I love Dublin. I suppose when you discover a place in your impressionable youth, the emotional impact tends to more long-lasting. I don’t think it’s exaggerating to say I’ve had a life-long affair of the heart with Baile Atha Cliath.
I was down there a week or so ago as part of an Irish-learning group. You’ve no idea how rowdy a collection of middle-aged and older Irish-speakers (OK, OK, learners) can get. Rumbustious on the way down, near- lawless on the way back. The visit had two objectives: one, to spend a day communicating through Irish (for the most part) and two, to take in a guided tour of Dublin locations linked to the Easter Rising.
As with all such things, the success of the tour depended heavily on the quality of the tour guide, and ours was 24-carat. Lorcan Collins (alas, no relative) is a middle-aged Dub who is, I would guess, a self-educated man and perhaps for that reason his knowledge of the events of Easter 1916 is encyclopedic. He’s also fluent in Irish, irreverent and witty, and he had us longing for more. We took in Connolly’s statue at Liberty Hall, the GPO, the Moore Street area heavy with the threat of demolition even though it’s also heavy with Rising significance.
When you hear that the people of the south have returned Fine Gael as the biggest party in the south, that they’ve revived the reviled Fianna Fail which led the southern state to the brink of oblivion, when you see the two main parties pirouetting around each other and pretending they’re concerned with the good of the ‘country’, rather than the good of their party and their own brazen backsides, you’d be tempted to give up hope on the ability of the ordinary man or woman to see through the media propaganda. But five minutes in the company of Lorcan Collins is immensely cheering. Clearly he’s an exceptional man and highly politicized, but he can’t be and isn’t alone in his insights into the present political situation.
Interestingly, during the tour we were approached by at least one man begging. Our guide passed some scathing remarks on the beggar, who was walking in a way that suggested he was seriously incapacitated. “Wait ‘til you see – he’ll be breaking the 100-yards sprint record once he gets round the corner!”
The other external intrusion was a man lying unconscious on the pavement. No, not totally unconscious, but certainly stretched on the pavement, failing to respond to questions as to how he was. Eventually members of our group helped him to his feet and he muttered incoherently as he stood upright but wobbling. When last seen he was semi-jogging off up the street, bound for who knows where.
Dublin is a beautiful city and one where the recession seems to be fading, judging by the amount of building going on and the crowded shopping areas. On the other hand, it’s a city which is filled with people crouched on the pavement, a paper cup before them. While our guide was amusing about the likelihood of those begging using the few cent we gave them wisely, the truth is, you’d be a long time begging in Dublin or any other major Irish city before you’d derive a living wage from the passing throng.
Yet another homeless individual is found dead on the streets, as police intercept drug couriers in order to seize cannabis worth £0.5 million pounds and the Tories engage in an uncivil war over the issue of membership of the European Community conveniently disguised as differences about welfare reform. It is a clear choice between bus passes or bombs.
Preparations are under way for yet another sectarian head count in the north of Ireland as elected representatives in the 26 counties continue to fail to grasp a central message from the electorate. People want representative government, government that will deliver high quality public services, security of employment and action on the adverse results of flooding. The electorate want change, change for the better and an end to the need for expensive Tribunals of Inquiry, government that reflects the values of Forógra na Poblachta in a nation that cherishes all citizens.
I fear it may get worse Dr C.
I was living down there recently (temporarily) and I was shocked by the number of homeless people, junkies and needles on the street (well, alley ways).
The price of living is rocketing at the moment as more and more people flock there to find work (I worked with a guy who was paying 300 euros a month for a room that he shared with TWO other guys, though it was in a nice area).
I think the government had an opportunity with all those empty buildings and estates 7 years ago.
Had they sequestered them then now they could populate them with government workers e.g. nurses, firemen, gardai, teachers and Luas drivers etc, that way they’d all be insulated from the effects of rocketing property/rental prices.
Add into the mix the potential for one in 15 of these houses in such estates to be reserved for people of a deprived background (I think one of the worst mistakes we make is to throw poor long term unemployed people into areas with other long term unemployed people, that way a culture of being long term unemployed is developed as ‘the norm’).
Also, despite the ‘lefty-ness’ of the above proposal I’d also have some right-of-centre things about the place too;
e.g. One day I bought food for a woman who was begging in Stephen’s Green.
I believed her story and went to buy some food in Dunnes for her and her kids (not a feast, just some spuds, bacon, onions, oil and seasoning).
I gave her the food and some instructions on making fried potatoes with onions and bacon (cheap, easy and will keep ye going for a day or two).
She couldn’t comprehend what I was telling her. She didn’t know how to par-boil spuds. I had to give her clear instructions and saw the confusion in her face.
What I’m getting at is that there’s a poverty of knowledge which I think I not acknowledged let alone addressed.
If you put her and her kids on benefits then the chances are she’ll be on them the rest of her life.
What I propose is that people who are so disadvantaged in that respect should have to go to basic home-keeping courses four/five days a week, for years if need be.
Yes, it might be condescending and indeed not particularly economical but running a country shouldn’t be about protecting a person’s feelings, it should be about ensuring that it’s a well oiled machine that can accommodate for the well-being and human rights of its citizens.
If that means that people have to be shown how to boil spuds at the age of 45 or obliged to maintain their locality four or five days a week then so be it.
After a few years they might find they are armed with the skills that are desirable in the jobs market (case in point, they’re always looking for chamber maids and cleaners in hotels).
Now, with these groups (well, government workers) now insulated from the struggles of keeping up payments (and the government insulated from having to make big regular pay rises frequently once the economy over heats) then this takes the pressure off of the rest of society.
The current set up is short term and it’ll go bang again;
rents go up, speculators move in, prices jump up, politicians ignore what’s happening on the ground because the GDP ‘looks good’ and everyone has a job (in construction or pubs) and eventually it comes off the rails.
It’s happening again, already.
If we are to fix it then a few hard truths have to be acknowledged;
The right have to acknowledge that the free market and hard-core capitalism leaves a LOT of people behind (and is more expensive to fix than prevent) and the left have to acknowledge that some people require a boot up the backside from time to time (I would include myself in that bracket. Fittingly, I’ll now go to the gym so I can feel like I’ve done something useful…).
Your mention of the Artful Dodgers of Dublin, Esteemed Blogmeister, coincided with another character from the source novel, ‘Oliver Twist making (again!) a guest appearance on RTE radio over the weekend.
Or rather, an all-too-unreal character who eerily echoed that other fictional character in the same novel. The first, uber-in-your-face character was, erm, Sir Bob Geldof; alas, the fictional character he so resembles escapes one at the moment, going forward.
But as it is on the tip of the tongue, one is confident it will trip skippingly off the t. by blogsend.
The show in question was –mirabile dictu ! – the (gasp) Dame Dosh Finucane Show. To quote the beknighted guest himself:
-Seems loik Oi’m never off your bloody progromme, Finucane !
The topic was – uber-mirabile dictu ! – The Easter Rising, or rather the upchucking, oops, upcoming RTE documentary on that topic du jour. A two-part Documentary to be hosted by (gasp) Geldof heself.
(That it is a documentary to be spread over two weeks is quaintly appropriate; the very surname of the presenter always strikes one as representing the opposite, i.e. it sounds like the welding together of two surnames which had hitherto been separated at birth by a hyphen: Gelding- Bitsoff).
-In Easter 1966 I was 14 years old. And the one television station available to most people was RTE which filled the living rooms of the country wall to wall with the most (pause) Appalling. Mawkish. Emotional. Nationalistic. G.U.F.F.
(Phew).
The above is a loose translation, incidentally, from the DORT. The name of the Dortumentary is ‘A Fanatic Heart: Geldof on Yates’. Oops, that should, of course, read: ‘Geldof on Yeats’. And is co-scripted by Professor Ray Faster (which, one understands, is a tight translation from the DORT: Roy Foster).
-It was, in fact, W.B. Yeats who invented Oirland as the (pause) Generous. Open. Pluralist. Highly. Intelligent. Country that. we. all . recognize. today.
(Phew number two).
-There was more, much more to 1916 than the (pause) Banality. On. The. Floor. Of. A. Post. Office.
(Phew. How one is thankful one has more than just a few phews at one’s disposal.The Risible Rising or what?).
Meanwhile while the guest was , what was the hostess up to? Happily, not much. Dame Dosh Finucane (for it was she !) is not known as Lady Less is More (which is possibly long for Lismore) for naught. For a four hour week, in an equally truncated year, she gets to wheelbarrow home on castors a sum just short of three hundred thousand smackerooneys from the public purse.
On merit, and merit alone, is she numbered among the A-list of broad castors. Oops, broadcasters. And, indeed, this was very much evidenced by her reaction to the A-word, or, rather lack of reaction, in her less-is-more mode.
Re-spect.
For her beknighted guest squeezed at least as many mentions of the A-word into his free-rein appearance as there are curlie-wurlies in a Curly-Wurly Easter Egg. Africa, being the A-word in question. And who would gainsay the Geldof goy the right to namecheck the A-word ? The hero who did most with his motor-mouth to put the Eat back into Ethiopian mouths.
-Famine? Black 47 ??? Lookit. More people die of hunger in an average weekend in Africa, for Gawd’s sake, get real !.
A lesser broadcaster than Dame D. Finucane might have tried to spancel the Sir Bob Geldoffian gallop over the nationalistic guff of 1916 by fastforwarding. Say, to the jaw-jaw approach of the empathetic Empaw to the Mau Mau campaign of tribal violence.
Or, might even have gently chided her distinguished guest even as he badmouthed ‘Sean O’Brien’ the creepy husband of Maude Gonne. The sinister chap who sided with the boring Boers, in the, erm, birthplace of the internment camp. Rather did she allow her guest’s inner self-corrector to kick in:
-Did I say, loike, Sean O’Brien ? Meant to say ‘John McBride’, of course. Roysh?
Class, pure class from a broadcaster on castors. Evidence (as if such were needed !) who is worth every last hen on a penny of her 285 thousand smackerooneys, which is only 100 thou more than that which her fellow female, Garda Commissioner Noirin O’Sullivan , gets to wheelbarrow home.
The latter being the very first female to hold the heretofore all-male top cop spot south of the Black Sow’s Dyke since, erm, Michael Staines first held the swagger stick way, way back in 1922.
Michael Staines? Yes, that was his name. No, this is not a ‘Sean O’Brien’ moment (see above).
To end where one began: in Dublin’s fair c. where the girls are so p.c.
One of the streets where the Artful Dodgers are most concentrated is that street where there is most footfall, or indeed, FOT-fall . That would be O’Connell Street which is named after the Gliberator aka the King of the Beggars. That was the title retrospectively bestowed upon Dan the Man by one of Fintan O’Toole’s (for it is he !) , erm, cultural gurus, Sean O Faolain.
Of course, those who indulge in Nationalistic Guff might prefer to use the term the Beggar of Kings (see Sir Bob above).
Lightbulb moment !
One recalls, and just in time, the minor but designer character in ‘Oliver Twist’ whom the Geldof Goy most resembles, having reluctantly spent a lifetime in the public eye, modelling his every gesture, movement, tone, attitude and general demeanour on that very character.
That, of course, would be the cute, cuddly, pet pit-bull terrier of Bill Sykes with the red-eyes, white coat and blue, oops, brown nose.
-Bullseye !