great moments in sport

Afternoon in the Cafe Des Beaux Parvenus at Newbridge Silverware.
Doctor Barn and myself quaffing lattes.
The goodish Doctor says: "You know something Heelers. I think you genuinely are among the Irish poets."
I sit bolt upright.
"I am among them," I cry warmly. "And I'm shouting: Get out of my way you pretentious anti Catholic bar stewards."

moonrise over the heartland

the chain of gold

Night time at the Chateau de Healy.
The noble Heelers is reclining on his bed.
The mother's gold chain is on a table beside my bed.
The delicate paper thin links are hopelessly tangled.
I'd spent an hour trying to fix it yesterday.
It had been tangled up in another trinket, a bracelet.
With the mother's permission, I'd cut the bracelet to ribbons, in order to free the chain.
Even with the bracelet gone, the chain itself still proved impossible to unravel. It seemed knotted in upon itself. To straighten it, I'd have to risk breaking it too.
In the end I promised her I'd bring it to a jewellers.
I see it now on the table beside my bed.
An impulse comes to me.
Work on the chain while kneeling in front of the image of our lady of Guadalupe.
The image is in a corner of my room.
I take the chain and kneel.
I begin to run the links between my fingers.
There is only one light, a bedside lamp, in my room.
It is hard to see what I'm doing.
I pray the fifth glorious mystery of the rosary, the crowning of our lady as queen of heaven, as I run the links between my fingers.
This prayer involves reciting an Our Father and ten Hail Marys while meditating on the mystery.
At the fifth hail Mary, the chain untangles in my hand.

a satire on the reporting style of sky news

The elections in Afghanistan took place today amid a low turnout and repeated attacks by insurgents.
The elections must therefore be considered a failure.
Who needs democracy anyway.
We at Sky News think Islamist rule works much better.
Yes.
Impeach President Bush.
Impeach Tony Blair.
Victory to Al Qaeda.
The Taliban have once more shown their magnificent invincible power.
Ooh they took over a bank in downtown Kabul.
Amazing.
It shows how unstoppable they are.
Okay all three of the brave Taliban Al Qaeda members who took over the bank for a full five minutes were soon deader than dead.
But that doesn't matter.
It's the principle of the thing.
There is no Al Qaeda attack that we at Sky can't interpret as complete victory for the terrorists and therefore a repudiation of the War On Terror.
Bad President Bush.
Bad Ton Blair.
We at Sky never liked them.
Good old Taliban and Al Qaeda.
No one can defeat these Muslim supermen.
Yesterday yet another suicide bomber demonstrated how close to all out victory the Taliban are.
He killed ten people.
It was amazing.
Ten.
A full ten.
Why does anyone dare to resist them?
We at Sky certainly don't.
The total number of British troops lost in Afghanistan is now above 200.
My God.
I mean Allah.
The humanity.
Alright, Heelers may tell you it's not exactly the D Day landings, the loss of 200 troops in eight years of fighting.
Heelers may insist that actually it's the lowest losses Britain has sustained in any war against any enemy ever.
But what does he know?
200 British troops dead.
Who can resist such a massive death toll.
It just makes us want to build a mosque right now in Sky Central and begin bowing to our new overlords in Mecca.
No need to mention the death toll British troops have inflicted on the Taliban.
No need to mention the Al Qaeda losses.
We don't want you to think about them.
We want you to think about the indomitable Taliban and Al Qaeda.
We want you to lay down your arms and surrender.
We at Sky think that by reading out the numbers of British dead we can break the public will to fight and after that we can discredit both Mr Blair and President Bush.
Surrender.
Surrender to Jihad.
No one can defeat it.
Oh come on everybody.
Nazi Muslim warlords are our friends.
200 British troops dead.
Do you know how many times we at Sky have read out the number of British losses in Afghanistan?
Every night for the past eight years.
And how many times have we mentioned Taliban Al Qaeda losses?
Er never.
Not relevant.
The only time we mention Taliban and Al Qaeda losses is to claim that every member of the Taliban and Al Qaeda that our forces kill is in fact a civilian.
Either a baby.
Or his mother.
Or an innocent farmer called Mohammed.
This war is unwinnable.
We must surrender.
It's the only way.
It's the Sky way.
If CNN is doing it, why can't we?
You see Afghanistan has never been conquered.
Never in thousands of years.
That's why we should surrender immediately to the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
And as for Iraq.
We at Sky have been advocating all out surrender to Al Qaeda in Iraq since the beginning.
Oh the humanity.
Forget that Britons Never Never Never Shall Be Slaves rubbish.
That's not the Sky News motto.
The Sky News motto is oh the humanity, let's all surrender to the Jihadis.
Do it now.
Don't even think about it.
Ironic that we are owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns Fox News which pretends to support the War On Terror.
I gotta tell you folks, whoever wins or loses the War On Terror, Rupert wins.
The wheel is rigged but it's the only game in town.
So support your local Jihadis.
Surrender to the peaceloving religion of Islam.
Allah U akbar.
This is Tim Marshall, Jackie Rowland and all at Sky Traitors, saying over and out.

an open letter to doctor william reville of the irish times

Dear Bill.
I have just read another of your witty little articles in The Irish Times.
The article was a review of a book which puported to offer psychological explanations for cases of demonic possession.
Thank you for that article Bill.
It give me some much needed larfs.
Having said that, I must add your assessment of the book under review seemed mostly fair enough.
You outlined the various psychological perspectives which the author offers on demonic possession.
You touched on all his perspectives.
Hallucinations.
Drug induced psychosis.
Female hysteria.
Group hysteria.
Yes, all the usual perspectives.
Except one.
One more perspective you might have mentioned Bill in the course of your urbane, rational and eminently civilised assessment.
The perspective that in some instances there may actually be some sort of possession of an individual by the forces of darkness.
Surely this perspective would be important to mention for a man of science like yourself.
I mean, if only to ridicule it.
Don't get me wrong Bill.
Your review was adequate.
And adequate in The Anodyne Atheistic Abortionist Contraceptivist Left Wing Anti American Pro Jihadi Drooling Drivelling Dribbling Irish Times is akin to bloody marvellous.
But you might have mentioned even the anecdotal testimonies which are freely and readily available, and which aver that although the psychological perspectives explain much of what passes for demonic possession, they don't explain it all.
I challenge you Bill.
I challenge you to review Matt Baglio's book The Rite (Published by Simon & Schuster 2009) which is stocked on the top floor of that nifty nooky naffy book shop on Grafton Street.
You know the one.
Snooty male books sellers who labour under the misapprehension that the book shop is their turf and not their place of work.
Hag women looking at the customers as if they've got two heads.
And one sexy little girl staff member with mischievous eyes, bobbed brown hair, short skirts and punky tights who is just the bees knees.
But I digress.
Review Matt Baglio's book The Rite.
It gives a slightly different perspective on cases of demonic possession to the one which you advocated.
To my innocent eyes the data seems quite sound too.
Review it Bill.
If you dare.
Fond regards.
James Healy

dances with jihadis

A Libyan Muslim terrorist mass murderer called Abdel Basset Al Megrahi was released from jail today by the British.
Not the British people you understand.
No.
The British people are still lions and, given their way, would have sent Megrahi home to Allah without the obvious impediment of his fat Muslim head.
That is to say they would have executed him.
Megrahi was one of Colonel Gadaffy's agents responsible for the Lockerbie bombing which killed 270 people.
Yes, the British people are still lions.
But they are lions led by Millipedes.
British Foreign Secretary David Millipede has even gone so far as to say: "The War On Terror was a mistake."
Who needs a war when you can just as easily surrender, eh Millipede?
So another Jihadi walks free.
On both sides of the Atlantic there has been the usual half hearted pious craw thumping condemnation of this latest surrender to Muslim terror.
President Barack Obama has condemned the release.
But President Obama himself has ordered the release of Muslim terrorists from Guantanamo Bay and the draw down of troops in Iraq.
President Obama has sought to criminalise his predecessor President Bush who led us through Nine Eleven and gave the Jihadis the wars they still can't quite believe.
President Obama has, with his draw downs and his get of jail free cards, snatched defeat from the jaws of the Petraeus victory.
So his credibility and his outrage on the Lockerbie surrender to Muslim terror won't impress anyone overmuch.
Incidentally, two of the murdering Guantanamo Bay Muslim scum are coming to live in Ireland.
The Irish people haven't accepted this situation.
We were never consulted.
Our kleptocratic Fianna Fail government answers to Arab terrorists more truly than it answers to the Irish people.
So we're getting two Guantanamo Bay Al Qaeda thug Muslim killers as freshly minted Irish citizens.
Hoo boy.
I wonder where they'll go on holidays with their freshly minted Irish pass ports.
The Irish too have some lion like qualities.
And we too are ruled by toe rags.
But that can change.
President Obama was not the only one who lacked credibility today when he condemned the release of the Libyan mass murderer with the fake prostate cancer.
David Cameron, head of the Conservative Party in Britain also condemned the release.
Unfortunately the Conservatives have consistently failed to support the War On Terror, instead seeking short term political capital out of every decision former Prime Minister Tony Blair had to make.
The Conservatives failed to offer a government of National Unity for the war in Afghanistan.
The Conservatives failed to support the destruction of the Iraqi Al Qaeda terror fiefdom run by Saddam Hussein and his murdering Muslim sons Uday and Qusay.
The Conservatives failed even to support Mr Blair's modest efforts to increase police powers to detain and question Jihadi suspects.
The result of that failure was buses and trains blowing up in down town London.
The World War Two generation of Brits must be turning in their graves.
Consequently the Conservatives have less credibility than Barack Obama when it comes to condemning the release of Abu Bertie Basset Al Murderabi.
You know folks, Al Qaeda will make us all pay for the appeasement our leaders have offered it.
What the pseudo elites of Europe and America have not figured out yet is that the Muslims are not playing for an honorable draw.
They have come here to conquer.

the irish police ask a question

The Irish police have been demanding to know why they weren't immediately informed by hospital staff of the death of a baby until two days after the baby's death.
The baby had head injuries.
I believe the hospital staff behaved disgracefully in failing to contact the police immediately.
I doubt anyone will answer for it.
With regard to why the baby died, the Irish Times has already printed disculpatory quotes from anonymous neighbours saying what a good family the baby came from.
The quotes should not have been printed.
Anonymous quotes from anonymous neighbours are not relevant to any serious attempt to establish whether or not yet another baby has been murdered by her parents in Ireland.
But the police at least want answers.
And they have asked a question.
Allow me to posit one possible answer to their very particular question.
In another recent case where a child suddenly died after suddenly bleeding profusely from her head, the Irish State Pathologist Marie Cassidy told a court that the baby may have had a rare medical condition which caused her to bleed in this way.
Because of Marie Cassidy's testimony, doctors who had suspected the baby was murdered were compelled to apologise in court to the baby's family whom the medical professionals had suspected of killing the baby.
The answer to the police question about the late notification they received in the present case, is that the medical professionals' awareness of the previous case regarding a dead baby may have led to a reluctance on their part in the present situation to consider the possibility that another child had been murdered.
I am no fan of Marie Cassidy's.
If you get stabbed or beaten to death in Dublin after a few drinks, she's liable to conclude you may have died because of the presence of alcohol in your system.
Or because of a weak underlying heart condition.
Or a mysterious haemhorrage in your brain arising from wogga wogga woo woo syndrome.
I'm not making it up.
Marie Cassidy's assistant is Abdul Abul Bull Ameer.
I wonder what religion he is.
Probably not relevant.
Unless Al Qaeda ever starts torturing and killing Jews or other citizens in Ireland, citizens such as me who don't want any Muslim immigration at all here, none whatsoever, until Muslims have grown up sufficiently to not bomb buses and trains in London, to not bomb trains in Madrid, to not torch French cities while torturing and murdering French Jews, to not attempt to poison the water supply in Rome, to not murder 3000 people in New York using hijacked aeroplanes, to not murder seven women by drowning last month in Canada, to not beat a teenager to death on Grafton Street Dublin with a baseball bat, to not murder 200 people in race violence in Xinjiang in China, to not murder 100 Hindu and Filipino serving maids every year in Lebanon, to not slaughter people in the streets of Bombay in India, to not murder hundreds of airline passengers in Russia, to not murder hundreds of school children at Beslan in Russia, to not murder theatre goers at the Nord Ost theatre in Moscow in Russia, to not murder anyone for any reason anywhere, until Muslims have grown up sufficiently to stop murdering other human beings for the sheer hell of it, I think it would be wise to stop them coming to live here.
All of them.
Just so's you know.
Yeah.
How objective would a Muslim State Pathologist be in doing an autopsy on any enemy of Islam?
We'll find out eventually.

voices on the ether

They come like ghosts out of the night.
Anonymous commenters on this blog.
The predilected topic of choice for anonymous commenters here at the moment is the recent emergency incident involving a Primera Air flight bound for Dublin from a Greek holiday island.
We've had a series of critical comments about our coverage of the incident.
Some of the comments purported to be by passengers who were on the flight.
Some purported to be from members of the general public.
All were unsigned.
The comments claimed that nothing untoward happened on the Primera flight.
Let us remind ourselves exactly what happened on that ill fated flight.
On Friday the 10th of July, the pilot of a Primera Air jet flying from Zykanthos to Dublin, entered Italian controlled airspace and plunged his aircraft without warning, from 38,000 feet to 20,000 feet.
Without warning.
He failed to warn his passengers.
He failed to warn air traffic control.
He failed to warn anyone.
In direct contravention of all international flight laws, customs and traditions, the Primera Air pilot failed to inform air traffic control authorities what he was doing or to respond to subsequent air traffic control attempts to contact him.
The Primera Air pilot then pursued an erratic course towards Rome airport where Air Force One was about to take off carrying President Barack Obama who was due to return to the United States after the G8 economic summit.
The Primera Air pilot did not answer air traffic control instructions demanding he cease his approach to Rome.
A Typhoon jet fighter was despatched as the authorities feared a terrorist attack was underway and that the Primera jet was endeavouring to get into position to ram Air Force One.
As the presence of the Typhoon fighter jet became apparent, the Primera Air pilot found his voice again and began communicating with Italian air traffic controllers.
The pilot also now advised his passengers to wave to the Typhoon fighter jet.
Primera Air have issued statements about the incident which I do not believe.
Primera Air have claimed the plane had a fault, and the pilot felt he had to land at Rome because he considered the runway at Naples where Italian air traffic control sought to divert him, was too short.
The mysterious fault has not been specified.
I consider the Primera Air statements to be arrant nonsense.
I have challenged Primera Air to name the pilot who performed these outrageous manoeuvres in a jet plane packed with 148 passengers.
It's not an unreasonable request.
Basically folks, I wanna know if he's Muslim.
Al Qaeda has traditionally found it hard to get suicide pilots who are not of the Muslim persuasion.
Naming this pilot will lay a lot of concerns to rest.
Or not.
I have suggested that claims about some unspecified fault with the aircraft itself are also false.
If there was a fault, we should be told precisely what it is and why it precipitated the pilot's inexplicable and thus far unexplained, behaviour.
Yes.
We need answers.
We should be told clearly and categorically whether or not a pilot working for Al Qaeda attempted to get his plane into position to either attack the G8 economic summit, or to ram Air Force One.
Why is the pilot's name a secret?
Surely he should be answering questions.
Surely the police should be investigating him and Primera Air.
Surely he should be talking to journalists before the eyes of the world without lawyers telling him what to say.
Surely he should be explaining to us all precisely what the hell he was doing.
Let me say it again.
As a citizen of Ireland and Europe, I don't want Primera Air or this pilot flying over our cities or through our skies.
If Primera Air wish to send me comments whose source I can clearly validate, I will consider printing them.
Over to you.
Ghostie ghost ghost ghosts.

a rooskie in dublin

The Irish National Sport!

by Irina Kuksova

****************

At first I was convinced that complaining about the weather was only a habit within a certain Irish family I happened to be staying with. Getting to know more families that played the same game, didn't immediately change my belief. I assumed they must be secretly related to each other. It took a recent newspaper article written by an Irishman to make it clear: Complaining about the weather is the national sport.

Before this piece of newspaper borne enlightenment, I used to get it all wrong. Whenever I heard a comment about "debilitating heat," "miserable cold," "rain cruel in its unpredictability," "wind strong enough to blow the whole country away," I would try to come up with a reason why this "terrible" state of affairs should be considered normal. I'd produce a raw list of solutions. A pause would follow. Then: "But isn't it just terrible?" The whole conversation would go round in circles until I gave up and agreed: "Yes, yes, the weather is quite dreadful."

If we compare the above conversation to a ball game, it looks like I receive the ball and start studying its physical properties instead of just kicking it back to continue the game.

But really my way of answering those casual Irish conversation tidbits was as much a part of my own Russian national sport as damning the weather is for the Irish. The main Russian conversational gambits for a non demanding chat are "Whose fault is it?" and "What are we to do?" I don't know why "The weather is terrible" doesn't work for us. Perhaps because it's no one's fault when it rains and there's just one thing you can do when it does!

in ireland now

Starbucks cafe. Dawson Street. 7.30pm. Lots of pretty girls. Burble of conversation. A relaxed carefree night in Dublin. Yet the shock is here too. The whole of Ireland is in shock. You can feel it. Even amid the cacaphony of conversation in an evening cafe. Pure shock. We've had so many stabbings these past few days that people don't know what to think. The regular gangland murders have been continuing. Then there's been a spate of knifings in the rural fastness of Mayo as a fresh feud spills into the public domain. Then there's been the stabbing murder in the Phoenix Park of a Romanian woman who used to beg on O'Connell Street bridge. All this and the police have just released a statement claiming there is no epidemic of knife crime in Ireland. Hilarious, no. And just yesterday we had another and yet more gruesome series of stabbings in the capital. A 22 year old guy with First Ride Syndrome apparently stabbed his ex girlfriend, her new man, the new man's brother and himself. The guy himself and the new man are dead. By the way in relation to this latest blatent evidence of a blatently overtly blatent epidemic of blatent knife crime in blatent bleeding Ireland, I use the phrase "apparently stabbed" because I feel this is one case where a bit of dispassionate left wing restraint and caution is called for. My journalistic experience tells me that it is very difficult to commit suicide by stabbing oneself through the heart. The aversion and self preservation instinct for such an extreme self inflicted knife wound is almost insurmountable. But hey what do I know. My journalistic instinct also tells me that the Irish cops are as usual making a balls of the investigation by failing to interview the two surviving "victims" until, as the police put it, "they are well enough to be interviewed." This will of course give them plenty of time to get their stories straight if perchance they have anything to hide. I wonder did the cops even bother sweeping the place for drugs. The last time Irish police displayed this sort of crass incompetence was a few years ago when a Dublin bus driver murdered five people by driving his bus through them on the pavement. At the time the police said they would allow the driver to receive "counselling" before interviewing him. You couldn't make it up. Someone in the Dublin Bus company did try to facilitate the emergence of the truth by immediately stating categorically to the media that extensive tests had been carried out and there was no fault with the vehicle. But the murderer was able to get paid testimony from an expert witness, ie a liar, who stated in court that he thought there could have been a surge of power in the engine which might somehow have forced the bus onto the pavement and into a crowd of people. The bus driver himself when the police finally got around to interviewing him, simply said he had no memory of what had happened. That's how you get away with five murders in Ireland. Back to the present. Tonight in Starbucks there is, on the surface of it, a relaxed casual atmosphere. But when you take a closer look you can sense the tension. At every table people are leaning towards each other talking in hushed whispers. They're talking about the four most recent stabbings. The sense of shock is palpable. And some of us. Just some of us. Are starting to wonder. How.
Do.
We.
Stop.
This.

three i never finished

Occasionally Ireland's greatest living poet produces a poem which doesn't quite reach the sublime levels of subtlety and harmony which the master insists upon for all his work, and so is left abandoned in that limbo known to scholars of great art as Poems Heelers Never Finished.
Some of these poems exist still as fragments.
For whatever reason I can never quite abandon them nor yet bring myself to try to complete them.
How about this...

a fire is dying in the night
upon the bare and windswept heath
shadows flare with sparks awry
tangle dervish in a wreath
above the ashes of my life
a fire is dying in the night
as soon the blood within me dies

Cheery little ditty, isn't it?
That's all there is. I never wrote any more of it.
I became demotivated when I discovered that it wasn't entirely original. In fact I'd been ripping off Alfred Lord Tennyson's cracking thing about the new year. Ring out wild bells, and all that.
Homage indeed.
I draw the line at ripping off Alfred Lord Tennyson.
He has enough on his plate since his Mammy made him take Lord for his confirmation name.
All the other poets must have laughed and laughed and laughed.
Here's a verse from another incomplete poem which sought in the grand old Irish bardic tradition to put a curse on a town I had become disaffected with.

a curse on galway

all the myth of galway is a lie
if you have no money you will not eat
and eating not surely you will die
unmourned though you drop upon the street
they'll crush you in the walkways with their feet

Ah yes.
But what happens in verse two?
And guess who lost money at the Galway races!
How much?
Let me this way put it.
More than I lost on John McCain in the US presidential elections.
Presumably by walkways I meant footpaths.
No one knows for sure.
And finally Esther.
This.
Thing.

in rome in lyons and in paris
passion shakes the lovers' hearts
even so in graigue na manaigh
the passion's there if you want it

Unfinished and deservedly so.
I'm telling you folks, anyone who thinks Graigue Na Manaigh can legitimately be compared to Rome, Lyon or Paris wants his head examined.
But then you knew that already.

in the cafe

The Mammy and me in a cafe.
A male drug addict wheels a boy child past us in a buggy.
The boy child is blonde haired and beautiful.
The druggy bangs the buggy off several chairs.
Presently the buggy is upside down with the child underneath.
The Mammy says warningly: "Don't do anything."
I am sitting in a little pool of stillness.
Cafe staff rush to help the drug addict turn the buggy the right way up.
The Mammy says: "It's as bad as all the crimes the liberals lay at the door of the church, isn't it? Leaving a child in the care of the likes of that."
I nod grimly.
"And no one sees what that child goes through at home tonight," I murmur. "Or tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the day after."

our television listings

RTE1
(The Irish national fraudcaster.)
4.25 Murder She Wrote. Jessica opens a sea food restaurant and gives up amateur detective work for a week. The criminal classes in Cabot Cove run riot and the murder rate goes through the roof. Jessica's restaurant earns a Michelin Star but the police are unhappy because for once they have to solve all the crimes themselves.
5.20 The Bill. Miffley is thrown out of a squad car by Batesy for a joke. Sun Hill is forced to collaborate with cockney coppers from The Sweeney who insist on raiding suspects when the toe rags are in bed with their girl friends who normally sit up in a highly alarmed fashion as the cops burst through their door, screaming "eeeek" and exposing bare breasts to an enthralled nation of Irish teenagers who used to watch The Sweeney in the 1970's for precisely this reason. Corrrr blimey.
5.45 Nuacht. Read by Dilin O'Damhas.
6.00 The Angelus. RTE's sop for believing Christians.
6.01 News. Performed by the Fembo Commie Pinko singers.
7.00 A Little Bit Showband. I have a horrible feeling this programme will be about showbands.
7.30 Eastenders. Pornographic yawn fest from Britain.
8.00 Fair City. Everyone in the cast is on cocaine. At least the characters they portray are. It's such a privilege to finance this debauching drivel through a compulsory licence fee.
8.30 How Long Will You Live? Nobody cares what this is.
9.00 News. Late evening performance by the Fembo Commie Pinkos.
9.35 Charity Lords Of The Ring. A programme about blah, blah, blah.
10.40 Luke. RTE homage to some dead person that RTE hold in high regard. Bet he wasn't a Christian.
12.00 Boston Legal. Lawyer fetish for brain dead pseuds.
12.55 News. After midnight but the Fembo Commie Pinkos are still on the job and I'm still paying em.
1.00 Sex And The Single Mom. Home videos from RTE employees. No, actually this purports to be a feature film directed by the legendary Don McBrearty and starring the scintillating Gail O'Grady. If you're crazy enough to watch it you'll see what I mean by the home video tag.
2.40 Telly Bingo. The most intellectual programme on RTE.

the monica leech laugh in

Ian O'Doherty falsely and maliciously claimed in Independent Newspapers that the Catholic Church is a paedophile ring.
Neither Ian O'Doherty nor Independent Newspapers have been compelled to pay a single penny of compensation to the millions of Catholics they have slandered with this disgusting vile cowardly lie.

Ger Colleran, editor of The Daily Star, which is itself owned by British porn baron Richard Desmond, was permitted on the Irish national television station RTE, to claim with blatently crass mendacious falsehood that children had been screaming for help in every Catholic church presbytery in Ireland.
Neither Ger Colleran nor RTE have been compelled to pay a single penny of compensation to the millions of Catholics they have slandered with their egregious dishonorable cowardly lies.

Monica Leech received a PR contract worth nearly two hundred thousand Euro from a government Minister.
There was much public disquiet over the manner in which the contract was awarded.
Someone rang RTE radio and suggested live on air that Monica Leech had received this contract for performing sexual favours for the Minister.
The person has never been identified.
It is not clear how the remark came to be broadcast as RTE programmes operate with a time delay switch allowing the deletion of inappropriate material should the need arise.
RTE paid Monica Leech 340,000 Euro, taken from the general public's financial contribution to the station, as compensation for broadcasting the remarks.
Other newspapers paid Monica Leech figures in excess of a 100,000 Euro in out of court settlements for their reportage of matters relating to the awarding of her government contract.
In a libel action against Independent Newspapers, presided over by Judge Eamon DeValera, (whose name is remarkably similar to that of the founder of the Fianna Fail governing party), Monica Leech was awarded nearly 2 million Euro against Independent Newspapers for its reporting of the circumstances in which she received her government contract. A majority of the Jury considered Independent Newspapers' reportage to have been libellous while many of the rest of us considered Independent Newspapers' reportage to be stating the bleeding obvious.

Why do the ways of evil men triumph while the good go unrewarded?

the soprano

Evening coffee with The Soprano in Newbridge Silverware's Cafe Des Beaux Parvenus.
Newbridge Silverware is a good location for coffees in these recessionary times because the car parking is free and the Russian waitresses are Russialacious.
Well you know what I mean.
As for The Soprano.
She is not a Soprano in the sense made popular by the television series The Sopranos.
That is to say, she is not a member of the mafia.
She's a Soprano in the old fashioned sense.
She sings.
Right this moment she's singing a particularly boring kind of song.
"Oh James," she says, "I was at a presentation this weekend. And they were talking about the oppressions the Catholic Church had committed in Ireland. Can you believe the things that were done?"
I favoured her with a dangerous look.
"What things?" I murmured.
"Oh you know," said the Soprano. "If a girl got pregnant out of wedlock she had to go to the work house."
"And you think that was because of the Catholic church do you?" I said softly. "And not because of the pious hypocrisies of petty small town Irish tribalists, the atheistic little Irelanders whose sons and daughters are now running RTE, Independent Newspapers and the Irish Times?"
"It was the Catholic church James," she cried. "The Catholic church caused these things to happen. That's the way it was."
I reflected briefly.
I had no wish to start one of my epic perorations including extensive quotations from James' First Letter To The Morons.
On the other hand these days I'm less inclined to let scruff and scum and Nazis bad mouth my church under any circumstances.
If the bstaads want to oppress me they can bloody well make it official.
By the way, I don't mean that the Soprano is a scruff or a scum or a Nazi.
But she was singing from their hymn book.
I sighed.
"Listen Serena," I said quietly. "When these people start making generalised accusations about the church, you need to remember you're only getting one part of the story."
"But what they say is true James," she put in. "It all happened. It's a matter of fact. It's a part of our history."
I shook my head.
"It didn't all happen," I said.
"What part of it didn't happen?" she challenged.
I shrugged.
In spite of my better judgement I knew I was indeed beginning an extensive reading from the First Letter of Saint James to the Morons.
"You said that in Catholic societies girls who got pregnant out of wedlock were sent with their children to the work house," I reminded her. "That wasn't always true. Yes it was sometimes true. And it was true for various reasons. But what I've been telling you is that today people are charging the Catholic Church with crimes and you're not hearing the other side to the story. You're hearing the side of the story told by people who wish to destroy the church. And they wish to destroy the church because they see it as a challenge to their own power. RTE, Independent Newspapers and The Irish Times could care less about unmarried mothers and innocent children. They've done their level best to promote the abortion of innocent children for a start. And the divorce culture they've championed has delivered us any number of abandoned mothers. The media groups and the half wits who take their lead from them are using issues drawn from the past to propagate and extend their own control of our society in the present. And they lie. Every step of the way they lie. They tell you Catholic cultures dumped women in work houses. I say to you, not always. You say, always. And I say to you Don John of Austria wasn't dumped in a workhouse. The bastard son of the House of Austria who saved Europe from Muslim invasion the last time the Jihadis got their courage up enough to make a play for our freedoms. The King of England wouldn't fight them. The King of France didn't want to know. The German Kings were too busy fighting each other. It was the bastard son of the House of Austria who saved Europe by kicking Muslim arses at the battle of Lepanto. He was alive. He was honoured. He was not in a work house. Precisely because Austria was Catholic. And without him all you liberal shit heads would be bowing five times a day towards Mecca, walking five steps behind your husband on the main street, forbidden to drive cars, and forced to wear sacks as your most daring fashion statement. You people haven't got a clue what oppression is. But remember Don John of Austria. You owe him a lot. Five hundred years ago he won you the Catholic freedoms you enjoy today. And then there's Erasmus. The finest mind of reformation and renaissance Europe. His father was a priest and his mother a prostitute. He wasn't sent to any work house. He wasn't abandoned to starve. He was reared in a convent by nuns who loved him. That's Catholicism. And his thinking has illuminated western scholarship for the past five hundred years. The nuns raised him. Catholic nuns. They were his mothers. They taught him to think and to believe and to be impervious to the opinions of small towners who are so obsessed with bastardy. Yes. Erasmus was the bastard son of a priest and prostitute. There's no shame in it. His soul has brought honour to Europe and given other children born in tough circumstances the sure knowledge that their lives may yet by the grace of God redeem the rest of us cosmic mediocrities. And his contribution to the scholastic method has enabled and propagated five centuries of free thinking and philosophy. It was the bastard Erasmus who set our universities on the trail of free exploration in the light of the wisdom of the ages. And without the Catholic church there's no Erasmus. Without the Catholic church he's either aborted or thrown on the street as a beggar child. Instead because of Catholic values his life has become a beacon to anyone with half a mind to see the wonder and the lesson that has been wrought in him. And then there's Tony O'Reilly. Ireland's richest man. He's a bastard too. In more ways than one. The son of a high powered government apparatchik who couldn't keep his mickey in his trousers. His mistress delivered the child and raised him. People of that class nowadays often contrareceive or abort their unborn children. O'Reilly lives only because of Catholic church values. His mother was not sent to any work house. And the irony is this. O'Reilly had more of a duty than a loose cannon like me to defend the church and uphold its values through the abortion age. He chose wrong. But he lives. Glory to God, O'Reilly the bastard lives. He lives and adventures, succeeds or fails, damns himself or repents, because of the Catholic values that prevailed in Ireland the day he was born. The same Catholic values his newspapers have done so much to destroy. Yes O'Reilly lives. Because in those days the Irish people turned their noses up at murder whether abortion or infanticide. It didn't matter how hungry we were. The child was always welcome. O'Reilly is a bastard. A brilliant bastard in his way. If he had chosen right I would have been his ally to the gates of hell and back. But he chose wrong. Yet still he lives. A traitor to the cause of life. But only God may judge him. And his life, all the accomplishments of wealth, prestige, privilege and position, which I account as nothing but which the liberals who despise Catholicism seem to think is the just the bees knees, all O'Reilly's accomplishments, I tell you, exist because of the Catholicity in Irish culture seventy years ago. That's Catholic values. That's the defence you will not hear when RTE, Independent Newspapers and The Irish Times and your liberal atheist friends attempt to vitiate the church with innuendo and lies. You know what they're doing, don't you? You know why they're doing it? They're trying to make you sit in judgement on the past so that you will not see the present. They want you to pat yourself on the back with a blanket condemnation of the Christian past so that you will never ever be at risk of seeing the satanic vileness of the atheistic present. It's taken them just twenty five years Serena. In those few short decades our media groups and their political hangers on, have delivered us the violent society, the abortion society, condom culture and the dictatorship of Judge Liberal. Twenty five years to undo 1500 years of Christianity. Twenty five years to give us daily murders in a country that had no murder rate at all. Twenty five years to deliver power to Dublin and Limerick city crime gangs. Hoodlums in the street sticking knives into people in the full knowledge that they will never answer for it. Drugs being dealt into every school in Ireland. Michael Neary violating women on the operating table at Drogheda Memorial Hospital. Nurse Mulholland murdering people in Naas Hospital. Countless murders in old folks homes all over Ireland. How many people died at Leas Cross nursing home? How many? And no one charged with murder. How many children have died in Health Board custody over the past few years. The Health Board admits to some deaths. Why aren't these murders explained? Why isn't anyone charged? Who in the Health Boards began shipping children raped by Health Board staff to England for abortions? Who did this? It's our generation, our non Catholic generation, our generation of Irish Times reading RTE watching, Independent Newspapers bum wiping morons, who are responsible for all this barbarism. No other generation would have allowed drug dealing in the schools. No other generation would have looked the other way as seven children committed suicide in County Kildare in the last nine months. No other generation would have tolerated the blatent sexualisation of children through television, radio, music videos, cinema and newspapers. No other generation would have enriched themselves by bunging their parents into old folks homes. No other generation of teachers, nurses, police officers, and bus drivers, would have extorted ridiculous pay rises from our weak kleptocratic Fianna Fail government, money which could only be raised through borrowing thereby running up a national debt that would terrify an oil rich third world dictator, a debt which will ensure the bankruptcy and impoverishment of our children. No other generation would have allowed 250,ooo Arab and Pakistani Muslims to smuggle themselves into the country in the back of lorries and then declare themselves citizens at precisely the same time as Arabs and Muslims were waging terror war in every other country on earth. No other generation would have betrayed the faith of our fathers as we have. No other generation would have allowed scoundrels to stand in judgement on our ancient church. No other generation would have done any of this. Our generation has done it. The great judgemental pious liberal atheists did it. In just twenty five years. Twenty five years to undo 1500 years of Christianity. That is what the liberals are trying to conceal with their perpetual attacks on the generations that came before. That is why they seek to destroy the Catholic church. No other generation would have surrendered to their vilenesses. The cowardice, corruption, barbarism and abasement are all ours. And look who we surrendered to. Look at the calibre of them. A lying coward like Ian O'Doherty is permitted to call the Catholic Church a paedophile ring in Independent Newspapers. A worse lying coward called Ger Colleran, editor of The Daily Star, is permitted to sneer on national television that children were screaming for help in every Catholic church presbytery in Ireland. I say Colleran's mendacious hypocrisy is worse than O'Doherty's, because Colleran actually works for porn baron Richard Desmond. Richard Desmond and Tony O'Reilly have gone half shares in The Daily Star. So that's the class of clype that is Ger Colleran. And these are the moral arbiters who would sit in judgement of the Catholic Church. I tell you they are judges of nothing. Their undead souls will go down forever."

birth and dying

armies were marching
through the low lands in winter
when she ran through the fields
to her only love

bleak were the hedgerows
the fastnesses lonely
the wind took their whispering
and gave it the wilds

the wilds took their whispering
and made it a song
of dreams that are broken
and dreams yet to be

her footsteps returned
to the place of her growing
and she slept like an angel
though armies were marching