Welcome to to Citizen Keane. Straight between the eyes not between the lines. You’re now entering the Anti-Spin Zone. Read all about it ..
‘And a great unity
brings a peace
with all creation
defiled
no longer
by the I’
- -’Beyond The I’ by Michael D.Higgins
The Wests Awake as Micheal D. Higgins heads for the Aras. The Statesman beat the Salesman as Sean Gallagher was shown the door by the Irish electorate. However Micheal D. owes a debt to the people of Dublin. As we watched the results come in Dublin led the way to get The Saw Doctors favourite politician home .
Micheal D is the Statesman, Gallagher the Salesman. Higgins is a man who understands what it is to put the interest of a country above your own. Yes they all have egos but you sensed with Higgins that he had a wider picture of things. He didn’t make rash promises, content instead to stand on his own record .
Sean Gallagher came like a medicine man to a Wild West town. This slick salesman promised that with just one dose of the Gallagher Elixir we could all have jobs. That the President doesn’t create jobs didn’t matter, it was all about the line of patter. People were desperate and bought the Salesman’s rap .
For Gallagher though last week was the Death of A Salesman. The man who sold Smart Homes in the boom wasn’t smart enough to handle a TV show. Now his team are saying that he lacked the experience to respond to Martin McGuiness’s intervention on the Frontline. They ignore though the substance of the issue — FF man Gallagher was not credible and was no more ‘Independent’ than Bertie Ahern.
Crucially we see from postal votes cast before the TV debate that Gallagher was miles ahead. The RTE Red C Recall poll showed however that 28% of voters had switched preference in the final week. Half of them deserted Sean Gallagher and most went to Micheal D. Why?
The poll showed that the most important factor for voters was honesty and integrity. Jobs and economy were not rated as highly. The people believe Michael D has integrity and his humanitarian record is testament to that. They don’t like fellas who talk about ‘envelopes’ or have cut off a working woman on an RTE Radio show.
In Micheal D’s poem ‘Beyond The I’ he talks of a ‘great unity.’ With his victory he has brought this broken nation that very quality. Could you imagine if Gallagher had won? This country would be split down the middle between those who feared a return to the Cowen days and those who saw Gallagher as Mr Self Help for the nation.
The ‘I’ in Micheal D ‘s poem is the selfish part of Ireland that almost killed this country. It is the greed of the Celtic Tiger s epitomised by the old me fein Fianna Fail. Michael D is the opposite of that type. He is a poet, a man who has fought for human rights, a man who doesn’t need smooth sales talk to convince you he is right. A man who Gallagher rather pathetically tried to portray as too old at 70 years of age.
During this election we had Gallagher The Karate Kid as he demonstrated his martial arts skills for reporters. Then we had Gallagher of Riverdance fame as he did his Sean Nos dancing. The implication all the time was that Sean was the dynamic young leader while Micheal D hobbled around. That was an insult to Higgins and to an elder generation who reared us and gave their all for this country.
In the end Gallagher wilted under more pressure than Dana’s car tyre. And his blow out was a good thing for this country. In another poem ‘Toes’ dedicated to his son, Michael D writes of how he has received the ‘frail hope of belief recovered.’ With today’s result the man from the West has given us that same precious gift.
Emperor Enda. Really he couldn’t have written a better script. Managed to lose the 2007 election and so avoid the worst economic catastrophe in Irish history. Then he appeared to an electorate who, like long suffering innocent prisoners, would have signed anything for escape. However despite giving him their vote the public are now questioning the Emperor’s new clothes.
The Emperor looked pretty good for a while. Built up Fine Gael, then with the Obama and Queen visits, he brillantly caught the mood of the nation. He gave a traumatised people both a sedative and feel good factor all at once. Not a bad thing to have a mood stabiliser while recuperating.
But while Enda campaigned in Poetry is it okay to continue to govern solely in Prozac?
This calming strategy was backed up by the creation of ‘Enda the President.’ Hell, he even took Obama’s speech. This latter day Ronald Regan hangs out with our sporting heroes and unites the electorate with that good old homespun feel. Except the drug is beginning to wear off. And like the patients in psychiatrist Oliver Sacks book ‘Awakenings’ who wake up after years of deep sleep, they are questioning what they have been sold.
This awakening has been triggered by one simple fact. It is slowly seeping into the mass consciousness that FG is in fact FF. The economic policies are identical with one exception- Brian Lenihan took responsibility for his decisions. I’m sure he would have smiled wryly on hearing the Troika praising the Government last Thursday.
Is there a single thing the Coalition have done that was not set in motion or agreed to by Lenihan? Despite the spin we know the cuts in interest rates for our ‘Bailout’ came solely from the Greek crisis. Now the public are awakening. For how long can Enda blame FF and yet accept praise for what amounts to Lenihan’s decisions?
Enda’s poetry was evident in the FG election manifesto. No easy payments to Anglo and bondholders would be burned. Yet, though clearly not part of the agreed deal with the Troika, you are still paying off the senior bondholders. Enda and Co are bowing to Europe in the hope of a better deal. Maybe time will prove them right.
Another manifesto promise was mortgage interest relief. What happened to that ? You see Enda and Co. honour their commitments to the EU –IMF but you? Well, you’re a bit down the list .
The other FG similarity with FF is in the area of transparency. Enda Kenny promised us a new era of openness. It was precisely a lack of transparency which allowed developments like Priory Hall to arise. It also allowed institutions like Anglo Irish Bank to flourish without proper regulation or oversight.
So we’ll all sleep better tonight right? The Gay is out of the Presidential race.
Norris had to be watched. I mean nine years ago wasn’t he promoting the view that young fellas were fair game for oul fellas? That was the subtext of the attacks on him .But Norris never said this. It didn’t matter though, just get him to deny it .
What if we subjected straight men to the same scrutiny about what they think and say? Did you ever hear the crude bar room jokes like’ if they’re old to enough to bleed’ old enough to ..’ that were spoken about young girls? What about the men who see nothing wrong with watching young girls, some who are victims of trafficking, lap dancing in nite clubs? What about the lads who have sex with them on the sun holiday? Just where is the line?
Rape, domestic violence and harassment of women continues on a daily basis. Double standards of morality apply, but hey at least the Gay is out of the Presidential race.
Norris wrote a clemency letter on Oireachtais notepaper for a gay lover who’d been convicted of statutory rape. That was wrong and was rightly condemned. But a TD or Minister appealing directly to a judge on behalf of some double rapist who ‘ came from a good family’ is okay? No need to resign there. Labour TD Kathleen Lynch, subsequently promoted to Minister, sent such a letter directly to a judge on behalf of one Trevor Casey in 2008. Casey had raped two girls aged 14 and 16 as they lay in their beds. Same goes for FF’s Tony Killeen whose office sought clemency for a convicted paedophile (though Killeen said he didn’t sign the letter). Both Lynch and Killeen were promoted as Ministers. Hypocrisy.
Is it time to say goodbye? Senator David Norris needs to consider letting go of running for the Presidency of Ireland. Letting go and getting on with the rest of his life. Letting go before every part of that life is destroyed.The Senator is now in a far bigger battle than that race. Like it or not he is battling for his personal reputation.
Independent TD Finian McGrath has withdrawn as Norris’s political organiser. Key members of his team have resigned. Barely a third of his Oireacthais supporters came out in his favour. I find it hard to see him getting the twenty votes necessary to be nominated. Given that it is unlikely he will, why then stay in and subject yourself to more pain? And does David Norris truly believes he can handle whatever else is coming down the line?
Like Fergus Finlay I defended Norris and called for him to be allowed to run. Why? Because I don’t like to see anyone bullied out of a race. The Mob were at work. So it is with genuine reluctance that I would ask anyone to give in to the bully boys. But the drip feed won’t stop here. The stress and strain of this would bury most normal individuals.
Let’s be clear. Norris is not the first TD to appeal for clemency for a convicted offender. Labour TD Kathleen Lynch wrote a letter on behalf of a double rapist. She is now a Minister. Why wasn’t there the same pressure on her to stand down as TD? Her action was inadvisable and so insensitive to the victim. But she was let run for office. And rightly so. Kathleen is a good hardworking politician who screwed up .Equally Norris, who was wrong to use Oireachtais notepaper, is not a bad person because of this act. Remember he did not try to interfere with the police or the judge in question. Some have been less restrained.
‘ And it seemed to me you lived your life like a candle in the wind,
Never knowing who to turn when the rain came in..’
The rock n ‘roll lifestyle .Sex, drink and drugs. And death of course. The myth that there is anything glamorous in it has been torn apart by the death of Amy Whitehouse.
The beautiful and talented 27 year old girl could have been your daughter, your sister, your girlfriend. This girl who woke up every day with the first thing and only thing on her mind being drink and drugs. Amy who craved the effect, the numbing of the pain, the agony and the ecstasy. Amy who kept going, hour after hour, day after day, her slow descent into hell. The prison of addiction was her final resting place.
And they call it the glamorous rock n ‘roll lifestyle? Falling round streets vomit ridden, face pock marked and battle scarred. Going to the dealer who doesn’t give a dam about you but loves your money. Injecting into the veins between your toes. Stumbling across a stage destroying the one thing that you love, the one thing that keeps you going. Your music. Booed in Serbia and heckled in Glastonbury. You who had the voice of an angel .
And what were they booing Amy? They had paid to watch a circus act, to see you fall. Like some latter day Colosseum they waited for the savage end. And now they have it. Amy’s CD and download sales are on the up once again. And of what good is it to the cold and lifeless body laid out on a morticians table? A body that will never sing those bitter sweet notes again.
n 1994, Labour TD Emmet Stagg was caught in dubious circumstances in the Phoenix Park. Stagg was forgiven and went on to retain his Dail seat. Today Senator David Norris is in danger of being politically destroyed for comments he made nine years ago about sexual practices in ancient Greece. Welcome to our Salem Witch Trial.
We like to pride ourselves that we are a liberal, progressive country. The behaviour of some last week belied that notion. Consider this. In the same week that Norris was ‘on trial’ for indeterminate crimes, hundreds of teenagers remained in adult psychiatric wards across the country.
There they are vulnerable emotionally, and in other ways, to adults who themselves are in distress. In that same week we had the Pope reiterating the primacy of Canon law over our own national legislation.
We had the news that there had been no prosecutions to date arising from the Ryan Report — which detailed the systematic sexual and emotional abuse of children. We had RTE’s powerful Prime Time programme which showed how a lack of proper care support led to children and adults being neglected.
Maybe David Norris’s critics are genuinely worried about pedophiles and the abuse of minors in Ireland. If so, maybe they can ring Liveline and talk about the Catholic Church, which let young children be raped for years while it moved the perpetrators around at will.
Maybe they can consider that over 80 per cent of abuse is perpetrated by a family member or a friend of the family. Will the defenders of family values come out of the closet on this one? Are they really worried about the potential abuse of minors by homosexuals? Because that was the insidious inference they promulgated. Well, sorry, bad news there, but the main perpetrators of child abuse are heterosexual.
He came and told us we could be free of our new slavery. Said it doesn’t have to be this way. Told us we had endured worse. We who had helped build America. We who had left here in coffin ships navigating with only the twin stars of faith and hope to guide us. We believed and dared to hope one fine Spring afternoon on the day the 44th American President came to town.
As President Barrack Obama spoke last Monday he nullified the verse of the German and European bureaucrats who see us a feckless nation, deserving of our debt fate. Obama dared us to question the narrative that says we must lie down on bended knee. The Irish
We are beaten now not so much by our past as but by our present and future. Beaten by a Europe that would strangle us under the guise of doing what’s best for us. Beaten to the point where men in increasing numbers take their own life in this country. Beaten by mediocrity and abuse in our political and civil governance systems. We have been imprisoned for the debts of others.
And why do accept it so easily?
The Nyberg Report has nothing to do with Banking. It has instead everything to do with the corruption of power Irish style. It unwittingly reveals the sham of the Pretence of Change politicians engage in. It also shows how the danger of the Herd Instinct led us to the cliff edge. And finally it details how the corrosive effect of the bending of rules for personal gain pushed us toward our ultimate destruction.
The Pretence of Change was best demonstrated in Enda Kenny’s call for a referendum to enable the Dail Committee to properly investigate the bank scandal. Enda promised proceedings would be televised live. Imagine it. Three years of politicians playing Colombo in front of the RTE cameras. Enda made much play of seeing it on our ‘TV screens’ as if that would somehow yield the truth and make it all real. That would be fine if FG hadn’t fallen over themselves trying to avoid the findings of the Moriarty Tribunal. The psychotherapist Sheldon Kopp coined the term Situational Ethics. That is what we have in this country. All for change and truth as long as it doesn’t affect me.
Nyberg wrote in section 5.5.5 of his report: ‘‘ The Commission suspects… that contrarians,
I’m coming out of the closet . Well the sitting room actually. You see that’s where I did it. Watched the Royal wedding. Yes the whole cabooodle, church ceremony, the drive away, Buckingham Palace and that kiss. And worse I even got emotional. I haven’t done that since Bobby Ewing reappeared in the shower scene in Dallas.
All week some of my normally sensible female friends appeared to have lost it. They abandoned normal speech patterns and discourse. ‘The Dress’ dominated discussions. ‘Kate’s weight’ also featured highly. Maybe they were secretly programming me for the wedding. Remember how we forced women to became soccer experts during our World Cup exploits? This was their revenge as I was an expert wedding matters even before the broadcast.
I actually wasn’t going to watch it. I was meant to be writing a political critique today. So you can’t really blame me for switching on the TV can you? And I was instantly hooked. There are compelling reasons for my conversion.
First off this was theatre at its purest best. It even had a balcony scene. And a happy ever after kiss. Normally it is the Catholic Church who do the best show business. When it comes to theatre and spectacle they have few peers. Now it was the Monarchy’s turn. And they didn’t disappoint.
‘There are known knowns.. There are known unknowns..But there are also unknown unknowns.’
The Land of Known Unkowns. Donald Rumsfeld famous quote about the Iraq War could have been written about the Moriarty Tribunal Report. There are things we know we know. There are things we know we might never know fully about and things we don’t know we don’t know. With me?
The Report has been described as giving light to the greatest scandal in Irish Political Life. Michael Lowry and Denis O’Brien however see it as an expensive trawl which has unfairly wrecked their reputations.
What are the ‘known knowns’- the things we can be sure happened? We know that Denis O’Brien’s ESAT/Telenor consortium won the mobile phone licence. We know that suspicions were raised about the granting of the licence. It is clear that a $50,000 donation from O’Brien’s partner company Telenor was sent to Fine Gael.
Now to the ‘known unknown’. Why would a Norwegian Company take an interest in FG? The cheque was eventually rejected by FG and ended up back in ESAT’s Office. Denis O’Brien points out that he made donations to all parties as did many other businessmen.
We know that Lowry was the Minister with responsibility for the licence bids. The Department Secretary General John Loughrey was insistent at the time that protocols be followed in relation to contact with bidders:‘ one to one or social outings were to be avoided.’
A ‘known known’ is that Lowry ignored this in his contacts with Denis O’Brien.
Lowry also contacted members of the overseeing Project Group to see if a winner had been found. In one meeting Moriarty says that some members were surprised that Lowry was aware of draft rankings for the licence bidders.
The Tribunal has also contended that Lowry rode rough shot and pushed the Project Group to making a decision with indecent haste. Lowry denies this and O’Brien makes the valid point that the process was delivered on schedule. Another ‘known known’ is that international expert Professor Michael Anderson backs them up.
So we come to the first major ‘known unknown.’ Why did Lowry intervene like he did? He says it was simply to expedite matters and that he had a right as a Minister.
Welcome to Planet Lowry. It’s been some trip. This star is now in the same orbit as Planet Bertie and Planet CJ.
You see Michael Lowry, Bertie Ahern and CJ Haughey have one distinguishing feature. All three have a complete inability to admit they ever did anything wrong Equally any problem is always someone else’s fault. Just listen back to Lowry’s interview with Sean O’Rourke on RTE.
The Tipperary man has spent the last two days blaming the Tribunal Judge. “Deeply hurtful and offensive” and ‘’Chinese torture’’ was his assessment.
Even if the Judge got everything wrong – and the evidence suggests otherwise – Lowry still behaved in ways that could only damage himself and others. But like Bert and Co its another case of blame the messenger. Remember how Bertie felt a Tribunal judge had it in for him? So did C J Haughey who lumped the media into the offending pack for good measure.
What a week. Perhaps we needed the euphoria of a new beginning in the Dail. Enda deserves his day in the sun. But when it dies down what do we have? A parliament that is effectively neutered by IMF -EU deal. Bottom line is Merkel and Co want Corporation Tax Reduction or ‘harmonisation’ in return for any interest rate reduction in the deal. When Kenny talks of an overwhelming mandate Merkel won’t be too bothered. She is more worried about her mandate back home. Anyways remember the 1st Lisbon Treaty vote? We gave a mandate against it and Europe ignored it, until we gave the right mandate.
So we have a colorful Dail and it provides good copy for the hacks. But we are like ants running around as the big footprint of Europe hovers over us. We could play poker though. The paradox is that the only way to save ourselves is to threaten to destroy ourselves.
We tell Europe that we cannot pay. We say we will default. The contagion effect for Spain, Portugal, Italy and German banks would be massive. ECB may threaten to pull out of supporting our banks, if we put the fear into them. EU and IMF may say fine but you won’t have money from us to pay your state salaries and so on. And this is where the good Poker players will win. Call the bluff, go the distance. Watch how the markets treat the Euro. However, is there a will to play poker? FG are committed to the European project. Me, I’m committed to the Survival project. And we are finished if they persist with the terms of the current deal.
Dad’s Army, with the women making the tea and looking after the children.
That’s one way of looking at our new Coalition Cabinet .Do you remember the BBC series, which featured the
The average age of this new Coalition is 55. In Bertie’s time it was 49. What the two cabinets have in common, though, is that they are dominated by the mature male.
Admittedly Leo the Lip Varadkar and Simon Le Bon Coveney are in there as well. This should keep the Tweenie Twitterati happy.
There are two women in the cabinet. Joan Burton and Francis Fitzgerald have been assigned to the ‘caring’ portfolios of Social Protection and Children respectively.
Fianna Fail did the same trick when they moved Mary Hanafin to Welfare. She had previously proved a very capable Education Minister.
So is this a case of jobs for the boys, or d’oul lads?
Four more days of foreplay. And a weekend consummation. It has to be done. Then back to work. Especially in a partnership which has to last for five years. A s Labour and Fine Gael jump into bed, we are watching an elaborate mating ritual which is more about show than performance. Moreover it will be rendered impotent by events outside their control. There will no honey moon when stepmother Angela Merkel demands the dowry.
Still we all like to play the Guessing Game so here is what will happen in the Coalition Negotiations.
First off there is all the usual tough talk coming from ‘ well placed sources’. Ignore it. There will be leaks a plenty about sticking points and talk of ‘no compromise’. We may even have a bit of table thumping and all the better if we have a walk out. But you see these boyos have waited years to be in power. As I predicted weeks ago Coalition was always going to happen. They won’t blow it now .
Now the negotiations are really about two things. Giving out the Goodies and trying to get a unified front for Europe. When it comes to sharing the spoils there is a pecking order in each party. It is based on loyalty and seniority. Enda Kenny told me he wouldn’t give out Ministries on that basis. He may not have a choice. Don’t forget the rebels coup last year. Those who helped him see it off will want good Ministries. Ministries that let them have money and power .That will be important come next Election time. Once Kenny has dealt with that internal problem he has Gilmore to face.
