Behind closed doors

  

It’s a laugh, a good, belly-clutching laugh, because most of the time most of the people we elect as our representantives live in a different world. Even people as admired as Mary McAleese do things you or I wouldn’t do in a thousand years ( Mary caught a government jet from Dublin to Belfast the other week, with a government car to deliver her at one end and collect her at the other).  So when they get caught saying one thing in public and something a lot less discreet in private, it’s schadenfreude time.

It’d be even more fun if we could forget that our reaction is totally unfair. It’s certainly a pleasure to see the world of the big-wigs sweating over the reaction to their indiscretions. But if your house had been bugged over the past six months, would you be happy for the tape to be played to your friends and neighbours? Different contexts prompt different kinds of language; we smile and wish someone a good morning, but that doesn’t prevent us mocking  them to our spouse later in the day. And that’s OK. If we were all honest all the time, we’d drive each other mad and make the world unworkable.  What was that old saying about our friends? Ah yes: if we knew what our friends really thought of us, we’d cut our throat.

Besides, we knew all along what was going on at the highest levels of politics, didn’t we? Of course US diplomats are busy collecting information on those they come in contact with. All diplomats do.   Of course the London embassy was happy to supply information about the relationship between William Hague and Alan Duncan, who is gay and who shared a London flat with Hague at one time. Governments aren’t at all squeamish in their pursuit of information that could be of use to them, and like most of us they’re a lot less polite about friends and foes when they’re behind doors.  Anybody with a smattering of common sense would know that.

Mind you, it’s still great fun catching the great and not-so-good with their pants down. More, please.

It was a bit like the economic crisis, wasn't it? We saw the Donegal South-West upset coming but it still was a shock to the system when it arrived. The figures tell the story: Fianna Fail’s vote share has gone from 50% to 21%, Sinn Fein's 21% to 40%. Almost but not quite a see-saw exchange. Fine Gael and Labour got 19% and 10% respectively.

What to make of it? Well if you’re the Irish Independent, you’ll get a big fat headline ‘History is littered with winners who lose out next time round’. I’m tempted to email the political editor who wrote the piece and ask him if he’s interested in a bet on Doherty retaining the seat, but I’m busy anticipating collecting some big money from Eoghan Harris, who has £1,000 riding on his belief that Fianna Fail will take not just Doherty’s seat but ALL the Sinn Fein seats. (No seriously – I have 500 witnesses to that)…Where were we? Oh yes. The Indo warns he’ll perhaps lose it inside weeks, Fianna Fail’s Mary Coughlan blames the Greens for the loss (go figger), Fine Gael says ach sure, nobody takes the by-election seriously with a general election looming, and Labour …Oh dear, poor Labour. For reasons best known to themselves, they opted to run Frank McBrearty. Now it’s true Frank McBrearty is a man who’s been grievously wronged by the gardai, but anyone who thinks he has the stuff that makes a political representative needs his head examined…What’s that? I’m speaking of Eamon Gilmore, the hammer of Fianna Fail, the man with the answer to our economic woes, the most popular party leader in Ireland? Do you know, I suppose I am.

The big question is, did we see in Donegal South-West a miniature of the coming general election? In this I’m in agreement with Fianna Fail’s Eamon O Cuiv. Probably tingling from the references to the fact that Sinn Fein last won a by-election in 1925 when his grandfather Eamon de Valera was in charge of Sinn Fein, O Cuiv says Donegal is not the model, otherwise the results would be like 1918 for Sinn Fein. Well no, Eamon. For a start 1918 included the north, didn’t it? And like every other major party in the south, you’re desperate to forget the north exists. But you’re right that Sinn Fein won't gain as many seats in a few weeks' time as they did in 1918. The question is, will they gain any seats? And if so, how many?

Nobody knows. Not Eamon O Cuiv, not Mary Coughlan, not Gerry Adams. But we do know one thing after Donegal. Anyone who thinks disgust with Fianna Fail will send Fine Gael and Labour sailing smoothly up on the other side of the see-saw is in for a major political kick in the teeth.

Brian, Bill and the faceless men

It’s a long way from Bill Clinton to Brian Cowen. Clinton is revered by most people in the US as the man under whose watch they enjoyed eight years of unrivalled prosperity, Cowen is detested as the man under whose watch the twenty-six counties plunged into an economic pit. Clinton was famed for his ability to ‘feel the pain’ of others; Cowen is denounced as a man out of touch with the concerns of ordinary people. At the end of his time in office, Clinton could have sailed into a third term had the law allowed it; at the end of his term in office, Cowen will be lucky to escape lynching.

And yet there is a link. A couple of months ago I attended a talk by Clinton at the Magee Campus of the University of Ulster. A central point in his talk was that all students emerging from high school should have a firm understanding of basic economics – how the economic system is organised at a local, national and international level. As the waves of rage have swept the twenty-six counties these past few days, the former president’s words have sounded more and more convincing.

Over ninety per cent of the population are like myself: they haven’t a clue about economics. They’ve never studied it, they don’t understand it. Listen to the politicians and pundits talking. They contradict each other, they contradict themselves, they don’t seem to understand the problem and they certainly haven’t got a convincing answer to it.

So when people lambast Cowen, they might want to ask themselves if the problem is less of his making and more that of a very old, external force: international capitalism? Irish banks can’t get money except at exorbitatant rates. What’s more, the people who won’t give them the money are they’re now intent on doing likewise to Portugal, Spain and any other victims they can put up against the wall. As a result, tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs and their homes, social benefits are being slashed along with wages - misery is being doled out in generous helpings. Granted, Cowen’s austerity package has targeted those with least and let those with most off lightly. But that’s the detail. The pig picture is of international money-lenders overwhelmng national governments. It’s capitalism versus democracy, and capitalism seems to be winning by a continental kilometre.

So let’s not heap all the blame on Brian Cowen. Against forces like that, Bill Clinton himself would have been impotent. Granted, I say all this as an economic illiterate. But isn’t that what they called Gerry Adams a couple of years ago, when he said the boom times were favouring the big boys, penalising the poor, and that reorganisation was needed?

Good God - it's Gilmore!

Rage – that’s the word of the moment in the south. The people of the twenty-six counties are consumed with rage that their government has screwed up so spectacularly and that it’s costing them, the people, so dear. The Irish cock-up that’s rocking all of Europe has three layers: the gobshites, the incompetents and the victims. The gobshites are the bankers who lied, overstretched and helped themselves to bloated bonuses. The incompetents are the government who mishandled the accounts, allowed the bankers and property developers to roar ahead full steam and led the state into a quagmire. The victims are the people.

A morally-appealing analysis but it doesn’t stand scrutiny. The bankers are of course gobshites – that’s in the nature of banks. But the banks didn’t put a gun to the head of the public, whether ordinary Sean Citizen or big-bucks Donal Developer, when it lent more than it had to lend. It was consenting adults who did the business, a joint misadventure. As for the government - a shower indeed. But remind me who was it voted them into office? And were they forced to make the choices they did? People get the kind of government they vote for, and people share the blame for government mismanagement.

The thing is, of course, to learn from your mistakes. Do better next time. And suddenly, stunningly, next time is now, or at least next month. The general election which was just over the horizon has suddenly come roaring up, its hot breath sending the government coalition reeling back in a paroxysm of finger-pointing: it was all Fianna Fail’s fault, it was all Brian Cowen’s fault, it was all the Greens’ fault. So come January, the Irish people living south of the border will be given a clean slate and have a chance to draw a new government picture.

What will it contain? Not Fianna Fail for a start. There’s unanimous agreement on that, including within Fianna Fail. The general thinking is that Fine Gael and Labour will benefit. Hooray! …Although, um, Enda Kenny as Taoiseach…He wouldn’t be Brian Cowen, which for a lot of people would be a definite plus; on the other hand he would be Enda Kenny, which for a lot more people would be a definite minus. As for Labour: the defender of the working man and woman, the party that sees through the sham that is government plans, the party that has its own clear and better alternative, which is to…What? Well, they’ll definitely not do what Fianna Fail did, for one thing, and they’ll…Mmm. Funny thing, I can’t remember just what it was that Labour plan to do. Apart, that is, from getting into government as quickly as possible. But what will they actually DO different? Ummm…

Have you heard about the man who finally, miraculously made it to dry land, staggered up the main street and was hit by a large truck? God preserve us all from the economic brilliance of Eamon Gilmore.

'Pope Says Yes To Condoms!'

Great headline, isn’t it? Cue Paul Merton and Ian Hislop wisecracks on Have I Got News For You. It’s a headline, however, that’s got little to do with the facts. The Pope’s statement, made in the course of an extended interview that will appear in book form, was a brief comment on the hypothetical case of a male prostitute. Faced with the choice between spreading AIDS and using a condom, such a person might opt for the lesser of two evils – using the condom. Not exactly breakthrough doctrine - the Catholic Church has always subscribed to the notion of acting on the lesser of two evils. Besides, in recent years a number of theologians as well as churchmen like the former Archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor, have suggested that condom use in certain situations might be morally acceptable.

So is the Pope’s thinking on this - issued as a personal view, incidentally - the start of a slippery slope? If it is, the vast majority of Catholics in the Western world are already at the bottom of that slope, waiting for the Pope and the official Church to join them. Look at the size of Catholic families in Ireland, England, the US, today compared to, say, 1950s. Of course Catholics are using artificial birth control methods. Teaching has lagged seriously behind overwhelming practice.

And don’t forget – this isn’t new territory. I remember 1966, when a papal commission recommended the relaxation of traditional Catholic teaching on contraception. Two years later raised hopes were extinguished when Pope Paul VI issued the encyclical Humanae Vitae, which maintained the traditional view.

A final and important point. There’s a strong temptation –to which much of the liberal media yield – to present the Pope as a celibate old man talking through his tiara about the unknown world of sex. However, if you look at this latest interview and others, and his writings, you’ll see he grounds his views on the belief that sex should be about more than exchanging bodily fluids. It should be a body and soul encounter, involving the whole person, not just the naughty bits. That’s a commendable view and one that it’d be nice to hear more frequently from those who lay claim to a moral perspective on the world.

Smile - it's the IMF gang

There’s  a contrary streak in me, I’m afraid. Surrounded by people celebrating, I find myself growing morose and miserable; in the midst of those solemn or crying doom, I feel an urge to start laughing. Wretch that I am, over the course of the last twenty-four hours I found myself grinning and sometimes guffawing out loud. Here are five of my top rib-ticklers.

1.    Watching Fianna Fail ministers bust a gut trying to deny that an IMF deal would impinge on Irish sovereignty. Like, if you’re about to go under for the third time and a guy says he’s going to throw you a life-belt but you’ll have to put up with some spartan conditions he’s arranged, once you get to shore – that’s not impinging on your sovereign right to make free choices?

2.    Hearing the bleating of twenty-six-county commentators and opposition politicians,  as they lamented the massive dent in sovereignty that the IMF coming in would represent,  how the sacrifice of 1916 was being betrayed – without a single one of them mentioning the north. Hello – guys? You remember the north. The six northern counties of Ireland, where all major political decisions are controlled from London and where 5,000 heavily-armed British troops make sure things stay that way. No loss of sovereignty there but massive loss of sovereignty in getting the finances straight?

3.    Looking at a photograph in today’s Guardian.  It shows Ajai Chopra, the deputy director of the European department of the International Monetary Fund, striding along a Dublin street with his underlings.  He’s staring straight ahead, which means he can pretend not to see the Dublin beggar who sits with his paper cup extended for a bail-out. Sorry, hand-out.

4.    Gasping at Steve Bell’s cartoon in The Guardian. It shows a helpless Brian Cowen strapped to a post, saying ‘ME? Bend over and SPREAD ‘EM? NEVER in a MILLION YEARS!!’  while behind him a dozen European elves carrrying a very stout post come charging towards his exposed bum.

5.    Finally and top-fun of all,  an SDLP apologist called Owen Polley writes in the VO this morning. He uses his article to explain why Maggie Ritchie wore that poppy and apparently it’s because she’s busy reconciling the SDLP’s ‘aspiration for Irish unity with longstanding acceptance of the principle of consent’. Eh? She is also ‘making a respectful, bridge-building gesture’ while at the same time ‘championing a 32-county republic’. And there’s more.  The article is 800 words long and the knock-out hilarity is that the writer doesn’t once use the four-word phrase ‘South Down unionist votes’. If young Polley had any wit, he’d turn from the tight-fisted payroll of the VO  and sprint towards the lucrative world of stand-up comedy. He’d be brilliant.

Books and spoofers

I  was on BBC Radio Ulster’s ‘Talkback’ programme yesterday, talking about children and young people’s books. The truth is, much of what youngsters experience in the classroom teaches them that books are boring, so those writers who encourage youngsters to read – people like Roald Dahl, Sue Townsend, ,  J K Rowling  – must be welcomed. But that wasn’t what we were talking about on Raidió Uladh yesterday. We were talking about adults who read children and young people’s books.  Maybe I’m biased. When I was a young man, I once found myself in a group which included a loud young woman who at the time was attending Queen’s University. The subject of favourite books came up and she informed us all that she simply loved  reading comics – the Beano, the Dandy, the Hotspur – you name it, she couldn’t get enough of it. Ever since I’ve had a hard time convincing myself that people who say they delight in reading literature written for youngsters are either suffering from arrested development or are look-at-me narcissists who deserve a kick in the arse more than serious attention.

That’s not to say that children’s and young people’s books can’t be good. Some of them are superb.  If you haven’t read Maurice Sendak’s books for children you’ve missed a treat; and back in the day, writers like S E Hinton and Judy Blume and Paul Zindel wrote novels that were pacy and hilarious and moving. When I was a parent of young children and a teacher of high school English, I read many of those authors. But I did it  because I wanted to locate books my children or pupils might want to read, not because I found it  an area of literature that satisfied my adult reading needs.

And that’s the nub of it. There’s no law to stop me wearing teenage clothes or going door-to-door doing trick-or-treat or spending my spare time reading comics. But if I did, you’d rightly decide I was a bit...strange. Maybe even sad. Except, of course, you decided I was simply intent on drawing attention to myself as a highly literate eccentric. In which case you’d have every justification for strapping on your kicking boots.