Loopy Luka does it again

That neurotic gobshite President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has once again decided to show off his imbecility. This time the target of his lunacy is western degenerate pop music. He has ordered all of the country's radio stations to play less non-Belarussian pop music. In fact, it's not to form more than 25 per cent of station output. Any station that doesn't toe the line will be shut down. This move has caused considerable annoyance amongst local disc jockeys. Yauhen Mirov of Spunk FM in Minsk explained the dilemma. "This means that 75 per cent of our music broadcasts have to be sourced locally. The problem is that its difficult to get hold of stuff that people want to listen to. An awful lot of it is just plain shit." He added: "There are some really good local bands but they're all on the president's blacklist." President Lukashenka has some long-standing ambitions of becoming a pop idol and regularly entertains visitors to his house by playing tunes on his accordion. It is rumoured that he plans to release an album with an Irish group called Foster and Allen, and that the tracks will be laid down in a recording stuidio close to the border with Northern Ireland at Castleblayney, This will occur during the president's forthcoming visit to receive a cheque from the Irish branch of the "We Love Luka" committee as well as life membership of the Cocksuckers of Columbine and a special set of authentic Irish rosary beads made in Taiwan. As an honoured visitor to the Irish border region he will give a number of high-profile interviews to local media outlets, in which he will praise their commitment to maintaining the highest standards in journalism. Security is expected to be tight (and that's not the only thing) when he appears on stage in a one-off gig with Foster and Allen where he is expected to perform a Russian cover-version of their hit: "Once I had a hape o' shite". He has also expressed a desire to appear on the Irish wank-along variety show The Lyrics Board. Having seen videos of the programme he has expressed a near hysterical lust for its presenter Linda Martin, declaring that she is his "type of woman", as well as a determination to bring her back to Belarus where she would be made head of the country's campaign to win the Eurovision song contest.

Box populi, box ...

A recent opinion poll has found that a majority of people in the Irish republic believe that the IRA was not involved in the Northern bank mega-heist. A similar majority also stated their belief that Elvis is not dead, and that it is not possible to get pregnant after doing it for the first time. The opinion poll also looked at attitudes towards God. It found that Irish people still believe in a God - nearly 90 per cent. However the figure plummetted dramatically when a numnber of key variables were changed. Only 43 % believed that God is a woman, while less then 20% believed that God is black. An overhwelming majority believed that God was a Roman Catholic, but respondents were evenly split on whether God was open to bribery.

My latest toy

A place in the sun

Most people are aware of the difficulties that Minister for Justice Michael McDowell is having with Roscommon County Council regarding his prospective holiday home there. Most people also know that Mr McDowell is not, by a long stretch, my favourite Irish politician: I am opposed to his doctrinaire beliefs about Irish society and inequality and I have indeed made unfavourable and unflattering comments upon his baldness. But in his dispute with Roscommon County Council and its arrogant chief executive John Tierney, I am four-square behind Mr McDowell.

Mr Tierney is a conceited and supercilious individual who once served as County Engineer in Cavan where he found plenty of submissive weasels prepared to tolerate his insufferable and misplaced hauteur.  I recall how he dismissed the contributions of a county councillor to a meeting as being "mere semantics". I know this because the poor councillor, who in those days was a friend, rang me up to ask what semantics were. (Had I been truly naughty I might have replied that the engineer obviously meant "sementics" - a poncy word for masturbation, adding "he saw through you Pat for the wanker y'are..".) Mr Tierney believed that he was doing a good job in Cavan, although one of the people  to whom he made this 'umble comment begged to disagree. He has continued his boorish and arrogant behaviour elsewhere. But I somehow feel that he has met his match with McDowell.

Not long ago Mr Tierney attempted to steel his position as Ireland's best County Manager by revealing the reception of death threats; it was on all the news channels along with the messages of support and succour he received from others of his ilk. These threats must surely have been from some deranged crank and ought not have caused him much worry. For a start, he, like many a senior figure in Irish local government has long felt that he lives a charmed life and that "no man of woman born" can harm him. Even if a latter-day MacDuff had mustered the courage to shoot him Tierney would have been safe, as the putative assassin’s aim would have been disturbed by the outstretched and grasping hands of others in the crowd, begging: "Hey, let me do it". But let no one say that I am making light of such threats, which must have been very distressing for Tierney and his family. Having been the object of threatening 'phone calls from people with ties to illegal organisations I know how terrifying it is to feel that there are people out there who would like to do you harm.

Mr McDowell is a member of an unlikeable crowd called the Progressive Democrats. I must say, (as a "true" liberal - unlike the timorous beasties who apply the label to themselves in that organisation), that they must be allowed their errors. Yet one has to wonder whether Mr McDowell and his holiday-home’s fate would have been far smoother had he been a member of Fianna Fail? After all, one former Justice Minister who hailed from the county of his future recreation was allowed to emulate the builders and block-layers of early '60s East Berlin in building a wall around his dwelling without any planning permission. Had Franz Kafka lived in the 1980s he might very well have penned a story entitled The Great Wall of Cootehall. The gentleman in question, of course, is no longer an active politician, turning instead to Burn-again [sic] Christianity. He no doubt identifies closely with Rocco il Pagliaccione, but his religious beliefs and restraint cannot be emulated by some of his family and would-be successors to his political mantle. They lament when they have to forego sex for periods as long as ten weeks.

But Mr McDowell is no doubt aware that the area of planning law in Ireland is a long-standing and long-playing joke. These is not a county council in Ireland that does not routinely grant "Planning permission for the retention" of an existing structure, such as a house or building which was built without any planning permission, and probably in defiance of every rule of planning, and which has probably been occupied for years, maybe decades. Mr Tierney is probably aware, as a former county engineer in Cavan, of a house which had been built on a blind corner and which had stood for well over a decade without its owner or builder seeking retention. This example was after all brought to my attention by a member of his staff, but no one can ever say that Tierney was in the least responsible for it. But this is a problem which is widespread throughout Ireland, in far more places than those with which John Tierney may have had any links. It has nothing to do with the payments of bustarelle or bribes. It stems from a culture of bloody-minded arrogance and incompetence common throughout Irish local government, both its executives and its elected members. It is true that some county councils, as well as an Bord Pleanala, have declared some structures as illegal and have suggested that they should be demolished, yet I know of no structure which has fallen victim to bulldozers. In this regard it seems churlish and oppressive for Roscommon County Council to prevent Michael McDowell’s agents from continuing work on his holiday home, or even securing what work has been already carried out. Michael McDowell would not be the man I know him to be were he to let these bureaupaths away with this.

I do feel, however, that Mr McDowell has displayed a guileless attitude here, to such an extent that one wonders about his fitness for ministerial office. Why didn't he just build the house and thumb his nose at the planning regulations - after all they're just for ordinary people. This is what most people in his position would have done. That way he would have avoided all the delays, such as the loss of the initial planning application, the visits by council officials to ascertain whether the requisite notice was visible and hanging at the correct angle, not to mention the inspection by the fire officer. While Mr McDowell has revealed some worrying crypto-fascist tendencies as Minister for Justice he is a man of integrity. Not for him the skulduggery of transferring troublesome and interfering police officers to postings in the arsehole of nowhere or colluding with "foreign" police forces in the interests of family solidarity.

Many people will remember the Morecombe and Wise sketch featuring this song, and most would be astounded to believe that there is any link (albeit tenuous) with the dismal science of Economics. Well read on. This year’s Nobel Prize for Economics has gone to Professors Edward Prescott and Finn Kydland for their monumental, though by now a little passé research on macroeconomic cycles. By amassing a truly superlative-defying mass of data they have been able to show a number of very interesting features. For a start, and not really in the league of the revolutionary, they have helped put one more nail into the rotten casket of Keynesian economics. J.M. Keynes was a conceited man: it wasn’t so much that he thought himself the world’s smartest man but that he knew it empirically. His General theory was born out of the wreck of the Great Depression of the 1930s, and his work must be forever associated with lines of cloth-capped (and male) factory hands queuing up at soup kitchens while still-operating factory plants belched out phlegmatic effluvia of black, unhealthy smoke. Not that many of the men in the cloth caps read Keynes with its convoluted and involved style. Keynes worried little about the lack of demand for his thoughts among the working class, but he did think quite a lot about demand in the economic sense. Demand is a human activity, a rational response to the world. So, according to the Keynesian model a country could stoke its way out of recession by introducing demand which would in turn pump up production and with it pull up employment levels. This might lead to high inflation, but Keynes taught that sadly, people could not have their cake in eat it. High inflation meant low unemployment. This neat little nexus fell apart in the 1970s with the era of stagflation – runaway inflation accompanied by sluggish or negative growth and high unemployment.

Prescott and Kydland’s work also examines responses by ordinary to economic information. Economists came to believe in Keynes’ infectious optimism (or pessimism) about human beings – because they were as clever as he was (or maybe because they could never dream of being as clever) they would act in predictable ways to economic information. Such intellectual certainty could be pencilled into economic planning. So a government that cuts taxes on capital and savings in the hope of encouraging prudence by its people - and promises to keep them low - will be popular, but not everyone will believe that the government will be true to its word. They probably suspect that, a few years down the line, the government will not be able to resist the temptation to tax the funds that have been built up. So many people will decide not to be fooled but to act in what would be considered an economically deviant way and blow their money in the here and now. Similarly, if a government pays lip-service to the ideal of low inflation, but don’t have the bottle to stick to the policy, this can lead to high inflation as people sensing official wavering go on spending sprees financed by unrealistic wage demands. The perceived lack of trust in long-term economic policies is due to what Prescott and Kydland refer to as "time consistency problems", and hence the tenuous link with the song.

They’ve also shown that economic and business cycles aren’t really cyclical at all but are influenced by external shocks, such as technological developments and things like oil crises. Isn’t it funny the way economists can "prove" what we’ve known all along? I recall a similar, though not identical proposition being put forward by a Russian economist called Kondratiev, but he never got a Nobel Prize for it. He didn’t even get a permanent headstone over the permafrost of the Stalinist camp where he perished.

Regular readers of the RTE Guide might have been forgiven for thinkihg that the mag had transmogrified overnight into "Religious Right Review" owing to the placing on the front-cover of that flat-earther Dana. She's really ugly, a personification of a hatchet-face: in fact she makes Linda Martin look kind of ... er... well maybe not. The guide has announced the launch of a new reality show for 2005 called Screwed. Female television and show business personalities will dress up as prostitutes and attempt to persuade punters to have sex with them for money - or Green Shield Stamps. Once the deed is done the John will be offered his money back and invited to fill in a form rating the experience. Naturally his annonimity will be guaranteed, so his bishop, chief whip or CEO need never know. However, the public will be able to vote for its favourite hooker, and to vote off the one who isn't really making the cut, just like the BBC show Strictly Come Off presented by the geriatric Bruce Forsythe Johnson who must be relieved that he's no longer got a mass murderer living beside him.

The Race for the Park

The race to elect our next president has descended into an unseemly scramble. It is no more than a competition for possession of a useless, though highly-polished bauble. Let's face it, the Presidency is a ceremonial position. The framers of that heap of twaddle we call our constitution were influenced by numerous factors when they invented our head-of-state. One was a jealous, bureaucratic desire to ensure that power stayed where it was, and where it belonged, in the hands of the executive. There was perhaps a desire to avoid possible Bonapartist developments, whereby a populist demagogue could concentrate too much potentially disruptive powers in his fist. There was the need to ensure that the chief citizen had respect, but not too much respect, and that his powers and lustre did not clash with the real power-brokers in the land, the Irish catholic hierarchy. But more than anything else, was the unspoken wish to frame our constitution as closely as decency permitted on the British model, the one - possibly the only one - with which the constitution's draughtsmen were familiar.

Let us compare the two heads of state: the English crown and the Irish presidency. The crown sits at the constitutional apex in the United Kingdom, as does our presidency, but executive actions are imbued with the crown's aura. One speaks of the crown instead of the government when the latter acts. The proper name for the legislature is The Queen in Parliament. When a criminal case comes before the court it is cited as The Crown, or Regina, versus the accused. But this is all so much verbal froth. The fact is that the executive has usurped these powers, and it is the executive which wields them. There is such a thing as Royal Prerogative, but one of the most infamous instances of its use was in the early '80s when Queen Margaret employed it to outlaw unions at Britain's GCHQ. In reality the crown is impotent. No law can have force without receiving the royal assent. In theory this could be refused, but a constitutional convention has developed that the monarch assents to every law passed by parliament. The one remaining shred of power that may exist is the potential power to refuse to prorogue or dissolve parliament. Were a Prime Minister to lose the confidence of the House and seek a dissolution, the monarch could refuse such a dissolution were a potential alternative administration available. Not much of a power is it?

Ireland's president can rely on a nice, written constitution instead of a collection of constitutional conventions. But their power isn't much greater. The office does not apply its aura to official acts. These take place in the name of the state. Laws must receive the signature of the president, which is never refused. However (in one of the big differences between Ireland and her sister isle) the president can delay signature if they feel that the legislation may be unconstitutional. In which case it is referred to the Supreme Court who, as the nice pliant little mice that they are, nearly always find that the law is constitutional - the one exception being a School Attendance Bill in the 1940s. Once the court has given the legislation the constitutional thumbs-up there is nothing for the president to do but sign on the dotted line. They also have the power to refuse a request for a dissolution but as this has never been used, its employment would lead the office into such uncharted constitutional waters that it would be unlikely to be ever used. Rather the holder of the office would say: "Ah fuck it, let the cunts fight it out at the polls", though naturally they would employ less coarse language.

So the office of the Irish presidency is ceremonial: whatever powers it has are at best residual. It's a bit like an old man in a wheelchair who can, very occasionally, get an erection but who can't hold onto it - no pun intended - that's exactly the problem: he can't do anything with it.

But I muddy the waters. The office isn't about wheelchairs or erectile dysfunction; it comes with a nice house in the centre of Dublin with no pesky traffic or rolling house development to disturb one's sleep. There's lots of foreign travel with 5 star accommodation - no flea infested B&Bs, or Greasy Spoons. In fact, you never have to put your hand in your pocket, except maybe for a quick game of billiards. All you have to do is keep your mouth and your legs shut, and enjoy the ride.

This is what attracts so many of the would-be hopefuls. Michael D. Higgins has obviously got pissed off with having to deal with the knackers of Galway and the agonising transfers of crank candidates to see whether he'll be returned. The same distaste for the rough-and-tumble probably informs Eamon Ryan's presidential ambitions, though I'm surprised that it wasn't Ciaran Cuffe who had his head up. After all, were he to get ensconced in the Aras he'd have a decent gaff to invite his American relations to. But once elected president you could say goodbye to the clinics, having to listen to the great unwashed whinge about losing their benefits, or the plaint of the mother of twelve whose husband has left her, barefoot and penniless, for a Lesothan limb-dancer.

But what would happen if Dana were to get to the park - stop the bloody lights Bunny. There would no doubt be Prayer Breakfasts, while sections of the building would be renamed The Father Michael Cleary wing, The Father Brendan Smyth Suite and the Matt Talbot Bar, while to please some of her alleged financial backers in the deep south the Papal Cross would be moved to her front lawn and set on fire permanently.

Economic historians write widely about the Columban Exchange. The process whereby the fauna and flora of the Old and the New World were exchanged and mixed following Christopher Columbus’ rediscovery of the continent. Of course, it is more correct to speak of exchanges. On the level of food the old world and its populace benefited from the introduction of foodstuffs like the potato, maize and tomatoes. At the level of zoology the New World received the horse. There are many other exchanges that may be isolated, but nearly all of them involve an unequal exchange. Yet there is one where a certain equilibrium has been achieved. The arrival of the Europeans in America was catastrophic for its inhabitants. They brought with them European diseases like smallpox that were completely unknown in the New World, and before which the inhabitants were completely defenceless. Consequently millions perished. One of the soldiers who accompanied Cortes on his conquest of Mexico, Bernal Diaz, described how the emperor Montezuma used to smoke a mixture of tree resin and tobacco, served in a decorated pipe after his meals. The recreational use of tobacco leaves was taken up by the Europeans and it spread back to the Old World. Once again nobody is too sure how many people in Europe, and their descendants throughout the world have died of cancer and other diseases brought on by tobacco smoking. It is certainly equal to the number of victims of smallpox. So in this exchange at least, the Old and New Worlds are quits. But the imbalance is possibly not in the Old World’s favour here. Over time many natives of America acquired a tolerance to European diseases. Furthermore vaccinations were introduced which had an admittedly slow impact. Nobody has yet, as far as I know, developed a tolerance against lung cancer.

Weeds and grass

Here is a newsflash: a supermarket has been robbed by a lone intruder. Amongst the items stolen are a three-piece suit, 250 packets of cigarettes and ten lettuce. Gardai have asked the public for assistance in catching the robber. They say they are looking for a well-dressed rabbit with a cough.

The Vintners’ and hospitality industry’s hysterical response to Michael Martin’s introduction of a smoking ban once again shows that they are a group of idiots looking up their own back passages for a piece of fluff. They threaten massive job losses in the tourism sector, but it is a wonder we attract any tourists at all when such clowns are at the head of the sector. They have an image of the "average tourist" which is quite alien to reality. He (or occasionally she) is seriously loaded, so rich in fact that they don’t realise when they are being ripped off with poor service, rotten food and bad drink in unhygienic surroundings. They also stagger coughing and spluttering off the ‘planes, maybe smoking two cigarettes. They may just be able to carry the high-calibre rifles and shotguns they are going to use for shooting Irish game i.e. anything that’s Irish and game (it’s an old joke - remember it). They are also incredibly stupid, so they will accept anything green and cheesy as Irish.

If the vintners are so worried about attracting tourists why do they not lobby for the relaxation or complete prorogation of our cannabis laws? Look at the amount of money we could make by opening brown cafes, or brown-green cafes. The stuff is easily grown, and because it generally induces euphoria none of the punters need realise that a lot of the shit really is grass. So the rip-off culture can continue and even grow. Maybe I am being less than serious here, but there is one thing I can never understand. Why is it that cannabis, a drug which is non-addictive, is illegal yet drugs which are not only addictive but seriously deleterious to the health of their consumers, not to mention the distress which their family members must suffer vicariously, are available in every street, of every town, village and hamlet in the country. I can hear some of the vintners already protesting: "It’s what brings tourists to Ireland". In the words of the great Jim Royle "my arse". There are some pubs in Ireland where a toddler would be served alcohol – so long as he wasn’t a member of the Traveling Community.

And let us not forget about the sexual tourism industry. I accept that Cavan (and Roscommon) might not have much pulling power here, though this probably reflects a lack of business imagination, as I’m sure dogs occupy an as yet unexploited niche in the market (Let There Be Love…)

Wigs on the Green

Most people were no doubt stunned to learn that Ireland’s county councillors, that amorphous band of time wasters, pocketed 25 million euro last year by way of expenses. Considering they do nothing for the population, except attend endless meetings where they talk through their tail ends, and salve the egos of the various local government executives, this figure seems terribly large.

Some individuals creamed off 60k – that’s over a grand a week. Where did the money go? Up the Cook’s arse no doubt. But we have learned some alarming news about the type of "expense" that was covered. One county councillor apparently got the taxpayer to pay a large fine he had incurred, instead of a custodial sentence, for hitting a spectator at a football match. Another bought a fabulously stylish hairpiece to replace his old wig when he became council chairman: he donated the old one – nits and all – to a local museum. A third councillor spent part of his expenses on a very expensive art appreciation crash course. He was urged to do this after he described the paintings in an exhibition he was opening as "a haip o’ shit". He's planning on taking literacy lessons next. It has also been revealed that a number of councillors' expenses cover maintenance payments to sons and daughters, while a vile rumour is doing the rounds that another group of expenses went on bribes to guards and medical personnel in a lunatic asylum to allow one councillor to leave.

One wonders whether the expenses include the payments for presents to the county managers at Christmas. These include bottles of whisky or brandy for himself, as well as boxes of choccies for his wife. Then, as everyone involved in Irish politics knows, you have to stand your round. Do the expenses include buying drink for everyone in the pub – including the guide dogs – at retirement parties for policemen?

I just can’t figure out how anyone doing fuck all can get through this type of loot.

Question: What is the difference between a ham sandwich and a county councillor?

Answer: The average ham sandwich is only half an inch thick. If any of them read my comments (or failing that, have them read for them) they will become thick. Completely inarticulate, vowing vengeance and issuing all sorts of oaths preceded by curses. I remember a Cavan county councillor who said that the state of the county’s roads demanded that the government declare a state of emergency. Good job George W. wasn’t around, or he would have been expected to send a few ships to lie offshore. Cavan has no coastline though, but this didn’t stop one councillor suggesting that a delegation attend a conference on St Brendan the Navigator. But that was in the bad old days before the heroic era of Brian the Brave of Blessed Memory, who filled in all the potholes with his own ordure. Now that he’s gone the councillors are at a loss for someone’s arse to lick.

Compensation Culture

Our Thatcherite minister for loot, Charlie McCreepy has spoken out once again in good, new right style against another evil, insidious enemy. Not communism, not Social Welfare Fraud (that’s coming), but the Compensation Culture.

Well let me say, as a citizen of the Irish Republic, that I’m looking for some compo: compensation for years of mismanageme3nt, years in which our so-called public representatives and public servants have milked the system, feathering their own putrid nests. We all know the example of one west Dublin politician. Not content with his salary as an MP he was involved in a host of dubious property deals. There is also the example of the former assistant County and City manager, who kept bribes in his bathroom – and he was not alone.

All these people were paid to work in the interest of the public, yet they worked in their own self-interest, often against the public interest. Surely the citizens of Ireland deserve compensation for this.

Many (though by no means all) of those who were / are involved in these rackets were members of Mr McCreepy’s own party. If he wants to begin compensating the Irish people he can begin by zipping up his mouth and putting an end to the torrent of insulting, arrogant, holier-than-thou statements. These might cut some ice with the party he should have joined, but hadn’t the balls to.

Maybe Barrow-boy Bertie might like to kick him out – before he kicks Bertie out. That’s what he’s at. If Bertie can’t see it he’s too stupid to be sent around to Burdocks’ for a one-and-one.