It Should Have Been So Simple

❍BUSH: Thank God, he's now an endangered species.

God, I feel sorry for the Americans.
They're just about to get rid of a president who has done just about as badly as a president can do - he has destroyed the economy, the dollar is all but worthless, he is fighting an expensive war in Iraq that cannot be worn, America is a pariah worldwide, he has helped destroy the environment and failed, even, to rebuild New Orelans - and now they are faced with a choice between two bickering Democrats and a Republican who thinks, and possibly hopes, the Iraq war will last 100 years.
Bad and all as things are in Ireland, and they're bad, we have not reached that nadir.
It should have been oh so simple.
The Republicans choose an elderly, bad tempered war monger and the Democrats break new ground by choosing either a woman or a black candidate. Game over. New broom. New America.
But it's not working out that way, is it?

From the outside, it appears that Billary, for that is who Mrs Clinton really is, is determined that, if she doesn't get a shot at the White House, no Democrat will.
And, it could well be that, Barak Obama has much the same view.
Certainly, the damage they are doing to each other must have the Republicans laughing into their sleeves.
It might have been possible a little while ago for one to have the other as Vice President or 'Veep" as the Americans like to call it for reasons that have never been very clear.
Not now. They are, to each other, smiling assassins.
To those of us in the real world, that is the world outside the United States, it makes for confusing viewing.
One cannot imagine, for example, Dermot Ahern having a pop of Brian Cowen in the same way.
All right. You can imagine it. But it's not like to happen, at least, not in public.
Unlike the Democrats, it seems, to Fianna Fáilers, the party is everything.
It is more important than the economy, the health of the nation, crime, the poor - it is more important than anything, possibly or probably including, God.
While this makes for the creation of a political elite - think Cowen, Lenihan, Hanafin, Ahern, deValera, Haughey, Flynn and so on - it also makes for endless power and endless enjoyment of the trappings of power, not least large expenses, large salaries, jobs for the family etc.
If the American Democrats were as loyal to their party, by now either Billary or Obama would now be stuck into John McCain instead of being stuck into each other.
Healthy? Well maybe, if it wasn't for the fact that it's costing each of them a couple of hundred million dollars to fight the fight.
And which system is best?
In the heel of the hunt, probably the Swiss.
But when you think of all the dodgy money in their bank vaults, well, that's another day's work entirely.

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Represent Us But Don't Rule Us (How the Idiots Have Taken Over)

❍Hitler: A fine democrat

Democracy is a wonderful thing, someone once said.
It permits us to choose the fools who rule us.
Oh. It was me who said that.
Democracy. It sounds fine and dandy. It's, well, democratic.
George W Bush thinks every country in the world should have it. Except Iran. And Algeria. And anywhere else that has the temerity to elect people he doesn't like or with whom he disagrees.
Hitler was a democrat. Oh yes he was. He was elected.
Robert Mugabe was elected in a more or less fair manner to begin with at least.
Vladimir Putin was elected as was his successor Dmitry Medvedev.

If you look at any democratic country in the world, and I suppose for the purposes of this piece I'm talking about really democractic, you will find, without a shadow of a doubt, that many of those who have been elected are idiots.
It's not their fault. They have been chosen by their peers who, when it came to making the big decision decided, as it was their democratic right to do, that wanted an idiot to represent them.
It may have been for one of many reasons.
Maybe the idiot's father or mother or uncle or aunt or brother or sister had represented these people for generations and wasn't, in fact, an idiot. And so the descendant or relative got elected by extension, so to speak.
Maybe the idiot's father or mother or uncle or aunt or brother or sister was indeed an idiot but was a useful kind of idiot who got the local road resurfaced every now and then and got the pension for Mrs MacGillycuddy and a job in the civil service for that rather slow boy, Johnny from down the road. He might never have heard of Afghanistan or Burma or Zimbabwe or, for that matter, Berlin. But he got things done.
Either way, we end up with lots of idiots in our parliament and, indeed, every parliament in the world. These are people who need help dressing but can, unaided, tot up massive expenses, never miss a trick when it comes to tax and have junketted to the far corners of the world to see sewerage systems, street lights, schools and prisons, all of which we have in ample supply here at home.
So what's the point?
The point is this.
We elect these people, idiots and non idiots alike, to represent us. Not to rule us.
They should go to parliament and say: the people I represent do not want a tax on ice cream, the people I represent want a new motorway to be built to Gortahork; the people I represent want free jelly. Whatever.
And that's fine.
The problem arises when the idiots and, indeed, some of the non-idiots, are appointed to positions which actually mean they're running the show.
And so you end up with school teachers running energy departments and publicans running education departments and bus drivers running health departments and solicitors running the country.
We should elect our representatives to represent us.
But the job of running the country, should be left to people who know how to run countries.
Countries should be run by experts in education, finance, energy, transport, environment, defence and so on.
So.
Who chooses the experts to run the country....?
Ah.
Leave it with me.

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English Grammar Are Important

English are my first language.
I are speaking English since I were two years of age.
I are also able to spoke Irish and a little bit of French.
Language are important. It are important for communication. It are important to distinguish us from other species.
And so, it is important for we to preserve language.
It are important for the media to do so also.
Which is why it baffled me when I see newspapers such as the Irish Times and the London Times and broadcasters such as RTE in Ireland and the once venerable BBC, abandoned all pretence at the correct use of English.
Grammar are a thing of the past.
Oh, I can’t keep this up.
I find it a great deal easier to be correct than to be incorrect.

Why do the four institutions named above, seem to believe that the world government is plural?
Why do they think the word couple is plural?
And the words team, family, company, club, organisation, committee and syndicate?
Why is it always: “The government are...” and “the team are...” and “the couple are...”?
The BBC occasionally refers to itself in the plural: “The BBC are....”
And it’s not just grammar.
Listening to radio and television news, we are often informed that, for example, “a man was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for assaulting a man in the district court today.” To which I say that the district court is a pretty daft place in which to assault somebody.
What we should have been told, is that “a man was sentenced to six months imprisonment in the district court today, for assaulting another man.
Another example: “The Minister said he would tackle the difficulties in the economy when he arrived in Paris today.” To which I say, I wish he would tackle the difficulties in the economy before he goes to Paris at all.
What we should have been told was that “the Minister said, on his arrival in Paris, that he would tackle the difficulties in the economy.
And here’s another: “Gardai today named the man who died in a road accident yesterday.”
To which I say: That’s nice of them. What did they call him?
What we should have been told is that “gardai have released the name of the man...” and so on.
We are told that “over a million pounds has been stolen” when what is meant is “more than a million pounds has been stolen.”
The English language is constantly being eroded by laziness, bad teaching and bad example.
There is barely a politician in the English speaking world who has any grasp of grammar or syntax.
Indeed, George W Bush is marginally ahead of our own Bertie Ahern when it comes to the garbled use of English.
You may think none of this matters once we can understand each other.
Oh, but it does.
Man started off communicating by making basic sounds. “Ugh” “Oogh” “Aagh.”
The way we’re going, that’s the way we will be communicating in the not too distant future.
If you don’t believe me, ask a question of a moody teenager.
(PS You don’t need to tell me that I too make mistakes. I don’t claim to be perfect!)

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