Are you suffering from electoral fatigue? I’m not. Already I’m missing the leaders’ debates, the gaffes, the put-downs, the what-me-worried insistence of candidates who are clearly worried to death. And there’s no point in looking south: they’ve gone and cobbled together a government at last. It should be a quality Fine Gael minority government, given the time and attention that went into its construction. But in truth it’s damaged goods and will stumble from crisis to crisis.
For its part, Fianna Fail will spend the next Dail session in an increasingly schizophrenic state. Fine Gael needs a Fianna Fail life-support system 24/7, and Fianna Fail has promised to provide that for the next two years. At the same time, Fianna Fail has declared itself the leader of the opposition to the Fine Gael minority government. That’s because Fianna Fail is watchful of Sinn Féin and has decided to use an Arlene Foster approach. You probably remember – how could you forget? – the way Arlene went headline with the need to vote for her and her party in order to block Sinn Féin and keep Martin McGuinness from becoming First Minister. Fianna Fail, besides supporting the government, must be the main opposition to the government. If it doesn’t, look who’s coming up behind them:the Shinners! You couldn’t have them leading the opposition, ergo we have Fianna Fail the watchful opposition to the party which it endorses and keeps in office.
I predict that within twelve months, the schizophrenic pressures will be such, Fianna Fail will be found lying, eyes bulging, in an empty room. Its anti-government ego will have tried to throttle its government-supporting ego, and the party will be in urgent need of dim lights and soft music.
Meanwhile up north the two People Before Profit MLAs, Gerry Carroll and Eamonn McCann, are punching well above their weight, at least in terms of air-time. There may be just two of them but they’ve received more media attention than at least 80% of the other MLAs.
I find myself a bit like Fianna Fail with regard to the two PBP people.
- I think they’re a breath of fresh air, not to be confused with a Fresh Start. That big red flag that Gerry Carroll carried when his jubilant supporters raised him up was an colourful addition to our local flags collection. Eamonn McCann, not to be out-down, gave a spirited rendering of ‘The Internationale’ at his election, proving that he was perhaps the finest singer in the room and certainly the only one who knew all the words of ‘The Internationale’.
- It’s wonderful to have two such able orators – especially my old (as in ‘former’, although he is old too) classmate, Eamonn McCann. Eamonn always was an outstanding public speaker, and it’s good to see people elected who can cut to the chase, focusing hard on jobs, homelessness and all the other matters that plague everyday life for many.
- However, the more I think about the stance of the PBP on the constitutional question, the more confused I get. Eamonn explained to the cameras on Friday night that the party had given clear instructions to their candidates. On the doorstep, they were to start by declaring their name and party, they were to explain that they were neither Orange nor Green. This, Eamonn said, resonated with the people they’d encountered: people felt this was what was needed. Enough of this meaningless bickering over the border – bread-and-butter issues where what mattered.
- But didn’t John Hume’s dad say as much when he said you couldn’t eat a flag? Well yes, although I’ve always thought Hume Snr must have had a poor opinion of the intelligence/common sense of Hume Jr when he felt he had to point this out. But either way, he addressed the need to focus on the bread and butter issues. Common sense, really.
- Or is it? If you’re not Orange, then presumably you’re not pro-Union with Britain; if you’re not Green, then presumably you’re anti-Union with Britain; If you’re neither pro- nor anti- Union…How does that work? Is the idea that partition and rule from London don’t matter? That has an Alliance Party ring to it. And it’s also absurd. The Union with Britain affects our lives every day of every week. Saying that the elephant isn’t there doesn’t make it go away. And somebody as smart as Eamonn McCann – and presumably Gerry Carroll – should know that.
On second thoughts, maybe the end of election campaigns here won’t leave such a hole in my life: the follow-up to those campaigns may be even more interesting.
Politics, the art of the implausible
In the aftermath of the election in the sic counties, it is a case of ties and musical chairs in the Assembly. In the 26 counties there is no shortage of floating voters courtesy of floods and water bills. Mr Kelly, a contender for the leadership of the Irish Labour Party, described Labour’s election result as “disastrous” as the party was
“lost in the flow of populism that engulfed Irish politics.”
Not to be outdone by others who wish to govern “in the national interest” or for the “good of the country,” Mr Kelly stated,
“Labour were so busy concentrating on saving the country that they didn’t demonstrate to their core voters the fights they were winning in government during the past five years.”
Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil are both saying that despite the fact that charges will be suspended in six weeks, people should pay up until then because it is
“the law”
To quote Marx,
“These are my principles, if you do not like them, I have others…”
That was a quote from Groucho, not Karl.
Well, if there is anything that will unite a divided community, it could be the rise of communism.
In an all island context, I would vote for Fine Gael or even the DUP before I would support that crap.
“But didn’t John Hume’s dad say as much when he said you couldn’t eat a flag?”
Sure, most of Ireland don’t know where the next meal is coming from, yet they can afford fags and drink galore.
“But either way, he addressed the need to focus on the bread and butter issues. Common sense, really.”
Really?
Ignore the fact that a unified economy is the only way to fulfil our potential in both parts of the island, the fact if managed correctly it would spread the wealth into areas outside of Dublin and Belfast and into the west and more rural areas north and south.
The majority of sme businesses want unification, this will be accelerated in a brexit as it will impose even more issues on businesses expanding cross border. Especially those small but growing who do not have premises on both sides.
I can guarantee it wont be the commies among us that unite our people or grow our economy.
In his throat-catching valedictory tickety boo piece last Thursday in The Unionist Times, Esteemed Blogmeister, the victorious Eamonn McCann wrote of how he would represent the Others.
As the prize title of the fighter’s piece implied: ‘Neither Green nor Orange, but up for the fight’.
Touchingly, he writes:
-There’s a song about this which I have not tired of quoting, Harry Chapin’s Flowers are Red, about a teachers’s critique of a pupil’s painting.
-‘She said, ‘Flowers are red young man/ And green leaves are green/ There’s no need to see flowers any other way / Than the way they have always been seen’.
-But the little boy said / ‘There are so many colours in the rainbow/ So many colours in the morning sun/ So many colours in the flowers and I see every one’.
Now the last thing Eamonn McCann would consider himself is (gulp) colourless, nonetheless, it is odd that he should draw on the Harry Chapin song with its rainbow motif .
Considering how the Pooh Bah of PBP has already begun the dual task of deletion. Eamo’s only one day in Stormo and already two colours have been excised from the same rainbow by Comrade McCann-do.
Never mind what a Fianna Failure would make of this, what would Finian himself say?
Probably something along the lines of : Be afraid, Glocca Morra, be very afraid: for you and your ilk, there may well be no tomorra, if Mr. Global Norming has his way.
But, of course, Comrade McCann is not at all colourless as anyone familiar which his widely (erm) read columns can attest, in any one of the twin pillars of Unionist thought –TUT and its sister paper of record, The Bel Tel. Even the most casual of perusals of his writings will confirm that while Roy G. Biv of the Rovers will be stripped of most of his colours, there will still be one colour left standing in the cosmos of Comrade McCann.
No, not blue. Goodness, we are not talking hear about his near namesake, Edward du Cann, a true blue, if ever there was one.
A clue as the what that colour is / will be may well lie, of all places, in that which has often been disparagingly called ‘the longest carpark in the word’ – The Long Island Expressway, NY, specifically at the Jericho Turnpike.
On July 16, 1981 at the age of 38, Harry Chapin was killed in a car smash at that fatal spot. By a bizarre coincidence, and at an almost the identical location on November 8, 1974, another pop singer suffered what, in Victorian times, was known ‘as a fate worse than death’. That happened when Connie Francis was raped by a still unidentified assailant in her room at the Howard Johnson Motel at the Jericho Turnpike.
Happily, the song bird later recovered from her dreadful ordeal in the HoJo, though not without years of post-traumatic suffering.
As to the clue re. the colour of the almost colourless Comrade McCann: consider the following couplet from one of the splendiferous Connie Francis’s biggest hits, ‘Lipstick on your Collar’. For it poses a question which may well come to dog the up, up and away political career of Mr. Eamonn-come-lately:
-But your bottom dollar you and I are through
Cause lipstick on your collar told a tale on you.
Now, at first glance one might conclude that the key phrase is ‘lipstick on your collar’ (metaphorically speaking, of course) but in fact, the real deal dual word here is, actually, ‘bottom dollar’, as will soon become clear.
-You said you belonged to me, made me stop and think
Then I noticed yours was red, mine was baby pink;
Who walked in but Mary Jane, lipstick all a mess
Were you smooching my best friend, if the answer’s yes.
Connie Francis is singing frankly here: can Comrade McCann come clean with the same frankness ?
On the night of his election, he namechecked his local sweetheart, Miss Candystripes. Perhaps, even, protesting his devotion too much?
It certainly made at least one watcher blink before thinking: what’s going down here? Can this actually be the same social swain who, as recently as the last day of last year, in his killer of a column in The Unionist Times declared himself, above all, an Arsenal man?
So which is it: baby pink or red ? Who gets first dibs here: Egalitarian Eamo or Emir Eamonn? Where does his heart, in fact, lie: Londonderry or just plain London ?
Perhaps, the answer is neither. Perhaps, after all, football (sic) has been used by Comrade McCann, as a ploy possibly to delude the commonality by having a, erm, Red Mist descend upon the unwary and the cute hoory alike.
He does, after all, see the cosmos in terms totally of pounds, shillings and the rest is mere nonsense. And in the macrocosm of moola there are but two colours: black and red. As : in the black / in the red.
Now, if one understands Comrade McCann correctly, his One Big Idea is to get the hoi polloi onto the left side of the slash, i.e, to be, as it were, in the black.
A curious phrase (hopefully not racist, says one, looking nervously over one’s shoulder) but one which gives rise to the ever more peculiar phrase ‘the filthy rich’. A phrase which must be only be spoken with tongue firmly in cheek. Its origin being another t.i.c. phrase ‘ don’t forget to wash behind your ears, Mr. Big : it’s black there, very black’.
Mr. Big, is this case, being, of course, the very man who was McCannonised on the last day of last year as (gasp) ‘The Patron Saint of Common Decency’ aka, Arsene, the A-man of Arsenal.
The bottom line here is, indeed is the ‘bottom dollar’ (see above) is that Arsenal FC are one of the major players of the Premier (sic) Leagure in what may actually be a more sinister threat to wo/mankind than even Gobal Warming itself – Global Norming.
Where the only colour then will be, naturally, black.
Where only the Filthy Rich can skive, contrive to deprive, high five, thrve and go into overdrive. In other words, forget what you’ve, erm, read in the killer of columns.
Not for nothing is The Unionist Times located on the banks of Dubhlinn / Black Pool.
Eamon McCann was singing the “The Internationale”?? Isn’t that the same song sung by the Bolshevik’s? Joseph Stalin and Lenin often finished their Communist meetings with a sing song of the Internationale, if I remember correctly…..
I seen footage of Gerry Carroll waving a Red Flag and I guessed correctly it was the Red Flag of Communism…..
Could you imagine if someone got elected and they waved a Nazi flag and did Hitler salutes? They would be rightly lambasted but yet no one lambasts Communists….but yet Communism has cost the lives of FAR more innocent people than Nazism, at least 100 million people and that’s a low historical estimate….the Communist gulags in Siberia were no less horrific than anything found at Auschwitz and were far more numerous in number….
But yet these displays of Communism is tolerated…..its a perfect example of society not adhering to principles but to propaganda.
The most famous historical imagine in the World is a photo of Che Guevara which is often on T-Shirts, an Argentine Communist, who many regard as a “Hero” and an upstanding citizen. But very few know the facts about Che Guevara. For example, Che Guevara was a rapist. He forced a house maid to have sex with him in front of his friends at a dinner party. He was also a racist. He wrote that Blacks were inferior to White Europeans. He was also a mass murderer, he even wrote of enjoying executing people. On one occasion he executed a 14 year old boy who tried to stop his father from being executed, he shot the boy in the head and literally blew his head off, we know this because he wrote about it. He was also a sex addict, as is Fidel Castro who slept with over 2000 women. He spoke of capitalists taking advantage of the lower classes but yet he was a sexual predator of lower class women, as I mentioned he raped his maid in front of his friends and after wards ate his dinner as if nothing happened. He also set up Gulag style camps, inspired no doubt by Joseph Stalin, where thousands died. I could go on.
If asked would Gerry Carroll/Eamon McCann regard Che Guevara as a “Hero”? Does he sound like a role model? Does he sound like a good person? There is even accusations that Fidel Castro set Che Guevara up because he was a loose cannon but I cant validate that.
It would be wrong for anyone to wear a T-Shirt of Heinrich Himmler or to endorse Nazism, its just as wrong to endorse people or an ideology such as Communism which did even MORE harm to our World. Yes of course we need to protect the most vulnerable but the facts show Capitalism, which I’m no great fan of, has did more to lift people from poverty than Communism ever has.
The only way to help people is by making them realize they are the only ones who can help themselves, even the Bible says God only helps those who help themselves. People can take control of their own destiny. Societies job should be to give people the tools to help themselves, not by throwing vast amounts of money at the problem which doesn’t solve anything in the long run.
“Yes of course we need to protect the most vulnerable but the facts show Capitalism, which I’m no great fan of, has did more to lift people from poverty than Communism ever has.”
Capitalism is a driving force for entrepreneurism, quality of service, fitness for purpose.
Everyone knows very well, public services are run poorly, over utilised, top management heavy, abuse of sick leave, strikes for pay levels and benefits they simply don’t deserve and so on…
The private sector has no choice but to run things efficiently.
Fairness and equality have nothing to do with left wing politics. How many billionaires are their in Russia and other communist countries?
It is corruption and greed we need to remove from society, not the freedom to make money and improve our quality of living by working hard.
The world will be taking steps to prevent the wealthiest businesses from avoiding paying their dues to society. The southern state has assisted them in keeping billions from the Irish people yet charging for water and are still prepared to take our citizens to court for fundamentals rather than go after multi national corporates.
It is not capitalism that is the problem, it is greed and corruption, unfairness and deception, something Ireland in 2016 is rife with.
I agree with much of what you say Jessica.
No one ideology is the solution to creating the “perfect” society. I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a Capitalist but I believe in some aspects of Capitalism and also some aspects of Socialism. For example, free education is socialist and its been a massive benefit to the economy, children are growing up able to read, write, do math, etc and they are more economically successful due to this when they grow up.
One negative aspect to Socialism is its approach to immigration. Indeed Socialists use the “racist card” to try to silence anyone who opposes immigration. What Socialists don’t like to admit is that many immigrants coming into the country lowers wages, especially for the working class because so much competition for jobs lowers the price of labour, hence instead of benefiting the working classes it actually makes the wealthy more wealthy. Take Germany for example, Germany took in 1 million refugees last year alone. That’s a massive amount of people and most of them will be applying to do Labour jobs. The result will be a lowering of wages in areas where there’s many refugees and also a huge benefits bill because many of those coming in will be dependent on benefits. Benefits don’t appear out of thin air or grow on trees, its paid for by the German tax payer. This means less money for roads, hospitals and other things.
“I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as a Capitalist but I believe in some aspects of Capitalism and also some aspects of Socialism. For example, free education is socialist and its been a massive benefit to the economy, children are growing up able to read, write, do math, etc and they are more economically successful due to this when they grow up.”
I totally agree Ryan, the further you stay from the middle in either direction has consequences.
Centre left would be about right in my opinion, but if you have had a right wing government for any length of time, sometimes you need the left to step in and give back to the most vulnerable. Long term left would be a disaster for everyone though. Long term right results in the gulf between haves and have not’s increasing to an unfair distance. Running a country, should be very much done like running a business though. If you give more away for free than you can afford to, you go bust.
“Take Germany for example, Germany took in 1 million refugees last year alone. That’s a massive amount of people and most of them will be applying to do Labour jobs. The result will be a lowering of wages in areas where there’s many refugees and also a huge benefits bill because many of those coming in will be dependent on benefits. Benefits don’t appear out of thin air or grow on trees, its paid for by the German tax payer. This means less money for roads, hospitals and other things.”
If Britain leave the EU, that could bite Germany hard and could help lead to the collapse of the European union.
I believe they will regret it if they don’t already.
I don’t consider myself a racist, but there are times when the number of foreigners I see all over the place really pisses me off. But if that makes me a racist so be it.