You wait for months and then two come along. In the south, the government tried to talk down the mass demonstration against water charges; in the north, the governments (British and Irish) tried to talk up the arrival of David Cameron and Enda Kenny in town, to help broker an agreement on flags, parades and the past. Both will end well or badly, depending on your point of view.
I was in Dublin yesterday, though not at the main rally. Media reports said that riot shields were produced by police after a garda had been hit with a missile. Untrue: several lines of gardaí stood across the street, blocking access to Leinster House – so much so you could hardly see it. Behind them stood several lines of suited and booted gardaí. Media reports said that the march largely consisted of Sinn Féin people bussed in. Untrue. The people I talked to were middle-aged people, disgusted by the way the police were preventing them from even approaching their politicians to voice their discontent. There were flags and chanting, and there were some flags with ‘Sinn Féin’ on them, but they were outnumbered by Starry Plough flags, tricolours – one woman even had a tricolour with Che Guevera in the white bit. The young men urging leaflets on people were socialist party activists, not Shinners. The Irish government says that nearly a million people have signed up to pay their water charges. Maybe so.The next mass rally will be 31 January, two days before the deadline for registering to pay. If I was a member of the government, I’d be worried (i) about raising enough money to effect any worthwhile water changes ; (ii) about my seat.
In the north, we’re told that the pace of negotiation has picked up. We’re also told that that there’ll be deals done: corporation tax control if you play ball with welfare cuts. The A5 built if you play ball with welfare cuts. There’s talk that this must be it, because after Christmas will be the run-up to the Westminster elections. Don’t kid yourself: these negotiations are a part of the run-up to the Westminster elections. All parties will want to be able to point to how hard-knuckled they were during negotiations and how, like the Scots, they held the British government’s feet to the fire until considerable concessions were wrung from them. What form those’ll take we’ll know inside twenty-four hours.
It’s an interesting place to live in, Ireland, these days. There is a sense of the ground rumbling under us, north and south. When that will emerge in a full-blown earthquake may be sooner than we think. Oh, and I forgot two other lies told yesterday. Environment minister Alan Kelly says there’ll be no change in the water charges, full stop. And Enda Kenny says there’ll be no general election in 2015, full stop. Nothing like a bit of humour for adding to the festive spirit.
I was at the Dublin march yesterday. Reading the Dublin media reports I’m wondering were these reporters even the same planet as the rest of us yesterday.
Same with RTE’s 6-1 News alex. One of the organisers had the turnout figures disputed about 10 times, in an interview lasting approx 5-8 mins by that horrible woman that just seems to have a ‘snidey’ tone in her voice. Repeating over and over, “Well the Gardai put the figure at 30,000”, making heavy distinction to a missile being thrown at one of them – and having the temerity to ask him that “Considering almost a million have signed up, what gives you the right to organise this march – disrupting shop-keepers/retailers at such an important time of the year”, AND added “When measures are trying to be put in place to keep the homeless off the Streets this Christmas so there are no more deaths, after the Nursing Home revelations in Co.Mayo….”. On and on she went, as if she was the arbiter of whether the people get to protest about anything down here in the South.
Infuriated was not the word! – Well done and Thanks for making it up there alex. Appreciated, and to you all.
(I used to work as a Stagebuilder, rigger etc at Concerts, Festivals by the way – lots and lots of them (before getting injured) – and i’ve seen PLENTY of crowds. There was way, way more than 30,000 up there). The Guardian (UK Newspaper) reported six figures as well.
whether one is for or against the water charges(for the record I am against) I am stunned by the misrepresentations, slurs and outright lies put forth by both the print and electronic media. Yellow journalism, more like saffron. The Irish people should feel insulted that both the government and the press consider them just
so many amadans. If you listen to the govt and/or the press, you would think the average Irish IQ is in single digits. Slandering the protesters with the ‘subversive’ label is both pathetic and laughable at the same time. Lots of elderly people out marching as is their right. Kenny is too arrogant to have to bend an ear to the ‘little people'( working poor). Suggesting that all is well in Leinster house until 2016. Please, Enda take your meds. Shame on the govt and even more shame for falling in step with the party line. Are their no honest reporters out there( excluding yourself Dr C). Ireland deserves so much better. For a new Ireland, people and parties will have to accept compromise and change, the media will have to change as well, they will have to regain their integrity
I’ve said it before .There’s “history” and then there’s “history”. Are we to believe what we read in the newspapers , ever? Thumbing through those old archive back-pages full of lies.
I hope you had your woolies on yesterday Jude . It’s getting colder on the old bones , especially when out demoing. Now I know why you were out of the loop…..
I imagine we are all being lined up for another bunch of half-truths that the mandarins have been cobbling together behind closed doors to cover their bare arses. I wonder which problems on the massive talks list will be wheeled out as “sorted”. I don’t think anything that Haass sorted out a year ago and which the talks were really supposed to be about in the first place …will even feature.
They’ll probably find a little money to complete some old projects to keep the populace from thinking about what we asked them to sort out in the first place. What were these talks about anyway?…Can anyone remember that far back? Marty was making noises that the Irish government has found money for that abandoned road project for example.There’ll be a little more of that I’d imagine and they’ll all shake hands for a nice Christmas photo -op.
Deficit Spending
The manner in which the media covered the protest in Dublin yesterday should come as no surprise to anyone. It was Mark Twain who said, “Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.” Today in Belfast as a substitute for mature political dialogue we get clichés.
The Taoiseach and the Prime Minister arrive for “crunch” talks that have reached a “critical” stage during these “crucial” few days. The Taoiseach is looking forward to a “fruitful” discussion, however, the proconsul states there is “no big cheque” and it is no longer possible “to throw money at the problem to resolve it.” Perhaps the proconsul is taking to heart Mr Paxman’s comments.
“Successive British governments poured in public money to try and secure thousands of shipyard jobs before throwing in the towel…there are half a dozen quarters in Belfast but that is inflation for you.”
It was money well spent to remind us all that the Titanic Quarter is being kept afloat by “entrepreneurs” and their private finance “initiatives” courtesy of the taxpayer in the north of Ireland while taxpayers in the Republic are being forced to bail out bankers.
Maith thú, Iolar – and pithily said.
Have you now moved from being a “hurler on the ditch” to an active protester against the water charges?
Bot really, Argenta. Sometimes I get off the ditch and stroll around for a while. That OK?
No need to be sensitive.There’s nothing shameful in taking part in a legitimate protest.
You should know by now, Argenta – I’m a looong way past shame…
I have to be honest that thought had crossed my mind though only in a pleasant way!
Coincidence is the ultimate four-fingered word shown to the Chaos Theory.
(The missing fifth finger will enter on cue, by and by).
And there are a number of coincidences worth fingering today, Esteemed Blogmeister.
Perkie’s inner numerologist suggests taking the number 160, though not at random. Mirabile dictu, but 160 just happens to be the same, identical,spitting image number of euros arrived at by the dismal scientists of Sinister House to levy on the serfs of the Free Southern Stateen now for the water supply as it has been for the television service.
And anybody who has never considered doing a spot of streetwalking in protest might find cause now that RTE has just coaxed back to Chateau Montrose their former staff member, one Ray D’Arcy for an eminently whistleable, 500 K. If one was Le Petomane and had a tune to that number one could whistle it through his rear end.
Provocation is nothing new to RTE: it is what Les Agents Provocateurs Nouveaux of Donybrook, Dublin 4 do. Sans the statutory 160 second warning.
How this latest deal was clinched has nourished numerous surmises, one of which has not a word needing to be uttered.As follows: D’Arse’s agent being rung (not wrung) up by the relevant Dismal Scientist in Donnybrook Dublin 4 and getting an earful of the following tune, the whistled version:
‘Whatever you want
Whatever you like
Whatever you say….’
And with that the deal was clinched; the Spinach Doctor of the Status Quo was back in the fold, his wheelbarrow larger now to accommodate the piles of extra folded stuff from the public backpocket. D’Arse had obviously been just going through the motions on TodayFM. Marking time till the Fatted Calf had been hanged, drawn and cut in half.
In a digitally penetrating piece on this latest saga of the Prodigious Son in The Unionist Times today one, Laura Slattery, manages the near impossible feat of avoiding all mention of the 500 K. Just imagine tapping out an article in TUT on P.Pease and not mentioning the squint in his eye or on S.Mallon and omitting all reference to – hello – his halo.
Otherwise, Miss Slattery is all flattery. Seemingly, during his exile in Today FM the Cathode Ray of Sunshine ‘cemented an affable everyman persona’. Though it is not mentioned, Ray may, nay, must have had an off day the time he mooned the Deputy Leader of the Largest Political Party in the islands of Ireland (he is that, and Perkie will have none of this, ‘he is in me Ireland’s Eye’ stuff neither).
McGuinness not being good for you, D’Arse chose to show off his mastery of the f.art to Mart. This happened in the swelling prologue to the FSS Presidnetial Election and was done with one eye on the Cyclops of RTE. It did not go unnoticed.
Miss Slattery: ‘Ray D’Arcy brings with him 14 years of experience, establishing genuine rapport with listeners on a 3-hour mid-morning show in which empathy and respect was awarded to coping-class heroes while anger was reserved for power elites, notably the Catholic Church’
Well, curry one’s yoghurt.
It was the mention of ‘the 3-hour mid-morning show’ which sent a chill down the spineless back of Perkie’s inner invertebrate. For it brought back dreadful memories of being trapped once in a CIE morning bus on a trip back to Liffeyside after a weekend of croquet and cucumber sandwiches at Castle Warbeck.
Where he was, as a captive listener-passenger, compelled to endure a version of the Spanish Donkey which once acquired a certain popularity according to the ratings during the Inquisition. It is too gruesome to describe in detail here, except to point out it involved a vertical wooden board with a sharp v-wedge on top. Snuff said.
And to think that D’Arse promises to out do the ‘Gerry U. Ryan Show'(aka the Spanish Donkey Show): go bhfoire an Diabhal orainn. As St. Augustine once texted: ‘Inter faeces et urinem nascimus’. Later to be elegantly translated by the blog Latin scholar, St. Samuel A’Beckett: ‘We are born between the s–t and the p–s’.
First U. Ryan; and now, D’Arse. Another coincidence, no? RTE is reborn !
Slattery’s Mounted FOT had raised a fair gallop by now: ‘D’Arcy rejoins RTE – a station which broadcasts the Angelus gongs twice daily’.
Gongs, mind. Very J. Arthur Rank,like. Bells is wot gets rung twice daily in the two C of I Cathedrals on Liffeyside. One dedicated to St. Status, the other called Christ Quotedral.
And down from the mountainside of CaraunToole came the squadrons and swoons of Slat’s Mounted FOT: ‘RTE’s controversies tend to be particularly bad-tempered ones. So what of D’Arcy’s ability to generate a storm.The religious-placard carriers who go through phases of picketing Montrose will be aware D’Arcy once opined on air that ‘the Catholic Church has really f—-ed’ up this country’. And that he apologised only for the bad language, not the sentiment. What more, he is – gasp ! -an atheist’.
There’s – gasp ! – more.
But, before we come to the kicker from Slattery’s mounted FOT, a brief skeddadle by way of the Banal-Retentive D’Arse’s background in broadcasting: among his many and varied on air airhead accomplishments are blind date competitions, endless reiterating of listeners’ texts, personal relationships issues, the retelling of boob and willie jokes, and, the sine qua non: the sob story, not to be confused with the DOB story.
Slats, again: ‘commissioning executives in RTE will have D’Arcy as their choice for….thoughtful factual programmes’.
Hold it there Collette ! D’Arse here: ‘tell Laura I love her’.
PS. Almost forgot: that missing fifth finger from the first paragraph. It will be obvious from the following report: ‘D’Arse is expected to trouser a whopping 500 K……plus …….PERKS’.
The missing finger being, of course, the pinkie.