our economy.
Well that was a kick in the nuts. Four days after one of the most insipid displays from an Irish football team we saw one of the most sublime. After a bit of a stuttering start, Ireland actually began to pass the ball to each other and to pass through the French defence. By the simple expedient of playing 15 yards further up the pitch we managed to negate the French midfield and they were the ones that began to look disjointed with their forwards isolated up front.
And then came Keane’s goal, created by some glorious one-touch football that saw Duff do what he does best – get to the byline and deliver a wicked cross. From that moment we began to believe, especially when we didn’t do our usual thing and retreat. But with every missed opportunity, particularly Duff’s one-on-one with Loris, that belief slowly ebbed away. Once into extra time the hope was for penalties and even that looked a bit forlorn as we lost two of our first five takers in O’Shea and Whelan.
Genius or French cunt
Deep into extra time FIFA’s prayers were answered. A nothing ball into the box that should have been dealt with by Dunne and McShane was beautifully controlled by the hand of Henry and Gallas put us away. All the talk of replays is just that, talk. The referee made his decision and thats that. We have another moral victory and Cowan has something to distract us from the mess that the country is in. Henry will become a hate figure, we’ll stop eating baguettes but, in time, we will forget and Dunphy will go back to sticking the boot in on Trappatoni. Roll on the Euro qualifiers.
walsh, cowell, minogue, cole and the entity that is Jedward
It comes to something when a middle-aged talent(less) scout with a scowl for a face starts hogging the political headlines. We now have not one but two heads of government who think they’re down with the kids by giving us their view on Jedward. Forget the economic crisis, forget NAMA, forget the slaughter in Afghanistan. No, we need to know what Gordon Brown and Biffo think of two rejects from Joe 90.
What is it about so-called reality TV that most of the country (or two countries in this case) is so addicted to it? Do people watch it because they genuinely think that the performers are really talented and deserve a break? Or is there an element of hoping some of them really fuck up and totally embarrass themselves? And why would anyone put themselves forward to be abused, mocked and slagged off by four fucking idiots with about as much idea of what constitutes talent as an amoeba? People are breaking down in tears because they want to be famous. Well, here’s an easier way – get yourself an assault rifle and take out an army base. Ok, you might end up shot but your name will live on longer than Susan Boyle. Or easier still, get a can of petrol, go down to the X Factor TV studios and set yourself alight. Try and get Louis Walsh to give you a hug as you do so and make sure you do it in time for the 9 o’clock news.
The bloody performers are bad enough but what, seriously, is Dannii Minogue? A failed singer, a failed actress and the runt of the Minogue litter. She wouldn’t even be able to catch a high-profile illness in order to save her career. As for Cheryl ‘I can mime really well me’ Cole, she gets accolades because her singing voice doesn’t sound as if she’s downed a crate of Newcastle Brown Ale. Lets face it, she’s not even the best looker in her marriage. Then there’s Walsh and Cowell – they should just accept the fact that all the constant arguments and bickering just means that they are made for each other, don’t deny your sexuality lads.
The two strutting marionettes struggling to sing while jerking wildly round the stage are just your younger idiot brothers showing off in the vain attempt that someone might think them cute. They are about as cute and slick as dysentery and are as good an advert for safe sex as you can get. Its not even as if their hairstyles are anything new. Did anyone else endure the 80s and this shower? Now that’s how to get your hair to stand up and pay attention. Jedward are just the lowest common denominator when it comes to popular culture and that’s bloody low in an era of Peter Andre. You don’t need talent, you just need a hook and backing from a gormless, moonfaced twat like Louis Walsh.
X Factor was shown up for the money grabbing, hypocritical nonsense that it is on Sunday when Cowell decided to “save” Jedward. Cowell knows where the money tree is and he’s bringing his chainsaw to chop it down.
Now where did I put that hairspray and fake tan. Come on folks, vote for me cos my teminally ill son/wife/mother really needs me to be famous…
