Keystone Kops, north and south

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Picture by Joe Brown

We’ve had proof positive over the last few weeks that partition happens once as tragedy and then later as comedy. Gilbert and Sullivan would have been jealous of a political plot that involved Mike Nesbit walking out of Stormont and imagining that he’d be missed. The Marx Brothers would have liked the DUP’s in-again-out-again routine, with Arlene (“Call me Boadicea”) Foster as gate-keeper against possible Shinner rogues and SDLP renegades. All that was lacking were a few red noses and honking horns to complete the carnival.

Down south, meanwhile, they’ve been keen to show that the PSNI aren’t the only ones who can do the Keystone Kops thing. It was announced yesterday that a lot of drink-driving charges – hundreds, in fact – may have to be withdrawn because they weren’t legal. Why so? Because the results of the blood test were given to those charged in English only. No Irish version. Hoping to God for a reversal, the district court  has referred the matter to the High Court, while hundreds of similar cases have been put on ice until such time as a definitive ruling is made.

And one  final delicious detail:  the whole schnozzle was kicked off by a Mihai Avandenei, who was charged with drink-driving on April 21 last year and who challenged the charge because he hadn’t been given a copy of his blood level readings in Irish. Mr Avandenei is a Romanian national.    

9 Responses to Keystone Kops, north and south

  1. paul September 22, 2015 at 11:58 am #

    You can’t make this up. Not too surprising as believe the Minister for the Gaeltacht is not even an Irish speaker. I guess he has free rein to do as he pleases

  2. Belfastdan September 22, 2015 at 12:30 pm #

    That just goes to justify the my low opinion of many(not all) of the legal profession who for the sake of money would try to get an over the limits driver off on a charge of drink-driving.

    The challenge is not based on whether Mr Avandenei was over the limit, that is not being disputed, but on some obscure technicality.

    I wonder how the legal eagle fronting this challenge would feel if Mr Avandenei had run over a member of their family whilst driving under the influence?

  3. Perkin Warbeck September 22, 2015 at 1:11 pm #

    The unnamed brand of car the Romanian was driving while under the influence, Esteemed Blogmeister, might well have been a factor.

    Not least if it were a, erm, Rover. (In which case he would have been driving under the affluence). After all, a renowned Romanian who, if not actually born in Ireland was at the very least conceived here, first entered these islands – via the delightful port of Whitby, Yorkshire – disguised as a Rover. A four legged one, not a four wheeled one.

    That would have been, of course, Count Dracula. Whose name in the original leprechaun was Dreach-Fhola – which translates as Face of Blood. Fact.

    Before one leaves the linguistic dimension of the breathalyser, one is reminded of a friend who lived (still does, in fact) in a county bordering a border county during the Dirty Thirty Year War. And every time he was stopped at a nocturnal Garda road block he made sure not to give his name in leprechaun, as it was in his driving licence.

    Instead, bitter experience taught him to give the honeyed Hiberno-English version of same. In the early days of Na Troibloidi he discovered that every Garda without exception who leaned in through his wound-down window with a proprietorial palm on the roof of his non-Rover, seemed to take his leprechaun name as a personal insult. Leading to one’s friend being ordered to switch off his engine, leave the car and open his boot. Pronto, like.

    So, rather than run the risk of being charged with ‘leprechaun on his breath’ one’s friend opted for the civilised choice already mentioned. And naive folk still wonder why Meath is often referred to as The Royal County.

    To switch from the Gardai and the q. of imbibing while driving to the abstemious PSNI, one non-tribal scribe who would not subscribe to your take on things, E.B., is the gorgeous, pouting, put-herself-abouting Liz O’Donnell, a columnist for the Irish Endapendent.

    This is the opinion-former who was formerly a Minister of Stateen in the Ms Government of the F.S.S.. And whose most memorable contribution to political life (before being unceremoniously rear-ended, albeit in a shapely heap, in the 2007 election) was her confession to the manipulated media that she, as Minister, often conducted wireless interviews from home while still (gulp) in her underwear.

    Small surprise she joined the P.D. Party (alas, now defunct). That would have been, of course/ ar ndoigh, the Partially Dressed Party.

    In her most recent panty-wearing rant, Lady LOD exasperatingly demands in a bod-kicking way that ‘Northern leaders need to grow up and govern !’.

    A short way down the lower limbs of the high-minded homily her Victoria’s Secret (Vickie’s Knicks) get into themselves into a predictable checklist:

    -How many times have we been over the same territory when the bona fides of Sinn Fein and their fitness of otherwise for office?

    The bona fides of Sinn Fein? This is called throwing a bone in the direction of Fido, the guard dog of democracy. The better to distract the mindless readership of the purchased press.

    As 2007 (see above) is a while ago now perhaps the former Countess of the Count Centre might recall that the b.f.’s of Sinn Fein, are sourced in the number of votes the BFF’s of Sinn Fein deposit in the ballot box. (Some, like those postal voters, send their ballots through the mail). A straightforward enough case of Democracy and us,like.

    Hundreds of them. Thousands, indeed. Hundreds of Thousands. Not many blank ballots fired there,m’lady.

    The D.O.E.-eyed Diva of Discarded Dail Deputies then shows just why she has been so deservingly conferred with that title: by getting her Vicky’s Knicks into checklist shape once again: welcoming the recall of the International Monitoring Commissioning, going into Empathy Emma mode after watching a ‘compelling documentary’ on the victims of the Abercorn explosion etc etc.

    No ticking off the checklist of the rather unfairly overlooked Glennane Farm Centre for Pieces and Wreckconciliattion.

    But then, D.O.E. is, after all, an acronym for the hackette who started her stellar career as a briefless barrister: Disparity Of Esteem.

    Anois, ca bhfuil mo fho-bhristini? / Now, where’s did one leave one’s budgie smugglers?

  4. PJ Lynch September 22, 2015 at 3:26 pm #

    All i can say Perkin, is that you’re a genius who makes my day, everyday !

    • Jude Collins September 22, 2015 at 5:28 pm #

      I’ll drink to that, PJ…

      • Perkin Warbeck September 22, 2015 at 7:03 pm #

        No need to remind you, Esteemed Blogmeister, to quaff responsibly.

        As you are a true-born Iris-man, one just knows that will be a pint of Robinsons’s Barley Water.

        Slainte agus Tainte !

        • Ceannaire September 22, 2015 at 11:06 pm #

          Perkie, surely it is Droch Fhola – bad blood. Though no doubt you will prove me wrong, a chara, by proving the Warbecks are (blood) related to the Draculs. I just knew Aodán Mac Giolla Impaler was a Warbeck!

          • Perkin Warbeck September 24, 2015 at 7:50 am #

            Though you say Droch Fhola, a Cheannaire, while one says Dreach Fhola, let’s call the whole thing on.

            For the one thing that we can definitely agree upon is the second half of the name: Fhola – it rhymes with Uladh. The only coin to be tossed here is the one with 6 on the one side and 9 on the other.

            Heads or tails, in other focail / words.

            As for the first half – Dreach or Droch – this is clearly material to do with dialectical differences. And we both know that any dispute pertaining to Dialectical Materialism is something which can only be sorted out at the Dawning of the Day, when all the children of the night are safely tucked away..

            Overseen by Seven Spanish Engels on the altar of the sun, in the valley of the gun. Best not go there.

            One place which is a must-go-to, however, is the Castle Dracula Hotel in the,erm, neck of the woods at the top of the Borgo Pass, deep in the Carpathian Mountain at the heart of Transylvania.

            Where the crouched and shawled peasants still harvest their hay with a sickle in one hand: though this may be a legacy of the communist era.

            The hotel rooms are tastefully furnished in blood red fittings, from carpets in A + to drapes in O-, thoughtfully covering all the different types of ruddy guest.

            Nilim dearfa an raibh tu riamh ann / Not sure if you’ve ever been there, a Cheannaire, but the one suite of rooms to A-void is indubitably the (gasp) Count Kenny Suite.

            Which is where Perkie’s inner pilgrim once found himself, having arrived at the hotel when it was enveloped in Harker Darkness, in the dead hour of night. Luckily, one had come armed with the ultimate v.b.d. (vampire bat deterrent.)

            Formerly,it was garlic, of course. In point of fact, garlic was nothing if not compulsory at one stage.. But ever since those monoglot monarchists, the Castle Catholics of Dublin gleefully abolished Compulsory Garlic, an alternative disincentive has had to be sourced.

            And sourced it was. And – mirabile dictu / anam an diabhail !- in the very identical Castle where the garlic had been outlawed. Irony, or what in the Land of Ire?

            As follows: Bram Stoker, author of Dracula, started off his horrifying career as a (gasp) civil servant in the law and order redoubt of Dublin Castle. Which is where he penned his first book: ‘Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland’.His takings were duled filed under p for petty cash.

            To say this D-book did not have quite the same impact as his later D-book is to put it, erm, Wildly. (He was also busy in out of work hours, wiping the eye ofone, O ‘Negative’ Wilde for the hand of the beautiful cuite called Florence Balcome).

            Remaindered copies of this first D-book remained, unbought, unloved, uncherished in the basement of Dublin Castle. And that is where Perkie first obtained one. It proved to be the ultimate v.b.d. (see above). Even more so than Compulsory Garlic.

            Based as it was on the First Book Theory, as any failed author will attest. Unless one happens to be, say, a Harper Lee whose first (and only book) ‘ To Kill a Mockingbird) was a smasheroo most authors prefer to bury their initial publication with a stake through its false start.

            In the case of the D for Duties book, make sure to peruse it thoroughly on the journey to Hotel Castle Dracula so that it will be well and truly dog-eared on arrival.This is to guarantee it will out-howl even the children of the night.

            It wasn’t till Perkie’s inner perigrinator awoke in the morning that he discovered just why the shunned room he had been assigned to, the Count Kenny Suite, was so called.

            This happened when he looked in the M.N.R. (the Mirror of No Reflection). For the eponymous Kenny, be it Enda, or be it Pat, is faced with the same identical blankness every morning of his or his life. Reflected there he sees IN the glass with the emphasis on the IN: an Inner Nothingess.

            PS Speaking of Lee (see above) it is not long since the finest screen Dracula of them all, Christopher Lee, passed over the Borgo Pass. As it happens, his successor has been already sourced.

            And – again, mirabile dictu ! – in the very identical parish where Bram Stoker first saw the light of night: Marino, Dublin 3.

            The would be, ar ndoigh/ sans doute, the dystopian Diarmuid Connolly.

            Anyone who witnessed the ridiculous ease with which he flicked up the bar-of-soap ball with his right or left boot without stooping last Sundayin Croke Park will, monsooner or later, realise that we are living in the era of one, who must be, erm, Counted among the Greats.

            Not that you would guess that from perusing the manipulated and manipulative media, who loathe him a very Van Helsing-intense hatred. For his very aversion to the stooping gesture. No stoop he, both on and, crucially, off the field. He just does not play the media game.

            On the numerous occasions he has been awarded the MOM award, Count Connolly has kept his counsel, and left the microphone wielders to concoct their own cliches as they talk alone and palely goitring to the camera.

            He is now the holder of three All-Ireland celtic crosses; hence the reason why Marino is located in Dublin 3.

            Watch it morph in time to……Dublin 13.

            Is leor sin don babhta seo, a Cheannaire.

    • Perkin Warbeck September 22, 2015 at 8:30 pm #

      GRMA, PJ, a chara,

      Though in truth, the g-word doesn’t enter into it. Far from it.

      The Shoneens who control the opinion flow in the Free Southern Stateen are the shysters who are not shy about the other g-word: giving. They just continue to give. And give., for all the livelong day, 24/7, 365/ 1.

      Trouble is the stuff they give is the sort of stuff that ought to be stuffed there, where the proverbial monkey was /is prone to s. his nuts.

      And picking up this stuff (with industrial safety gloves, of course) to shy it straight back at the Shysters is not exactly, erm, rocket science.

      As the coiner of the phrase, Davy Crokett so succinctly put it. He, of the soft racoon pelt hat, coined it while growing up on a mountain top in Tennessee. Just after he had killed himself a bar at the advanced age of three.

      What is difficult, however, is to locate a fairground coconut shy stall from which to do the shying. Such is the deadman’s grip which the DOB-dominated media in Dublin have on freedom of expression in the Free Southern Stateen that North Korea seems like Liberty Hall beside it.

      -Hah ! We serve neither the Moon nor the Sun !

      And this is where the Esteemed Blogmeister must take a bow.

      Not only was he one of one’s two favourite teachers (the other was the mighty Micheal O Muircheartaigh) in a former life, but he is now, and has been for the past two days, one of one’s two favourite J. Collins.

      Having duly pressed the p-button (for plamas) one feels emboldened to slip in a further example of the kinda stuff the Shoneen Shysters insist on giving.

      Not so long ago, the hagiographer of St. John Giles, and sweeper in chief of the Sunday Endapendent opined in another outlet of the DOBlin monopoly media (the P. Kenny Show on Newstalk FM) that ‘nobody……but N-O-B-O-D-Y speaks leprechaun any more’.

      One doubted that Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch (for it is he !) was entirely accurate with that assertion (despite even P; Kenny’s chortled endorsement).

      (Na bi buartha / fear not, PJ -nobody blames Peter Pan for the excesses of Pol Pot).

      And it wasn’t till last Sunday that one realised than Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch was right, if only only half-right.

      This happened in the immediate aftermath of the 5-second Final in Pairc an Chrochaigh (the one where the dirty big PEIL fell on its sward) when one of the Dublin backroom team, Bernard Dunne, former world bantamweight champ, was seen to exchange a few congratulatory words in leprechaun with Ciaran Kilkenny, the Dublin centre forward

      The same number 11 who looks in danger of being poached by Buffalo Brian Cody whose ancestor was a near contemporary of D. Crockett (see above).

      One knows this because one has been a lep lip reader since even before Darby O Gill became a silent movie star.

      B. Dunne and C. Kilkenny, two N-O-B-O-D-I-E-S, one language.

      Beirt gach bua !