COUP D'ETAT IN THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

J'ACCUSE

Today's election in the Republic of Ireland is illegal.
The electoral process has been hijacked.
It has been hijacked through a mixture of incompetence and malign manipulation.
Over five hundred thousand voters have been removed from the voters' register.
No explanation or warning was offered for their removal.
People who had voted all their lives, only found out something was up when their voting cards failed to arrive last week.
The removal of over half a million people from the voters' register, in a country with a population of four million, was carried out under legislation introduced last year.
I am profoundly convinced that the removal of over half a million voters from the register amounts to a coup d'etat by the governing parties.
At local level, in the town of Kilcullen whole sections of the populace, particularly in the Bishop Rogan estate, have found themselves completely disenfranchised.
The same pattern of egregious disenfranchisement has been repeated nationwide.
I believe this represents a blatent gerrymandering of the electoral process.
The constitution of the Republic of Ireland has been willfully trahaised.
Our democracy has been trampled in the mud of petty ambition by a shambolic alliance of parvenus and aparatchiks.
I call on Irish men and Irish women of honour and integrity, no matter what their political or personal backgrounds, to unite in rejection of this sham, this mockery, this thieving of our democracy.
I call on the thieves who have stolen our country to return what they have stolen.
I call on the courts to uphold our constitution.
This election is null and void.

daffodils and tulip

to a wild rabbit

words are mine
no words take from his eyes
the breeze blown beauty of the woodlands
nor the silver scented sight of evening glories

manhood mine
a prince of the fields is he
even in the terror of flight
a strange high ecstasy
spirits to delight

age is mine
he will not grow old
nor fear the passing of his world
the lure of yellow gold
the bitterness of friends becoming foes

in time of the breaking of nations

Driving my American Aunt from the airport to the chateau.
A pleasant journey flush with roseate good humour, made all the more warm hearted indeed by the undoubted fondness of our reunion and the sure knowledge that she would try to slip me a hundred before we reached home.
The aunt is a strong and generous woman.
Other family members have awful tensions with her when out of the blue she takes it into her head to proffer them random monetary contributions.
She's never had the slightest problem with me.
And so we drive.
Chatting merrily about nothing in particular as is our wont.
Suddenly.
"George Bush is a liar and a murderer. He won't stop until somebody stops him."
The words are my aunt's.
The noble Heelers falls very silent.
As many of you know I do not rush to discuss these matters.
Particularly with a relative as generous as this one.
The last time I entered such a debate...
Why if I wasn't a guest in sweet French Sarah's luxurious Dublin apartment. She'd asked me up for a coffee after a night out. My little heart had leapt because I was thinking oh Lordy, who knows what might happen next.
What happened was we talked about the battles in Iraq and Afghanistan until the wee small hours.
Until in fact she threw me out for defending the Prez too vociferously.
(No not Chirac.)
You should have seen the hang dog expression on my face that night.
I'm telling you folks, whatever the CIA is paying me, it's not enough.
But I digress.
The aunt and me in the car.
That's where we are now.
Should I say anything?
In my mind's eye I see PG Wodehouse, the last genius to write in the English language before I came along.
Wodehouse many years ago in a series of radio broadcasts is supposed to have expressed himself a little ambiguously on matters relating to a certain Adolf Hitler and his attempts to take over the world.
Since hearing of this, I have always vowed that no matter how popular my own sublime poetic stylings became, I would not make the same mistake as my predecessor in greatness.
It doesn't matter if you agree with me or not gentle travellers of the internet.
Honour is served as long as you know where I stand.
Against the killing of the unborn.
In favour of reducing the Jihadis.
Everything else is conversation.
"President Bush is not a liar," I said firmly. "He's not a murderer. Under his presidency the Americans helped by the British have liberated two countries that have never known freedom before. He's ended the Saddam Hussein family murder business in Iraq and he's ended the Taliban's murderocracy in Afghanistan. And the rest of us all around the world with a few notable exceptions, have failed to play our part. The rest of the world wants to play it like 1939. They think if we only get rid of Mr Bush those nice master race Jihadi's will go away. Meanwhile Iran and Syria are trying to sabotage the liberation of their neighbours because if their own people see free countries nearby, they'll rise up and demand American style freedoms for themselves. I'm telling you Saddam did have weapons of mass destruction. I watched that country for twenty years. He had them. President Bush's opponents all said he had them. Edward Kennedy said he had. Hilary Clinton said he had. Bill Clinton said he had. Of course they were talking in 1998 when the Clinton administration was itself bombing Saddam to distract the world's attention from Bill's impeachment hearings. The world can ill afford to ignore the fact that Al Quada is being strengthened by the media bias in the west against Mr Bush. The Jihadis are even starting to claim that the Americans bombed New York on Nine Eleven. But make no mistake. Those planes were hijacked by muslim terrorists. No, the hijackings were not a response to anything. They were nothing to do with American foreign policy or Israel. Islamic terrorists murdered those people simply because, well, because the terrorists felt if they themselves are unhappy, then everyone else has to be unhappy too. Misery loves company. They're not at ease in the 21st century. They want everyone to live in the 12th. They will lose of course. Eventually. It's just if the world got together to stop them now it wouldn't have to cost a few hundred million lives to stop them in five years time."
I left the aunt at her hotel.
There was no hundred spot for Bonzo.
Truly none of us have come through this war on terror unscathed.
The ghost of PG Wodehouse appeared in the passenger seat of my car.
"What ho Heelers!" he said not unkindly. "You've done the hard part. Alienated at least half your readers too I reckon. Now don't you think it's time you wrote a few books?"

fortuna favori hammus

For a moment I couldn't believe my eyes.
A peculiarly gormless Irish soap opera called Fair City was droning away on the television.
And there right in the middle of it...
Pushing up the gormlessness quotient...
Ah for crying out loud.
No.
Not him.
Please not him.
But it was him.
Reggie McGroarity.
A native of my home town no less.
Hale and hearty and over acting.
My leonine roar filled the old chateau.
"Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo."
It was a Macbeth moment.
Shakespeare fans may remember an evil Scottish king wannabe called Macbeth who would occasionally get outdone along the bloody road to ultimate power by his old pal Banquo. As the thwartings grew more serious Macbeth would mutter: "I should have killed him when I had the chance."
Well something like that.
I think Macbeth's exact words through gritted teeth may have been: "From now on the firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand."
But you just knew what he meant.
Now I know exactly how he felt.
What's the technical term for assassinating an over actor?
Reggie-cide I think.
My aspirations to membership of the religion of love, normally disbar me from culpable homicide.
But no court in heaven could convict me in these circumstances.
For a decade ago the aforementioned Mr McGroarity started his professional career in one of my plays.
And here we are years later with my dreams of fame languishing in abeyance, and the irrepressible Mr M just keeps getting famouser and famouser.
Last year he was cast in an Amstel lagar international ad campaign. It features scenes from history, with three Dublin lads playing key parts in every scene. There's a Bible scene, a Helen of Troy scene, and a Columbus discovering America scene.
Annoying as hell.
But Amstel are showing it all over the western world.
Reggie McGroarity is in the lead role.
Death where is thy sting?
Then in January he got cast in a Dublin city theatre production of Look Back In Anger which played to packed houses and got rave reviews.
Banquo McGroarity was singled out by the critics for the sensitivity and depth of his performance.
Words cannot express.
Tonight he's showing up in soap operas.
Bloody hell, as my Uncle Peter used to say.
For many years in this town I was considered boy-most-likely-to-become-a-famous-actor.
Now the cup has passed to another.
It gets worse.
In one of his recent interviews the immortal McGroarity claimed the Amstel ad was his first professional work.
Hmmm.
I don't remember him refusing the checque for a hundred quid which I gave him for playing Doctor Milton Scherbitzki in the two week run of the Vampires Of Dublin during the dulcet Autumn of 1996.
In fact his exact words as he pocketed the checque were: "Ah for f---'s sake James could you not pay in cash!"
The baldy little git never even thanked me.

Heelers Memo to the Almighty: Why do you mock me oh Lord, why do you mock me, etc etc.

interlude

Driving through the heartland of South Kildare in afternoon sunshine.
"What's wrong with you?" wonders the Mammy. "You're very quiet."
The dam broke.
"Listen Lil," sez I. "Everything's out of control. The nephews are coming over seven days a week. They're vomiting and fighting and biting all over the place. And Cleaning Lady is coming five days a week. Everywhere I look she's either polishing something or moving something to the left or hiding something so that it may never be found again. My life has changed. And there's nothing I can do about it. My life is in complete turmoil to be honest. It wouldn't change this much if I got married."
The Mammy smiled.
"Believe me," she said with mystic calm, "believe me, it would."