Gremlin’s Fireside Chat

I have to admit that I am not a fan of the Irish language. I think it has little or no relivance to Irish life or me as an Irishman. Irish should be left to liguist historians and “fans” of the language. The only reason Irish survives is because is because it is propped up by successive governments pandering to a small vociverous vocal minority that fundamentally believe Irish Gaelic is the core of what it means to be Irish. Poppycock I say. The function of language is to communicate meanings and idea’s and if a language is not good enough to stand on its own two feet without the crutch of massive funding from central Government, then it does not deserve to survive. After all most of the Irish Government business is conducted in English (listen to any Irish news program as proof), and most Irish people hate the way the Irish language was thrust down their throats at school. You rarely hear Irish spoken in the streets of Ireland these days unless you go to one of the expensive government funded enclaves on the west coast of Ireland. So why is Irish compulsary?

Anyway I heard two new words about an gaeilge (Irish language) today: Gaeilgerist/Gaeligerista – A militant or vociferous advocate of the Irish Language who fervently believe that English should never be spoken in this hallowed land, and preferably should be the only language spoken in the world.

Its been a tough week for the Irish Minister Noel Dempsey a fellow Meath Man. First he makes a welcome announcement of scrapping the scandalous mechanism where provisional drivers (drivers who are not experienced and have not passed the official driving test) can drive for years and years on their own without being accompanied by an experienced driver – well in most cases they should be, its just that the Guards are too busy on their tea breaks and avoiding catching gangsters to enforce the feeble laws as they currently exist. I digress. A couple of days after announcing that provisional drivers must be accompanied in a weeks time, then after a clamouring of such people – some 400,000 if its is to be believed; than the “honourable” minister changes his mind and says it will now be introduced in 2008!!!! Make up your mind man…. its another cock-up for the minster for not-thinking-ahead Noel Dempsey and a good example for why he should be removed from office.

I have never meet Mr Dempsey; but with the current cock up on top of the Aer Lingus/Shannon and Tara/M3 ones, clearly shows that apart from a probable gold medal in brown-nosing it is time for this minister-for-incompetence to go. Why should I as an Irish Tax payer and citizen put up with a 7th rate manager as a “leader” of one of our major government bodies? we shouldn’t, it’s just isn’t right. If the government was a private company Mr Dempsey would have been fired years ago. Heed the people Noel – go back to the back-benches where you belong.

Well the election has come and gone, and we have still no government. Fianna Fail got the most votes – Ireland is virtually a one party state, but the party is “mostly harmless” due to the lack of imagination, drive, will and passion for the people that Irish politicians have. So we will get the same-o middle of the road chaotic crap we have had for the last 80 years or so. For a country founded by revolutionary zeal, there has been a pronounced lack or revolution in the political mind and process. There is little difference between the government before independence and that afterwards!!!

The only interesting thing from the election is the Progressive Democrats (PD’s) were absolutely hammered at the poll’s down to a miserly two members of Dail. The best news being the much-despised Micheal McDowell, PD leader, Minister for mis-Justice loosing his seat and bowing out of politics. One of the PD’s was whining about “not getting any electoral credit for taking the portfolio’s of Health and Justice” – excuse me!!! you only get credit if you a good job, not for being a disaster!!! Micheal McDowell has been particularly bad in that we have gone from one crisis to another. If it’s not the release of paedophiles for being imprisoned illegally due to badly drafted legislation it is some other badly thought out policy or law.

So who is Bertie going to sleep with to form the next government? its it the Green’s? the PD’s or even Labour? I’ll keep you posted.

We have an election in a couple of weeks and if the press was to be believed things are “hotting up”. Over the past couple of nights we have had on prime-time TV debates between the leaders of the various parties – although I disagree that the two main parties, Fianna Fail and Fine Gael had one show to themselves and Labour, PD’s, Greens and the rest had the other show; they should all have been on the one show squabbling likes kids for their patch. Did these shows actually tell us anything we did not already know? NO. The one thing it did show was the lack of passion, zeal or personality of any of those who vie to lead this great country of ours. What we had were the same old leaders making the same old dull points. Where are the idea’s? the ground-breaking policy statements?

There has only been one half hearted attempt at a good idea – and that was from Fine Gael and Labour, who for those out there are trying to get a “rainbow” coalition into government. This policy is the aboluton of the much hated Stamp Duty on property purchasing. As soon as this was announced virtually every other party jumped on the band-waggon.

So what do I want to see…. pretty much what everyone else want:

1. A police force that go hard on crime and criminals – and by this I mean murder, drugs, gangsters, corruption rather than the “easy” ones they do seem to focus one which is car offenders.
2. A faster judicial system – why does it take 1-2 years to get someone to court!!!! and why are witnesses allowed to be intimidated by the “friends” of the accused and thus refuse to testify. Ipso Facto murderers and gangsters go free to cause more misery in society.
3. When you are sent down for 10 years, it’s 10 years you serve – not this you are let out after 6 for good-behaviour. You should get 10 years and thats it. Time should be added for “bad” behaviour not deducted for “good”.
4. A decent health system with a good A&E service. The PD’s and Fianna Fail have had 10 years to make things better and all they have done was initiate one disaster after another.
5. Better planning of housing market. Why should a developer be allowed to build anything before the infra-structure and societal resources are in place to support that. By that I mean: schools should be built/expanded to cater for the proposed amount of new “youngsters” in a development. Sewerage and water processing structures should be available and adequate for the increase in usages, roads to support the proposed increase in traffic, shops and medial/dental units built etc. There should be none of the current brown-envelope initiated “let them build and the infra-structure will follow”. No lads that is the arse way around way of doing things – all you get is the current chaos, blight and mahem that is current Irish Housing market.
6. Child-care facilities. In France there is adequate child-care provision for all parents and at reasonable cost. By reasonable cost I mean a couple of hundred euro’s a month. It is rediculous that in Ireland you have to pay 800+ euro/month for EACH child. I know the little mites are treasures, but that is day-light robbery. There are many unemployed girls who may be suitable for retraining as nursery school staff; especially since so many of them are single mothers who “only have” no future but benefit claiming and bringing up their children.
7. Politicians should work the same “regular” hours as the rest of us – plus the unpaid overtime too; it only fair for these over-worked members of society. A TD’s salary is something your “average” man in the street would love to have. So to bring them in line with the rest of us,,,, the Dail sat for what 100 or was it 120 days last year? With nice long breaks for Christmas, summer, easter and paddies day. So why not make them work the 210-220 days plus 4-5 weeks holiday I work a year paying for their salaries. The Dail should sit for 5 days a week and TD’s who are not ill or government ministers should be there for 90% of them or suffer penalties – docked wages, disciplinary action etc. We pay them to be in the Dail and vote on our behalf as a professional. If they are not prepared to sit in the Dail then they should not be in the Dail. A lot of our TD’s have a terrible attendance record and it is an insult to the voter, democracy and our country.
8. Government ministers can rarely be found in the country on our national day – St Particks day, March 17th; Why you may ask are they missing? well they are swaning off at the public expense to places foreign – America, Australia, China; You name a place and on Paddies day you will find a government minister representing the “public interest” and “flying the flag” – maybe in conjunction with a “fact finding mission”. Funny enough often the ministers partners are there as well. This is wrong. Whats wrong you ask. Well apart from the “junket” label, they should not be abroad – they should be at home in their home consituencies having a good craic with the people who put them in the Dail in the first place. The flag should be flown in the foreign countries by the local Irish Diplomat. After all it is the Job of a Diplomat to represent the Irish people abroad, otherwise why employ them if they cannot be used to represent us on our National day. Odds on they will do a better job of it than the minister would, basically because the Diplomat should able to speak the local language an know how not to offend the natives.
9. Ban all election posters… by this I mean all those “vote for…” with a inane grinning prospective candidate that spring up on every pole at election time. A real eye-sore and next to useless. I don’t care what a candidate looks like, I do care about what their policies are. So why the posters? The only time I usually see my local TD is when they (or their lackies) come around grovelling for my vote at election time; apart from that they are conspiquous for their absence. Therefore I would therefore ban the “personal picture” telegraph-pole election poster. Not only will it keep the countryside looking a lot better, it is better for the environment too.

Now back to my usual Friday evening and a nice pint – have a good one.

what a week or two it has been in Ireland. We have seen a government humbled, the Minister for Justice shown (if what the papers say is true) to be an incompetent arrogant fool; criminals who are a bit slow and the anguish and righteous anger of the Irish people in full flow.

What is this all about? Well let me tell you. There was a law until last week which stated that if any man slept with a girl under 17 they were automatically guilty of statutory rape. It did not matter if the act was consensual, or the girl concerned was 15 and dolled her self up to pass as 17+ (and there a lot of them around – teenage pregnancy and under-age drinking are rife and a recent survey said around 50% of girls lost their virginity before they were 17 – but I digress); if the act occurred then the man was guilty. There was NO DEFENSE. This law has existed since 1935 and has been used to put away the most vilest of paedophiles and perverts in our society. Well the long and short of it is that someone challenged this in our highest court and won. Essentially there should be no crime where the accused is automatically guilty of crime without the redress of saying (in this case) “Sorry, but I did not realize that she was under-age�. The result in our society has been an uproar.

What happened after the supreme court ruled the law as unconstitutional (we have a written constitution in Ireland) has been amazing, horrifying, and fun to watch as a bystander. When the court ruled, the minister for justice stated that “this was totally unexpected; no one told us that someone was challenging this and that the law was dodgyâ€? – which was funny since he is the Minister for justice and if someone is challenging a law on constitutional grounds he should be better damnedest be aware of it or else he should be hounded out of office as a buffoon and incompetent. This is doubly true if:

1. The challenge had been proceeding through the courts for a year or more.
2. The law society had written in the official law rag that the piece of law concerned was likely to be successfully challenged on constitutional grounds; – and this article appeared 17 years ago!!! and as legal beagle of many years standing the Minister for Justice should damned well be reading his own professional bodies articles.
3. The minister for Justice himself (if the papers are to be believed) gave an interview on the dangers and problems with the “no defence available� law some 11 years ago.

Anyway there are loads of perverts lining up in the courts claiming that they can no longer be held in prison since the law under which they were convicted no longer exists. This opens the possibility that the genuine fiends and paedophiles could possibly sue the government for false and illegal imprisonment and get massive damages. A “Mr A� has already been released from prison based on the supreme courts ruling. Mr A being a 41 year old man who raped a few years ago a 12 year old girl. The Minister of Justice said last week that he would not be rushed into “fixing� the law and there was no crisis – how bloody wrong that idiot is.

Rape centres, youth groups and many victims are incandensent– and justly so; although some of them don’t seem to “get the pointâ€? that any law should permit some form of legal defence on valid grounds – especially if its age. If you don’t you get the worst kind of repression and excesses like you see/saw with Sadaam Hussiens regime, The American treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay and any number of other dicatatorial regimes around the world.

The long and the short of it is that It seems that the law is going to be passed to allow the “honest mistakeâ€? defence; although that may mean that youngsters will probably have to submit to cross-examination in court which won’t please a lot of people. I just hope they get the law constitutionaly right, don’t make it retrospective, and get rid of the ass-hole who is the current justice minister since he has shown a distinct lack of ability, understanding, management and moral fibre in this and other matters of late. If the minister did not see this crisis coming then you should not be doing the important post of Justice Minister – arguably the most important post in the government since society works and moderates itself through the rule of law. Without rules then there can only be chaos and our society will fall.