The Mayor of Belfast and a shameful affair

It’s good to see for once that the public of Belfast appear to be united against a shameful affair. I’m referring, of course, to the case of the British Army cadet who wasn’t given  a Duke of Edinburgh award by the Lord Mayor Niall Ó Donnghaile. There really is a point where people have to say enough is enough, whether that’s by words or actions – or in this case refusal to act. 

Because what we have here is a 15-year-old who has been encouraged along the path of organized violence.  This child has barely reached the age of puberty, yet she has been enlisted in an organization where people are taught to kill other people – with guns, with grenades, with tanks, with rockets, with bombs. Last year cash-strapped Britain spent over £38 billion on training and equipping people to kill or threaten to kill other people. To that you can add another £34 billion for the Trident nuclear replacement, a death-programme designed to kill civilians by the million. Meanwhile there are nearly three million people out of work in Britain today, while those who are in work are having their pensions gutted and their pay slashed to fill the pockets of bankers and bond-holders. 

It’ll be three more years before this cadet child is allowed to vote. It’ll be three more years before she can get married without his parents’ consent. Yet right now, without a murmur from anyone, she is being inducted into the world of weapons, violence,  mutilation and death. Thank God someone at last has had the courage to refuse to lend his office to this corruption of the young. Maith thú, Lord Mayor – well done! 

Peter Hain and the horrible hackers

The Germans have a word for it - schadenfreude.  Loosely translated, it means taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. So how did you feel when you heard about Peter Hain this morning? Apparently bronzed Peter's computer, which may have contained "sensitive security information" was hacked by people working for newspapers while he was British secretary of state for this warped corner .  This follows yesterday's testimony to the Levison Inquiry, when the British intelligence officer Ian Hurst aka Martin Ingram, who is understood to have run informers within the IRA , said that his computer had been hacked by people working for The News of the World. Both Peter and Martin are seriously upset by this fact.

I'm not. Yes, I know that's socially irresponsible, and I know Peter and Martin have all our interests at heart, but I don't feel upset at the news. There was a time - there may well be still a time - when an awful lot of people here assumed their phone-calls were being monitored, their emails intercepted, their movements tracked at every turn. You didn't have to be a criminal or a terrorist - it was enough if the authorities thought you might, um, bear watching. Have criminal tendencies. And now that you and I have access to Google Earth for free, which can let us see into our neighbour's back garden,  imagine what the security boys can do with their professional, paid-for-by-you-and-me equipment. That little nick on the back of your thumb? Right now somebody is probably studying that through a satellite spy-camera. Back in the 1970s and 1980s, there were those who were highly insulted if they thought their phone-calls weren't being tapped. Whaddyamean, I'm not important enough?

So there is a delicious kind of irony at Hain and Hurst/Ingram going all puff-cheeked about News International taking a look at what they were up to. Is that because  H and H had important information to conceal and we hadn't/haven't? If that's the case, what were they doing spying on us in the first place?

Chomp. That's the sound of the biter being bitten. Put on your party hat - it's schadenfreude time.

The BBC, a woman in a shower and your head's cut

I once knew a woman who talked aloud in the shower. Her husband said she did it to rid herself of the torment of l'esprit de l'escalier.  Which means literally 'the staircase wit'. It's when you are on your way home, or just before you fall asleep or, yes, going down the stairs from somebody's place, and you suddenly think of what you SHOULD have said during that argument when thingummybob said whatever it was. Grrrr and feck, you say. Dadblame it anyway, why didn't I? I gather that's what this woman used to say, except that she used far more colourful and forceful words.

I thought of her on my way home from BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh yesterday. I'd been on Sunday Sequence and the subject under discussion had been RTÉ's treatment of Fr Kevin Reynolds which has cost them (actually cost the southern tax-payer) a seven-figure sum. Allegedly. So there I was on Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh, throwing in my little two-cents' worth and trying to sound coherent, even though I was on my way to the A & E at the Royal to get a few facial stitches, having cleverly stood on a dangling trainer-lace while jogging about two hours' earlier.  Anyway, I likened the deplorable treatment of Kevin Reynolds with the deplorable treatment of Martin McGuinness by RTÉ, when Miriam O'Callaghan saw fit to single him out and ask him, during a live presidential debate, "Do you go to confession?"

So what triggered my thoughts of that woman and her l'esprit d'escalier? Well, when I raised that "Do you go to confession" point as deplorable RTÉ journalism, presenter William Crawley brushed it aside: "Oh not at all, a perfectly acceptable question, John Kerry was asked the same question in a presidential debate in the US some years ago". So I came back, quick as a flash and said "Uh er um, ah, mmm,ugh". Very intelligent, you got that one. It was only when I was turning onto the M2 that l'esprit d'escalier struck: why in the name of all that's rational hadn't I responded with "How does doing it in America make it right?" Simple question, which would have exposed the flimsiness of Crawley's comment. Grr and feck and dadblame and some other more colourful and forceful words.  There's no flagellation like self-flagellation.

Catholics voting for the union

Compared to television, radio is a discussion-friendly medium. That’s  because you don’t have to have interesting pictures to go with every word spoken. But only when it's compared to TV. When compared to real-life, radio discussion is thinner than Twiggy. 

An example. On Monday last I was on The Stephen Nolan Show on BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh. The topic was a recent claim by Peter Robinson  that the future of the union with Britain may depend on Catholics  voting for it. A startling claim and one that bears examination.  Why might the First Minister have come out with this when he did?  

Demographics might be one reason. Figures out last month showed  that in universities here, Catholics comprise nearly 50% of the student population, Protestants around 35%.  The Times  (in which Robinson originally made his claim) cites a recent national audit where children here were asked how they saw themselves: 53% of girls and 55% of boys said Catholic. So with the rumble of that particular demographic tumbril sounding in his ears, maybe Peter is hoping, that not only will Catholics learn to live like Protestants, as Terence O'Neill once famously claimed they could, but that they’ll learn to vote like them too. 

Or maybe it's the unionist opposition Peter has his eye on. There's what's left of the UUP and there's  the Alliance Party, which you’ll remember whipped his Westminster seat from under him last time out. If you picture Catholics having to choose between say, Nelson McCausland (DUP) and  Mike Nesbitt (UUP) or Naomi Long (Alliance), there’s little doubt either the UUP man or the Alliance woman would get the nod. So maybe this is Peter trying to smooth the Catholic-rough corners of the DUP and snooker the opposition. 

Meanwhile back at the Nolan Show on Monday, the switch-board was lighting up as a number of Catholics phoned in to say they’d vote to maintain the link with Britain rather than join a bankrupt republic. What held them back from voting for unionist parties here, they said,  was the stink of sectarianism coming off them. Maybe Peter hopes his statement will get the air-freshener working on his party and that nose-holding Catholics will troop in. 

But what if economics isn't at the heart of this at all? I talked to a unionist politician a while back and he swatted away the economic argument for union. When the south was booming, he said, unionists were against re-unification; now it’s bust  and they still don’t want to join. Might it be that nationalists feel the same way about breaking the link  with Britain? Maybe when the chips are down it’s not actually the economy, stupid, after all. 

Certainly economics wouldn’t be my first or sole reason for favouring Irish re-unification, free from British interference. Were the man living next door to me to move in and start running my financial affairs, he’d probably make a better fist of it than I do. But I still wouldn’t let him cross the threshold  - in fact I'd brain him if he tried.  Why ? An old-fashioned thing called self-respect. I figure I’m all growed-up now, and as a grown-up I must make the decisions, not some next-door-neighbour, however pleasant or rich he may be. 

One last point: you hear a lot of talk these days about people in the north not wanting to become part of a bankrupt republic.  Fair enough; but then nobody’s suggesting they do. When you mix green and orange you don't get all-green, you actually get brown - a totally different colour.  Were we to re-unite the amputated bits of Ireland, free from outside interference, you’d get a new republic. Talk about a fairly-run-down northern state being swallowed up by a totally-run-down southern state is painting a pretend-ogre. 

But as I say,  radio discussion doesn't leave room for much elaboration or nuance. The guy that phones in and sounds fighting mad - it's his voice that hogs the air-time. It doesn't cast much light but the heat is terrific.

Arlene Foster - What fracking interest?

I once went to a movie called Giant in the County Cinema in Omagh. It starred Rock Hudson and was all about Texas and ranchers and cowboys and oil and stuff. I’ve forgotten everything in it except one moment where Rock is in a field on his own. Looking very soulful, he bends down and lifts a handful of soil and holds it against the sky: “The good earth!” he murmurs.

Maybe that’s what Arlene Foster’ll be at down in Fermanagh this weekend  - or maybe she’ll leave that to her husband.  Arlene’s hubby, you see, owns a little parcel of 54  acres down there.  Arlene’s department has granted a licence for shale gas exploration in the area and whaddyaknow, the area includes her hubby’s 54 acres! Arlene was involved in discussion of the licence application and expressed her belief that the licence be granted. This had nothing to do with her hubby’s little bit of ground, however.

A number of MLAs begged to differ. They said “You know, Arlene, you really should have told us about this when we were debating the matter – declared your interest, to wit, that your hubby owns 54 acres of the exploration area”.  In fact  one MLA, Stephen Agnew of the Green Party,  said Arlene should get the sack for keeping the hubby’s land-thing under wraps during the debate. The right and fitting thing would have been to  ‘fess up about a vested interest in the matter at the time.  What interest?  Arlene demanded, like a woman whose virtue has been impugned. Sure it’s my husband has it, not me. And when Noel Thompson on the BBC's ‘Hearts and Minds’ asked her party leader about the notion of sacking Arlene, why, he nearly fell off his studio chair. Sack her? Peter demanded. Why, what rubbish! Arlene has no vested interest. Her husband has, but that’s different.

So now. There we were thinking that down in Fermanagh they took the marriage vows seriously. Especially the one about “All my worldly goods I thee endow”.  But maybe Arlene and her hubby had a different ceremony, or had a little footnote inserted to the effect that yes, all worldly goods we us endow, share and share alike, barring the hubby should happen to find himself with a wee 54-acre patch in the middle of a shale-gas exploration area, in which case that particular worldly good will be his and his only.

So this weekend, should you see a figure down in Fermanagh with a fistful of ground and muttering,  you’ll know who it isn’t. Hubby can shove his fist in  the ground and go on about the good earth until the cows come home across the fracking area  but include Arlene strictly out.  

Sometimes, you know, the DUP are just so damned loveable. A marital partner gets caught in the media headlights  and they just kind of, well, they go all so wobbly-lipped or uneasy or sort of hurt/angry, you want to kiss the sore spot and say “There, there, little man (or woman), it’ll be better in a minute, don’t oo fret oor little heady-weady about it, before oo know it,  those naughty naughty reporter people will have forgotten the whole fracking thing.”

It was never like this for Rock Hudson.

 

Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich - a life well-lived

I don't know what sins the late Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich was guilty of, but I feel certain his good qualities will easily outweigh them. TG4 aired  an excellent documentary on his life last night and somebody used the word "ebullience" of him. Good word. He had a life-giving energy, a warmth that not all Irish cardinals (or clerics of any rank) share. Two scenes from the documentary stick in my mind. One is of him on the Late Late Show, I think, in the midst of a group of singers, joining vigorously in a chorus of an Irish song. You could tell he was revelling in the company, the song, the occasion. Tim Pat Coogan testified to the fact that he (the cardinal) had "a heavy hand" with the whiskey bottle  - that he enjoyed a well-filled glass and he enjoyed sharing with others. Again, not a characteristic associated with all the higher echelons of the clergy - or not publicly anyway.

But it was his response to the blanket protest and the Hunger Strike of the 1980s that was most impressive. At a time when other Catholic clergy, including Cardinal Cathal Daly and even the Pope,  were strong in their words of criticism and condemnation of republicans, Ó Fiaich was the only one I remember who actually went into Long Kesh and came out to tell reporters what he saw. He compared conditions to the worst slums of Calcutta - "conditions in which you wouldn't keep an animal, let alone human beings". This didn't make him popular with the British, of course, or with that strand of Irish political thought represented by Garret Fitzgerald. In fact, he was hauled over the coals by no less an ethicist than Maggie Thatcher. For some twenty minutes she lectured  Ó Fiaich - a highly respected Irish historian - on the history of Ireland and Britain, ending her harangue with the impatient question "Britain and Germany have become friends - why can't Britain and Ireland?" That, it seems, was the point where  Ó Fiaich got fed up and pointed out that maybe an answer lay in the fact that Britain  wasn't occupying the Ruhr Valley.

Like Charlie Haughey's wonderfully ambiguous gift of a teapot to Britain's prime minister, that rejoinder alone makes  Tomás Ó Fiaich's life worth living.                                                                                                            

Mistakes, lies and selective outrage

I love the way people use words. Take the word “mistake”.  At present it’s being used by RTÉ. They speak of “One of the gravest editorial mistakes ever made” by the national broadcaster. They’re referring, as you probably know, to the showing of a Prime Time programme where they presented as fact that a  Fr Kevin Reynolds had raped a minor and had a child by her when he was working in Kenya 30 years ago. This, despite the fact that Fr Reynolds had offered to take a paternity test prior to the programme’s airing.

Abuse of words frequently, as George Orwell liked to point out, reflects abuse of truth. What was made by RTÉ over the Reynolds programme was not a mistake, except you see getting caught out as a mistake. It was a decision. They decided to bash on regardless, very likely on the assumption that the public would lap up without question yet another case of clerical sexual abuse. They did this, knowing that the programme would destroy Fr Reynolds’s reputation and inflict mental and emotional suffering on an innocent man.  Their “mistake” wouldn’t have been unearthed if Fr Reynolds hadn’t taken them to court, and he wouldn’t have been able to take them to court if he hadn’t been supported by some decent lawyers working ‘pro bono’.

Pat Rabbitte, never a man to shirk a big word, says we need an independent inquiry to know why such an “egregious error” was made. “There is extensive public disquiet about the case and it involves the national broadcaster. Taken together, this provides the basis for the decision that was taken”. The decision, that is, to hold an inquiry.

But there wouldn’t have been any public disquiet if Fr Reynolds hadn’t pressured RTÉ by taking them to court and the facts of the case being made known.

There is a disquieting, not-too-obvious-but-still-there anti-Catholic Church strand in the Irish media. If this case does nothing else, it might give the Irish public cause to question if they’re being told the whole truth about the Catholic clergy. They’re a far-from-perfect group of people, the clergy, but I find myself wondering how many other Fr Reynolds there are out there who were denounced for sexual abuse of minors but didn’t have the good luck to have evidence that stopped his persecutors in their tracks.

And I find myself still thinking of Rabbitte’s “extensive public disquiet” and the involvement of the national broadcaster being the key elements in mounting an independent inquiry into the matter. Can you think of another recent event where there was “extensive public disquiet” and the involvement of the national broadcaster?  I can. It involved a politician who, in the course of a political debate, was accused – without evidence -  of murder and asked if he went to confession. It happened on – would you believe it? – the same programme series, and it provoked not just disquiet but seething rage, particularly north of the border. Which meant, in Rabbitte’s egregious way of thinking, it didn’t count.

It’s called selective moral indignation.  Nice mouthful, isn’t it? You should try using it next time out, Pat. Or even try thinking about it.