bright eyes

Afternoon at the chateau.

Outside the world is shrouded in a sheen of ice.

From my window I can see trees like statues glistening white.

Snow drifts hardening on the lawn.

The hedge sculpted perfectly into a glimmering fretwork of diamonds.

Good one by the creator of the universe.

Really good.

Back to business.

The noble Heelers is typing up a Gettysburgh Address style letter to Barack Obama.

It is epic stuff.

My brow is fevered as I punch the keyboard.

I look tremendously serious.

Beside me a cup of steaming coffee and a plate of madeira cake lie unattended.

(You should wash that down with lashings of ginger beer. - Enid Blyton note.)

The door opens.

The neighbour's child Hannah enters.

Bright eyed and bushy tailed.

She walks up to my table and places a dead bird on it.

The bird's eyes are open.

The bird's head rests on a cushion of madeira cake.

He looks most poignant.

The noble Heelers' jaw drops nobly.

My Aunty Mary's head appears around the door.

"I'm leaving Hannah with you," she proclaims.

And disappears.

Hannah asks me what type of bird it is.

I rise from the Gettysburgh Address.

Would have brought down the Obama presidency if I'd had five more minutes.

Might even have won us the war on terror.

Later maybe.

More pressing issues at hand.

Hannah and I go to consult a bird book from the Dad's collection.

I'm normally good at identifying birds.

This bird looks to me like some sort of a dead thrush with his head resting on my madeira cake.

It's a particularly rare breed.

But they're becoming more common.

Hannah takes the present specimen with us.

We go to the kitchen and pore over the bird book.

Enter the Dad stage left complete with retinue of one sheepdog.

Hannah has the dead bird in her hands and is stroking him.

She places him on the kitchen table.

To his lasting credit the Dad drinks in the happy scene without comment.

"I think it's a thrush," I murmur.

"No it's more like a redwing," says the Dad absently from behind the kettle.

He takes the bird book and finds a picture of a red wing.

Our little bird is indeed a red wing.

Member of the thrush family with a flush of red on his wing.

"You've been telling me those are starlings for the past week," I inform the Dad accusingly.

The aged parent is dismissive.

"Not at all," exclaims the Dad, "Starlings are a completely different bird."

Hannah tugs my arm.

"Where are we going to get a coffin for him?" she says pointing to the redwing.

A dark presentiment crosses my mind.

An image.

In my minds eye, I can see an image of Ireland's greatest living poet trying to dig a grave in the frozen earth.

The image does not appeal to me.

But the child is still tugging my arm looking for a coffin.

I offer her the choice of my Korean tea caddy made of tin, or a Lyons tea box made of cardboard.

She opts for the Lyons tea coffin.

Still stroking the redwing she places him tenderly in the tea box.

"We'll wait till Aunty Mary gets back before we decide where to bury him," I say consolingly.

As if by magic the Mammy appears.

(Ere Eelers, you can't write that. - Mr Benn note.)

The Mammy is grinning at nothing in particular.

I accost her quietly.

"I gotta tell you Missus," sez me. "Aunty Mary is some woman."

The Mammy's grin deepens grinnily.

"What do you mean?" quoth she.

"I mean Aunty Mary's got chutzpah," sez me.

"What's that?" enquireth the Mammy.

I draw a deep breath.

"It's a word the ancient Israelites came up with for neighbours who left children in their houses carrying dead birds," I explained. "The Israelites would say: That Aunty Mary has got some chutzpah. The next time she does that, I'm just going to stand up, walk out, go down to Goshen and dwell there. We'll see how she likes that."

heelers excoriates the hired help

Dear President Mary McAleese.

I was somewhat surprised to see you did not attend Justin Keating's funeral and instead sent a lowly emissary to represent you.

I know how busy you are with the sales at Brown Thomas.

I know how difficult it is for people on your low pay grade to find time for anything as trivial as the funeral of an elder statesman these days.

And I know how difficult it is for people from Northern Ireland to understand basic human values.

Let me enlighten you.

McAleese when a statesman dies, you don't send the the lowly pissboy to pay your respects.

In the Republic of Ireland (as opposed to Northern Ireland where it's taken you people five hundred years to learn to be barely civil to each other), in the Republic of Ireland I say, in the Republic of Ireland of which you are for some incomprehensible reason President, in this same Republic I tells ee, the President of Ireland doesn't stay home sipping champers with scruff from her family when a statesman is being buried.

You get up off your fat arse, cancel your trip to the sales, and go to the ephin funeral.

That's what I pay you for, you evil Fianna Fail faux Catholic nazi bitch.

As for Prime Minister Brian Cowan.

The great grape ape of international politics.

Mr Cowan you too chose to send a stand in to the funeral of Justin Keating.

I understand you were very busy on the day.

The job of Prime Minister is not an easy one.

Boozing, wasn't it?

Let me explain to you what your job is.

You go to Justin Keating's funeral.

That's what you do.

That's all you do.

That's what your job amounts to.

You make time to attend Justing Keating's funeral.

Because he's worth ten thousand of you.

You incompetent kleptocratic thieving gypsy bastard.

Fond regards.

James Healy.

how green was my budgie

the bright side

Morning at the chateau.

The noble Heelers is in the kitchen looking grim.

Enter the Dad stage left, followed by a retinue consisting of one sheepdog.

The Dad spies number one son.

"Why the long face?" wondereth the Dad.

The noble Heelers groans groanily.

"I've just read something in the Irish Independent," sez me. "They've no remorse about bringing down the Bishops. They're crowing about it. Someone called John Cooney has written: It's time for another Bishop to fall on his crozier. He must think he's terribly funny. He must think it's a laugh riot to humiliate honorable people and drive them from office on trumped up charges."

The Dad cracked a grin.

"John Cooney eh?" he proffered. "You know what we'd have said about a lad like that in the old days... We'd have said: That lad will die roaring for a priest."

obitcheries

Cardinal Cathal Daly: Cardinal Cathal Daly is dead at the age of 92. The broadcaster RTE, along with Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times and something called the Daily Mail have been spouting eulogies to Cardinal Cathal Daly. RTE, Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times et al, are praising Cardinal Daly soley because prior to Christmas, this same RTE, Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times and associated snurds, were engaging in a persecution of the Catholic church using sex abuse as a Trojan Horse for their pogrom which resulted in the unjust resignation of several Bishops, and now RTE, Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times, etc, are anxious to foster the utterly false and facile illusion among the general public that RTE, Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times, etc, are not anti Catholic bastards at all but that in some strange incongruous paradoxical way, RTE, Independent Newspapers, the Irish Times, etc, are actually objective fair minded reporters of events. Ah. Show me the way to the vomitorium. Cardinal Cathal Daly is dead. I know nothing else about him. He is being praised by RTE, Independent Newspapers and the Irish Times. It's not a good sign. Even so their fathers praised the false prophets.

Justin Keating: Former minister in a 1970's Irish government. Came from a family which featured prominent communist sympathisers. Prominent in the Irish sense. That is to say, no one knew or knows who the hell they were or are while they usurped and continue to usurp positions of exponential influence behind the ever more debased trappings of our democracy. Justin Keating possessed a significant wodge of cash from somewhere. Entered my life in the 1980's when he wrote an article in the Evening Herald praising the government of Algeria no less. I never quite forgave him for it. Even as a teenager, I was aware that Algeria was a murderous mix of communist government and Islamist revolutionary terror opposition. I was sure that the revolutionary communist violence as a means to an end bullshit must be failing there the same way it was failing everywhere else. And yet Justin Keating's arrant falsehoods in the Evening Herald prevailed, and my own views remained largely unexpressed. (In propagating incompetently cretinous journalism of Keating's stripe the Evening Herald and its owner Independent Newspapers have run up debts of one and a half billion dollars over the past twenty years. The profits they have declared during that period appear to have been accountancy tricks. Like our banks, it is doubtful they ever made a genuine profit. Which just goes to show, even lying has its price. Particularly for the rest of us, if we are now going to be called in to bail out the liars' gambling debts with limitless doses of our own money.) It was amazing to me as a young teenager that Justin Keating could with gay abandon praise a country like Algeria simply because it had repudiated French colonialism. That he could go there and choose not to see the murders and oppression which I could see plain as day from a thousand miles away. I wonder what the Algerians themselves think of the shit they live in. I bet a goodly number would jump at the chance to go back to French administration. Like the Sudanese would prefer British rule to the past fifty years of Islamist crudd if anyone ever asked them. Anyway, Justin Keating went to Algeria in the 1980's and saw absolutely nothing wrong. To find a parallel to this sort of wilful ignorance, we must think of the great litterateur and communist sympathiser George Bernard Shaw going to Soviet Russia in the 1920's at a time when Stalin was starving out the general populace and killing em in their millions. We must recall that George Bernard Shaw concluded of Communist Russia that it was a modern progressive civilised society, feeding its citizens and giving them the best life they had ever known. Still, when it comes to lying hypocritical malign cretinism, at least George Bernard Shaw occasionally issued forth with a good one liner. No one ever accused Justin Keating of having a sense of humour. Justin Keating's lifelong unwillingness to register any failure on the part of communism or socialism, and his attendant detestation of the Catholic church, meant he remained a constant feature in the Evening Herald for some years. His only other achievement in life was to be the grandfather of Danielle Quinlan, (showjumper and putative television chef), the most beautiful girl whose signals I ever wilfully misinterpreted.

Michael Dwyer: Irish Times film critic for two decades. Erudite and immersed in his subject. A generally well liked fellow.

peekaboo robin

how corrupt is the irish police force

The Irish police force (styling itself An Garda Siochana) has released statistics claiming a fall in road deaths of thirty people over the past year.

The supposed reduction in road deaths comes amid an unprecedented display of aggressivity from police officers towards members of the public driving about their lawful business.

I would make the following points.

The police have for several years now behaved in a cavalierly thuggish attitude towards motorists.

It is good for the ordinary public to experience this.

In the past when left wingers told us the police were corrupt, most of us simply didn't believe them.

Now we have seen it for ourselves and we know it's true.

Road death rate falling?

After a few years of individual and institutional thuggery, the police are producing figures to show that their thuggery gets results.

Let me be clear.

I don't believe these figures.

The figures the Irish police produce for road deaths are figures they themselves have compiled.

In the past there have been problems with Garda statistics as compiled by themselves.

For instance, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights investigated An Garda Siochana for falsifying the DEATHS IN GARDA CUSTODY figures which the police are required to publish annually.

The United Nations Special Rapporteur was  called in after citizens who had been killed in Garda custody were not mentioned in the DEATHS IN GARDA CUSTODY figures.

The excuse the police furnished for their omission of two dead people who had met their deaths in police custody from their DEATHS IN GARDA CUSTODY statistics in a given year was that although the two people may have been assaulted in police custody, they only finally expired after being removed to a hospital.

Not our fault Guvnor.

Died in an ospital, innit!

Thugs.

Crass murdering thugs.

And the ones who cover up for them are worse.

If the police have been falsifying the DEATHS IN GARDA CUSTODY statistics, why should we assume they're not capable of falsifying the road death figures?

I am deeply dissatisfied that we rely on the police for the maintenance and tabulation of any figures, let alone road death statistics at a time when there is serious public concern about the way traffic police are behaving towards citizens at the side of the road.

Near where I live, two years ago at Christmas, a motorist was stopped by police who claimed the motorist had performed an erratic manoeuvre.

There was a child in the car with the motorist.

The erratic manoeuvre was never specified.

The motorist died at the scene.

The child watched the parent die.

Ah.

Hero cops of the Republic of Ireland.

We must presume the motorist had a heart attack.

This detail was never clarified.

If the police put that motorist in fear as they do regularly with thousands of other motorists, if they induced a heart attack in that citizen, I would consider it murder.

The police themselves released a highly prejudicial, (and certainly illegal) statement to the media, to wit that they were checking the dead person's blood for illicit substances.

This was an attempt to imply guilt on the dead citizen where there was no a priori evidence of guilt at all.

There was no further media scrutiny of the death.

The results of the police enquiry, such as it was, were not reported.

The death was not included in the annual DEATHS IN GARDA CUSTODY statistics.

Of course it wasn't.

The person died at the side of the road.

It doesn't count unless he dies in a Garda station, eh lads.

Thugs.

Murdering thugs.

Here is the news.

Copies to all Irish police officers.

No country on earth empowers its police to kill citizens at the side of the road for purported traffic infringements.

Not even Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe.

Not even the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Not even the effin Taliban.

The Irish police force has attained a standard of thuggery that would shame the Islamists.

It's bloody appalling.

Very bloody.

The Irish police force has replaced the internationally accepted standard of policing To Protect And Serve with a twisted malign motto of their own To Harass And Intimidate.

And now they're trumpeting a fall in the number of people dying in traffic accidents.

Ignore the fact that while the police have been terrorising law abiding motorists at the side of the road, real crime has been exploding off the scale all over the country.

Murders, stabbings, drug dealing, rape, child abuse.

Off the scale.

But Garda Hardman claims his thuggery towards the law abiding public has brought down the road death figures.

Yeah right.

An important, and thus far unreported factor, in the fall in road deaths, has been a fall in the general population.

According to official figures, half the foreign nationals resident in Ireland left the country in the last two years.

Half of them.

(I doubt these figures are correct because they were released in order to assuage public concerns about immigration. Nonetheless they are the official figures.)

Half the foreign nationals are supposed to have left.

That would mean several hundred thousand less people on the roads.

It would mean in fact that the much trumpeted fall in the road deaths figures actually amounted to an increase when the fatalities are taken as a percentage of the number of people using the roads.

And the statistical breakdown is so complicated, that the Guards can be virtually certain the general public will never figure it out.

Vile.

Vile corrupt bastards.

That is what they are.

That is what they will continue to be until we put a stop to them.

So there was no fall in the road death figures.

The claimed fall in road deaths is a nonsense.

A statistical hiccup downwards that when translated into reality actually represents an increase.

There you go.

Diabolical, isn't it.

Our police, the present generation of officers in An Garda Siochana, have repudiated a century of integrity, nobility and public trust towards the law enforcement officers who came before them.

The present generation of Irish police officers have become fascist scum.

I don't say it lightly.

I say it because it's true.

But let's assume for a moment that I'm wrong in all this.

I've had a few negative experiences with Irish police officers at the side of the road in the run up to Christmas.

Perhaps I'm not an objective judge.

Let's assume for a moment that the Irish police force, through their high aggression tactics, genuinely did bring down the road death figures over the past year.

You know folks, Mussolini made the trains run on time and put a stop to all Mafia activity in Italy for a period of twenty years.

No one else ever managed the same feat.

Most of us agree it wasn't worth it.