The Tree Which Makes Our Christmas

I love Christmas. I have always loved Christmas.
A long, long time ago, my father made Christmas magic for me.
It was as we left the house, in the dark, to go to Mass.
Suddenly, he looked skyward and asked me if I had seen Santa.
As he did, I heard the sleigh bells, I know I heard them. They were clear and loud and, well, jingly.
Of course, I didn't see the sleigh. But I heard the bells. That much was certain.
It was years later, when I lifted a bunch of keys off my desk, one day, that I realised how my father had made the sound of the bells.
He had rattled his keys. And he had made Christmas magic for me.
Of course, Santa had already been and gone by the time we were heading out to Mass, so I couldn't possibly have heard the real bells.

Now that we have little Charlotte in our lives, Christmas is more magical then ever.
She may not quite understand, at 20 months, what's going on. But we do.
And tomorrow morning, we know we will watch her little face light up as she unwraps the presents from Santa and from friends and family.
We have two Christmas trees, one in the living room and one in the kitchen.
And it is the one in the kitchen that makes this Christmas magic.
Because Connie has decorated it with the little shoes Charlotte wore in the first year of her life.
They remind us how lucky we are to have her, what a miracle life is, and what a wonderful gift from God our little girl is.
Tomorrow, we will go to Mass in Mount Argus where, like last year, I hope to fulfill my ambition of standing on the altar with all the other mammys and daddys with their children while we sing the Our Father.
It's emotional, and the likelihood is, a tear may run down my cheeck.
It's a truly moving experience.
And one that reminds us what Christmas is really about.
Happy Christmas.

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The Politically Correct Fairytale of New York

I'm putting this up for the benefit of anyone who doesn't get the Sunday World (shame on you.)
You may, or may not, know that the BBC removed the words 'slut' and 'faggot' from Shane McGowan's masterpiece, Fairytale of New York. They said the words may offend, though oddly, they left the word 'arse' in.
It was, of course, political correctness gone mad and they restored the words after a public outcry.
But just in case the PC brigade gets its way, I have cleaned the song up for them.
First, the words as Shane McGowan wrote them, then, the PC version.

Fairytale of New York (as written by Shane McGowan)

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The rare old mountain dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

They've got cars big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas Day

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas day

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

The boys of the NYPDchoir
Were singing "Galway Bay"
And the bells were ringing out
For Christmas Day



Fairtytale of New York (as the politically correct gobshites in BBC and elsewhere would have it)




It was December 24th, equal status female friend,
In the area set aside for the treatment of those with alcohol problems,
A senior citizen suggested that i seek medical help for fear that I may suffer fatal consquences from my condition in the coming twelve months,
Then he sang a song,
Which appeared to be about an alcoholic drink,
I was a bit rude, I admit, and turned away,
But I fell asleep and I dreamed of you.

I had a bet today - though I know that offends those in many religions -
And it came in at eighteen to one,
I have a feeling,
This year’s for me and you,
So Happy Christmas/Hannukah/Ramadan/Winter Solstice*
I love you equal status female friend,
I can see a better time,
When all our dreams come true

They’ve got high emission mechanically propelled vehicles the size of licensed premises,
They’ve got rivers of gold,
But the wind goes right through you,
And those in their senior years really should wrap up well or, better still, stay indoors,
When you first took my hand,
On a cold December 24th,
You promised me Broadway was waiting for me.

You were handsome but not in a way that suggests other males were less so,
And you were handsome too, in a similar way,
Queen of New York City,
When the band finished playing,
They cheered and shouted “encore”
Sinatra was swinging - though not in the irresponsible, partner swapping sexual sense,
And those with alcohol problems were singing,
We kissed on a corner
And danced through the night.

And the boys of the NYPD choir,
Were singing Galway bay,
And the bells were ringing out,
For the 25th of December.

You are clearly short of money,
And you like Seventies music similar to that once produced by the Sex Pistols,
And you, it has to be said, appear to be a woman of loose morals with a heroin problem,
Evidenced by the fact that you’re in hospital and on a drip to boot,
You’re not a nice person and you remind me of an insect of the kind people often use when they go fishing,
You are not expensive and you are possibly homosexual not that there’s anythiing wrong with that,
Happy Christmas/Hannukah/Ramadan/Winter Solstice* my bottom,
I pray to God/Buddah/Muhhamed/Yahweh/Nobody at all that we don’t have another one.

And the boys of the NYPD choir,
Were singing Galway bay,
And the bells were ringing out,
For the 25th of December.

I could have been someone,
Well,that’s true of everyone,
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you,
I kept them with me equal status female friend,
I put them with my own,
Can’t make it all alone,
I built my dreams around you.


And the boys of the NYPD choir,
Were singing Galway bay,
And the bells were ringing out,
For the 25th of December.


*For a full list of religious festivals from around the world held at this time of year, please send a stamped addressed envelope to, oh, the BBC.

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This is Ireland's Winter Wonderland

It's the same every year. The Christmas cards arrive and, almost without exception, they feature snow.
There are snowman. There are little cottages with snow on the roof. There are children playing in the snow. There are people tobogganing. There are buildings covered in snow.
Here in Ireland, companies send you cards which have digitally enhanced pictures on the front, showing their Dublin headquarters covered in snow.
Televisoin stations show us promotions. And there are always snow flakes.
Television advertisements feature snow, and some even feature Dublin scenes, covered in show.
Even the decorations on our streets are based on snow.
When was the last time it snowed at Christmastime in Ireland?
Some time around the birth of Christ, I'd wager.
So here is our new Christmas song. It's called Ireland's Winter Wonderland.
And, like the card above, it's true to life.

****

Car horns blare, traffic’s crawling,
Traffic jams, are appalling,
It’s nothing but rain,
It’s always the same,
This is Ireland’s winter wonderland.

Gone away is the summer,
Winter here is a bummer,
It rains cats and dogs,
There’s frost and there’s fog,
This is Ireland’s winter wonderland

In the meadow we can build a mudman,
And pretend that we’re in Sandy Lane,
But we know in our hearts that it’s a dudman,
And tomorrow ‘twill be lashing down again.

Later on, we’ll conspire,
As we sit by the fire,
Completely unfazed,
‘Cos we’re double glazed,
This is Ireland’s winter wonderland.

In the meadow we’ll swim in a puddle,
And pretend we’re on the Costa del,
But really in the cold we’ll all be huddled,
As the weather turns our Christmas into hell.

When it rains, it’s depressing,
In three layers you’ll be dressing,
You pray there’ll be snow,
But in your heart you know,
Not in Ireland’s winter wonderland.

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New Tara Find Will Change Nothing

❍The carved stone, found at Lismullen

IT’S a while since I mentioned Tara.
They’re firing ahead, as fast as they can, destroying the place.
How any archaeologist, with even a modicum of pride in what they do and what they are trained for, can aid and abet the destruction of 5,000 years of history is utterly beyond me.
The saddest thing of all in relation to the M3 is, that it is utterly unnecessary in the first place. It is being built to open up land for development and no other reason.
Soon, Fianna Fail and their lapdogs in the Green Party will oversee the construction of two more motorways through what once was the Royal County. That will bring to five the total number of motorways through Meath.
Add to that its incinerator, its dumps, its pylons and the gross overdevelopment of Bettystown and south Drogheda and you have all the evidence you need.

Of what?
Of utter ignorance, utter incompetence and, in our most historic county, an utter disdain for the past.
John Gormley is, of course, part of it all. His Pontius Pilate act is nothing short of a disgrace. Green? Not even vaguely. He can introduce all the carbon taxes he wishes. Gesture politics.
His buddy Eamon Ryan bans exploration for plutonium in Donegal because, he says, if we don’t use nuclear power, it would be hypocritical to allow uranium to be mined for use in other countries.
Typical of the nonsensical busy bodying of the Greens.
We allow prisoners to be brought through Shannon to be tortured God knows where. We allow troops to pass through Shannon to kill or be killed.
And I’m pretty certain that, in some industrial complex somewhere in Ireland, parts are made that ultimately end up in the weapons to be used by, again, God knows who.
Recently, a carved stone was found at Lismullen. It is as old if not older than Newgrange.
It won’t move Gormley or Noel Dempsey or, in particular, the chief philistine, Bertie.
If they found Tutankhamen’s tomb, it wouldn’t move Bertie. Likely as not, he has never heard of Tutankhamen.
The stone is just further proof, that the Tara/Skryne Valley is important, not just to Ireland, but to the world.
Irish travellers marvel at the antiquities in countries like Italy, Greece, Egypt, France, Cyprus, Malta - wherever.
Meanwhile, historic sites that could and should be preserved for posterity, for future generations and, indeed, for tourism, are being bulldozed by a government of ignorant, greedy buffoons.
We look back at our history, and we read of the wonderful people who built Newgrange and Knowth and Dowth. We look at places like Glendalough and Clonmacnoise and the Skellig Rocks. We think of our writers like Joyce and Shaw and Wilde and Yeats.
And we do so with pride.
Is it likely, do you think, there will be the same sense of pride when people look back at the achievements - or otherwise - of Ahern and Dempsey and Roche and Gormley?

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Some Things Change, Some Don't

IT’S almost Christmas.
It’s easy to tell how close Christmas is if you live in Dublin.
There are more vomit stains on the street.
There are more drunks and they appear earlier and earlier each day as Christmas Day gets closer.
Nobody will let you out into the ever worsening traffic jams.
Clampers are in overdrive.
Virtually every shopper in every shop is rude, behaving in a way they wouldn’t dream of at other times of the year.
You can’t get into pubs.
There is more violence, both on the street and domestically. It is almost inevitable at Christmas time, that some unfortunate woman will stab her husband, invariably fatally, after he arrives home drunk and penniless without money for food or presents for the children.

More people drink and drive.
Everybody is short of patience.
And children are greedier than ever before.
It’s likely that each of us are at least a little bit guilty (I know, I know, it’s like being a little bit pregnant) of at least some of the behaviour outlined above.
And I know that when someone my age talks about it being worse now than ever, other, younger, people put it down to my being a grumpy old man.
They’re half right.
I AM a grumpy old man.
But I am a grumpy old man because it IS worse than ever.
I wonder how much of Ireland’s new found wealth ended up, literally, going down the toilet?
Poverty, you see, has a disciplining effect. I you haven’t got the money to drink, you can’t drink.
If you haven’t got the money to splash out on ridiculously expensive and utterly unnecessary luxuries to hand out as presents, you can’t buy them.
If you can’t afford cocaine - or the new favourite in Dublin, Champagne, vodka, red Bull with a spoonful of cocaine stirred into it - you can’t buy it.
Nobody wants to go back to the bad old days. Well, not all the way back.
But it would be nice if we lived in a country run by people who were less concerned with their own salaries and more concerned with the fact that they expect pensioners to live on one-twentieth of what they pay themselves.
It would be brilliant to live in a wealthy country that had sufficient schools for its children.
It would be marvellous to live in a country which had a health service rather than a health system.
Ireland is now the kind of country where three young people died from cocaine overdoses in one week.
It is the kind of country where suicide is epidemic.
It is the kind of country where we wonder not if there will be another gangland murder soon, but only when and where it will be.
And it is the kind of country, where Christmas is seen as an opportunity to get drunker more often than normal, where cocaine supplies have been bulked up for the festive season, where prices go through the roof, where selfishness abounds and where, it seems, there is more concern about what’s on television or what is going to be the Christmas Number One, than there is about people and more especially, the people who are concerned about where they will get shelter on Christmas Day, where they will get something to eat and who they will have, if anyone, to talk with.
The Christmas message is all but lost.
Children, I would bet, wouldn’t mention the birth of Jesus in their top five Christmassy things.
And that is profoundly sad.
Because while celebrations, gifts, giving and receiving and traditional fare all have their part to play at this time of year, so too do decency, charity, prayer and reflection.
Last year, I had what was, I suppose, a slightly selfish ambition for Christmas.
It was to be able to stand on the altar in Mount Argus with all the other mums and dads and children, during the children’s Christmas Day Mass, with my daughter Charlotte, as they sang the Our Father. It is a tremendously moving moment every Sunday, but especially on Christmas Day.
I achieved that ambition.
And this year, it is exactly the same.

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Ireland's Prosperty: How it Started and How it Will End

From where did our recent and famed prosperity come?
The truth is, it came from lots of sources.
And here are some:
Europe, who pumped in billions without which prosperity would not have arrived.
The efficiency of John Bruton’s government which, if it was still in power, wouldn’t have us in this mess.
Jack Charlton.
Ray Houghton’s goal in Stuttgart to beat England.
U2.
Bob Geldof and his role in Live Aid.
Michael O’Leary and Ryanair.
Seamus Heaney.
Maeve Binchy
Father Ted
Bailey’s Irish Cream.

Riverdance.
Terry Wogan.
Temple Bar.
The IFSC.
The Royal Hospital
And even the Rosc exhibition
(and yes, I know they’re all Haughey inspired)
The DART.
Italia ‘90.
Rugby’s resurgence.
Pearse Brosnan.
Liam Neeson.
Gabriel Byrne.
Neil Jordan.
Jim Sheridan.
Roddy Doyle.
Low corporate taxes.
The US economic boom.
Peace, more or less, in the North.
Bill Clinton.
Pope John Paul II’s visit.
The building boom.
The house price boom.
Immigration.
Celebrity immigration.
Eddie Jordan.
Braveheart, Saving Private Ryan and other blockbuster movies.
Golf.
Stag parties.
Hen parties.
Multiplex cinemas.
Greater access to third level education.
Dermot Desmond.
Denis O’Brien.
Sean Quinn.
Michael Smurfit.
Harry Crosbie.
Dennis Desmond.
Jim and Peter Aiken.
John Fitzpatrick and his hotels in New York and Chicago.
The Cat Laughs Festival.
Oxegen, despite the spelling.
The Electric Picnic.
Vicar Street and The Point.
Croke Park.
The ‘new’ Gaa.
Rocket.
Sushi.
Bagels.
Parmesan Cheese.
Good restaurants.
A taste for wine.

And one thing that will kill it forever:
Greed.

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To Be Brutally Honest...

I am going to be honest. Don’t know why. Maybe it’s because the utter dishonesty of politicians is annoying me more than it ever did.
If you read my profile, you will know what I’m like.
Pretty cool guy.
I like cool music. And I like cool books. And I like cool movies.
And it’s all true.
But it’s not all.
Here goes.
Despite their being as uncool as it is possible to be, I like Keane. I actually like some of what James Blunt does. I like
Gilbert O’Sullivan. (A mate of mine, since deceased, once joined me singing Gilbert’s back catalogue at a pre-gig reception before a Bruce Springsteen concert. How cool is that?)

And I actually don’t give a damn what anyone says, I liked the Frog Chorus.
Mind you, Keane and Blunt are the only two on the Virginmedia list of top ten uncool artists I actually like. I would draw the line at the likes of Phil Collins or Celine Dion.
I like a lot of cool movies. But I also like the first three or four Carry On movies. I like virtually all World War II movies, especially the dodgy ones like The Dirty Dozens and Where Eagles Dare and such like.
I love the Ealing comedies and movies of that ilk, The Man in the White Suit, The Titfield Thunderbolt, School for Scoundrels. I love Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, anything with Alistair Sim, Alec Guinness, Terry-Thomas and so on.
I like any movie that makes me cry, even crappy tv movies.
(Another confession. I saw Love Story three times on three consecutive nights with three different girls. And it was only on the third night I had to pretend to cry.)
And if they have a Christmas theme all the better.
(Plea for help: I once watched a movie with my sister about a businessman who was mugged in New York whose clothes were stolen by a hobo. The man lost his memory and the hobo, wearing his clothes, was killed by a train.
His family thought him dead.
But one Christmas, his memory returned and he went back to his home town at Christmas and watched his now grown-up children go to church with their children. He then went to their house, while it was snowing of course, and looked in the window as they celebrated Christmas. His son spotted him through the window and went out to him. Not knowing who he was the son said: “Come in old man whoever you are and have Christmas with us.”
Happy ending I thought.
But the old man said “No” and walked away.
And my sister and I wept for a week.
If you recognise the movie, let me know. I fancy a good weep.)
I love It’S A Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34th Street, Home Alone, that kind of thing.
And when it comes to books, I love Kafka and Camus and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
But I love Stephen King even when he’s at his worst. I love Joseph Wambaugh. I love a bit of chicklit.
And when it comes to television, I’d watch any British cop show. Rebus, Silent Witness, The Linley Mysteries, Miss Marple, Taggart and so on.
I follow Corrie and EastEnders. I love Grand Designs and Property Ladder. I loved Butterflies, I loved Ever Decreasing Circles, I loved The Good Life.
I watch the Late Late Show, I listen to Tubridy, I think Ronan Collins is brilliant.
I think Tommy Flemming and Liam Lawton have brilliant voices.
I've always enjoyed Joe Dolan.
I When it comes to comedy, I loved all Ronnie Barker’s stuff.
I think Tommy Cooper was the best of them all, with Les Dawson close behind.
I loved Morecambe and Wise but never got a laugh out of Dick Emery or Benny Hill.
I find Russell Brand funny. I laugh at Jack Dee. I thought Bill Hicks a genius.
Currently, Peter Kay is miles ahead of anyone.
I don’t actually find Tommy Tiernan funny though he apparently finds himself hilarious. I think Jimmy Carr unbelievably unfunny.
And I admire Podge and Rodge for getting away with the same gag for so long.
Why am I getting this off my chest now?
Because I came into the hospital at 9.15 this morning and had my bloods taken. It is now 3.00pm and I’m still here having been told to wait, the doctor would see me in a minute.
Haven’t seen her yet.
Which reminds me.
I loved the Doctor movies - Doctor in the House, Doctor at Sea - too.
One last thing.|
Why don’t they show the Beatles’ movies on telly at Christmas time anymore?
Yes, I think they're brilliant too. And not at all dated.

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I'm Glad Ireland Is Not In Africa. (Or Am I?)

I am, kind of, glad that Ireland is not in Africa.
If it was, there would have been a coup a long, long time ago.
Why?
Well, all the ingredients are there.
We have a prime minister who is paying himself and his cronies more than just about any other leader in the world. And he’s doing it with public money, money taken off the people in taxes.
In addition to that, he has taken ‘loans’ from friends. These ‘loans’ weren’t ‘loans’ at all until it was discovered that he had received them. Up to that point, not a cent had been paid back.
He then lies, or at least doesn't tell the truth, to a tribunal of investigatioin.
And he won't explain what it was necessary for him to abandon the banking system and hide money in a safe while he was going through his separation.
I can only presume, despite his record, that he declared the money in the safe as part of his assets when he was required to do so.
Furthermore, he managed to wangle himself a bank loan of £19,000 without formally applying for it and without having to pay anything back for 18 months. It’s clear, he wouldn’t have got the loan if he had not been Finance minister at the time. And using your position for personal gain is more or less the definition of corruption.

If he could do the job, you might turn a blind eye.
But look at the country.
The health service is an unmitigated disaster, kept afloat only by the incredible and largely unrewarded efforts of the frontline workers.
It is top heavy with overpaid administrators who couldn’t run the proverbial in the brewery.
Our road network is still in an horrendous state. For years, little bits of motorway and dual carriageway were built here and there. This was a) to facilitate local political and electoral need and b) to avoid the legal requirement to open such schemes up to tender from construction companies in Europe.
Currently, only two cities on the island of Ireland are linked by motorway/dual carriageway. And Belfast and Dublin are linked for ideological reasons, not infrastructural.
When roads are built, they’re built badly and with little concern for history, culture, heritage or archaeology.
The M50 is, quite simply, a joke and it will always be a joke. And it will become an even more ridiculous joke when the National Roads Authority - possibly the most inept body in the world - is given control of the Westlink toll bridge.
The National Roads Authority. That’s the body that was charged with building roads to bypass towns and villages and then refused to allow services along the new roads telling people they could go into the towns and villages.
It is the body charged with signposting Ireland. Honestly. Someone is actually in charge of that.
It is the body which believed a bramble hedge was sufficient barrier in the central median of a motorway.
It’s another joke.
The Department of Education can’t build sufficient schools.
The Department of Sport is paying for the building of Lansdowne Road, a stadium too small by half, having funked building a national stadium.
It is also at least partially responsible for the pay-for-pay debacle in t he GAA.
The Minister for Social Welfare can keep a straight face telling us that €300 a week is sufficient for pensioners, when his pay rise alone is almost twice that.
The Minister for Enterprise is watching jobs vanish.
The Minister for the Gaeltacht has created division in Dingle where there was none.
The Minister for Justice is presiding over a brutal gang war, a police service corrupt in parts and a system that sees fewer gardai on the streets now than there were in the sixties.
As for the ‘Green” Party ministers, it seems there is a direct relationship between the amount of money they’re paid and the abandonment of their principles.
And as for the ‘independents’ they have, largely, been bought.
The years of prosperity are over, and the only ones with anything to show at the end of it all, are politicians who received more than twenty pay rises, and the construction industry.
It’s an outrage. It’s a scandal. It’s a tragedy.
We still have the desperately poor. We still have in sufficient places for the intellectually disabled. We have virtually no facilities for those who wish to try and beat their addiction to drugs.
We have nothing.
So maybe, at the end of it all, it’s a pity we’re not in Africa.

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Unbridled Joy as England Lose

THERE is a certain type of person, a politically correct type of person, who doesn’t approve of Ireland’s schadenfreude in relation to many things English.
Last night, I tried hard, very hard, to feel sorry for the English soccer team and, indeed, English soccer fans, when they were beaten 2-3 by Croatia at Wembley.
I tried to feel as I felt when Ireland bowed out of the European championships. I tried to feel the disappointment of the fans who had planned a summer of sport in Austria and Switzerland. I tried to feel sorry for players I like such as Wayne Rooney and Michael Carrick and Steven Gerrard and so on.
But I failed. I couldn’t do it.
It’s just not possible.

Now, when I wrote about this in the Sunday World, the last time England bowed out of some tournament or other (it wasn’t cricket. I support them to a degree at cricket) I received a bagfull of mail telling me how immature I am (I acknowledge that) how juvenile I am (no problem there) and how racist and bigoted I am.
Whoa! Not guilty.
My desire to see England lose at, well, soccer, rugby, tennis and a few other sports here and there, stems not from events in 1169 or, indeed, 1607 or for that matter, 1798 or 1916 or even 1972.
It has nothing whatsoever to oppression, perceived or otherwise.
It has nothing to do with the Irish being ‘colonised’ or ‘downtrodden’ or anything of that sort.
It has nothing to do with some of England’s more odious monarchs or the real and actual hardship imposed on Ireland over the centuries.
No, it has a great deal more to do with John Motson and Jimmy Hill and The Sun and Ian Wright than it has to do with history.
It is an extraordinary thing that English football pundits seem to think that any tournament without them in it, isn’t worth having at all.
In fairness to Motty, he acknowledged on Wednesday last, just how utterly lousy the current English team is.
But hardly had he said as much, when Ian Wright was blathering on about how England deserved to be at the finals. No they didn’t, Ian. They didn’t win a sufficient number of games and, hence, didn’t garner a sufficient number of points. It’s simple.
When it comes to rugby, you think Stuart Barnes and Brian Moore and The Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph.
But mostly you think Martin Johnson and how the arrogant lump insulted Mary McAleese and, by extension, Ireland, with his behaviour at Lansdowne Road a couple of years ago.
Rugby players are, in the main, a well-bred bunch, mannerly and so on.
But there’s always an exception.
And if Johnson didn’t do it for you, surely the reaction of their media to their jammy wins in the Rugby World Cup did.
When it comes to tennis, you think Tim Henman. It’s not so much Tim’s fault as it is the media’s. They built him up and up and up. Henman Hill, for God’s sake. What was that all about.
And anyway, I find the name Spiderman reasonably impressive. Batman isn’t bad. Superman is brilliant.
But Henman?
I’m afraid it will always be the same for us, or at least, most of us.
The next best thing to Ireland winning is England losing.
You know, the funny thing about our win against England in Stuttgart, is that it was celebrated as much in Glasgow and on the Shankill Road as it was in the Republic of Ireland.
Indeed, when Ireland was drawn with England again in the World Cup in 1990, a reporter asked a woman on the Shankill Road, how she wanted the Irish team to do.
“Beat England - and lose all their other games,” she said.
Just about says it all, really.

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Profiles in Greed

CAN you remember the last time a politician in this country did something courageous?
As a rule, our politicians are opportunistic, selfish and small-minded.
They are guided entirely by political expediency, not by any moral imperative.
They build schools and hospitals and roads in places that will provide the greatest return electorally. Those with any kind of power pour money into their own constituencies to the detriment of other areas.
Our leaders - an inappropriate word if ever there was one - make deals, expedient and opportunistic deals, with people, regardless of who they are or what they have done or what they stand for. The likes of Beverley Flynn and Michael Lowry may be rehabilitated in Bertie Ahern’s mind. But that just goes to show what a nasty place that is.

When was the last time an Irish minister resigned, voluntarily, for doing or saying something wrong, for causing offence, for wasting money or just because he or she felt morally obliged to make a principled stand? (On that score, if Bertie had been in just about any other democracy in the world, he would have quit over his over signing blank cheques for Charlie Haughey when the dogs in the street were barking about his corruption. He would have walked once his dodgy dig-outs became public, he would have submitted his resignation over his mysterious ‘money in the mattress’ during his separation. But he wouldn’t have been there at all if he had had the manners to quit after suggesting that those who moaned about the economy should go off and commit suicide.)
Every move an Irish politician makes is inspired only by self-interest.
Since going into government (in the mistaken belief that the 500 or so in the Mansion House, who endorsed the decision to go into government represented the 86,000 voters who voted Green) John Gormley has been busy telling us what he cannot do rather than having the courage to actually do something.
He recently managed to outfudge his Fianna Fail colleagues when it came to explaining how he was spending tax payers’ money on his office and constituency workers. Power corrupts etc.
Our politicians have built roads and railways where they believe such schemes will win them votes. For years, little bits of dual carriageway littered the country, each one built to satisfy local political needs. One utterly bizarre stretch in Mayo, was even nicknamed the “Pee Flynn bypass.”
Wood Quay was destroyed because politicians feared the wrath of unions representing local authority workers, just as the M3 is now being built on a route recommended only by those who will benefit financially from its construction. Not one of the area’s elected representatives had or has the courage to put heritage ahead of self interest.
Some years ago, representatives of Irish politicians were given the “Profile in Courage Award,’ an accolade named after the book written by John F Kennedy, for their work on the peace process.
It has, before and since, been given to politicians who have made enormous sacrifices, who have lost their jobs - who have lost just about everything - because they put right before self-interest.
I cannot imagine it, ever again, being awarded to an Irish politician.
Sure, I can think of exceptions. I can think of Joe Higgins, I can think of Richard Boyd Barrett and a few others who, even if I don’t agree with everything they say and do, stick to their principles despite knowing that by doing so their are lessening their chances of getting elected. The Labour Party too, refused to prostitute itself after the general election which was the honourable, if not profitable, course.
I used to think to he Greens in the same way, but no more.
We now live in a country where Dail seats are passed on to brothers and sisters, widows and children as if they were a favourite old armchair or a wad of cash left in a will.
We live in a country where politicians are becoming less and less accountable, where the Freedom of Information Act has been watered down simply because it allowed people the freedom to get information.
We live in a country where politicians, presumably to compensate themselves for no longer being able to accept bribes and handouts, give themselves pay rise after pay rise.
We live in a country where new laws are brought in in jig-time to allow for the abolition of the very tribunals which are exposing Bertie Ahern’s duplicity and dishonesty.
It is a country where the prime minister believes a pay rise of more than the average industrial wage is not only justified, but merely a ‘token amount.’
So, just think about these words:
“In whatever arena of life one may meet the challenge of courage, whatever may be the sacrifices he faces if he follows his conscience – the loss of his friends, his fortune, his contentment, even the esteem of his fellow men – each man must decide for himself the course he will follow. The stories of past courage can define that ingredient – they can teach, they can offer hope, they can provide inspiration. But they cannot supply courage itself. For this each man must look into his own soul.”
John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
Those words mean nothing to politicians in this country.
Instead, our politicians are greedy, grubby people.
And, yes, that is a moan.
And no, Taoiseach, I won’t go off and kill myself.

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