Two examples of political sleight-of-hand (that’s the polite term for them) this morning, one in the south and the other in the north.
In the south, the Fianna Fail leader Micheál Martin has “demanded” reforms in the way the Dail works. This morning’s Irish Times tells the tale:
“Mr Martin outlined major elements of his own reform proposals – including imposing limits on the ability of government to control all business; to end the practice of guillotines; earlier reviews of legislation; the setting up of an independent budget review office, and a new office of a Legal Advisor to the Oireachtas.”
There are at least two ways of looking at this. The first is that Mr Martin is concerned for the more equitable operation of the Dail in the interests of the electorate. The other is that the Fianna Fail leader is showing off his political biceps about matters that I’m willing to bet the vast majority of the electorate didn’t know about, and now they know about it, they don’t particularly give a damn. But it helps Micheál get a message to the electorate that his cojones are no longer to be trifled with. It’s not, as the old song said, what you do, but the way that you do it.
The second story comes out of Stormont, where the UUP’s Sandra Overend is in a tizzy about education:
“We’ve had a Sinn Fein minister for 17 years now. No matter which Sinn Fein minister had the position, education hasn’t been in good hands.”
And Ms Overend goes on to rend her garments over the damage Sinn Féin education ministers have done, citing in particular (well, actually, citing solely) the efforts of John O’Dowd to bring about the demise of grammar schools.
Two things rather weaken Ms Overend’s case. The first is that the continuation of the selection system, at any age, is to inflict a huge injustice on some two-thirds of the north’s school-going population. You might argue that grammar schools benefit the children who attend (although you might feel that segratation from two-thirds of their peers is a damage to grammar school children as well), but grammar schools very obviously do a disservice to the two-thirds of children who are deemed education failures at eleven. Anyone who’s thought for a moment about how children learn will know that the grammar school/secondary school division is a hammer on the hopes of most youngsters. So the very thing that Ms Overend and others would condemn Sinn Féin ministers for trying to achieve is in fact an effort to remove the single greatest educational injustice under which our children suffer.
The other and more telling point about unionist horror at what Sinn Féin ministers have been trying do to to their children is that it is fake. Pretend. A mirage. Since the establishment of the Assembly, if unionist politicians had wanted the educational portfolio, it was theirs for taking. It was just that they had other fish to fry and chose other ministeries. God help school-going children here if the UUP or the DUP decide to forego other goodies and get a grip of the educational brief next time out.
Sandra OVEREND and MICHEAL’S MANHOOD? Sounds like a happy coalition.
Jude, it just comes down to world views again. Unionism advocates a similar view to that of extreme Americans; a laissez fair society where the strong prosper and the weak are discarded. It manifests itself in their views on social welfare also. Let the less well off, dispossessed, alienated fend for themselves. Let them go forth and multiply basically, for all they care. As long as the military are well armed and the flag is in place and the privileged alone get ahead, then all is right with their world.
And don’t start me on their preachiness about integrated schools. Take south Belfast for instance, where substantial numbers of Catholic children go to Methody and Inst, whereas ZERO Protestants go to Rathmore, St Patrick’s and Aquinas. And remember that those three latter schools are academic all vastly superior to their Protestant counterparts. Now if that doesn’t tell you all….
But surely Methody and Inst aren’t Protestant schools, they’re state schools and therefore open to all religions and none, whereas Catholic schools (the clue is in the name) are, er, Catholic Schools, just as evangelical Protestant schools are for evangelical Protestants.
Um, sorry, Willie D – Catholic schools are open to people who are not Catholics.They also have staff who are not Catholics. Maybe visit one or two and you’d get your eyes opened…(That sounds a bit brusque, my apologies, Willie – I honestly don’t mean to be)
Well it is hard to beat the NAMA debacle for sleight-of-hand. While Mr Adams was being castigated about his grasp of matters economic, developers were being protected and ‘fixers’ paid off as other citizens were losing their homes. Fixer, a darling word Joxer, defined as,a person who makes arrangements for other people, especially of an illicit or devious kind. Minutes of meetings, those that have not been redacted, provide a more accurate picture of matters financial in Belfast and Dublin.
It is also amazing that failed politicians are now lining up to pontificate about the way forward for the 32nd Dáil. There is an absence of rigorous questions about the role played by former politicians on their watch in the 30th Dáil.
“The people have spoken, but it is not clear what they said…”,
is a mantra gaining currency in the media. The electorate voted to remove the coalition between Fine Gael and the Irish Labour Party. Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have approximately 50% of votes cast by in a 65% turn out in the 26 counties and not the national turnout as reported in the media. Budgets for a programe for government ought to be prepared by a representative committee with access to financial expertise. If anyone is in doubt, just consider the role played by the financial experts in the NAMA debacle and the subsequent stealth taxes inflicted on Irish people. The people want accountable and ethical government. The people want high quality public services. The people want an end to “dig outs”, the ‘brown envelope’ culture and expensive tribunals of inquiry. These are the views and values being reflected by the other 50% of the electorate.
I was reading on the RTE website that polls show that most people want Micheal Martin to be Taoiseach instead of Enda Kenny. Now I’ve always assumed that the party with the most TD’s got the office of Taoiseach, so obviously Enda Kenny should get the job. I don’t know what it is but I just cant see Micheal Martin as Taoiseach. Enda Kenny, Gerry Adams, Mary Lou McDonald, etc are all Taoiseach material. Even poor Joan is more Taoiseach material than Micheal (OK, that’s maybe going too far….).
Anyway, good news for the Shinners, they have got another TD and are now at 23. The best they can hope for now is 24, which actually looks likely but the count has been discontinued in, I believe, Westmeath. If there wasn’t a mix up in the numbers in Donegal SF would’ve had 26 TD’s to finish with. When you consider the number of SF TD’s in the Dail 10-20 years ago, SF’s rise has been impressive.
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Ever since newspapers have been reporting on Catholics outdoing Protestants in educational attainment (even though more Catholic children than Protestant leave school without proper qualifications), the UUP have been desperate to get their hands on the Education Department at Stormont.
We have seen crazy assertions being made by Unionist politicians, especially from Peter Weir, to explain why a lot of Protestants are leaving school without proper qualifications and why fewer and fewer are going on to University. The best has got to be the assertion that Protestants are “intimidated” and “alienated” by bilingual signs at Universities….
Unionist politicians don’t mention the fact that many, many Protestants choose to go abroad to University and there has always been a history of that amongst Protestants. Obviously then its no surprise Universities here are majority Catholic. Instead Unionist politicians resort to the centuries old logic of “Protestants under attack”, a siege mentality we all know so well.
I believe that Unionist desperation to get hold of the education department is motivated by sectarianism above anything else. The media reporting on Catholic schools outperforming all others, Protestants under achieving, etc is creating a fear amongst DUP/UUP politicians. Can we really trust them to run education on behalf of ALL children? Can we really expect them to do what they are plainly incapable of doing? Of course not, that’s akin to trusting Jack the Ripper to run a brothel.
Sinn Fein should do their best to keep the Education Department in the next Assembly. Of course the problem of educational underachievement in Protestant communities needs tackled and I’m sure SF will do that.
I think Unionisms tactic of helping Protestants to do better at education will come at the expense of Catholics, much like how they gave jobs to Protestants in the past to disadvantage the Catholic community. They did the same with homes too. Just last week the Irish news made allegations that Nelson McCausland blocked housing for Catholics (haven’t heard it being mentioned on Nolan or any other media). So have these people changed? Not one iota.
It was Stephen Farry, from Alliance, that wanted to close St Mary’s University on the Falls Road, that ranked 2nd in the whole UK for quality of teacher training. Yep, Stephen wanted to close it. Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?
I would expect Unionists to do similar, especially in regards to Irish language schools, if they ever held the Education Department.
The first reaction, Esteemed Blogmeister, to today’s eye-candy photos which twin a pair of photogenic partitionist politicians, was: now there’s a coalition to wetdream about!
One from the (gulp) overend of the Black Sow’s Dyke, the other from de underend, boy. The second reaction was: just how will this affect Micheal Martin’s (for it is he, though he is not on his Eoghan !) other efforts to juggle all the possibilities while not letting any of his liathroidi fall to the ground?
Will he lead FF / GG up to the overend of the hill to form a rainbow coalition with FG / GG, now that he has ten thousand mentals in each of the forty plus constituencies? And if so, will the Grand Old Duke of Cork from the Costa Cojones find it too, erm, cold a house at the top of the hill of has beens?
Compelling him, sadly but wisely, to lead FF/ GG down to the underend of the hill once again. And so on and so forth (to borrow a fetching phrase from that coiner of indelible epigrams, Dame Dosh Finucane) in the manner of Sisyphus.
He/she was the King/ Queen of Corinth who, as punishment for his/ her self-aggrandising craftiness and deceitfulness , was compelled to roll a massive cojone up the hill only to see it roll down again, for all eternity or a typical editorial from The Unionist Times, whichever is the longer.
And when the Grand Old Duke of Cork is up, he’s up; and when the G.O.D. of Cork is down, he’s down, but when he’s only half way up, boy, he’s neither up nor Down where the M. of M. sweep down to the sea. The last phrase being a quite poignantly accurate summation of the evolution of the FF/ GG party.
The second G incidentally, in FF / GG stands for Gang while the second G in FG/ GG stands for Glennane This air on a G string is, quite possibly, the only discernible difference between the two Civil Cor Blimey parties in the Free Southern Stateen.
Representing FG / GG on the preternaturally diffident RTE Radio this morning was their Director of Rejections, wee Brian Hayes, MEP who was on the phone from Bruixelles. (Where he was up till the wee small hours acting as a, erm, rapporteur for a committee dealing with the nitty gritty of pension plans. And as he almost reluctantly reminded the listenership).
Wondrous all the same how this Mannekin Pis of MEP politics can bestride the continent like a colossus in galoshes. Tepid on the forming of an alliance with the Grand Old Duke of Cork, the main trust of his telephonic communication, surprisingly enough, was his DNA-ordained need to put le hobnailed boot into the irresponsible so-called Republicans.
Who, according to Brianeen, are quite content, MP like, to say outside the tent and anything but tentatively to urinate on the parliamentarians within. Brianeen of the broim-sized brain knows about these democratic doings .
Not only does he tick-tack between Doll Aryan and the Berlaymont on a daily basis but he has been known to drop in for the odd nocturnal anti-Brexit pep talk to the moribund members the House of Lard Arsenals. In the gothic grounds of which, incidentally, stands a statue, in undecided granite, of the Grand Old Duke of York with a y-front. And moribund though well they may be, these members of the Step-Mother of Parliaments , they still retain, by all accounts, a healthy appetite for (gasp) altar boys.
Also, Sisyphus (see above) is in no way to be confused with Missy Dissy the hissy, prissy Senator from Caligualand. Senator Sissy wouldn’t recognise self-aggrandisement, craftiness or deceit even if it was tweeted to her in the dead of night by La Yawaniste. Or, even by Dick Van Dyke himself. For, it is a truism in bean counter jargon, that sow’s ears are not the recommended material for the manufacture of silk cutpurses.
On the second topic of education, EB, the nearest we have to the 11-plus dodge down here in the fee-paying Free Southern Stateeen is the rugga- playing school network. This translates as 11 plus 4 in which the ball is ovoid in a 15 boy a side game.
To ensure that this tiny oppressed minority of pampered pupils do not suffer from life-long psychological trauma arising from their privileged backgrounds, their every college game on the muddy field of play is correctly guaranteed vast coverage in the monolithic media.
More, in fact, than mere intercounty bogballers and stickfighters. This policy of P.D. is fully justified, i.e, Positive Discrimination. In fact, there is a incontrovertible case to be made that this P.D. should have its ante upped.
For, worryingly, it would appear that these garden centre nurseries of the nabobs of non-nationalist West Britannia are no longer producing the goods. The scary signs are already there. The Blackrocks, the Castleknocks and the Rockwells may well not be the West (Brit) Points of prouduction for the Officer Closs of Oirish Society they used to be.
As a quick gawk around the managerial level of three of the four Provinces will corroborate, a gawk lasting no longer than three shakes of an antipodean lamb’s tail.
-Lam, Kiss and Schmidt.
Which rather sounds like a commercially-minded company overseeing the sheep-shearing industry. Not that egg-chasing is the only game of football favoured by the outgoing hackiatiat-backed Slab-obsessed Cabinet. Football is the other one.
Even as one types this mournful obituary one is lending an ear to AOR ullagoning on the sympathetic shoulder of a compassionate Yawnya Lawlor on the transcendentally even-handed RTE Radio 1. Having just exited the marathon marine count in Dublin Bay North.
AOR is not only the acronym for Aodhan O Riordain, exiting ex-TD and Laborious Minister for Various Shapes of Virtuous Deeds, including Self-Promotion. But AOR is also the leprechaun for (gulp) SATIRE. And never was Lam-poonery (see above) more apposite.
In a last ditch efforts to salvage his political Pullman seat AOR pulled a political rabbit out of the hat. No, not the one named Pat but rather, John this time. That would be the revered John Giles, to whose birthplace in Ormond Square, AOR had thoughtfully and disinterestedly contrived to have a plaque attached. And who selflessly volunteered to unveil it himself, as the local M.P.
Re-spect.
And even though Blessed John Giles kindly consented to walk across the water from the Mainland to indulge in a spot of political football at the launch of the Labour Party Football, oops, Sport Policy, regrettably it was not enough.
The hagiographer of Blessed John, none other than Dec ‘The Neck’ Lynch, author of the laugh aloud ‘Game for a Scaff ‘ column in the Sindo will just have to come with a better spot of legerdemain the next time. (Where do the Sindo string pullers find the time?)
What worked at Croke Park did not prove successful at Marino where the spin doctored Policy Document was launched. Marino, of course, is, oddly enough, the home turf of Ireland’s supreme footballer, Diarmuid Connolly, whom most folk have never heard of as he Doesn’t Do Media.
He also continues to grace Croke Park majestically, the same unfinished national stadium with the incomplete Edwin Druid End. This is the same end where AOR once heroically stood shoulder to shoulder with the local bogball-loathing residents of Clonliffe Road, some of which were even resident in Castleknock.
The premature farewell of a tear-welling AOR from the gnashional stage has dismal implications indeed for the Labour Party and by extension all those of the wider community who suffer from insomnia. It means that the Blue Collar wing of the Blue Shirts will forfeit (gasp) Yawning Rights in the high-minded Lower House of the Irish Parliament.
As of now the Party of Conor Cruise O’Connollly, oops.O’ Brien holds down 6 seats. It will not be till 6 this evening before it is known whether the heavenly 7 is reached.
To help tide the edgy through the nervous wait, consider the following unconsidered possibility: what happens if Enda the Ennui becomes a victim of his own TD-ium and is replaced by a particular Parliamentarian Pukka Sahib ?
On a memorable occasion in the not too distant past when a certain Fine Gael leader was elected PrIme Minister and while still on his chauffeured way to receive his Seal of Office in the Phoenix Park (no, not from the Zoo but in the adjacent Aras an Uachtarain) his thoughtful wife was already paying her first (of many) official visits to the rectangular office of the PM in Government Buildings on Upper Merrion Street, Dublin 2.
To carry out a winnowing excercise which involved the separating of the grain from the chav, oops, the chaff among the female cohort in the private/ public staff. This sifting having been done, with awesome womanly powers of winnowing which the mere male can only speculate upon, the grain was then shifted to the farthest-most extremity of the vast building.
Such as the basement archive, where the ghost of Dev is reputed to haunt, Marley like, clanking his chains till Ireland is reunited, or remain divided, or some such nonesuch.
One understands it is the cohort of chaps in the PM’s private office who are currently eyeing the Enda end game of the PM’s succession stakes with particular trepidation. Some of whom actually voted an emphatic Yis ! in the recent referendum.
This is called, one understands from, erm, one’s legal-minded acquaintances, the Law of Unintended Consequences.
Time, perhaps, to erect an AOR-raid shelter under Government Buildings, chaps.
Bimis ag faire, a fhearaibh.