Parkheaders

I don’t know much because I am merely a normal Irish person. There are others though, living amongst us, who are special. They are super Irish. Turbo charged, fuel injected Irish. They can usually be spotted on Saturday afternoons, predominantly in urban areas though not exclusively as they have also been known to thrive in more rural settings.

The allegiance they have chosen is designed to say something very strong and unambiguous about them. They have chosen to transcend geography, logic and aesthetics and hitch their wagon to Glasgow Celtic.

And these people want there to be no doubt about the symbolism of such a gesture. They want there to be no doubt that if, say, they were stranded on a snow capped mountain in South America after a plane crash and were forced to sacrifice a fellow passenger to eat in order to stay alive that they would choose a British person over an Irish person. That they would unhesitatingly, unerringly, undoubtedly choose the British person. Over the Irish person. And the solidarity and synchronicity with which these people stand when it comes to the issue of the prioritization of nationalities for cannibalisation in extreme survival situations is so staunch that it necessitates the wearing of a costume. It is white with a series of parallel green hoops. The costume is also designed to illustrate that the person in general would have a preference for all things Irish, would do his best in any given situation to err on the side of Irishness, to lend his support to Ireland and to do all these fine and noble things with more verve, gusto and enthusiasm than normal Irish people would.

And so it’s not easy to support Glasgow Celtic from the middle of Ireland. There are softer options available in order to attain access to football of a roughly equivalent standard. There’s Turners Cross, Inchicore, Tolka Park, Oriel Park, the Brandywell, the Showgrounds. But the super charged Irish don’t want it too easy, they believe a certain amount of self flagellation is only right and proper when a person unearths a real, hardcore vocation.

So Glasgow it is, to get behind the team with the kind of Irishness the super chargers insist upon, the kind you’ll never find in Dundalk or Galway or Derry. The Holy Grail, the deep fried Mars bar of Paddyism.

Liverpool 2 Manchester United 0 - An Apology

In my previous post I tried to convey the impression that Rafael Benitez is a total clown. This morning I would like to issue a correction to this assertion. He is in fact a total genius. I apologise for any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have caused.

Liverpool 1 Lyon 2 - An Apology

In my previous post I tried to convey the impression that Rafael Benitez has a personality which is made up of equal, independent strands of genius and clown. This morning I would like to issue a correction to this assertion. He is a total clown. I apologise for any inconvenience this misunderstanding may have caused.

Three Things

What the fuck is Bill Cullen up to? He fired Maria. The only normal one. He must have had a few jars on board. That’s the only plausible explanation.

Why didn’t John O’Donoghue make out that he had been taken hostage by extreme right wing French nationalists that time in Longchamp? No one would have batted an eyelid about him coming home on the government jet. Not like him to miss a trick like that.

Rafael Benitez is the only person that I know of who is simultaneously a genius and a complete clown. Tonight, against Lyon, he will show us the genius. On Saturday, against Sunderland, he showed us the clown.
Rafa can be summarized thus: (cl+pl-c/38)=(g+c)-g/6+4

Subhuman Resources

I have tried to give the protagonists on The Apprentice a chance, I’ve tried to like them but alas I appear to be fighting a losing battle with my better self. I can’t help but hate them all. And seemingly this is my default setting with so much of this reality based programming. I hate them all and I love Bill because Bill gives them all such a hard time. He abuses them unrelentingly and he seems to enjoy it. He takes pride in attempting to systematically dismantle their character from every conceivable perspective. I would enjoy it too. I love Bill.

They annoy us instantaneously; so self involved, so shallow and manipulative. And we know that the person or thing who devised the concept of humanity had the direct opposite of people like this in mind when he was coming up with his first sketches. And we wonder how people who are mostly in their mid twenties could be so numbingly dull.

It’s not of course that they are bad people but probably because they tend to take things a bit too seriously. And have a tendency to try to rationalize the most damning of situations into their favour. In blatant contradiction of the evidence. So their problems could be summed up by saying that they do not know when to let it lie. And in this regard they are probably no different to anyone born in this country after 1980. So it might not even be their fault per se. But that does not make them any more palatable.

This is why we get the likes of Brendan seeking to explain that his refusal to take responsibility for the management of a task in which he had a lot of experience reflected more poorly on his team mates than it did on himself. He did not know when to let it lie. And Bill came very close to cutting him loose as a result. But he won’t learn. They never do.

You don’t want to do it but it happens involuntarily; your mind casts back to your college days and you try to imagine sharing the same airspace with people of this ilk. Clean cut super heroes, learnt everything they know from long running American network sitcoms. Nobody comes out of that mental exercise smelling of roses let me tell you.

We will never embrace this medium, we knew that before we started. This medium with these young people in this young country in this unprecedented funk. And if we can’t embrace something like The Apprentice which within its genre is pretty mild, well what’s left, what slivers of modern pop culture are left for us. In America they seem to have got it figured out, like a lot of things that will eventually dawn on us over here. They have had their flirtation with reality but also had the decency to remember to make a few good TV shows while they were at it. They have something to fall back on. We have The Byrne Ultimatum.

We can at least give ourselves credit for starting the whole thing off in the first place all those years ago. Remember Superstars with Gerry Loftus and Declan Burns. They even had the odd celebrity like Pat Spillane and Jack O’Shea to add a touch of glamour. Reality TV ground zero right there baby. Don’t know if it’s any consolation, but it is the truth.

The Shrugs Don't Work

You look at some leaders and ascribe to them superhuman qualities. You marvel at their ability to do what they do, to motivate themselves day after day to deal with huge and complex issues, to navigate their way through the quagmire of partisan politics and global expectations to produce tangible results or at the least a sense of hope and optimism for the future.

There’s the crippling workload; the speeches, the committees, the meetings, the skill and nuances of diplomacy required to extract results from seemingly hopeless situations. There’s the unrelenting glare of the world’s media honed on them as go about their business, as they address world leaders, chair summits, give press conferences, do interviews or take part in live debates.

You see them do all this and think about the qualities they must possess. The composure, the poise, the work ethic, the confidence, the eloquence, the nervelessness. You know you could never do what they do, the mere thought is preposterous.

These people, people such as Obama possess such presence and charisma, such miraculous ability to lead and comfort people with the knowledge that whatever problems we face are eminently surmountable as long as he is at the helm. They have your admiration because you cannot for one moment imagine yourself in their shoes.

And then you look at Brian Cowen and you see what way things would pan out if by some bizarre mix up you yourself became prime minister of the country. You look at him and instantly recognize all the failings and shortcomings that you know you would be guilty of. The lack of motivation, the negative body language, the absence of any guile, confidence, enthusiasm or commitment. You look at him in the Dail and you think of days at work when you could not take your eyes off the clock such was your all consuming desire to get out of there and have a few pints on the way home. When it didn’t really matter how half assed you were doing your work as long as you kept out of the boss’s way and got paid every month.

The Obamas of this world belong to a parallel reality, one where real application and ability can produce real results for billions of people. Our reality contains Brian Cowen, midlander, nod’s as good as a wink, one of our own. He’s one of us all right; fuckin’ hopeless. And livin’ for the weekend.

Sure You Can't Have Everything

When Brian Cowen took over as our glorious leader he was touted from all quarters as an intellectual powerhouse. I took this to mean that under his stewardship we would soon see, all over the country, smoke filled bistros and cafes heaving with beret wearing militants chain smoking Gauloise, sipping absinth, talking revolution and discussing the later works of Baudelaire.

And none of this has happened.

What has happened is that Cowen has officially opened several unnecessary stretches of very wide tarmacadam, been photographed in a tractor at the National Ploughing Championships, fucked off to New York for a week to discuss the weather with Angela Merkel's wardrobe consultant and generally come as close to resembling an intellectual powerhouse as Dizzie Rascal has to resembling the next Prime Minister of Great Britain.

Ah well, it’s a good thing he’s so easy on the eye. I’d never forgive him otherwise.

Leading by Example

Irish Minister for Health and Children. I repeat, Minister for Health and Children. It is also worth noting that the Minister for Equality and Law Reform is a convicted murderer and passionate homophobe,the Minister for Integration a confirmed racist and the Minister for Tourism is xenophobic. Oh yeah and the Minister for the Arts thinks Celine Dion is the greatest singer of all time.

The Whether Prophets

Probably the best kind of a job to have would be one with a massive salary, undoubted implied prestige but absolutely no accountability. One where you can say or do pretty much as you please with no associated fear of being called to account or made to explain yourself to anyone. One in which exists numerous perfectly plausible means of rationalizing the most grievous of errors, the most errant of pronouncements. Where the very nature of the thing which you are trying to understand and illuminate unrelentingly provides the excuses you need for your repeated inability to do just that.

And that’s OK, because we all know these things are not an exact science. Welcome to the world of the international economic forecaster. Somebody who might be attached for example to the IMF or the World Bank or the World Economic Forum or Nafta or any one of a long list of mysterious global organizations.

If I was a blocklayer and a person whose house I had got the job of building asked me how many blocks it would require and how long it would take I would find it very hard to defend or justify a response such as “it could be anywhere from five hundred to five thousand and it could take anywhere from a week to three months”.

Typically in any professional realm a certain amount of accurate estimating is required, to the nearest ballpark will do. The international economic forecaster has created a domain for himself where none of that inconvenient need for accuracy applies to anything he does. He has replaced ballpark with galaxy or when really pressurized, time zone. His time is spent monitoring developments and analyzing trends. This is work which can be done in conjunction with looking at internet pornography, staying in bed half the day, attending conferences, chairing superfluous think tanks and skiing. You would have thought that when the words analyst or forecaster appear in your job title that these are areas in which you would excel. And you would be wrong there too. For the international economic forecaster is a law unto himself.

“Initial predictions of a third quarter recovery and an annual growth rate of 1.2% proved to be a little optimistic as crowd trouble at a League Two fixture in Darlington and an outbreak of colic in John Oxx’s yard on the Curragh severely impacted Asian markets forcing analysts to revise their growth forecasts.”
“Gross national product has grown in inverse proportion to many analysts’ preliminary estimates due primarily to the re appearance of Dirty Den on Eastenders and the suspected kidnapping of half of Leo O’ Malley’s dairy herd from his farm in Cloughjordan”

Grand, that explains that then. And thanks. Thanks a bunch. A big bunch or a little bunch, not sure, say nothing till you hear more, or someone puts a microphone to your head.

Break His Legs

So here we are in 2009 mired in the deepest recession since the dinosaurs roamed the earth or Tommy Tiernan was funny, whichever was earlier. Nobody can afford anything. Of course nobody could afford anything during the boom either but it didn’t stop us because we were effectively in a war with all of our neighbours and we had armed ourselves with the latest and greatest in credit card technology, the kind which thankfully didn’t incorporate anything as inconvenient as a spending limit.

The carnage is everywhere. A first time visitor to our country might take a look around vast tracts of our once coveted landscape and be forgiven for thinking that the War of Independence only ended yesterday. It’s all over all right, the people who are in charge of all these things and consequently know what to do have declared an armistice, a ceasefire, a truce even.

And of course it affects virtually everyone so it’s big news, seemingly it’s the only news. Not only is it news in its own right but we are now seeing a trend develop whereby it has to dragged into other, seemingly unrelated news. Every bit of news must contain an element, a touch, a smidge, a taste of recession news.

So a piece came up on the six o’ clock bulletin a few nights ago about the forthcoming Dublin Theatre Festival. Being someone with a keen interest in things of this nature I, quite reasonably I thought at the time, became excited at the prospect of finding out what plays were to be performed and in what locations, what new playwrights we might expect to be showcased and things which generally pertained to the content of the festival. The theatre festival.

How naïve I was. The four minute report consisted exclusively of the correspondent’s dire predictions regarding the glut of tickets which would remain unsold and a very helpful comparison with previous years when, yep you’ve guessed it, all the tickets were sold. I was surprised he managed to get through it without unleashing a pie chart or venn diagram or some such convoluted schematic to give pictorial validation to his verbal synopsis of the despondency which he obviously believed that everyone connected to the event should feel. The director of the festival was given a brief airing wherein he said that he was confident that any unsold tickets would be snapped up between now and the start of the event. His positive outlook was obviously deemed to be off message and his contribution quickly guillotined to allow the reporter roll out yet more frightening statistics as to the financial train wreck the whole thing was going to be.

All of which might have been palatable if it was aired in conjunction with some useful information. But it wasn’t, he never mentioned the name of one fuckin’ play, writer or venue.

The recession is the play, the writer and the venue. It’s the only show in town. And it’s on a long run.

Surreal Away, Just Surreal Away

As far as I was aware surreal was a word that you would reserve for the most exceptional of circumstances. When the evidence before your eyes took on a hallucinatory, ethereal other worldly quality. Evidently I was wrong. Apparently it is a word that is available to be thrown about to characterize the most mundane and trivial of situations. “It was incredible, when I got home the kitchen was spotless, it was very surreal” “I opened my lunch box and found not one but two bags of crisps. It was surreal.” No it was not. It was mildly, microscopically noteworthy. Barely worth mentioning. Consider these on the other hand “I came home to find a colony of giant stag beetles in my living room watching TV and a herd of magenta coloured African elephants playing backgammon in the kitchen” or “I turned on the radio and heard the Ceann Comhairle announce his resignation”. Now that’s what I call surreal.

Animosity Towards Verbosity

I just heard someone on the radio say “We trust each other implicitly” Is it necessary in this instance to use the word implicitly? Is the presence of the word implicitly not implicit in the use of the word trust, with all that it represents. It is implicit - therefore by my reckoning it does not actually need to be there. So why put it in? And why stop there? How often have you heard someone say “things got progressively better”? If things got better is it not implicit that this represented a progression? It would have to be considered by its very nature to be progressive, what with things getting better and all. So why put it in? Because we are in the throes of a collective love affair with superfluousness. We are merely acting out, verbalizing a deep rooted bullshit instinct. We can help it no more than we can keep our hands in our pockets when we trip over a kerb.

Sometimes It's Hard To Be A Man

So it’s a debate that surfaces from time to time, who has it easier men or women? Women of course have to periodically endure the undoubted inconvenience of childbirth but stop to take a look at the pressure men put themselves under just going about their everyday lives. They have to keep up with current affairs, big deal you might say so do women. But then take a look at all the extra curricular stuff men are obliged to take on. They have to know all about the latest Tamil Tigers offensive in Sri Lanka, keep abreast of the MP expense scandal in Westminster, keep an eye on Obama’s progress in Washington AND do the research necessary in order to arrive at a fairly good idea as to how many Group One winners Johnny Murtagh is going to ride this season. They have to know whether Wolves have a realistic chance of surviving in the top flight next year, they have to have considered, insightful opinions on the Cork hurling dispute, they need to be able to recognize whether or not Leinster are sufficiently competitive at the breakdown this season, and so on. As if that were not a demanding enough workload, they also have to keep themselves apprised of what far flung car manufacturers are doing. She comes home and says “Oh I think I saw Seamus in town” and you respond “It might have been him, what kind of car was he driving?” and she says “Oh I’m fairly sure it was green”. Men just can’t get away with such sloppiness. A man’s answer to that question would have to contain at a minimum details such as it was a 1999 Peugeot 306 Meridian five door 1.8 diesel. That kind of knowledge doesn’t come easily you know, concentration, graft and dedication are required to hone those skills. I could be mistaken but women appear to have rather shrewdly and deliberately limited their extra curricular specialist areas to shoes and handbags. That’s an extremely narrow field. At which subject do you think you would stand a better chance of success with on Mastermind - the history of shoes and handbags or the history of sport and the automobile. Exactly. Men have been their typical passive selves and not bagged something with a bit less homework. It's too late now, we can't co opt longer eye lash techniques or soap opera gossip for ourselves at this stage. They're spoken for. Do you know how long I had to spend reading the sports section last Sunday in order to ensure I don’t make a fool of myself in company next weekend. A long time let me assure you. There’s only so many faux pas you can make in the realm of footwear and shoulder accessories, you just know what you like. Sport is a different matter entirely. It’s very easy to make that fatal verbal slip and indefinitely alienate yourself from male peers by being inadequately equipped with knowledge of Wigan’s offside trap. Well I've had enough of the pressure, I think I need a gender reassignment.

I Was Just Following Hors D'oeuvres

Gordon Ramsay has illustrated an important modern truth – anything can be shouted or sworn into the public consciousness. Up to recently nobody I know gave a flying fuck about food or how its preparation must accord with some grand unwritten code of sophistication. But we are all by now obscenely familiar with the darkest practitioner of this very dark art Gordon Ramsay. It goes to show that our priorities will eventually align with those of anyone who wears a uniform, is granted plenty of air time, appears to have very little patience and communicates constantly in a raised voice. What will he have us doing next I wonder, because God knows we’re willing. Just say the word Gordon.

Thank You But Please Come Again

I have often been hopelessly lost and stopped someone to ask for directions only to then blatantly not listen to a word they say. There appears to be some impulse within the brain that creates interference the moment your respondent begins to speak. You helplessly and unconsciously become swamped with an avalanche of erroneous data. The person’s lips stop moving, you mutter “thank you” but you know you are every bit as helpless as you were ninety seconds previously. What is the etiquette in this situation? I mean is it polite to say "Sorry buddy could you run that by me again my head involuntarily became submerged in a montage of the top ten Champions League goals followed by a five minute chunk of dialogue from Entourage. Honestly I’ll listen this time, next left was it?"

Kid A. X Tractor.

Summer is departing and with it goes that unique Irish tradition of thirteen year old boys in county jerseys driving tractors the size of houses on country roads. Is the inverse of normal licensing requirements at work when it comes to tractors, I mean do you have to be under sixteen to drive one nowadays? Evidently there are random Department of Transport spot checks to make sure that when pulling a Titanic sized load down a pot holed boreen that you have to be disfigured by acne and flooring it. Are you at risk of having your license revoked if found driving one of these beasts while employing a modicum of road sense or in possession of anything which has been manufactured by the Gillette corporation? “It’s out of my hands Paudie, you were pulling twenty eight round bales and you slowed down coming into that hairpin bend, it contravenes everything we stand for. You’ll have to sit on top of the unsecured load for a few years till you get a bit of sense. One day you’ll thank me for this”

Charity Begins Elsewhere

Tube Tied

When you’re channel surfing late at night what exactly do you need to come upon to make you stop? How good does something have to be to prevent you from going around the complete circuit for the fourteenth time in as many minutes? You would think that when you happen upon the Interpol set from the Reading Festival or a previously unseen interview with Che Guevara in his dying moments or a Ken Burns documentary on the faking of the moon landings that you would drop the remote and settle down. But no, the lunacy continues unabated until you have tutted yourself into a hysterical frenzy over the paucity of quality programming on telly these days. That BBC is nothing but repeats, Channel Four is Big Brother on a loop, RTE is far too parochial and Sky Sports is an extra fifty quid a month and they can stick that right up their arse. Besides what would I do with my hands if I decided to actually watch something? The Rubik cube is surely not manufactured anymore, I can’t smoke in the house and I can’t see myself taking up knitting or embroidery. What’s on? Oh I know what’s on, it’s what else is on that concerns me. I want to find something decent so I can completely ignore it and in so doing authenticate my quest by upgrading my expectations while simultaneously guaranteeing my ultimate disappointment. I want to up the ante in the self fulfilling prophesy of misery. Better to travel than arrive, Patsy.

Oh To Be Frank

Yesterday I passed a recently built development of twelve houses. At the entrance stood a huge estate agent's sign which proclaimed excitedly that there were “only nine left”. Because let's face it erecting a sign which says “On the market an entire year and only three of the tasteless, overpriced mangy kips sold, Jesus H. Christ what's wrong with you people?” on it would probably be considered a no no from a PR perspective. There would have to a certain amount of goodwill which would accrue from its refreshing honesty though, I would have thought. Candid advertising; it'll be all the rage by this time next year, mark my words.

Ballyhoo Tube

There is officially nothing that cannot be found on You Tube. You can put in the most outlandish search parameters and a plethora of options will instantly and miraculously appear. It’s at the point now where I genuinely believe it to be under the control of fairies, such is its magical power. There I was the other day, having just viewed and enjoyed some decidedly grainy footage of me winning the sack race at the Parish Sports in 1979 when I decided to search for my five year old son duetting Moon River with Frank Sinatra. The sound quality of the resultant clip wasn’t brilliant but was still good enough to showcase my son’s promising booming baritone voice and certainly did not dampen my excitement. The picture was quite twitchy but it still managed to remind me of just how impressive a setting Carnegie Hall really is. The biggest revelation however had to be the posting which showed me and several of my primary school contemporaries disembarking from a lunar module during our third class nature trip to the moon in 1980, footage which I was sure had been long since lost. Not to mention the likes of the clip with Che Guevara joining Christy Moore on stage at The Beaten Path in Claremorris to play the spoons on Joxer Goes to Stuttgart. Stop the lights. Gas altogether.

Size Matters, Apparently

I have just seen a TV3 presenter outside the new Ikea store in Dublin in front of a baying mob of anxious punters champing at the bit to get in. The doors are about to be thrown open any minute and the tension all over north Dublin is, quite naturally, unbearable. The store we are told is “the size of several football pitches.” This shoddy description renders a good image hard to conjure since the presenter did not say whether she was talking about gaelic, soccer, aussie rules or even grid iron. And “several” left me with a muddled, unsatisfactory picture in my head. I resolved not to set foot next nor near the place until I acquire a more accurate mental image of the scale of the sales floor, in sporting terms of course. Surely Micheal O’ Muireheartigh was the man to anchor that report, not some Xpose type handbag addict. “ I can now reveal that the sales floor in this retail facility is equivalent in size to the combined playing area in O’Moore Park, Parnell Park, St. Conleths Park, Markiewicz Park ( prior to redevelopment), Semple Stadium and Dr. Cullen Park up to and including the 45m line at the town end”. Much better. Now that’s a place I can shop.

A new swimming pool opened recently in our local town and I recall excitedly describing the facility to a friend of mine who had yet to visit it. “How big is the pool?” was his sole, perplexing response. “Massive” I replied. “Yeah but how big, is it Olympic size like?” was his insistent reply. It’s funny, you think you know someone but here was a guy I have known for years who was obviously secretly harbouring ambitions to launch an assault on Michael Phelps’ 200m freestyle world record, and in the heart of the midlands to boot. I am watching his progress intently, this is the type of thing we need to put us on the map. That and a discount furniture store the size of several Olympic swimming pools. We shall be known henceforth as the definitive, undisputed Olympic Village.

Summertime And The Living Is Queasy

Have you heard the new version of “Year of the Cat” by Tehran based singer songwriter Al Jazeera? Bloody brilliant it is. You can get it on i tunes.

Have you succumbed to the temptation to quantify the remainder of your life? For example if you are thirty five you might reasonably expect to live to seventy five and, like myself, you take one shower a month that equates to only 480 more showers. If you have a shave before each shower and use Gillette Fusion razors that’s only a half dozen more four packs you’ll have to buy for the rest of your life. Keep track by drawing up a simple square grid and hanging it, and a pencil, on the wall beside the bathroom mirror.

Dennis Hopper, on screen for the first time in Blue Velvet. Come on Dennis Hopper legend of the silver screen, icon of celluloid; explain it all to me in your typically subtle, brilliantly understated way. Let your first dramatic utterance shed some much needed light on this debacle of plot and posture. I’m confused Dennis, this tangled gothic parody has me all perplexed. Bring your presence, your stature, your aura to bear on this cinematic nail bomb. We’ve waited for you Dennis, we knew you were coming and that when you arrived you would set things straight. What’s going on Dennis, please? I need to know. At which point Dennis scans the situation and booms as loud as his larynx will permit “fuck you fuckers fuck”. Grand that’s me up to speed then. Thank you Dennis Hopper. Legend.

Would the assassination of Brian Cowen qualify as a circumstance under which he would consider his position? I am of course speaking within the context of an agreed framework under which clearly established procedures and parameters of negotiation with the social partners could form the basis of the substantive issues which would then clearly need to be addressed in an inclusive manner notwithstanding current global market conditions which are still uncertain while our fundamentals are sound and sixteen pints a night does not constitute a drink problem. Not where I come from at any rate, going forward.

Fancy A Dip?

Let me give you a piece of advice. Don’t set foot anywhere near a public swimming pool if there is even the slightest of chances that there are going to be small children present. I would willingly take a blowtorch to my armpits in preference to spending an hour in a public swimming pool in the presence of kids. This is not the irrational, ill conceived statement of a grumpy bastard; this is knowledge that has been hard earned at the coalface of bad experience.

In a leisure centre that is occupied by the janitor and two pensioners the noise is already unbearable. Ratchet things up to the tune of forty eight year old kids with the intermittent shrill blasts of lifeguard whistles and you create conditions for noise reverberation that are the equivalent of sitting inside an airtight steel fuel tank while the entire Kilkenny senior hurling team are held at gunpoint and ordered to batter it mercilessly with their camans until told to stop.

In a public swimming pool you encounter the whole spectrum of disagreeable factors – the noise, the heat, the smell and the remote chance of unwittingly catching a glimpse of twenty eight stone Fionnuala from Station Road in her birthday suit should the tarpaulin she brought to protect her modesty accidentally slip.

It is a symphony of the most offensive and unpleasant conditions imaginable. The thermostats are unerringly set to 120 degrees regardless of the weather conditions outside. When you come through the sliding front door you are assaulted with a cocktail of heat and humidity that can’t be too far down the discomfort scale from being slapped repeatedly with a sheet of plywood. Then there’s the smell. Jesus Christ are you sure that stuff is not going to harm my skin? Based on the pungency of the odour I would say it was a chemical concoction designed to eliminate every living organism within a ten mile radius. And I’m going to swim in it? If the noise, the heat or the smell don’t get you, fear not, you’ll probably dislocate a few vertebrae when you inevitably slip on the ceramic tile some genius installed in the communal shower area. Non slip tile, anyone heard of it?

Add it all together and you come up with an experience broadly comparable in terms of enjoyment to being bound, gagged, blindfolded and duct taped to the fuselage of an F16 fighter jet on a nocturnal surgical bombing mission over Fallujah. Avoid like the plague unless of course you want a dose of the plague because I’m pretty sure that, after yesterday’s visit from Tadhg the dairy farmer for his bi annual fumigation, it is now residing in the shallow end.

You'll Never Walk (Alone) Again

An American boy wonder named Corey Carter from the Chicago Fire club signs for Blackburn Rovers in the English Premiership. In his first match he holds the opposition goalkeeper at gunpoint for a corner kick. He gets his red card rescinded because there is actually nothing specific in the rules to say that such behaviour is not allowed. It starts a worrying trend which culminates in Liverpool midfielder Steven Gerrard losing both his legs in a guerilla style grenade attack during a Carling Cup quarter final match against Sunderland. At this point UEFA President Michel Platini steps in and issues a directive limiting allowable on pitch weaponry to 9mm calibre handguns and 16 inch Samurai Swords. Sky introduce a new interactive channel and Robert Mugabe launches an audacious takeover bid for Manchester United. Football enters another global golden age. Millwall win the treble.

Gordon's Wry Grin

He would scratch his head at a lot of things, our friend the visitor from another planet. He would wander around constantly perplexed at some of the bizarre spectacles on display. None would illicit more confusion though than the priceless Hell’s Kitchen with Gordon Ramsay at the helm.

On a recent instalment Gordon was informed that some chicken had been overcooked. To describe Gordon’s reaction as demonic would be a good start. You would then be forced to go on to use words such as apocalyptic, cataclysmic. The stranger would look on bewildered and wonder what pioneering process, what phenomenon on the outermost frontier of scientific endeavour was being attempted which could provoke such emotional investment. Were they putting the atom back together, or translocating matter? He would gaze in awe at the flame haired maestro at the centre of it and wonder if he was the leader of our civilisation, a kind of deity. This must be the scientific nerve centre of humanity, he might think, with all manner of experiments being conducted and radical new hypotheses being put to the test, elements being fused and dismantled in gleaming circular vessels over infinite heat sources. What was he willing his minions to accomplish, what monumental project was afoot? What attempt to alter the galactic equilibrium was he exhorting his subjects to with such urgency, such seemingly insatiable desire? Were they against the clock, had imminent Armageddon been put in train by an unseen enemy and these were the chosen ones in their curious chrome laboratory, the crack squad tasked with finding a way to head it off? Had they only minutes in which to unearth the impossibly complex encrypted algorithm which would save the planet?

And then it would arrive, the plate of rice with a few bits of parsley on it or a lump of ice cream. And the stranger would shake and scratch his head simultaneously and think how he’d hate to see the hoor trying to lay a patio, or put up a few shelves in the spare room.

This Is A Local Victim. For Local People

Have you ever noticed the little verbal protocols that RTE correspondents seem to observe when reporting on anything of a judicial nature? “A file is being prepared for the DPP”. It never varies, you will never hear “prosecutions are likely” or “evidence is being compiled to pursue convictions”. It’s always the exact same sentence. A file is being prepared for the DPP. Or how about “the victim was named locally”, my personal favourite.

Are you aware of any circumstances under which the victim would be named remotely? “The incident took place in this remote townsland south of Tubercurry; the victim was named near Budapest as thirty eight year old welder Sean Og O’ Shaughnessy”. Are we not to presume at this point that in the case of a victim of a crime being named at all that this is an event which would exclusively take place locally.

How has it come about, this fixation on pinpointing the co ordinates at which victim names are released? Is it intended to clear up what has heretofore been seen as a grey area? I’m not aware of any confusion having existed in this regard. I could be wrong of course. Maybe there is a little known piece of European legislation, perhaps something buried deep within the Maastricht protocols which, unbeknownst to everyone, created Reciprocal Victim Naming Treaties between regions within European Union member states.

There may previously have existed, for example, a pact between Leinster and Provence whereby we get to name their victims and they get to name ours. If this is the case then maybe the reporter should reference it in his summation “As the Reciprocal Victim Naming Treaty between Connacht and Bratislava expired last May, the victim was named locally”. That’s better.

If these agreements do indeed exist they are more than likely constantly being re drafted and implemented. Are we soon likely, for example, to hear an RTE reporter outside a courthouse in Kerry say something like “the victim cannot be named locally due to the existence of a Reciprocal Victim Naming Treaty between Munster and Tuscany”. How likely is it that we will shortly hear Ann Doyle tell us “still to come on tonight’s Six One news all the weekend sport, weather and a round up of today’s Venetian murder victims” while simultaneously Italian news anchor Fabio Lippi invites his viewers to stay put in order to catch the names of the subjects of the day’s homicides in Tralee.

Could this be the basis of another leg in the No to Lisbon platform? I can just see Declan Ganley in his next press conference urging us to reject deranged European democracy and, ahem, keep victim naming local. Wrestle back control from the Brussels bureaucrats, first it was straight bananas, now they’re messing with the deceased. What are they trying to achieve? If they’re not careful the identity of these people will become the subject of baseless speculation, conjecture and gossip and none of these are areas in which Irish people are particularly comfortable. Oh God no.

Of course if there was any real commercial acumen to be found in the management of RTE they would recognise the commercial potential here. Especially in these straitened times with advertising revenue dwindling at an alarming rate. It’s an alternate revenue stream staring them in the face and they can’t even see it. Naming rights could be auctioned off to the highest corporate bidder in a manner reminiscent of the Point Depot or Landsdowne Road. Tonight’s manslaughters are brought to you by Nokia. Connecting People via blunt instruments.

The victim was named in Frankfurt as forty two year old Kilmuckridge man Fiachra MacGillacuddy. A cake is being prepared for the DPP.

Poverty - Day 67

Things are getting tight. I haven’t moved from this bed in days, I feel the walls closing in on me. I have to do something to lift myself from this grim torpor. I know, I’ll make a few calls.

First up is Irish Life & Permanent. I spoke to a lovely girl called Mairead in their customer service department. I explained to Mairead that henceforth I had absolutely no intention of furnishing them with a red cent of the vast amount of money I owe them for my six bedroomed aberration on the edge of Edgeworthstown. Mairead said that was grand, don’t give it a second thought, sure there’s thousands like you. She also told me I was exceedingly charming and had a lovely phone voice. She wondered would I be interested in going for a coffee sometime. I told her I was married and besides the last thing I need right now is a bizarre fiduciary love triangle. Furthermore I have nothing to offer now apart from butter vouchers, pipe dreams and a rapidly dwindling collection of expensive toiletries.

Next up is Jim Bolger. I explained to Jim that henceforth I had absolutely no intention of furnishing him with a red cent of the fees for the very promising two year old colt by Sadler’s Wells out of an Oaks winning mare that he has in training down there in Carlow for me. Jim said that was grand, don’t give it a second thought, sure there’s thousands like you. He said he’d see me at Tipp v Cork in Semple on Sunday and we’d have a chat about the situation, maybe we could come to some “arrangement”. I felt uncomfortable with the implication and besides the last thing I need right now is a bizarre equine love triangle. I wished him luck and hung up.

I gave Nedzad over in Croatia a buzz. I told him to down tools immediately and cease work on my four thousand square foot Adriatic beach house. Boy did he sound upset. Jeeeesus. I think he told me to eff off in about eight different dialects. They all sound so aggressive though those people, don’t they? It turns out the poor hoor was actually telling me that’s grand sure there’s thousands like you and that I had a lovely ass and would I like to go out on a day trip to Sarajevo with him sometime. I had to email him later to explain that I was married and besides the last thing I need right now is a bizarre Balkan love triangle. He replied to say that was cool but he would still be needing the two hundred grand I owe him. (Note to self: prepare budget spreadsheet to get a handle on some of this stuff)

I decided to give Sean Fitzpatrick a ring to vent my anger at him for having deliberately put a bunch of numbers in the wrong column on a report thereby bringing about Armageddon. I asked him could he talk, was this a bad time. He said there’s no such thing as a bad time when you’ve just drawn a sweet three wood to within twenty yards on the tricky par five twelfth. You can sing that I said, I used to get the same feeling when I got a skimcoat mix just right. Ah, those were the days, we thought the sweet music of the mixer would last forever.

I came right out and asked him why he felt the need to ruin my life. He asked me how much I had invested in Anglo. Nothing I told him, in fact I never heard of you or your bank until a couple of months ago. Well how do you make out I ruined your life then, he asked me. Because Gene Kerrigan told me you did, I replied. He proceeded to tell me to eff off in about eight different dialects. I apologised for the confusion, wished him luck with the par three thirteenth and hung up. He rang me back to tell me he liked my style and that I was the type who could go places in his organisation. What organisation is that I asked, Opus Dei he replied. Jaysus wept I told him and besides the last thing I need right now is a bizarre ecclesiastical love triangle. I wished him luck and hung up.

I thought how funny it is how golf and our approach to it has crystallised our attitudes and framed the debate on the boom and sudden bust. Five years ago images of Fitzy and his buddies playing golf would have garnered nothing but approval from all quarters. We would have lauded these corporate giants networking and making the decisions that were facilitating the continuation of our grand lifestyles. Now a similar image provokes such derision and contempt that to be photographed on the fairway nowadays is the equivalent of being photographed clubbing baby seals.

I wonder was Fitzy always a golfer or did he just take to it when the shit hit the fan in order to rub it in? Having spoken to him it certainly seems like the kind of flourish of which he would be capable.

Anyway much done, more to do. I will have to shop in Lidl tomorrow. You’re already shopping in a landfill. Seamus, formerly of number 46 across the way, is living in a landfill and has changed his name to Paddy Neary to avoid the shame and embarrassment. It’s still you Seamus, as Dara O’ Briain would say.

P.S. Fidelma from New Tone spa and fitness centre just called looking for this month’s dues. She can sing for it. Anyway according to Fidelma herself I’m fit enough already. Never knew my luck with the ladies was inversely proportionate to Gross National Product.

Let the bad times roll.

The TV Told Me To Do It

There is a huge amount of frustration associated with not being a techie. You are always going to feel that you’re behind the curve, impotent. Increasingly the world is being slanted in favour of people who are technically proficient and who consider it important to spend vast amounts of money arming themselves with the equipment necessary to preserve their techie status.

DVDs have features that your perfectly fine but slightly old television is not good enough to avail of. You consistently feel that you are being railroaded into buying stuff that you could have done without because you can’t just watch a film in a normal way on a normal television, one that can’t take advantage of blue ray and superwide screen features on the disc.

This represents progress for who exactly? Sony, Phillips, Bosch and Toshiba that’s who. Relinquishing a perfectly good television because DVD manufactures insist on inventing nonsense features that only televisions built ten minutes ago can run certainly does not represent progress from my perspective.

Put on a DVD on an old television and it’s like trying to watch a film on your phone. The DVD gleefully reduces the picture to the size of a match box in a cynical and malicious attempt to belittle you and your antiquated equipment. When a DVD is taking the piss out of you it could be time to stage some form of revolt. The DVD has been programmed by the manufacturers to shrink the picture once it detects an old fashioned television. You are being ridiculed and made to feel inadequate by a shiny circular disc.

I had to go out and buy what I was led to believe was the latest and greatest flatscreen television to watch rented movies. The picture was great but I couldn’t hear the dialogue no matter how high I adjusted the volume. And this is the real genius of their grand satanic design; I had to return to the shop to buy speakers which would augment the pitiful volume coming from the television itself and provide me with a “complete viewing experience”. I don’t consider being able to hear what the actors are saying as being so pampered that I would classify it as a “complete viewing experience”. I would just call it “watching a film”. But “watching a film” is just not good enough anymore apparently.

Anyway I’m off to have a glass of water or should that be a “complete hydration experience”

It's All Over Now Baby Blue

I was rolling in it but it’s all been reclaimed
The mighty Celtic Tiger lies battered and defamed
Black tae and dry bread from now on I’m afraid
We’ve hit the arse end of our affluent escapade
It would be back down the mines for me, if we had any
And looking for a sub from the incapacitated Granny
Watch Peig Sayers climb back up the bestseller list
As you sneak down the local at lunch to get pissed
The youngsters will ring to reclaim their old room
Beached and abandoned by fast receding boom
Hand back the Range Rover with a lump in the throat
And the forty foot Olympic, “it’s a feckin’ yacht, not a boat”
Nothing for me now but the old bedsit in Marino
But please, one for the road, one last iced frappuccino
Strike another match, go start anew
‘Cos it’s all over now, baby blue

Green Blues

Green Fatigue, we all have a mild dose at this stage. I’ll do my bit, and I do know what my bit is, just lay off the Gestapo approach. We are all well aware of the principles of the thing by now. There are certain things that can be reused and recycled; it makes sense to use renewable resources wherever possible, the massive carbon output of certain processes is a very bad thing indeed. But leave it up to us to fill in the blanks.

I would be more worried about what happens the stuff after I religiously segregate it into its appropriately coloured bin. One week just after Christmas I was confused as to the rotation and left out both bins thinking they would just take the appropriate one. I came home to find both emptied, into the back of the same truck presumably. General rubbish and recyclables in one repulsive cocktail. Doesn’t inspire confidence now does it?

It’s just another case of unreasonable and unwarranted demands being lumped onto the little guy. Attacking medical card holders, special needs teachers and middle class families is seen by some as the solution to a mess created by corporate corruption and cronyism. Similarly I’m responsible for correcting the wrongs of short cutting chemical manufacturers and their complicit political buddies since the dawn of the industrial age. It has seemingly come down to whether I can be relied upon to put an empty orange juice carton into the correct receptacle to reverse a trend put in motion and expedited by every unscrupulous industrialist and his elected lapdogs the world over.

Now I’m not too petty to reject the task or to disagree with the science but don’t talk to me in that oh so patronising way as though the whole thing begins and ends with me. All the green bins in the universe won’t make the slightest difference if the boys in China or India can’t meet Kyoto targets. Talk tough with them. I’m doing my bit, I get the message. Consider me enlightened and leave me alone.

It's Gone? So Where Do Shamrock Rovers Play Now Then?

It’s not that long ago in this country when you were mad if you did anything. I remember when I bought a house in Beggars Bush, a five bedroom Georgian townhouse on four levels, in 1984 for two hundred and forty three quid. Everyone said I was mad, "are you off your head, you’ll never get that back". Look at me now. I remember around the same time I bought a bronze bust of Paddy Kavanagh for fifty two pence in Blackberry Market, everyone looked at me like I had just stepped out of a flying saucer. "Are you off your head, you’ll never get that back". Look at me now. I remember a year or so later I paid seven quid for the original copy of the Bible in The Winding Stair bookshop on the quays. "Are you off your head, you’ll never get that back". Look at me now. Just look at me. I met a few friends in town the other night and paid the equivalent of sixty eight quid for three pints and a plate of chips. "Are you off your head" I said to myself "you’ll never get that back".

Name That Buffoon

It has emerged this lunchtime that Daniel Kitchen is set to succeed the controversial Michael Fingleton as Chairman of the embattled lender Irish Life & Permanent. The well known building society have a large market share in the provision of mortgages and loans for home purchases and house construction. Kitchen is an example of the recent trend within corporate Ireland which has seen Boards only appointing people whose name is appropriate to the business in which they are involved. Other well known examples of this phenomenon are Horse Racing Ireland Chief Executive, Dessie Orchid and Newbridge Cutlery Finance Director, Stirling Silver.

Wait Till I Tell Ya

Police in Dundalk are confirming the arrest of Lorraine Keane in the town on Saturday night on suspicion of masterminding an ongoing cross border diesel smuggling operation. Keane, who is best known for hosting celebrity gossip programme Xpose on TV3, was denied bail with the judge characterising her as “a significant flight risk”.

Sunday Independent columnist Barry Egan will issue a statement later this morning after footage which appears to show the journalist taking part in a gruesome bare knuckle boxing match appeared on You Tube.

Rachel Allen has denied reports that she is in the final stage of negotiations with Gastroporn Productions, a company run by Ron Jeremy, to appear alongside Nigella Lawson in a big budget production provisionally titled “I Like Big Buns and I Cannot Lie”

A spokesman for Jackie Healy Rae would not comment on reports in some of today’s tabloid papers which suggest he has agreed personal terms and will in the next twenty four hours be confirmed as the new face of Ralph Lauren.

In the wake of Peter Stringer’s sudden disappearance from the international rugby scene, Paul O’Connell was this morning forced to deny accusations that he had mistakenly blended the former no. 9 into one of his high protein milk shakes and drank him.

Miriam O’Callaghan incurred the wrath of anti blood sports protestors on Saturday when she arrived in Clonmel with her eight children to attend the finals of the Irish Coursing Derby. When questioned by reporters Ms. O’ Callaghan replied "Sure Jaysus we’re all mad into the coursing, it’s a mighty day’s sport like"

Have Beard Will Unravel

At the time the propagandists were obviously going to toe the party line and translate it as "Death to America, Death to Bush" but it has come to light that a more accurate translation of what Saddam was roaring defiantly from the gallows that fateful day would be "I want my Mammy, can someone get me my Mammy please?" A former Baath party official described the revelations as "complete and utter horseshite"

Shame On Our Shaman Eamon

Eamon, Eamon, Eamon. I would like to point out that amongst the audience for televised international football there are the odd few souls who possess some degree of mental competence. This is a fact that you have either forgotten or were never aware of in the first place. Not all football fans think, for example, that entering Dustin the Turkey in the Eurovision Song Contest was a hilarious thing to do.

Let me assure you that there are people out there who have well calibrated Bullshit Radars and that you have been a permanent blip on them for a good number of years now. We had come to terms with you though, accepted you as an unpleasant but unavoidable fact of life because out there somewhere, somehow you had a constituency, a captive audience and we were not so churlish as to seek to deny them their kicks. Our very own Bruce Forsyth.

Only now it has come to a head, the most patient of us can no longer withstand the relentless onslaught of slurry you unleash every time you are given a platform. It’s over Eamon and it’s not me it’s you.

When Giovanni Trapattoni was appointed Ireland manager Eamon hailed it as one the greatest days in Irish sporting history. Now someone such as myself who has a keen interest in sport but would by no means be considered an expert welcomed the appointment of such a successful and high profile manager. My enthusiasm was qualified, however, by the knowledge that Trap’s half dozen or so Italian League titles amongst other successes had come via fairly dour, formulaic football. I was aware of this. I am not an expert.

I would have thought it reasonable to expect a man who has held down a job as the nation’s premier pundit for the last generation to also know this. Apparently I was mistaken. Because the tactics that Trapattoni subsequently employed in his first few games as Ireland manager came like a bolt from the blue to Eamon. He was appalled.

Now a there are a couple of possibilities as to what happened here. (1) Eamon was not adequately familiar with Trap’s track record to know that this is what we were going to get or (2) He was familiar with Trap’s track record but was convinced that once he arrived and got a few pints of stout into him he would chill out and change the habits of fifty five years in football. In either case it is apparent that Dinny from Glenroe is more qualified to be on the RTE panel with Giles and Whelan.

On Wednesday night Ireland produced their best performance in years, a performance that was born out of a precise tactical approach and bold substitutions at the appropriate times. In other words astute management. Such shrewdness was dismissed by Eamon as nothing more than gambling, he poured scorn on the changes made and generally called every aspect of the manager’s competence into question. He seemed particularly irked that Trapattoni could replace an ineffective Kevin Doyle with Noel Hunt having never seen the Waterford man play competitively live. Eamon has never seen Noel Hunt play live either. If Trapattoni is not qualified to know whether Noel Hunt should come into the game on the basis that he has never seen him play in the flesh then surely Eamon is similarly unqualified to claim that he should not.

Maybe it’s me, perhaps to subject his nonsense assertions, errant predictions and all round pitiful insights to any kind of analysis is to miss the point completely. The absence of consistency or logic could actually be what it is all about.

Have I gotten the wrong end of this Dunphy shtick? Could it be that it has nothing to do with football and is more about fusing pantomime and soap opera for bizarre comic effect? That would certainly explain a lot.

In future I will bear this possibility in mind when I tune in. I will try to enjoy the setting, designed to provoke maximum fake outrage and phoney indignation from the man himself. I will try to embrace the concoction of a set up where protagonists are encouraged to showcase their most box office traits and goad other participants into doing likewise. Cast your mind back to incidents where Dunphy tries to tease fireworks from Graeme Souness.

Where you have the construction of a set up designed to deliver a pre determined result; controversy, whilst removing the scope for any genuine insight or intelligence that could skew the desired outcome, you can only call it like you see it: Reality TV.

There is also a beautiful symbiosis at work here. Dunphy gets to keep up his profile by preaching to his choir; people who think Podge and Rodge is comedy and RTE gets three hours of cheaply produced, high rating, high ad revenue programming masquerading as sports coverage. Everybody’s happy.

Do you think John Giles knows he is a Reality TV star?

Backwater Ireland

Backwater America gets a bad rap. It’s a popular pastime here to point to the Deep South and marvel at how stupid, uncouth and backward they all appear to be. But are they really any more backward than their equivalent over here? It is down solely to the fact that the inhabitants of these few states appear to hold the balance of power every four years that their inhabitants come into such sharp focus. The American Presidency has a huge impact on all of our lives and we resent the idea that sometimes the casting vote can lie in the hands of people who have never heard of Snow Patrol. In 2000 it was possible for all of us to hone in our anger and frustration on a few hundred Floridians. That anger required that we characterize these people as obese, in bred and very stupid.

There are probably people who are just as backward thinking on social issues, on religion, on the Middle East living in North Yorkshire or Donegal but we never have any occasion to give them a second thought. God only knows what’s lurking in the valleys of Wales and Scotland. The biggest issue these people get to vote on is who in the village grows the most impressive marrows or what potholes to fill in this year. If subjected to the same scrutiny as their equivalents in places like West Virginia or Georgia are every four years, I’m sure we would find their credentials just as suspect when it comes to voting in the “right on” fashion that we think is appropriate. It’s so easy for us to whittle these people down to a trigger happy bible bashing characterization and ignore the other elements that inform their conservatism. They might be pro military because the local navy base is the biggest employer in the county, they are pro life because they are religious. This is a religious country. Everyone in this country over the age of I would suggest fifty (and at least half of those under fifty) are also pro life yet we never hear people of this ilk described as ignorant rednecks.

The worst possible thing to happen to the global profile of American Christian conservatives was George Bush. With such a repugnant figurehead it is easy to stockpile revulsion for the grassroots, for those who put him there. If the exact same things had taken place in America over the past eight years under the stewardship of someone like John McCain (though with anyone but Palin as vice), the conservative base would not be half as much of a lightning rod for global hatred and anger as they are. We generally view McCain in a more positive light and I think under his leadership decisions such as the one to invade Iraq would not have been viewed as one more leg in the compilation of a new, evil right wing world order. It would have been viewed as wrong absolutely and condemned but not as part of a sinister and premeditated plan to subvert world power structures.

Bush was responsible for ensuring that every move the White House made attracted a disproportionate amount of scorn from every quarter and was viewed through the prism of suspicion and hostility. The revulsion we felt for the man himself clouded everything. It is still only very grudgingly that any credit is given to Bush for being the only US president in two generations to increase aid to sub Saharan Africa. The profile we have devised suggested that Bush was incapable of pointing out Africa on an atlas so the suggestion that he would be capable of increasing aid to that continent does not compute.

They make easy targets and provide good comedic entertainment those rednecks. We chortle at their names like Cleetus, Billy Bob. We dismiss their outlook on life, their social conservatism and bible thumping sensationalism. We resent that in a November every so often our destiny becomes entwined with theirs. It’s an uncomfortable reminder that they exist, that we share the planet with such specimens with their pickup trucks, their guns, their home made liquor. We don’t like it one bit but make no real attempt to understand them. So we respond with put downs, ruthless dismissals of their motivation, their backgrounds, their way of life. A playground moment “You’re a stupid head, well you’re a bigger stupid head”

Cleetus believes in being left alone, that some government is necessary to keep the show on the road but for the most part he doesn’t want too much interference in his day to day life. Cleetus wants less governance and believes that this will logically lead to him having to pay less taxes. He’s a patriot, he believes in God and isn’t sure about children being brought up by two mommies or two daddies. If Cleetus lived here he would probably have joined the queue to ring Joe on Liveline in the aftermath of the Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross phone call furore. He can’t afford college for his kids as things stand and believes that an obvious upshot of all the tax he has paid throughout his life is subsidised or free university education. He will pay a modest health insurance premium for effective and efficient health care. He sounds like he’s from another planet doesn’t he? The conventional wisdom here suggests that we could not trust such a specimen to put one foot in front of the other never mind play a pivotal role in deciding the direction of his country and our world.

The political right in America, that in our infinite wisdom and moral superiority we so denounce, have devised a system whereby they claim Cleetus as a loyal subject by virtue of a smattering of patronizing pronouncements on what they call social issues. But their real passions lie elsewhere. They believe that all the power and wealth should be concentrated within a small, select grouping. They believe that this group should collaborate, co operate, take care of each other’s interests and act to prevent the ascent of anyone from outside their sect to any position of power or influence. It believes that any manner of deception, dishonesty, criminality or manipulation is justified in achieving this end. Does any of this sound familiar to you? Yanks, eh? What a shower of fecking eejits. It seems Cleetus is not the only one being taken for a ride.

Cowenesian Economics

Those of us who monitor the National Irony Level Indicator have identified April 7th as the day on which the readings are most likely to go off the chart or at the very least venture into perilous orange.

This is the day on which the Minister for Finance is set to talk up our knowledge economy credentials and potential while simultaneously reintroducing third level fees and increasing student teacher ratios.

He is also set to announce a substantial reduction in the €1billion annual budget of FAS, the state employment and training agency, in response to the recent emergence of a trend away from full employment to employment haemorrhaging.

This is not surprising as it is generally agreed amongst economists that during a period of economic and fiscal utopia it is vital to grossly over fund your state employment agency and that during a period of economic and fiscal freefall it is equally as important to slash that funding as mercilessly as possible.

It is known internationally as "The Offaly Approach".

Show Me The Money

We have had to listen to a lot of debate recently about the value for money provided by our elected representatives, most notably the ones who occupy Leinster House. The extent and nature of allowable expenses, participation in out of hours committees, the merits of the Junior Ministries amongst other issues have been discussed and dissected ad nauseum by panels of experts and journalists up and down the land. Well I’m glad to report that I have heard all I need to hear, I have considered all the evidence and am now in a position to weigh in with my conclusion.

None of them should be paid a red cent. Give them nothing.

These people never tire of reminding us that their sole motivation is the prosperity and well being of their constituents. Their raison d’etre is to look after the interests of those abandoned, voiceless peasants who saw it in their hearts to make the ultimate declaration of trust and vote for them in the first place. To do anything less than work ceaselessly and tirelessly on their behalf would be a downright betrayal of that trust, wouldn’t it? Well yes it would, now that you mention it. In fact it seems that we are in such noble territory, on such lofty moral ground that when I think of the likes of the selfless Beverly Flynn depriving herself of the most basic human entitlements in order to deliver unequivocally for the impoverished inhabitants of Mayo that the mere mention of money seems somehow inappropriate, crass and vulgar. That’s right, crass and vulgar.

Supposedly the best public representatives are people who have first succeeded in other fields. People who bring all their experience, their positive attitude, their connections and expertise to bear on political and fiscal matters and as a result excel at getting things done. Having realized all of their commercial ambitions their attention will then inevitably turn to giving something back, to being a force for good. Money does not even come into the equation. And here we have the kernel of what should be the start of a new political order in this country and ultimately the world.

Means testing for those seeking to run for public office.

They’ve done it to us, let’s do it to them. You must satisfy a minimum net worth or be excluded from even declaring your candidacy. We want to take money off the table as a motivator. Willingness to work for the common good is the only motive we’re interested in. I have a feeling we would be less uptight about helicopter trips, first class seats and bonuses for chairing of Oireachtas committees if we knew we weren’t picking up the tab. Have as many Junior Ministries as you like. In fact I always thought there should be one for plumbing paraphernalia. Minister of State for Back Boilers. About time.

The problem we have with the likes of Martin Cullen and Noel Dempsey is that they are grubby little wasters on the make, strutting around the place like big shots. Well in this scenario our TDs already are big shots, they’ve already made it. We can’t begrudge or complain about anything because they’re paying their own bills. It opens the door for proper no nonsense, unencumbered governance without prejudice. It has the potential to disentangle us so completely from the political realm that life could conceivably become enjoyable again. We could actually make plans to do things like go fishing with our buddies rather than face another evening tethered to the radio lest we miss details of the latest shambolic misappropriation of our money on Bullfart Radars by Brendan Smith. You want your life back don’t you? So do I.

I’ll give Denis O’Brien a ring, I’m sure he’ll run in Kildare South.

Hey Joe, Where You Going With That Assertion In Your Hand?

What can be done about the scourge that is Joe Duffy? For me, listening to his show is strictly a form of research, an attempt to gauge the mood of outraged Ireland, to see what is on the mind of the inhabitants of our parallel reality.

Today was a good example. Tommy from Ballyfermot rang to voice his disgust that Deirdre de Burca was running as a Green Party candidate for the European elections in a Dublin constituency. Tommy’s hostility to de Burca stemmed from a vote she cast as a Wicklow County Councillor some years ago to extend an existing law which limited the granting of planning permission in Wicklow to local residents with local need only. The law was extended to limit the sale of houses in small developments in small towns to local people thereby eliminating the need for a plethora of unsightly second rate developments to accommodate Dubliners chasing their lifelong dream of owning two Labradors.

An eminently sensible law which sought to restrict the disfigurement of the country side with crap semi detached houses. Now our friend Tommy had placed a deposit on a site in Wicklow with the intention of applying for permission and building himself a house and, according to himself, the enactment of this law precluded all of this. No mention was made of the fact that existing planning laws would already have prevented him from doing this, as it would have done in every other county in the country, laws which have existed since before Deirdre de Burca was even born. Tommy dressed up this bitterness in a rudderless rant about how “you can’t have it both ways”, that De Burca had “nailed her colours to the mast” and was now looking to Dubliners for her vote, thousands of whom according to Tommy had been deprived of their childhood dreams of moving to terraced houses in Wicklow by her.

Joe, as moderator, made no attempt to suggest that the woman’s motives were in fact honorable and all too rare. Here was someone who was an advocate of good planning and anxious to arrest or at least limit the needless destruction of the Irish countryside. He in fact took up the torch passed by his Ballyer comrade, got de Burca on the line and promptly facilitated Tommy and some other moron who had arrived onto the phone lines by this time to belittle her along with her motives and background. Duffy is smart enough to know the logic behind her vote but at no point provided her with an uninterrupted forum on which to air it preferring instead to see her humiliated and shouted down. Duffy knows that unsophisticated reactionary twits are a much bigger proportion of his listenership than enlightened Green party advocates and so was content to throw her to the wolves, even getting in the odd dig himself.

Apparently what ultimately offended Tommy and his ilk irrevocably was the notion that someone with obvious ties to Wicklow could just simply migrate and seek election in Dublin. This according to him “is just not right”. Duffy did not see fit to point out the irony of this assertion in that what Tommy had originally sought to do was to simply migrate to Wicklow. The good people of Kilcoole dodged a bullet here and should consider staging an annual Deirdre de Burca appreciation day. The only tragedy is that she is ten years too late.

Fairground Infraction

We are dealing with an unprecedented set of political and economic circumstances which will undoubtedly require the enactment of all manner of innovative and radical legislation over the coming months. Recent revelations regarding the scurrilous goings on in all quarters during the boom will ensure that the gabel of illegality falls upon all sorts of heretofore perfectly acceptable behaviour.

Well if we are going to wipe the slate clean I have a suggestion as to where we might start. The utterance of the phrase “it was a rollercoaster ride of emotions” should be re classified as a criminal act and one which should attract merciless censure.

What used to be the preserve of inarticulate and illiterate footballers during vacuous post match interviews has stealthily made its wicked way into the mainstream vernacular. Only yesterday on the radio I heard a chap who is on the production team for what is apparently a fairly high brow musical biography of Michael Collins which is about to open in the Cork Opera House describe the show as “a rollercoaster of emotions” for the prospective audience. Now only the revelation that this man’s role in the production team is the procurement of hot beverages and jammy donuts for the standby carpenter could possibly assuage the horror I felt at hearing such linguistic excrement emanating from someone involved in the thee-aaat-re.

Overrated, overused, meaningless and perenially out of context it is a phrase which has much in common with its best known proponent, the Thesaurus of Tallaght, the one, the only Robbie Keane. At the end of the day.

Glad You Asked

The meek, introspective singer songwriter came to the end of the latest particularly heartfelt tune and in a bid to initiate a bit of banter with the audience asked in a mock stern, lecturer type voice “Anyone got any questions?” “Where do you buy your Johnnies?” came the immediate, booming retort from the lone Irish guy at the back of the packed, hushed auditorium.

A Simple Life

What would you do without eggs? Can you even contemplate such a prospect? Yet when was the last time you stopped what you were doing and gave thanks for eggs? You can’t remember because you’re an ungrateful article. Eggs are awesome and yet appear to get absolutely no credit. You can have them poached, fried or scrambled; they are an essential element of almost every sweet or savoury dish. They provide essential protein yet in excess can be very dangerous. A seemingly inoffensive foodstuff, yet so volatile, can turn on you if abused. The flipside, you could say.

The sandwich is another example. Fast yet wholesome food, can be made any way you want, healthy or indulgent, any meal any time of the day; the sandwich is versatile and irreplaceable.

Right, but aside from uncomplicated food look at all the things you take for granted; the humble, unsung aspects of your life. The unglamorous things that we don’t pay much attention to but would yearn for if taken away.

The radio is still the simplest, most wholesome way to be entertained. Mindless chat, provocative debate, avant garde music or art – the radio has it all yet the concept has not changed one jot since its inception. The old ones are the best then apparently. Like the X ray, how old is the bloody X ray? Still hasn’t been surpassed. Penicillin is another beauty. Combustion engines. You can churn out all the talking maps and automatic wipers you like, you won’t make one dent in what’s happening under the hood.

The newspaper, one would have thought that the whole concept of the newspaper would have been outrun in this digital age but it’s doing more than hanging on it’s thriving. There is still something very exciting and relaxing about opening up your paper when you know you have a bit of time to read it. It is so synonymous with break time, with relaxation that its mere sight triggers our brains to make the association with being seated, having a cup of tea. For an addict the most exhilarating moment is not when the drug is actually taken but the moments before, the anticipation causing the body to produce adrenalin which surpasses the effect of the substance itself. It’s the same with the paper, the few seconds of the preamble to reading it is always better than the reading itself.

The weather forecast, when you spend most of your time outdoors and your work depends upon it there is still a little bit of you that gets giddy just before the weather forecast. It could be great tomorrow. It could be gorgeous. Disappointment inevitably follows. It’s a bit like the Irish soccer team, you always harbour a faint hope they are going to thrill but they never seem to do it. The flame of hope remains lit though, no matter how often we’ve been let down. Hope against probability, evidence and logic. Like watching the lottery. It’s definitely not going to be me but it could be me. Charlie Bucket and the Golden Ticket.

I wish Mart and Market was still on the television with Michael Dillon. “Now we go to Kilcullen where there was a lively trade in store heifers making a hundred and two pound per hundred kilos” Those were the days, when you could equate the price of beef in the supermarket or in a restaurant, if you ever got out, back to the guidelines Michael provided every week. You knew where you stood, you were clued up on the Beef Standard.

It’s hard to know where you stand with Brazilian beef, I don’t speak Portuguese. I’d like to see the Brazilian equivalent of Michael Dillon, he is probably the image of Luis Felipe Scolari but he delivers his weekly report against the backdrop of a packed Rio beach with the national ladies volleyball team in the background limboing under a bamboo stick to a banging samba rhythm. Although that could just be an image I concocted from a collection of tried and trusted stereotypes. In fact it definitely is. Bring back Mart and Market and its sister programme Landmark. They were inextricably linked, indistinguishable, incapable of surviving independently; the Minneapolis St. Paul of late night agricultural and livestock programming.

The sea area forecast on Radio 1 always makes me feel calm even if they are predicting north westerly winds reaching gale force on all Irish coastal waters and on the Irish Sea. Is that ironic? Does anyone actually know what irony is anymore? Is it ironic that nobody knows when anyone is being ironic? Or is that just a curious idiosyncrasy? Or a strange dichotomy maybe? Who is the go to guy when it comes to irony, who can we trust to be the sole incontestable arbiter of what is ironic and what is not? This person is like a shaman, before he dies we need to be sure his secrets are passed down to the next generation or irony could easily disappear forever.

It’s safe enough for the moment though, in Ireland at any rate. Instead of a national threat level there should be a national irony level. The other day the radio told me that banks and building societies are looking unfavourably on mortgage applications from people who have online betting accounts. In the eyes of these people gambling with one’s own money is apparently the ultimate faux pas. The national irony level surged to iridescent red.

Brutality

The Sunday evening ritual was always the cause of anxiety and conflict. They had talked about it exhaustively on countless occasions, from each Friday evening onwards they in fact seemed to talk of little else. Ethan was capable of putting forth all kinds of inspired rationalisations as to why he shouldn’t have to participate in what he considered to be the ultimate manifestation of tyranny and victimisation. Nobody he knew had to endure such brutality on such a regular basis; he was quite sure in fact that his parents, far from being the liberal right on types his friends maintained that they were, belonged to a local chapter of some obscure and sinister medieval cult and only delighted in the practice of its more sadistic ceremonial elements on him. But contrary to what his son believed Oscar derived no pleasure from administering the treatment. He could barely stomach inflicting that level of misery with such regularity on someone he loved so dearly. But he also knew that it was required of him, that he could not hope to survive and prosper indeed even function in this community without indulging his hosts, without satisfying their conventions however repugnant they may have seemed to him or his son.

His wife had long since managed to detach herself from the whole arrangement. She made a point of being somewhere else when the time came. There was grocery shopping to do, a friend to visit or maybe even in desperation a church to drop in to. The initial guilt at being so willing to disable the emotional connection between herself and her son for that hour every week had subsided and been replaced with the kind of steel edge she never thought she would be able to summon. Knowing what needs to be done; simple, unavoidable. She just hoped the scene she arrived back to was palatable, that the aftermath would not be too brutal to bear. She had heard of the tipping point and knew that hers could not be far way.

Marianne and Oscar married in 1998. They were living what hindsight calls an unconventional life, a sort of international freeform bohemian escapade with no discernible pattern or plan. But they were ready for something new. They were ready to replace the glamour of being broke and disorientated with the glamour of expansion tanks and high thread counts. The quest for normality brought them deep into the realm of a civilisation on whose periphery they had previously existed. They both knew that there would be bizarre concepts to confront, strange conventions to grapple with, compromises to be made; change to be embraced not resisted. This was all going to be fine because they were ready to do whatever was necessary to make a go of a real life, a life with regularity and certainty where the bin is wheeled to the kerb every Tuesday night and wheeled back every Wednesday afternoon. The kind of world where the merciless efficiency of the structures themselves let you off the hook, swallow so much of your workload. Pay and display. Life by numbers.

The reality was invariably different. The idea that the machinery of society, as devised by the clever people who know how to get things done, would absolve a person of the need to think or try too hard had apparently been tried and was found to be a complete failure as a model for human behaviour. This came as something of a shock to Oscar who suspected that it had simply been run by the wrong people. Oscar began to find increasing tracts of his time given over to the accumulation of items for which he fundamentally had no need. The system which he thought would insulate and cradle him was now responsible for all the compounding anxiety he constantly felt.

He questioned everything. He struggled with the grim realities of this new world order, the illogical hierarchies, the surreal demands he felt were put upon him. His wife became preoccupied, drifting slowly away leaving him alone to contend with the great expectations of an unforgiving world of someone else’s making.

“Who made up these rules?” thought Oscar as he began the latest fraught instalment of their Sunday ceremony. Through years of practice he had perfected a way of controlling Ethan as he pulled off his clothes and held him under the tepid stream of water amidst flailing arms and other worldly screams. “When it was over his eyes blazed with a sort of demonic fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat” Oscar would remember later. “I’m nearly six, I don’t need to have a shower every week” Ethan screamed as he let go and began the dripping march to his room to seethe, sulk and plot his father’s inevitably gruesome demise.

In Any Poor Man's Language

The times they are a changing, the recessionary days are rapidly returning. Is it not appropriate that our language also evolves to reflect the changing circumstances? We need to cut our linguistic cloth according to our measure and now is the time for more austere language. We need to get back to basics.

During the boom we used boom language. Language that we imported from America to adequately describe the serious and urgent manner in which we were going about the accumulation of money and ahem..... stuff. The time has come to send all that packing and reassert our national dialect which is more in keeping with these straitened economic times.

When you‘re a go getter you “call” people on your phone. This is something that you do “right now” because naturally there is no time to lose. You also have the option to “touch base” with someone to give them the “heads up”. How about we all calm down and decide instead that you will “give him a ring there later on” or “give him a buzz and tell him the crack”. Anyhow you can’t “touch base” with someone who’s down to their last tenner, it just doesn’t fit. No, in such a scenario it is more fitting to “give him a shout”. More leisurely I think, not as clinical or aggressive. In fact let’s put back the lovely expression “at the minute” where it belongs. Let’s not be stuck in traffic “right now”, let’s be stuck in traffic “at the minute”. To a lot of people the term “bejaysus” belongs in the past when Irish people were generally perceived to be uncouth and uneducated, but I can see a role for it in today’s climate. Instead of saying “right now we are seeing a significant decline in retail activity” we should say “bejaysus we’re seeing a significant decline in retail activity”. I think you will agree that this is a much more effective way of conveying the gravity of the situation and the associated despair you are experiencing as a result.

In the boom words such as “approximately” or “roughly” were replaced by the catch all expression “in the ballpark”. We only had a vague handle on the origin and actual meaning of these three words but this did not stop us trotting them out at every opportunity. A provisional price from a contractor for home improvement work was “in the ballpark”, a bit of parallel parking that could have been better but was not strictly speaking illegal was “in the ballpark”, an exorbitant price for some three piece faux leather abomination was, somehow, “in the ballpark”. Well we should now make these three words the hardest ones to say and replace them with the much more Irish “close enough”. “Am I all right with the kerb there? Close enough”. “Is that within your budget? Close enough” “Will my arse fit into these trousers? Close enough”. It is much more suggestive of that relaxed, casual approach that we Irish became famous for in the days before the invention of sectional sofas and kitchen islands.

We are facing a dire set of circumstances and those in the know seem to think that there is no end in sight. We need a word which conveys the despair and helplessness we all feel. The good news is we already have one, “Ochon” should be resurrected and reintroduced into everyday usage. “Ochon, ochon my Range Rover has been repossessed”. “Ochon, ochon my apartment in Croatia has been foreclosed on”. Our native tongue could prove to be very useful in these circumstances in providing words which hark back to our tragic past. “A few years ago I was a high flier but sure now I’m no more than a spailpin”

Blight is a word with tragic historical connotations for Irish people, the time is now right to dust it down and bring it back “we are faced with the blight of ghost estates the length and breadth of the country”. The term “coffin ship” conjures vile associations which go back to an era in our history of unprecedented poverty, death and despair. Many would contend that the current impasse has the potential to be comparable and that we should give consideration to renaming the “ghost estate” the “coffin estate” because, let’s face it, you’ll probably be dead before they finish yours.

The “zombie hotel” is a close relative of the “coffin estate“. Unfortunately it’s not the name of an obscure Doors album from the early seventies or a themed weekend getaway wherein you participate in the solving of a fictional murder, but a real country wide phenomenon where lavish hotels are lying idle. How could they be used, having, as they do, state of the art facilities and all manner of hedonistic delights?

How about redeploying them as Correctional Facilities for white collar criminals? I’m sure the coming months and years will see the unearthing of all sorts and scales of financial irregularities, corruption and deception which took place during the boom. We are going to need somewhere to house all the offenders and cannot contemplate clogging up the real prisons with such reprobates. Since all the money is gone there is very little chance of these people re offending so a minimum security facility would suffice for their rehabilitation. Employment could be created by retrofitting the inmates with electronic tagging devices and constructing electric perimeter fencing. We could euphemistically refer to these compounds as “tribunals”, the inaugural facility being “The Fitzpatrick Tribunal”.

What used to be an iced frappacinno and a wholemeal bap with prosciutto, mozzarella, water cress and guacamole has quickly become a can of fanta, a yorkie and a bag of Hula Hoops. From knocking on the door of Nashville to a residency in The Cush Inn Kildangan, we are the fiscal equivalent of Ray Lynam.

Ochon, Ochon.

Television - Shrug Of The Nation

I’d call it tripe but when cleaned up and prepared in the correct way, tripe is very appetising and fulfilling, no matter what you do with this it is still an unpalatable abomination.

The term reality TV is quite promising insofar as it suggests a footing in and a reflection of the world in which we all live. It becomes apparent pretty quickly though that we are dealing with the reality of some other species, a parallel reality perhaps.

Is there another civilisation that I don’t know about living on this planet, one we never see or encounter, who don’t share anything with us apart from one thing - they watch TV. They don’t participate in our world in any other way, but they all have cable subscriptions - this is it, this has got to be the target market.

Because nobody I know or know of, is of the opinion that watching a show in which busty blond Samantha who once went out with a fella who went to school with John Terry “wins” by virtue of being able to eat more dung beetles than a chap who once had a walk on part in Byker Grove is first rate entertainment.

It in fact provides a new basis for refusing to pay the TV licence - “but you don’t produce any programs for my species”. I’d like to see a Circuit Court judge’s reaction to that defence if you were to really dig your heels in and trust the judiciary to arrive at the only morally acceptable outcome. “I find in favour of the defendant based entirely on his wholly plausible contention that your product is aimed at other life forms”

Producing shows such as Failte Towers and Living with Lucy is considered by the powers that be in RTE to be preferable to putting money into the nurturing of real talent or worthwhile drama and documentary programmes. When I first heard the term Reality TV, I in my naiveté assumed that it was in fact a new, most likely American, way of describing a documentary. RTE don’t have funding issues they have misappropriation issues.

I’m sure I’m not alone in being able to remember a time when Channel Four was good, their flagship show now is called Celebrity Big Brother. My Sky package gives me half a dozen American evangelical channels but not BBC Three or Four, two channels whereon you would harbour some faint hope of coming across something connected to planet earth. It took a forty minute phone call one day to reconfigure my setup and squeeze them in between Living +12 and Men & Motors.

You, like myself, probably have a lot of little jobs around the house that you keep meaning to take care of but never quite do. The niggly things that started out small but have evolved into gargantuan, epic tasks and grow by the second. I’m talking about the pollyfilla for the hole in the kid’s bedroom wall, the new handle for the kitchen cabinet, hanging the timber shelves that have been propped in a corner unopened since last Easter.

Well let me share a motivational technique I discovered recently that will help you to reclaim your realm from the demons of procrastination. 1.Throw a few logs on the fire, get a cup of tea, sit down, make yourself comfortable and grab the TV remote. 2. Try to find something that a reasonable, rational, sane person would find enlightening or entertaining. 3.Nothing on the first circuit? Try again. Repeat three times.

Now turn off the TV, sit back for a moment and ponder this. Which is the more enticing - climbing into the attic to lag the water pipes or sitting through an hour of Fat Teenagers Can’t Hunt? Exactly.

Now I’m prepared to admit that this could be my fault; that somehow I’m not tuned into the zeitgeist or am even participating in the same consciousness as everybody else. I after all live a fairly sheltered existence in rural Ireland and know only trivial things, for example that milk comes from cows or that Sacramento is the capital of California.

And in all likelihood it’s knowledge like that which is putting me at a disadvantage. Could it be that I know too much to enjoy reality TV or that on the other hand I don’t know enough about the right things ? I think I’m safe in saying that everybody I know is aware that milk comes from cows also and none of them enjoy reality TV either.

All this time me and my ilk have been in pursuit of the wrong kind of knowledge, in our misguided quest for useful and worthwhile pieces of information we have firewalled ourselves from the primal glee to be derived from watching someone very few people have heard of scream racist abuse at someone even fewer people have heard of on live television.

There are I’m sure large swathes of the population that are similarly out of the loop when it comes to this issue. It is in fact a splendid idea for a reality TV show - “Skinny Culchies Don’t Know Reality TV”. Bear with me. We could be assigned a series of tasks in which we are required to re enact legendary scenes from seminal reality shows or reproduce famous lines of dialogue uttered by participants, and the public could vote off those of us who do it unsatisfactorily or unconvincingly.

There could be a three person judging panel who would provide insightful tips and constructive criticism as the weeks progressed. Bill Cullen, Grainne Seoige and Bertie Ahern. Because there’s nobody knows show business like Bertie knows show business. The good cop bad cop routine. Bill could provide the hard nosed put downs while Bertie could as always be everybody’s friend with Grainne entrusted with the casting (e) vote when the situation, or the viewing figures required it. Bertie, having spent the last decade as the lead in a never ending pantomime should have a particular aptitude for such a setting.

I’m a Homo Sapien, Get me out of Here.

No Punditry For Old Men

There is a very British trait emerging in the realm of our sports journalism. Lampoon and harangue everything and everyone. Our sportspeople should be venerated not chastised. Save your scorn for incompetent politicians and crooked financiers. Leave Robbie Keane alone. He, amongst others, has never failed in his passion or commitment, has manifestly given his all every time he pulls on the jersey yet attracts the bile of hacks who in their wisdom detect something lacking in the character of the man. And what’s worse is it transmits to the sheep on the terraces who start to boo instead of getting behind the team. Another British import, are we as a nation incapable of having a collective original thought. If they do it in America or Britain it’s good enough for us. Booooo, aren’t we great lads? Sophisticated fans, well versed in the nuances of the game. We know dross when we see it.

At the end of Staunton’s reign apparently it was all about the results. He was seen as a man incapable of getting us results. Trapattoni was appointed to get us results. Which is exactly what he is doing. Only now it’s about the results AND Andy Reid. Who knew the landscape could shift so flippantly? You see Trap is perplexed by this; anywhere he has ever worked his techniques were lauded as long as he was accumulating the points. He was accorded the respect that his stature and track record merited. He has been blindsided by the sophistication of Anto and Deco who, apparently, all of sudden, demand results and champagne football. Champagne football into Blue Nun players won’t go.

Who are these guys to second guess Giovanni Trapattoni? A man who has achieved as much as he has still has to suffer being second guessed in press conferences by two bit hacks in a language he does not understand. Humiliating. He will handle Andy Reid and Stephen Ireland how he sees fit for the overall good of the team and the ultimate aim of procuring results. These hacks believe it displays considerable insight and tactical savvy to know enough to be even second guessing him in the first place. That’s why they do it. “I know enough to know that we don’t have enough creativity in midfield”. Great, good man yourself. Do you think Trap has not considered this? Do you think you are capable of insight that has eluded a man who has won everything he has attempted? Get behind the team and give it a rest.

How much of the blame for this can be laid at the door of the sheep cheerleader Eamon Dunphy is hard to work out. Eamon has been one of our leading pundits for a generation now. Eamon touted the claims of Paul Jewell for the Irish job. That, more than any of the countless shockers he has been guilty of over the years, encapsulates the extent of Eamon’s insight.

He has achieved something remarkable, he has ascended to the top of a field about which he knows four, maybe five fundamental things. These tenets are trotted out at every opportunity in a “passionate” manner which replaces the need for any real insight or indeed, research. The sweeping statements on European nights bear this out. “Spain has had to import ALL its top level defenders, which is strange for a country the size of Spain” The Argentinean Robert Ayala was identified as the proof of this thesis. And nobody else, because Eamon did not know of anybody else who fit the profile. Yet there is something about the delivery which means that there are people who will take away this erroneous tripe as gospel. “Italian football is in the toilet". This is knowledge that Eamon has garnered from his regular trips to Milan, Rome and Turin to experience first hand the deterioration he refers to. One can only presume he has people on the ground in Italy as well who provide him with the detailed feedback one would require to arrive at such a conclusion.

Yet we still defer to Eamon because we have somehow come to believe that saying something defamatory about some one or giving an airing to your latest churlish prejudice is edgy punditry. We laugh at the BBC with their boring shirts and their well informed, well researched, balanced, judicious assessments and think how lucky we are to have Eamon to verbally dismantle forty goal a season Ronaldo every week. Podge and Rodge is not comedy, Eamon Dunphy is not a pundit – he’s the bearded lady. Putting Dunphy beside Souness on European nights in the hope that he can goad the Scotsman into a row is cynical, childish and manipulative on the part of RTE.

All of this could of course be justified if it was indeed any good, if it provided any entertainment. Alas all it provides is the same tired spectacle, another depressing example of the Irish obsession with playing to the gallery.

If I knew four things about Economics would this entitle me to hold down a position as Chief Economics Correspondent for RTE for twenty years? You would have thought that fairly soon the game would be up. Well the game was up for Eamon some time ago but the Barnum and Bailey factor so beloved of RTE producers has kept him where he is. Himself and his doppelganger George Hook.

George Lee is capable of telling us more than that the Financial Regulator lacks moral courage or is devoid of a cutting edge going forward. We insist upon genuine insight and expertise in the area of politics and finance but are perfectly prepared to waive those requirements when it comes to sport, an area we are all supposedly obsessed with.

Time to empty the bench.