Load o’ Ballog

RIP Stephen Gately

It doesn’t really touch me on a personal level that Stephen Gately has died, although it is always sad when someone dies and a tragedy when they go “before their time”. However, I did not know him personally, nor was I ever a Boyzone fan, so I’m not upset.

I am irritated, though, by the innuendo in the media. It’s disgraceful that the family’s lawyer had to issue statements to say that Stephen did not kill himself or die of a drugs overdose or after a binge drinking session.

If any of us knew someone who died at the age of thirty-three, we would immediately be thinking of the tragedy of it and how awful it must be for their loved ones and friends. But when it’s someone famous, or even better, someone famous and gay, the media have to look for something sordid.

Well, there was nothing sordid. The poor man died of a pulmonary oedema. Would it have been too much for the media to have waited for the autopsy report instead of speculating?

Of course, it would have been too much, because decency doesn’t sell papers.

I have a vision of a large sack of snakes into which hack journalists would be thrown and then beaten with sticks. Form a disorderly queue.

Sardines in The Joy

I am somewhat bemused by a news report on the RTE website about violence among prisoners in Mountjoy Prison. The article implies that the violence is related to overcrowding at the prison.

I believe that prisons should do what they can to rehabilitate criminals so as to minimise the risk of repeat offences and part of that rehabilitation should be reasonable living conditions, so I do I think the authorities should be taking steps to ease overcrowding, perhaps by building another prison.

However, the people really to blame for overcrowding in prisons are the criminals.

If you are unhappy about overcrowding in The Joy, stop breaking the law, yiz gobshites!

Land of saints and child abusers…

I am angry.

This week in Ireland, The Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse published its report after ten years (summary here – full report here). The commission investigated reports of the abuse of children in Catholic Reformatory and Industrial Schools over a sixty year period up to the 1980s. Such institutions were set up to care for poor and abandoned children and often as a means of dealing with troublesome children.

Scene from the feature film "Song for a Raggy Boy"

What makes me angry is not just that children were beaten, tortured and raped. What makes me angry is not just that children were beaten, tortured and raped by people who were supposed to be caring for them. What makes me angry is not just that children were beaten, tortured and raped by members of religious orders who were supposed to be caring for them. What makes me angry is that not one of the torturers and rapists still alive is going to be named and not one of them is going to be prosecuted.

It angers me that the Catholic Church and the Government in Ireland knew that abuse was going on and did nothing about it.

It angers me particularly that the Christian Brothers (against whom more allegations were made than all of the other male orders combined, according to the RTE news website) even successfully sued the commission in 2004 to keep the identities of its members anonymous in the report. I was educated by the Christian Brothers for all my secondary schooling. I was in a normal school, not one of the institutions that are the subject of the report. My memories of the brothers are generally good, particularly of one head teacher who was a gentleman. I have no personal axe to grind with the order, but to think that even now they would try to cover up the abuses of some of their members is a disgrace. If I had children in a CB school, I would withdraw them in protest.

Why was there so much abuse in Ireland? I think it goes back to the (not distant) past when poor families were large and couldn’t provide for all their children, so some were packed off at a young age to religious orders to become priests, nuns and brothers. Effectively condemned to a life of restrictions that they had not chosen for themselves. These were not vocations, they were sentences. What resentments and frustrations did these children carry with them into adulthood and subsequently take out on the children who eventually came into their own care?

Severe corporal punishment was considered normal in school when I was a child. Of course, “severe” is a relative term. I have no experience of brutal beatings, either as a victim or a witness, but when the whole class is being punished with strokes of a large, wooden ruler on the palms of both hands, and you are waiting somewhere down the line, having to see and listen to those before you receive their punishment knowing that yours is coming, and to top it off the class is being punished for making noise during a break when you yourself had stayed as quiet as a mouse – that can be quite traumatic for a six-year-old mind. That happened at the Sisters of Charity primary school in Gardiner Street, Dublin. I bear no ill-will towards the nun who meted out that punishment. She was generally a good woman.

Later I went to a school run by the De La Salle brothers in Navan. The young brother who taught me there was generally good-natured and friendly but had a bizarre way of testing the boys’ spelling skills. He would line the whole class up along the walls of the classroom. Each boy in turn would be given a word to spell. If he got it right, he sat down. Otherwise he would remain standing. Those were very long moments in a boy’s life because he had to wait for round one to be over. Round two started with a single lash across the palm of the hand with a bamboo cane for each boy who remained standing. The lash was excruciating; the waiting possibly even more so. Then the spelling bee would begin again. Each of the remaining boys would be given another word to spell. Round three would begin with a lash to each hand. I don’t remember whether there was a round four. Fortunately, I was literate from an early age, so I rarely got lashed for spelling mistakes. But I burn with anger and resentment now when I think of it. There was no educational value in such behaviour, certainly not for any children who had never been encouraged to read or who were dyslexic. My parents never learned of those beatings from me. I considered them normal and I had been brought up not to question authority. Ironically, the brother blurted it out to my mother during a meeting when he thought she had come to complain. He said that when he had started out, he vowed he would never strike a child, but in the end he saw no other way to control the class. Yes… because during our spelling bees we must have been like rioting prison inmates on crack.

I mention these two, generally good and kind, teachers because even they beat us when it came down to it. And we were ordinary children in an ordinary school who went home to our parents in the afternoon. What must have gone on behind the closed doors of those institutions for underprivileged children if ordinary kids like us were being physically and mentally abused for not knowing how to spell “anguish”.

I can only imagine the anguish suffered by those victims of abuse (and I personally know some) at the hands of the Catholic Church with the collusion of the Irish Government, to be told now that their abusers will not face justice.

The kinds of abuse that went on are Abu Ghraibian, yet perpetrated not on adults by soldiers following the orders of shadowy intelligence officers, but on children by priests, nuns and brothers with the consent of government ministers.

Anywhere else there would be prison sentences for the abusers and anyone who obstructed justice by shielding abusers. But not in Ireland, where the old attitude of “Ah, sure it’s best we don’t think about these things” that allowed it to happen in the first place is still alive and well, it would seem.

And the irony of recent times is that Ireland’s Minister for Justice wants to be able to prosecute people for “blasphemy“. But not for the abuse of a child, it would seem, because not offending religious people is more important than not raping children. Welcome to 1930s Ireland.

It’s at times like this I wish I was not agnostic, then I could believe that Hell awaits such people. What all this certainly does show me is that even if there were a god, religious organisations have no direct line to him and certainly receive no mandate from him.

To get a flavour for what the commission’s report is about, I recommend you watch “Song for a Raggy Boy“, which is based on the true story of a lay teacher’s courage to stand up against abuse in a Catholic Reformatory and Industrial School in 1939 Ireland.

Continue reading Land of saints and child abusers……

What’s the matter with blasphemy?

Further to my post below, point 6.1.i of Article 40 of The Constitution of Ireland states:

“The publication or utterance of blasphemous, seditious, or indecent matter is an offence which shall be punishable in accordance with law.”

However, the Supreme Court ruled in 1999 that this point could not be applied in a legal case because it was not possible to say what blasphemy actually is.

Instead of moving into the 21st century and removing the point about blasphemy from the constitution, Dermot Ahern wants to make it enforceable by defining blasphemy. His proposal for a new law in Ireland against the publication or utterance of blasphemous matter defines such matter as:

“grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of the adherents of that religion; and he or she intends, by the publication of the matter concerned, to cause such outrage”

Although I am not quite sure how one can “utter” matter, I’ll go with that for the moment.

There are two problems with this definition. Firstly, it does not go on to quantify the phrase “substantial number”, thus leaving it entirely subjective. Secondly, a successful prosecution would be contingent on proving that the defendant intended to cause outrage. So in his attempt to add clarity, Minister Ahern has added none at all.

But let’s suppose he made things clear by quantifying the “substantial number” and removing the clause about intent, there would still be problems.

Then suppose I started a religion which taught that the “God” of the Old Testament was actually the Devil and that he created the world as a prison, a religion which taught that Hell was in fact our own physical world, created by this Devil as a means of tormenting humans, a religion which taught that the resurrection of Jesus was not a physical resurrection of his dead body but more a spiritual awakening akin to Buddhist “enlightenment”.

Now suppose a “substantial number” of Roman Catholics felt outrage, I could be punished simply for expressing a belief that is at odds with what they believe.*

But hang on! What if a substantial number of my adherents felt outrage at the publication of Catholic beliefs? I could have all the Catholics punished!

Yes, everyone punishing everyone else over which mythology is the right one at a time when people are losing their jobs. That is the way to lead the country out of crisis.

I do not believe that simply causing outrage should be punishable. Such a policy tells us that things should be left alone, be nice, don’t rock the boat. But we all know that sometimes the boat needs to be capsized. Of course, people in power tend to lose their balance when boats are rocked, so they don’t like it.

“Outrage” is often just a politically correct synonym for “intolerance” and intolerance should not be rewarded by enshrining it in law.

Interesting article on this topic by Michael Nugent here.

* These beliefs were held by many in the Languedoc region of what is now called France. The Church of Rome was outraged at this blasphemy and dealt with it by torturing and murdering adherents to those beliefs until there were none left.

Irish Blasphemers, get your licks in while you can

I think I just woke up in the 1920s.

The Irish Times on-line is reporting that Fianna Fáil (the Irish political party currently fucking up the country, if you’re not from Ireland) wants to make it a crime to blaspheme.

Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern proposes to insert a new section into the Defamation Bill, stating: “A person who publishes or utters blasphemous matter shall be guilty of an offence and shall be liable upon conviction on indictment to a fine not exceeding €100,000.”

The Cambridge on-line dictionary has decided to be the Cambridge off-line dictionary today, so I went to Merriam-Webster instead. They define “blasphemy” as follows:

1 a: the act of insulting or showing contempt or lack of reverence for God b: the act of claiming the attributes of deity

2: irreverence toward something considered sacred or inviolable

I imagine there would be so many legal problems with such a law that it could never be applied.

With reference to 1a in that definition, surely in legal terms, in order to convict someone of showing contempt for God, you would first have to prove that God exists?

In the case of 1b, does the Minister for Justice (no, really, JUSTICE) seriously intend prosecuting every nutter who claims to be God? That’s what he would have to do in order to fairly apply this ridiculous law.

As for 2, it would mean that if even one person considered something sacred or inviolable, that thing would have to be legally protected from blasphemy. For example, I consider my bollocks to be pretty sacred and inviolable. That would mean I could have somebody arrested for laughing at my two veg in the changing room at the gym.

A return to the glory days of the Church?

Seeing as the Minister wants to turn back the clock, the next thing you know he will want to bring in a law making it legal for the Catholic Church to start raping children again. Oops! Did I just show irreverence for the Catholic Church. Don’t some people consider that institution sacred?

I’ll save you the bother, Minister, I’ll put myself on the rack just after I finish heating up the branding irons.

Gobshite.

Twenty Major says it as eloquently as ever here.

If you want to express your opinion to the Minister, you can contact him as follows:

Constituency Office
Dermot Ahern TD
28 Francis Street
Dundalk
Co. Louth
042 9329023

Dáil Office
Dermot Ahern TD
Dáil Éireann
Leinster House
Kildare Street
Dublin 2
01 618 3000

dermot@dermotahern.ie

Childish nations

Recent events in Georgia have reminded me just how childish nations are.

Various news articles have tried to explain Russia’s actions by stating that Russian pride has taken several severe knocks since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with many of its former subject nations rejecting Russia and joining the EU, applying to join NATO or otherwise looking to the West. Thus Russia took this opportunity to restore its national pride by taking action in South Ossetia.

National pride.

That’s a phrase that should be saved for the Olympics, or cheese, or beer or even (choking back the nausea) the Eurovision song contest.

When national pride results in guns being fired, how is it different from the violence that erupts when one street gang offends another’s pride?

Let me answer that question for you, just in case it is in any way unclear in your mind: there is no difference.

Of course, all the hypocrisy has come out. Great Britain and the USA, among many others, have remonstrated with Russia for using military force. These are two other countries that have a tendency to use their military as an expression of national pride.

Let’s invade Panama because their President shafted the CIA in a drugs deal!

Let’s go to war with Argentina over some windswept islands in the South Atlantic (or let’s go to war with Britain over some windswept islands in the South Atlantic)!

Let’s bomb the crap out of Iraq because Sadaam Hussein has WMDs or is in league with Al Qaeda or because it’s Tuesday or because we are GREAT countries and that’s what GREAT countries do to prove their GREATNESS… they bomb the shit out of people!

What does it say about a country that continues to formally label itself “Great”?

What does it say about a country that constantly has to tell itself that it’s the “greatest country in the world” (which, if it’s true, doesn’t explain why I have never, ever seen a clean taxi there)?

National pride.

National pride is nothing more than the insecure trying to prove to themselves that they are worth something after all by dropping bombs on children.

Type “proud to be Irish” into Google and you’ll get around 218,000 hits*. That’s 218,000 pages of utter crap.

I’m Irish. I like being Irish. I am pleased to be Irish. I am not ashamed of being Irish (as many my age or older used to feel). But proud to be Irish? What? Was it something I somehow achieved through the sweat of my brow? I would happily wear a shirt that says “Irish” on it, just as long as it is not preceeded by the words “Proud to be”. No, I am not proud to be Irish and anyone who says they are is only one step away from the Georgians who dropped bombs on the South Ossetians just because they don’t want to be Georgian, or one step away from the Russians who dropped bombs on the Georgians because they haven’t been feeling too good about themselves over the past twenty years.

Awwww… How do you say “Diddums” in Russian?

The more I see world leaders on TV, the more I see them as damaged children desperately seeking approval. And they are willing to kill to get it.

No country is so great that they need to shout it from the mountain tops. No country is so great that they need to fire assault rifles to prove it. Leave that childish nonsense to gang-bangers

Continue reading Childish nations…

Quelle partie de “Non” ne comprenez-vous pas?

According to an article on the RTE news website, the French government isn’t happy with the fact that Ireland voted “No” to the Treaty of Lisbon.

I didn’t vote because I live in Spain, but as I am quite pro EU, I would probably have voted “Yes”. But that doesn’t mean I think there should be another referendum just because other countries aren’t happy with the outcome of this one.

Watching interviews with voters on the news, I got the impression that a lot of people who voted “No” did so because they didn’t understand the terms of the treaty. If that’s the case, then a big slap on the wrist to the Irish Government for not explaining them well.

The next step shouldn’t be another referendum just because the French don’t like the way the Irish voted, but a study to see whether or not people actually understood what they were voting on. If that study found people really didn’t understand, then there is an argument for another referendum, provided the Government bother their arses to explain the terms of the treaty properly instead of simply telling people it’s a really good idea.

In the meantime, Président de la Commission des Affaires Étrangères de l’Assemblée Nationale de France, Monsieur. Axel Poniatowski, which bit of

NO

do you not understand?

Introduction to Dublinese #1

Just in case any readers from beyond the sea decide to visit Dublin some day, I thought I would present the following scene to help you become accustomed to the local language.

A young Dubliner, bumps into two friends in the street.

Kaiser: Story, lads? Did yiz go t’the pictures last night?

Eyelash: Hawaya, head. Yeah, we went t’see Rambo 9.

Kaiser: Was it any use?

Turkey: It was massive!

Eyelash: I thought it was brutal.

Kaiser: I don’t think I’ll bother m’hole then.

Turkey: C’mon we’ll go for a gargle, I’ve a terrible throat on me. <indicates a pub across the street>

Kaiser: Not to Mooney’s. That place is a kip.

Eyelash: Let’s get some bevvies and take them back t’your gaff. Then we can watch the match on the box.

Turkey: No, my aul fella’s home tonight and yiz know what he’s like when he’s watching the Gaa. He ate the head off me last time I brought the lads home during a match.

Kaiser: <Pointing down the street>Look at that bowsie over there!

Turkey: Who?

Kaiser: Anto’s brother.

Eyelash: Ah, he’s an awful gobshite.

Kaiser: Hard t’believe when Anto’s such a decent skin.

Turkey: I don’t think he’s as thick as people think. He’s a cute hoor.

Kaiser: Well, he’s only an aul bollix then.

Eyelash: How is Anto? I haven’t seen him in donkeys.

Kaiser: He got his mot up the pole. They have a chisler now, so he doesn’t get out much. He even got rid of his ronnie for her.

Eyelash: Hate tha’.

Turkey: Not that young wan, Jacinta?

Kaiser: No, not that scanger! Angela’s sister.

Eyelash: You’re coddin!

Kaiser: No, head, I’m deadly.

Eyelash: Jaysus.

Kaiser: Here, have yiz got any odds? I need to get some fags from the Chinese.

Turkey: Yeah, I have some shrapnel here.

Eyelash: Get us a single with sore finger while you’re there, head.

Turkey: And then we can borrow your brother’s banger and go for a spin.

Kaiser: Can’t. Some Apache took it and and when he got it back it was banjaxed.

Turkey: I thought Tooler fixed that.

Kaiser: He made a haymes of it. The whole things bollixed now. <Departs across the road>

Turkey: Well, feck it, then. I’m going home.

Eyelash: Don’t be such a dry shite!

Turkey: Well, I’m not traipsing around here all night!

Eyelash: C’mon, when Kaiser gets back we’ll go down t’Slattery’s and get stocious.

Turkey: Savage!

Eyelash: Gear!

Kaiser: <Returning>Rapid!

Here is the translation…

Continue reading Introduction to Dublinese #1…

Do as Bertie says, not as Bertie does

I am not proud to be Irish.

I am pleased to be Irish, but I am not proud. It is an accident of my provenance that I am Irish. I didn’t go away and work or study to become Irish, I just am. So I have no right to be proud. It’s not something I achieved.

However, I often feel a sense of pride when I see my compatriots achieving something. I’m trying to think of an example… Oh, yes! Like our Taoiseach (Prime Minister) being the highest paid leader in Europe.

What a glow it brings to my heart! Those other gobshites… call themselves leaders? Look at Angela Merkel… Prime Minister of eighty million people… I bet she has to bum bus fare off Bertie at EU meetings. Our Bertie has managed €310,000 out of just four and quarter million people. And to think he only started off ten years ago with a salary of €112,000.

Now there’s a man with drive and a keen understanding of economics. Not many people out there could figure out a way to get €310,000 out of so few people. Genius!

Now all those mangy gits out there doing useless jobs like… I don’t know… nursing and policing and firefighting and ambulancing and crap like that… they all want a piece of Bertie’s well-earned pie.

Bertie says those people will just have to have realistic expectations.

Those gobshites clearly don’t get it… after paying Bertie, there’s fuck all left.

Do not pass Go

There have been scandals about paedophilia among priests in the Catholic Church for some time now and I personally know people who were victims of such abuse.

Ireland has not escaped such scandals and there are on-going enquiries. The latest twist in the scandal is that Cardinal Desmond Connell is seeking to prevent the release of certain documents to the enquiry. On the face of it, his motives are fair enough. It seems he wants to maintain the privacy of victims and priests accused (but unconvicted) of abuse. Incidentally, Michael Nugent has an excellent post here which illustrates the magnitude of the issue in the Dublin Archdiocese alone.

The thing that struck me as odd is that Cardinal Connell is reported to be willing to go to prison to protect the people named in those documents. Surely the ones going to prison should be the guilty, paedophile, rapist priests and anyone in the Church who sought to cover up their crimes by simply transferring them to other parishes instead of reporting them to the police?

It’s a topsy-turvy world where the people who spend so much of their time preaching to everyone else about sexual morality are embroiled not just in a sexual scandal, but in a criminal one of the vilest nature.

Luke 17:2
It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.