Vincent Browne is a formidable man. He was at UCD the same time as me, where he was a luminary in Young Fine Gael. When I confronted him with this on a visit he made to Feile An Phobail, he looked at the ground and shook his head in mock shame. “I’m afraid it’s all true, all true”.
At present he’s on a series of TV visits called The People’s Debate, where he visits different political constituencies throughout the south. These are held in a local hall rather than a studio, and besides the candidates for the south’s March 2016 election (with the exception of Fine Gael, who for some odd reason are boycotting the series), there’s half the population of the constituency crammed into the hall. it has the unpolished feel of a town-hall meeting.
And the frankness. Browne was in Clondalkin last night, with two sitting Labour TDs and Eoin Ó Broin, who represents Condalkin on South Dublin County Council and is a likely Sinn Féin candidate in the south’s election.
I like a number of things about these People’s Debates. You get the feeling that this is the real thing, not some sanitised version produced in an RTÉ studio (Browne’s show is on TV3). Browne stumbles over names and sentences, but sure what about it? When the Labour Party people made their solemn statements about how much Labour had done for the constituency and how the economy was clearly on the rise, the people in the hall laughed loud and long. People representing single parents, people representing those concerned over drug misuse, people concerned about lousy construction workers’ contracts – it seemed every group had a say, often eloquent, sometime faltering, but always real. This is what politics looks like at the grass-roots level: untidy, sectional, frank. The coalition government may produce figures that tell people their lives are getting better; here they tell what life is really like and it’s a very different picture they offer.
TV3 isn’t the most well-funded of channels. Much of the other stuff on it is, frankly, garbage. But the presence of Browne’s show, particularly in its People’s Debate form, justifies the channel’s existence. You suddenly realise that RTÉ is awfully fond of playing at home and avoids getting its hands dirty by going local. Besides, you never know what somebody might say. They could even (gulp) tell the truth.
Frankness?
Rudeness, disdain & mocking in a superior attitude never impress mé.
Well yes, Tugim – Vincent can be rude and disdainful and mocking – but then he has a lot to be rude and disdainful and mocking about…
Críochdheighilt na hÉireann/The partition of Ireland
The Irish government has announced its second attempt to articulate the values of the 1916 Proclamation given its failure to mention the signatories in a promotional video which gave weight to a potent symbol of monarchy, political unionism and ‘rock’ stars. The Irish government announced Ireland 2016: Centenary Programme on 31 March 2015. It is based on five themes: remembering the past; reconciling and respecting all traditions; presenting the story of Ireland to the world; imagining the future and celebrating achievements. It would appear that the political reality of ‘partition’ will not feature in presenting the story of Ireland to the world.
Will the story feature, the Mc Mahon murders in Belfast on 24 March 1922 and the role of the RIC? Will the story examine the role of the UVF in murders in Belfast during May and June 1966? Will the story address unresolved issues about the role of politicians and military commanders in the Ballymurphy massacre or Bloody Sunday in Derry? Will the story delve into the issue of collusion between disloyalists and British security forces in relation to bombings in Dublin and Monaghan? Will the story consider statements made by one of the brave men in the military reaction force about the killing of innocent catholics in Belfast?
Le moulin à silence (Madame Guillotine) has a penchant for a toadying culture designed to ensure that céad míle fáilte does not apply to certain questions associated with the seminal events in 1916.
Iolar very good questions, but we know nothing like this will happen as FF, FG and Labor dare not do anything that would make Britain or Unionists uncomfortable. Maybe an taoiseach will recount how Redmond stood up in Parliment stating that the rising was thankfully over and that britain used the force they need to and would be obliged to.” I doubt any questions about Dublin and Monaghan bombings will be raised. We will most likely here about the OTR issue and Jean McConville. If I were asked, my question would be this: ‘Given the uproar about the OTR letters, why doesn’t anyone ask why Robin Jackson, the Jackal, a former UDR man was allowed to kill with impunity with out being OTR?”In fact he operated right under the noses of the forces of the state( or was it WITH the forces of the state). He was brought in for questioning many times but was never held or convicted. Among his victims the Mobile sweets shop victims, Miami Showband and others. This is my question to Mr Kenny. What does it have to do with the Proclamation you may ask? Well the three big parties in Ireland seem to have an aversion to the leaders of 1916 and to the rising itself. They seem to feel that it was too violent. My question gets to the heart of a statelet that was founded on british violence and the threat of further violence by Carson and the UVF
So true re RTE. Knowing the money they get from licence fees goes to their D4 Club of presenters is sickening.
Jude, you seem a bit surprised at Fine Gael’s absence from these open meetings.
Those cute hours consider themselves too smart to be exposed to their voting public.
There’s liable to be water protesters at these meetings, and how would those likely rowdy exchanges impress the nice people Kenny wants to vote for him?
He will be hoping the economy will have improved and the water brouhaha has dribbled to a standstill before he needs to come out into the open to canvass for the general election.
The only places RTE would host a people’s debate would be Rathgar, Rathmines, Donnybrook or Terenure. Places where they would be assured of a good unbalanced turnout in their favour.
Oh let us hear the huddled masses and their gripes nobody asks a builder to sign a contract or somebody to sign up to a zero hour contract or single parents issues cry me a river!
To manage an economy which was wrecked and to fix it takes guts and determination taxing rich people to make poor people better off is fiscal suicide not even the most ignorant member of the community believes it will improve the economy.
Don’t worry SF will come in and everybody will be better off nobody will live in council estates wealth will cascade through the country and there will be justice for all then again…
Look neill – you know those tablets you’ve stopped taking. Well…
Well you started it : )
He strikes again!
Neill, the Rich’s version of Robin Hood: Take from the Poor and give to the Rich!
Victorian era economics. Largely consigned to the dustbin of history but some of its supporters still linger.
No taking from the rich doesn’t make the poor any richer you should keep tax low on the wealth creators because guess what they create wealth!.
Its not my fault you have an infantile grasp of economics is it?
Is that right Neill, they create wealth under certain conditions. That is they create wealth pay the lowest wages they can possibly pay and keep the bulk of their profits for themselves putting FA back but expecting all lower income groups to carry the can anytime a crisis arises. Where did you get your amazing economic acumen, was it from the Charles treveleyn school of economics or the Maggie Thatcher higher economic academy?
Pointless discussing this matter with you because you have no grasp of how business works perhaps if you actually had any knowledge on this matter you wouldn’t come across in such an infantile manner.
If you feel that way, why did you even bother replying you’ve only demonstrated your own infantile outlook. The truth of the matter is you have sweet FA knowledge of economics yourself only an extreme right wing ideology that Friedrich Nietsche would have been proud of.Why dont you go get yourself a grasp of what some people outside of your own social group are having to put up with before you post your patronising crap.
Ah, Clondalkin.
The very sound of the C-placename transports Perkie’s inner snotty-nosed gurrier streeling up the Long Mile Road of memory with his, erm, long lost youth’s compeers.
From the Half Mile House when the horse trough still stood outside it, straggling up that storied highway while it was yet a dusty two-lane conduit, pausing at the wayside water pump and slugging the gushy water (no charge !) from the lion’s mouth with the staring eyes.
Before bursting forth in another raucous chorus of their newly-minted song:
‘We’re walking to Clondalkin
We’re walking to Clondalkin…’
This tune was later filched san permish by a Fat Man in the Deep South of The Land of Uncle Sam, who later altered the chorus to the distinctly unrhyming:
‘I’m walkin’ to New Awleans
I’m walkin’ to New Awleans…’
And from which he is ready reckoned to have made a prince’s ransom if not a small fortune itself. This, in pop music, is known, one understands, as; The Domino Effect.
Later, much later, all was forgiven, when Fats Domino ( for it was he!) made an indelible appearance in the National Boxing Stadium on the South Circular Road and gave a virtuoso performance. The show was climaxed by the rings-fingered ivory-tickler, clad in a resplendent milk-white silk suit (which even Joe Dolan himself might have envied), pushing with his well-upholstered midriff (hence the sobriquet) the ring-sized grand piano across the stage to the toon of ‘Blueberry Hill’.
Even Franz Listz or the mighty Rachmaninoff himself would have been put to the pins of the respective winged collars of their swallow-tailed dress suits to successfully effect such an awesome achievement.
There are times, even, when this ole’ world ain’t half bad.
On up them, with Perkie and his long lost youth’s compeers, suitably refreshed, through the nonpareil townlands of Bluebell, Fox ‘n Geese, Robin Hood and Red Cow. So named, one suspects, after long demolished taverns where Oliver Goldsmith himself might once have gorged himself on a saddle of mutton to be washed down by a tankard of cider.
Last night’s episode of ‘Tonight with Vincent Browne’ came from the Red Cow Hotel. Which was not entirely inappropriate, for a variety of spicy reasons..
In the dear dead days beyond recall when leprechaun was sitll spoken unapologetically and Eirleand was known by the code-name of ‘An Droimeann Donn Dilis, a Shioda na mBo’/ The Brown-backed Cow, the Silk of the Kine’. It was still possible back then to act the Boslhie bovine and tweak John Bull’s tetchy tail with impunity.
Not, alas, anymore. How now, Vincent Browne, when introducing the hinterland of the Red Cow Hotel, he never gave even a nod in the direction of the origins of Clondalkin. After all, Clon is derived from Cluain which is the lep. for, yep, meadow. Where the cows, red and brown, used in bygone days have great gas, not always of a methane base. Not least when J. Bull was in the mood.
But, then, one does not wish to out-grouch VB in these matters. Despite a year spent as a boarder in Colaiste na Rinne, Na Deise/ Ring College, County Waterford where Darby O Gill was the only show in town, it must, in fairness, going forward, be pointed out that his schooling was followed by many more years as a boarder in Castleknock College.
Castleknock, is right. So called because it is where Castle Catholics get any Neanderthal notions of nationhood knocked out of them. One understand this cleansing process is known as ‘hitting for six’ on the playing fields of said enlightened educational establishment. Its religious overseers refer to their presence there as ‘The Apostolate of the Rich’.
One only has to look at Vinny Bee to see.that the only remnant of ‘A Shioda na mBo’ is his slik tie. Certainly not his tongue, in both meanings of that concept.
One glance at the panel of two, reminded one too that Katherine Tynan, the poetess (an eight letter word Perkie’s inner poetaster normally avoids like the p., but in this case is more than h. to make an exception) was a native of this parish. Though she did not merit a mench,for whatever reason.
Although a grand-aunt of Dave Allen,ne Tynan, one is prepared to forgive her that on account of her unexpungeable lines:
‘All in the April evening,
April airs were abroad
I saw the sheep and her lambs
And thought of the lamb of God’.
Yesterday of course was April the First and yes, the sheep were in attendance. And yes, they were represented on the panel by the two local Labour Party TDs and no, Perkie is not about to descend to using the F-word.
This being Holy Week, his inner quiet man, Mickaleen Flynnj (no fool he) is minded to repeat: remember,please, the proprieties at all times, And so will pass swiftly on.
And do ditto with the topics under discussion, all of which were of a distinctly dismal and scientific character. Or, char-act-er , as the noted economist Margaret Maynard Barry might have termed it.
While it is easy for a plutocrat like Perkie in the remote fastnesses of Warbeck Towers to disdain the very mention of pounds, shillings and penicillin nonetheless there IS a limit to what a mere immortal can endure.
When the Red Cow congregation began to take on the contours of McBreen’s Heifer and everything was reduced to the Price of this and the Leontyne of that, Perkie began, and he takes no great pride at all in having to, erm,man u. to this admission, began to do that which the Yawnaiste does with such aplomb.
And found his (alleged) mind wandering to when the Red Cow Inn was once a synonym for Arus an Uachtarain. That was when the last occupant (bar two) was in residence and fragments of whose signature tune still survive: Cu-chu-ca-chu and ‘Jesus loves me more than I will ever know’.
Alas, this latter fragment seems so to have inflated her egg-chasing ego so that she felt compelled to jump ship in the manner (whisper it) subversive before her term was up as, erm, Global Dominatrix beckoned.
Thus resulting in an abrupt change of sig tune:
‘I’ve picked a fine time to leave you, Loose Heels
With your four hungry P’s and a crap in each field’.
Sadly, as the jump was premature the noble leap would appear to have been aborted.
Another point of rare insignificance which did not get a mench from the bench of Vincent Browne, BL of the oval-balled vowels and grubber-kicking growls was the name of one, Jim Gavin.
This is a local nobody who, after a career flying Taoisigh or Prime Ministers (as some preferred to be known) around in the Government Jet now sits in the cockpit of the Dublin Gaelic Football Team. Having graduated from the local club team, Round Towers, the oldest club in the GAA, as it that was anything to writhe home about. in VB’s estimation.
Of course, there is no joy stick in the cockpit of the Dublin team no more, if one were to believe the baying bloodhounds of the kept media. Who singularly withheld the rather vital info that the Derry copilot during last Saturday’s game of shame deliberately kept Captain Gavin and his team locked out.
Fact.
Mind you, Esteemed Blogmeister, perhaps one will stick with non-reactor V. Browne on TV3. Having taking approximately two nano seconds to consider the alternative: the two reactors over on RTE – Madame et Mademoiselle Guillotine.
It takes real guts to tax the poor to give the wealthy a sense security. Where have I heard that moronic, brainwashed piece of spin before, I think it was down at the Rugby or Country club. One things for sure Neill to come out with the Crap you just came out with you have to be well off. If the super wealthy made up their minds to contribute something substantial from. their wealth towards helping the updating of the water infrastructure it would probably help alleviate a lot of grief, but they would probably invent some spin explaining why that would be a bad idea, to be repeated by brainwashed zombies. In the meanwhile we’ll just have to put up with a cowardly government who taxes the less well off because they’re afraid of the rich.
I first came across Vincent Browne on Youtube when he was having a very hostile interview with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuiness in the 1990’s. I have to admit I didn’t like him because of his unfair attitude towards Martin McGuiness and that impression of him still lingers to an extent with me.
In saying that in another youtube video he is very impressive in confronting an EU banker about Irelands economic problems and why the Irish people are paying debt that isn’t even there’s! The EU Banker refuses to answer the question but Vincent wont let him off the hook so easily! Its worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAf7J4a_T1g
Here is his radio interview with Martin McGuiness in, I think, was in 1990’s
And as if on cue…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=17&v=6HqYxm-tDR0
Labour’s Jack O’Connor walks off the Vincent Browne show.
This is actually mortifying. Car crash television.
Bye bye Labour Party (Ireland) #vinb