James Joyce

One hour long RTE show from last Saturday
link here

Kurt Waldheim

We note that Old Kurt passed away yesterday. Gone to the great Gaulieters abteilung stempel stimmung in the sky no doubt. He was the last great defrocked Nazi - apart from the odd French bloke. Bizarrely they keep on turning up every few years.
We shall not see his like again. Hopefully.

Las Malvinas

Yesterday apparently was the 25th anniversary of the liberation of Port Stanley - or recapture as we prefer to call it. It seems like only yesterday I was working on the sites in Munich - during my Aufweidersehn Pet days - with some gougers from Liverpool. I liked their Empire Strikes Back T-shirts.
The papers here are full of our boys Churchillian dogged determination against the odds. The Argies would have won if the Fronch Exocets had actually all gone off. Most of them just landed on the decks and lay there - waiting to collaborate no doubt.
Still the Brits are a warlike lot and they revel in their military exploits, Waterloo, The Somme, Islandlwana, Vinegar Hill etc. It has to do with their whole royalist, established church, psyche.
Every now and then they have to kick the crap out of poorly armed opponents and wheel out the Queen to mourn the gallant dead in a nice Church of England service with top notch choral accompaniment.
Maggie should be done for war crimes over the sinking of the Belgrano which was heading for Chile as fast as the lads could paddle it. She seems in reasonable shape for an auld wan and should be good for at least a couple of years hard labour.
Viva Las Malvinas. Viva Diego Maradonna.

Its over for the Greens

It looks like the Greens got robbed blind by FF.
Not since the man bought the cow for a bag of magic beans has a better deal bean struck.
The Greens have come away with a bunch of promises and very little concrete, apart from the longed for Noise Bill. Huh?
Its business as usual on the M3 dig and down at Shannon.
The Greens will get a well deserved ass kicking at the next election, when their core lefty protest vote will go to Richard Boyd-Barrett and the Stickies.
As Jimbo Jones on The Simpsons said "You let me down, man. Now I don't believe in nothing no more. I'm going to law school."

Vegetable Market

Are the Greens really going to sellout to FF?
I can't believe it.
Shurely the the rank and file membership will reject what Roger Garland has called an unbelievably bad deal. Or are they such hero worshippers that the will follow the merc chasing leadership cabal?
I will have to shop elsewhere for my sandals in future.

Greens Bottle

The Greens walked out of the talks on Friday over 4 issues:
* Climate Change
* Education
* Local Govt Reform
* Healthcare.

Why are the Greens getting het up over Education and Health?
The mistake they are making is wanting to go into Government - where they would be collectively responsible for all cabinet decisions. What they should do is agree to support a minority FF Govt. if it does 3 things:
1. Save Tara
2. Reduce carbon emissions by some Kyoto amount.
3. Whatever green issue you're having yourself.
(Build a rail link to the Airport?)

Of course the Cunning One is only playing with them while he sidles up to Pat Smartarse. But if the Greens unilaterally declared their support for FF under simple terms they would out-maneuver the lot of them, coz Pat wouldn't have the "National Interest" excuse to fall back on.
Some chance of that.

FF voters are fecking deluded

According to my learned friend people who voted FF say:
* FF are wizards at running the economy
* FF created the IFSC
* FF lowered corp tax
* Bertie has answered the money/house thing.

On the economy the perceived wisdom (subscription reqd.) is that inflation has eroded our competitiveness and residual growth is fuelled by consumer borrowing. Oops.
Even Bertie has admitted (post-election) that we are heading for trouble.
Michael Casey (sub req.) argued in the IT the other day that no Irish government has much control over the economy - they don't set exchange or interest rates, they have no control over population growth and as we are a "globalised economy" we are dependent on the performance of other economies. He also points out that "non-governmental experts and specialised agencies make the important decisions."

The dreaded CJH and Der Kaiser must take the credit for the IFSC - which happened about 400 years ago, and the IDA brought the yanks here, albeit with tax incentives etc.

Most FFers believe Charlie was innocent and were more upset over the revelations about Dead Keen than the scrounged millions. They are similarly taking a benign view of the Bert and his unconventional house buying and banking arrangements. Gobshites.

The reality is the difference between FF and The Blueshirts is so narrow you couldn't squeeze a brown envelope between them.