Did Fianna Fail evolve from the Sinn Fein party of 1905? Are the Lenihan family an example of Survival of the Fittest at play in the political world or just some sort of horrific genetic mutation? Is Charles Haughey a Missing Link? These questions could have been answered this evening by Conor Lenihan, Minister for Pseudoscience, Irrationality and Superstition at the book launch of The Origin of Specious Nonsense, by his good friend and constituent, John J. May.
Alas, it emerged late last night that Lenihan has pulled out of the launch. Perhaps he’d had enough of dealing with the unevolved at the Fianna Fail “think”-in down in Galway at the weekend. This is a pity as I’m sure the intellectual heavyweight that is Lenihan would have had all the facts at hand (or opposable thumb) to destroy the non-scientific arguments put forward by May.
And in a startling attempt to show that the Neanderthals didn’t actually become extinct, our glorious leader might have turned up pissed on Morning Ireland today. Of course, its our fault that we elect these primates. Maybe we’re not as evolved as we’d like to think.
If you were in hospital, really sick, maybe terminal who would you trust to comfort you, perhaps help cure you or at least make things more bearable? How about these fine people, carrying round a 500 year old, desiccated heart?
Although I’m not sure if they’re coming to help or to hurry you on your way.
Now ordinarily the daily goings on of the superstitious would not bother me or cause me too much concern unless they were breaking the law or waking me up early on a Sunday. However, these scary looking oddbods have been getting getting a police escort since the non-beating heart arrived in Ireland.
Why is the state paying good money to guard a piece of Catholic mythology? Surely the church has enough funds to pay for a couple of bouncers for a few weeks? I’m assuming that the police were just guarding the relic and not affording it full blown diplomatic status cos that would be just plain silly. After all, its not as if the ex-organ can actually do anything, what with its previous owner being dead for half a millenium. For those of you who, however misguidedly, think that there is something to this mumbo-jumbo you can do a google search to find where the lifeless, bloodless husk will be making its next appearance. For those of you with a more realistic view of the world you might want to check this out tomorrow – Atheist Ireland AGM.
He’s at it again. Just when you thought it was safe to go out in the sunshine up pops Joe “I see virgins” Coleman to point in awe at a sunbeam and claim its an apparition rather than the weather or an extremely crap car.
What makes the whole thing worse this time is that the charlatan was on the Late Late Show. For some reason RTE decided that it would be a great idea to give the national airwaves over to a self-proclaimed visionary. And for some, equally bizarre reason, Ryan Tubridy decided not to challenge Coleman on any of the proclamations that the fakir was making. In fact, Tubridy seemed to be afraid of giving any critical commentary on the nonsense that Coleman spouted. Is this the same intrepid presenter that gave short shrift to Cowan, Kenny and Gormley?
The only semi-critical comment came from an extremely nervous young lady raising concerns about the damage to people’s eyesight from looking at the sun too long. Nothing about the damage to people’s heads from listening to Coleman witter on about being a channel for various deities. Following on from his prediction of the volcanic eruption in Iceland (only two months after it happened), Coleman says that the virgin will be appearing in 2015 to give us a stern talking to. He was reluctant to claim that it would be the precursor of the second coming but he wouldn’t be at all surprised. This followed an admission that Satan had been in touch, possibly by batphone, and warned him not to go on the Late Late Show – obviously even Satan thinks its gone downhill since Gay Byrne left.
It would have been worth my licence fee to hear Tubridy challenge Coleman on where he gets his money from and whether he charges people for his ‘healing’ services. In fact, it would be nice to know if the Department of Social Protection had done any investigation into the extent of Coleman’s disability and whether all his travelling and channeling affects his disability benefit. It would also be interesting to know why the all powerful and ever living woo hasn’t cured poor old Joe from his bad back. Surely that would barely count as a miracle these days?
The increasingly irrelevant Catholic church still refuses to face up to its obligations and responsibilities for the litany of child sex abuse cases in Ireland. The putative head of the church in this country, Cardinal Sean Brady, has invoked the Nuremberg Defense in order to excuse his inaction in the case of Fr. Brendan Smyth in 1975.
However, the increasingly loud calls for Brady’s resignation miss the point. At the very least, Brady knew of criminal acts committed by Smyth and did not inform the police. This itself is a criminal offence. At the other end of the scale, there could even be a case made for conspiracy as Brady’s inaction may have facilitated Smyth in continuing to abuse children for almost twenty years up to 1994.
Brady should be in custody. The celice wearing Minister for Injustice, Xenophobia and Jail-for-all should be demanding that the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) take some action. We need justice. The children need justice.
The sooner we remove this cancerous church from any sort of control in our society the better. We should start with Brady and continue by removing control of our primary schools from this malevolent and pernicious organisation. Patrick supposedly removed the snakes from Ireland, unfortunately what he left in their place is a lot more slippery and dangerous.
What happens to people in this country when they get to a position of power? Do they just subscribe to the adage that power corrupts? Or maybe its as simple as living in a culture where there is no responsibility and it doesn’t really matter what you do as you will not be answerable. Even the language of power doesn’t acknowledge that doing wrong must lead to some sort of punishment. Dáil deputies cannot be called liars in the Dáil, no they tell untruths or omit to tell the truth. If we did the same we would be liars and quite rightly so. Power is facilitated in this by the lack of action by the police and the courts.
Willie O’Dea told ‘untruths’ to the High Court. According to himself he forgot what he had said in a taped interview three weeks prior to the signed affidavit to the High Court. Actually what he did was perjure himself. Perjury is a criminal offence yet O’Dea has not been charged with the crime, let alone arrested for it. O’Dea doesn’t even recognise that he is further diminishing the standing of politics in this country.
The Catholic bishops of Dublin colluded with and facilitated the abuse of children in Dublin. This is another criminal act. Yet, as with O’Dea, the authorities have been silent on the issue. The bishops went off to Rome to kiss the pope’s ring (insert your own appropriate gag). They got a bit of a telling off and then listened as the weasel-faced bastard tried to blame a lack of faith for preponderance of paedophiles in the Irish institution. These bishops should be in handcuffs and chains and not colluding in writing a pastoral letter that will absolve them and put the blame back on the victims.
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.
