tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8028720386750422012024-03-14T01:08:30.808-07:00Fiche Focal ...Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.comBlogger167125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-68966893062981818482011-05-27T06:30:00.000-07:002011-05-27T06:39:27.640-07:00Cuairt na Banríona: Éire agus SasanaBa bheag an tsuim a léirigh muintir na hÉireann sa scéal nuair a fógraíodh go dtabharfadh Banríon Shasana cuairt ar an tír seo. Rinneadh trácht ar an chuairt i bhfad siar, bhí a fhios ag daoine go raibh sí le teacht, ach shíl formhór na ndaoine nach leanfaidís an scéal agus nach gcuirfidís iontas nó spéis ar bith sa chuairt nuair a tharlódh sé. Ach i rith na laethanta beaga roimh theacht na banríona, thosaigh na daoine ag caint. Uaireanta ní raibh i gceist ach focal grinn, ach ba léir go raibh daoine ag cur suime sa scéal i ngan fhios dóibh féin. Faoin am a leag Banríon Eilís a cos ar an fhód Fódhlach ní raibh scéal ar bith eile i mbéal na ndaoine.<br /><br /> Thuig an tír gur stairiúil an ócáid í. Bhí a fhios ag daoine nár thug monarc Sasanach cuairt ar Éirinn le céad bliain, agus bhí a fhios acu cén fáth: cogadh na saoirse, an cogadh eacnamaíoch, diúltú DeValera páirt a ghlacadh sa dara cogadh Domhanda (cé gur chuidigh sé leis na Sasanaigh ó thaobh na faisnéise de), agus ansin, an choimhlint fhuilteach i dTuaisceart Éireann. Is beag duine atá os cionn daichead bliain d’aois nach bhfuil íomhánna gránna ón Tuaisceart greamaithe i gcúl a intinne. Is cuimhin leis an ghlúin chéanna an chaoi ar chlis go hiomlán ar an chaidreamh idir rialtas na hÉireann agus rialtas Shasana i dtús na coimhlinte. Bhain sé tamall fada uathu teacht ar chomhthuiscint ar na cúrsaí seo. <br /><br /> Táimid ag leanstan próiseas na síochána le fada an lá: an Comhaontú Angla-Éireannach 1985; sos-chogadh an IRA 1994; Comhaontú Aoine an Chéasta 1998; díchoimisiúnú airm an IRA 2005, Paisley agus McGuinness mar chéad aire agus mar leas-chéad aire 2007. Mar a thug an tUachtarán, Máire Mhic Giolla Íosa, sliocht as saothar Yeats san óráid ag an chóisir in onóir na banríona “is go mall séimh a thagann an tsíocháin”.<br /><br /> Ba dheimhniú do mhuintir na hÉireann í cuairt na banríona go bhfuil deireadh leis an choimhlint agus an síor-achrann. Chuir an chuairt seo ina luí orainn go raibh toradh leis an obair chrua a rinne ceannairí stáit agus ceannairí pobail síos fríd bhlianta deacra na nochaidí. <br /><br /> Is léir, áfach, go raibh ní ba mhó na cúrsaí síochána agus polaitíochta i gceist. Tá stair fhada an dá thír fite fuaite le chéile. Le míle bliain tá daoine ag dul anonn is anall idir an dá thír, agus ag réanna áirithe bhí cuspóirí éagsúla ar intinn acu: an t-ionradh, an coilíneachas, an ghabháil, nó, nuair nach raibh an lámh láidir i gceist, an creideamh, an t-oideachas, an trádáil. Ar an drochuair ba mhinice muintir na hÉireann thíos leis na hidirghabhála seo. Suaitheadh an tír seo ó bhun go barr. D’fhulaing na dúchasaigh dí-shealbhú, dí-láithriú cultúrtha, agus i bhfad ní ba mheasa fós.<br /><br /> Bhí sé de mhí-ádh againn gur tháinig ann don impireacht ba mhó dá raibh ann riamh ar an oileán beag in aice linn. Agus bhain ceannairí na himpireachta sin máistreacht amach ar chuid mhór den domhain ar fad. <br /><br /> Ar ndóigh bhain an tír seo sochar as an impireacht fosta. Ba fríd impireacht Shasana a rinneamar ár mbealach ón mheán-aois go dtí an nua-aois. Ba dhian an turas é, ach bhí sé amhlaidh i mbeagnach gach tír ar domhain. Thug na Sasanaigh innealra an stáit nua-aoisigh dúinn; thug siad an dlí dúinn; thug siad an teicneolaíocht agus an t-eolas dúinn; thug siad córas oideachais dúinn; thug siad bonn-eagar dúinn; agus thug siad an teanga is tábhachtaí ar domhan dúinn.<br /><br /> Ní iontas ar bith é gur fhág an stair sin dearcadh ar leith ag muintir na hÉireann i dtaobh na Sasanach: an ghráin agus an t-éad gan amhras, ach ceann is go raibh an impireacht an-mhór agus go raibh sí fíor-chéimlathach, fágadh coimpléasc na hísleachta orainn mar phobal. Ní iontas ar bith é nach mbíodh fáilte sa tír seo roimh mhonarc Sasanach. Seo é an cúlra stairiúil ar ndóigh, agus ní féidir a rá go mothaíonn pobal na hÉireann gráin do phobal Shasana sa lá atá inniu ann, nó le fada an lá. Ach bhí iarsmaí de na sean-mhothúcháin fós ann.<br /> <br /> Daichead bliain i ndiaidh chogadh na saoirse bhí an tír seo fós ag brath go mór ar Shasana ó thaobh cúrsaí geilleagair de. Mar thír bheag ní raibh dlúth-chaidreamh againn le haon tír mhór eile. Sin é an fáth gur chuireamar a oiread suime sa Phobal Eorpach i dtús báire. Cheapamar go gcuideodh ballraíocht sa PE linn éalú sa deireadh as bheith ag brath ar an tsean-namhad. D’éirigh thar cionn leis sin mar straitéis: ba fríd an aontas Eorpach a thángamar in aibíocht mar thír. Thosaíomar ag brath orainn féin mar phobal nua-aoiseach eile, amhail gach pobal eile ar fud na hEorpa. <br /><br /> Má bhí Éire ag athrú le tríocha bliain anuas – go cultúrtha agus go sóisialta go háirithe – cuireadh malairt crutha ar an Ríocht Aontaithe fosta. Tháinig deireadh le hiarsmaí na himpireachta. Chuir na pobail cheilteacha eile – in Albain agus sa Bhreatain Bheag – a gcuid féiniúlachta chun cinn. Tá ar a laghad seans ann go bhfágfadh Albain an Ríocht Aontaithe. Tá scothaicme Shasana ag teacht isteach ar an stádas nua atá ag an Ríocht Aontaithe, is ea nach bhfuil anois inti ach scoth-thír atá ag streachailt leis na hathruithe móra cumhachta atá ar bun ar fud an domhain. <br /><br /> Is tráthúil a tháinig an Bhanríon. D’fhág an ghéarchéim eacnamaíoch in ísle brí sinn. Tá deacrachtaí móra againn leis na tíortha móra Eorpacha. Agus arís eile tá aos óg na tíre seo ag dul thar lear ina mílte – cuid mhór acu go Sasana. Chuir cuairt na Banríona ina luí orainn gur tír neamhspleách í Éire fós, bíodh is go bhfuil dualgais ar leith uirthi. Táimid báite i bhfiacha, ach nílimid faoi chois.<br /><br /> Is dócha go bhfuil rian an dearcaidh a bhain leis an impireacht fós le mothú i measc scoláirí Eton nó i gcoláistí Oxford. Agus is cinnte go bhfuil corr-dhuine i Whitehall agus i Westminster a bhfuil gothaí na huaisleachta fós air. Má fuair Sasana ísliú céime le glúin anuas, tá sí fós i bhfad níos cumhachtaí na an tír seo. Ní bheidh an tír seo ar chomh-chéim le Sasana choíche agus beidh caidreamh aon-taobhach idir an dá thír. <br /><br />Ach thug cuairt na banríona le fios go bhfuil meas ag an dá thír ar a chéile ag leibhéal oifigiúil. “A Uachtaráin agus a chairde” – níor labhraíodh cúig fhocal Gaeilge riamh a raibh a oiread tábhach ag baint leo. In aon abairtín amháin, d’aithin Banríon Shasana go bhfuil a mbunreacht féin agus a gcultúr féin ag muintir na hÉireann. Murar féidir cairdeas bheith ann idir dhá thír, is féidir cairdeas, nó gean éigean, bheith idir dhá phobal. Agus d’fhéadfadh sé tarlú fós go mbeadh ár sean-namhad ar an chara ba dílse againn.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-25089260195148496712010-09-09T10:34:00.000-07:002010-09-09T10:39:05.183-07:00Why the left hates BlairSomeone in prospect magazine wonders why the left hates blair more than some of his conservative predecessors. My thoughts are roughly:<br /><br />Blair’s achievements are enormous: the huge improvement in the NHS and the funding and performance of schools to name just two. His constitutional changes (though conceived before he became PM) were also very significant. So too with peace in NI. <br /><br />I think the virulent opposition to Blair from the left – more instense than against conservative leaders – owes something to a sense of betrayal. From the day of his controversial court backed electoral victory, Bush was loathed on the left. For Blair to align himself so closely with Bush, after 9/11 but even before the Iraq war, was always going to alienate Blair from large sections of left opinion. Blair allowed no distance between himself and Bush, not even a shade that might have made independence of mind and policy seem credible. <br /><br />On Iraq, where Blair constructed a casus belli from intelligence that was plainly insufficient, if not patently exaggerated, he was always going to destroy his image on the left. In arguments about justifying Iraq, Blair keeps on saying that after 9/11 he knew islamic fundamentalism had to be confronted, yet everyone knows now, as they did then, that Al Queda and the 9/11 bombers were not spawned in Iraq but elsewhere. So despite Blair’s insistence that Saddam’s regime posed a threat, we know that it didn’t really, not after 1991 and all the years of sanctions. Saddam was a murderous dictator, but the time to intervene to save his victims was long past (incidentally the West backed him while he was at his most brutal). <br /><br />On top of Iraq, there is Blair’s rightward lurch in matters concerning law and order, and issues like Freedom of Information (which he now says makes government impossible). <br /><br />Blair was an immense politician, and I believe did have a genuine progressive intent, at least in the beginning. But more clearly than any prime minister in recent times, he let power go to his head. He became a megalomaniac, even evangelical in his zeal. He seemed not to have a healthy sceptism towards power itself. The way he deployed his power, and how he altered the office of prime minister, are troubling. <br /><br />For Blair there was no such thing as a cabinet. He was right and his person decision was a diktat. It is probably on balance a good thing that there was another powerful figure next door whose presence was the ultimate limit on how far Blair wanted to stretch his office. <br /><br />Blair’s term exposed how little real counterweight exists in the British system for a PM with a large majority and who is in command of the senior figures in his own party. In the end, he is hated on the left as much for how he deployed power as he is for any single policy (aside from Iraq).Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-91959615885000328672010-09-03T13:44:00.000-07:002010-09-03T13:55:25.499-07:00Subjects I hated in School (Or did I)I attended a terrible primary school : apart from the teacher in the infants’ class, the other three varied between hopelessly incompetent and simply deranged. All my teachers at primary school were middle aged women. Two of the four were so bad that they spent a good deal of their time either crying, pleading with the class, or exploding in fits of violence. It was a disaster for them and us, but that was how it was. Parents complained to the board of management – but the main voice there was the parish priest and he supported his teachers to the last. And anyway, even if he hadn’t there probably wasn’t much he could do. This was the late 70s, but even now it is almost impossible to have incompetence teachers removed. The only thing I would hope is that they are rare and that on average most children get decent, capable teachers.<br /><br />It is secondary that I wanted to talk about, but primary has a huge bearing on how a child fares in secondary. Those who say primary is a crucial foundation are right. When I arrived in secondary I felt that I was far behind the other students. In everything from history, to maths, to Irish, they were years ahead of me.<br /><br />At our school we did exams every Christmas and I recall that the message from my first set of exams was that I had a lot of catching up to do. Thankfully I developed an appetite for study and over the course of the junior cycle I made up the lost ground. But I was probably lucky. I could easily have become disheartened or found that I couldn’t bridge the gap, in which case I would have joined that quarter of the class or so who never returned for the senior cycle. <br /><br />The truth is that I didn’t really hate any subjects, but my interest was usually a direct function of the effectiveness of the teacher. I was unlucky again in Irish, English, and French, finding myself with two of the schools weakest teachers. (I had the same one for French as English).<br /><br />I dropped classical studies (my year was the first where this was offered in place of Latin) after first year, and also dropped Commerce, choosing instead to stick with woodwork and technical drawing. I excelled at all the technical subjects and in the end got very high results in subjects like drawing, maths, and the sciences. But my progress in the languages had stalled. <br /><br />I had a moderate interest in Irish but the teacher hadn’t. His passion was Gaelic football and he spent large parts of the class talking to the footballers about results or forecasts (I had no interest in sport of any kind and used this time to scribble or write obscenities into the margins of my textbooks). English and French were even worse. The teacher had no command of the class – or her subject matter. I never really read any of the texts. In the end, for my intercert (now the called the junior cert) I scraped a C in English and French and a D in Irish. <br /><br />I remember well the day the results came out. I walked into the principal’s office to see how it went. He was beaming. I had done very well overall. He said I had 8 honours, among them five As. I was ecstatic. I hadn’t expected to do half as well. Standing beside the principal was the Irish teacher, a dour look on his face, and as I took the slip with the results he said ungraciously, “obviously languages aren’t your strong point”.<br /><br />It hit a nerve, for I can still feel the way his comment deflated my sense of joy in my achievement.<br /><br />For the senior cycle I was again unfortunate with teachers. Apart from one year I had the same dreadful Irish teacher, and again the same teacher for English. Thankfully I had a much better French teacher. I made up ground in French, getting a B in the end. But I only scraped a C in English and Irish.<br /><br />I know now that there was nothing at all wrong with my ability to learn languages. During my first year in college I took up evening classes in Irish. It became a passion and I read voraciously in Irish throughout college and spend several summers in the Gaeltacht. Years later I was to spend three years in France and made very good headway with the language. In English too I developed a taste for literature – and even writing. <br /><br />My experience has taught me this much about education. One, the competence of the teacher is vital. A capable teacher can be inspiring and can draw students toward their subject. Two, students should never give up. Learning is indeed lifelong, and with a bit of dedication you can amaze yourself at how well you can learn even a subject you might not terribly like. Better still you might discover a way in to a subject that makes you realize you kind of like it after all. Three, never allow yourself to be categorised. I believe that the boxing of people into learner types is artificial. So and so is great at maths and so and so is great at language. True, different subjects require different skills and abilities, but after all, even at the end of the senior cycle the goal is not mastery or deep learning, but to get a very solid foundation, and that can be achieved by any student in any subject.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-64369057106973148942010-06-30T06:44:00.001-07:002010-06-30T06:44:47.386-07:00The Words We UseFor a long time now each generation which has reached middle age has lamented the decline in intellectual ability and civility of the one coming after. Yet civilisation hasn't collapsed. In many ways it is now a better time to grow up than at any time in the past. But the changes over the last half century aren't a mere linear evolution in manners - there seems to be a substantial rupture with the past. <br /><br />The way in which post-60s generations have kicked off respect for authority has in many ways been liberating. But the reaction or rejection has gone too far and has been far to unselective. This, in my opinion, is one reason why teaching in school is now a barely tolerable task. And it may also explain the explosion in petty, mindless crime. It certainly explains the evaporation of civility from most public spaces. <br /><br />It seems that we have been gripped by an agressive (and agressively hedonistic) cult of the individual. All of this was underway before the late, great, acceleration of technology into the realm of the personal (where the bywords of marketeers have been 'personalisation', 'customisation', 'unique user experience' - all short hand for individualsim). The twin phenomena of rejection of authority and tradition, and the rapid rise of email, text and other casual forms of communication have cut away the formality - and the discipline - that was once associated with the written word. <br /><br />Indeed, to mention just one consequence, isn't the demise of letter writing one of the more lamentable side effects of our great leap forward into the age of electronic communication. What a joy for ordinary citizens to have records from their ancestors. But more important, for posterity, what a jewel to have such things as say, the letters of Abraham Lincoln, or those of other eminent persons in the history of any nation. <br /><br />I cannot claim any great knowledge of the link between proficiency with language and intellectual ability. I would hazard that informality and (what we call) debasement probably have no bearing whatever on the agility of a mind. Even the most slovenly language will be capable of conveying all that is required to run a laboratory - or a country. The great fear would be if the collapse of language were to make its way into literature. There are few greater pleasures than reading a paragraph of prose which shines in impossible beauty. When we reach a stage where literary language has been thus devalued, we should know that we have indeed reached the end of civilisation.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-20058325004835249272010-06-29T06:38:00.000-07:002010-06-29T06:48:53.899-07:00Watching England Lose<span style="font-style:italic;">This little post came to mind in response to a piece by Roddy Doyle in the New Yorker. Doyle wrote that he was going to bet for England but when he went to the bookies he couldn't bring himself to back the old enemy.</span>. <br /><br /><br />Doyle's remarks ring true: here in Dublin I could hear my neighbours cheer each time Germany scored. Typically punters in Irish pubs shake the rafters when someone, anyone, scores against England. These are usually the same people, like Mr. Doyle, who support English soccer clubs! Nothing illustrates our relationship with England better than the soccer paradox. <br /><br />We built our argument for independence on the twin beliefs that a) we are not English, and b) they, the English, were responsible for all the wrongs of our history and our current state of misery. For this much blood was spilled (and great national myths were necessary to justify each separate horror). None of this, of course, makes us Irish unique. We made our myths, our wars, and our nation. Our trouble with the English, however, is that while we broke the political ties, we failed to break the cultural ones. <br /><br />We failed to rehabilitate our national language and we remained under their cultural and (for most of the 20th century) economic shadow. Language is important. Nothing facilitates the cultural dominance of a great power over a small one more than a shared language. In terms of forging an independent culture (though I stress, not in any other way), it was to our misfortune that the power which stepped into the role of global empire after Britain was also English speaking. This cemented the position of the English language in Ireland (as elsewhere) thereby preserving a direct channel for English cultural produce into Ireland. All of this was happening at a time when communication, television, and later the internet was connecting Irish homes into the English cultural scene.<br /><br />During our (ill-fated) economic boom of the 90s and naughties, Irish town and city cetres grew more and more like those in England. This is more to do with capital flow than culture, but it merely set in concrete what was happneing in parallel in cultural terms. In Ireland we consume vast quantities of British celeb culture; far from being force-fed British media, the fact is, English titles sell here because we Irish are prepared to pay to read about Victoria Beckham or Elton John.<br /><br />We even follow the British Royalty, another topic which bubbles the paradox to the surface. Despite following the tribulations and foibles of prince Harry with great interest, there is something of a minor backlash on Irish airwaves at the announcement that Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, is going to visit Ireland next year - the first visit by a British Monarch since Irish Independence. <br /><br />In Ireland we are happy to adore and support anything English as long as it has no national symbolism attached. This is surely a sign that despite our political independence, our success at building a functioning nation, and our increasing confidence as a member of the European Union, an ache of self doubt lingers in the heart of our project to creating a unique national identity, one that need not be defined by what it is not: English.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-4420145977530604582010-06-14T07:31:00.000-07:002010-06-14T07:36:28.086-07:00FG wrong on Leaving Cert IrishThe position of Irish in the school curriculum is central to the larger question of whether the state - and by extension this nation - ought to preserve or promote the first official tongue. The cause of the language is very dear to my own heart, and therefore I feel very strongly that this is an important issue. <br /><br />Everyone knows that Irish language policy has been very flawed down the years - though some remarkable changes have taken place over the last 15 years or so. We know too that there have been chronic failures in how the language has been taught. I recall studying 16th century poetry in a class where no student had the ability to order a train ticket in Irish. Some of these failures have been corrected in part in recent years; for example, by making the curriculum more relevant and emphasizing communication over literature. <br /><br />Given the known and perceived failures it is tempting to reject current policy in its entirety. This would be a mistake. If the Irish language - still declining in the Gaeltacht - has any hope of survival as a spoken tongue, it is by virtue of the latent but widespread support that it enjoys among the general population. <br /><br />It is true that among those who look favourably upon the language, most never succeed in mustering the effort required to learn to speak it. The reasons for that are complex, but the fact remains that passive support among the public is a crucial buttress without which the whole edifice of recent language policy would collapse.<br /><br />Compulsory Irish, I believe, has been a key factor in maintaining a thin but very widespread knowledge of the language among the general population. It makes the vast bulk of the population at least moderately familiar with the language. People may not have enjoyed their experience with Irish in the classroom (one hopes that this can be continuously improved upon for future generations), but, more often than not, they come away wishing the system had served them better and that they had learned more not less of the native tongue. <br /><br />When people who struggle with the language are given the option, they will opt out, and the result will be an evaporation of the crucial familiarity with Irish. The result will be alienation from the language. It is easy to see how, over a period of time, this would lead to a drastic drop in support for government sponsored revival efforts.<br /><br />That people retain a mere 'cúpla focal' after years of schooling is an indictment that the system has failed to create competent speakers. Yet dispensing with this thin base entirely would be devastating.<br /><br />The Fine Gael attempt to make Irish optional is a political ploy - designed to portray a party ready to take radical steps to inject impetus into fresh policies. In reality their proposal is a populist proposal, designed to capitalise on the widespread negative view, not of the language itself, but of how it was taught in school.<br /><br />I would urge those who support the goal of preserving Irish not to fall for this ploy. <br /><br />It is worth noting the Welsh have increased their compulsory requirement. From the early 90s it was compulsory to study Welsh to age 14 and in 1999 that was increased to 16. Welsh preservation and even revival efforts have been seen as more successful than ours. We should certainly keep an eye on developments there, though I would accept that each situation is different. <br /><br />One thing is to be welcomed. Over recent years the debate on the Irish language has been increasingly informed by expert opinion in the field of socio-linguistics. Indeed this has brought a dose of reality to the question of Irish survival prospects that was previously absent. It has also highlighted with greater accuracy than before, that the language is indeed in a very perilous position. The state of the language is now so fragile - despite popular views to the contrary - that a major step in the wrong direction could wipe it out quickly and everywhere as a community tongue. <br /><br />So the status of Irish in school should not be an object of experiment or political gaming. Instead it should be seen as an essential component of a survival strategy for a language which now needs very careful nurturing if it is to survive.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-53368401544480076192010-05-26T03:33:00.001-07:002010-05-26T03:37:24.300-07:00Bord Gáis Taking the PissAll I needed was to have my gas metre moved by a couple of yards. There was nothing complicated - just a trench and a short pipe. So I phoned Bord Gáis. I gasped when the agent told me how much it would cost: a thousand euro! <br /><br />I thought I had misheard and asked again. Yes, a thousand euro, said the agent.<br /><br />I took a minute to recompose myself, took a deep breath, then, knowing I had no choice if I wanted my porch built, I begrudgingly agreed. <br /><br />Ok, I asked, so will the Bord Gáis people have my gas working again when they leave? Oh no, the voice said, in a tone somewhere between surprise and contempt, you will have to call a registered gas fitter to reconnect you. <br /><br />Why, that is absurd, I protested, I'm paying you, the gas company, a thousand euro, to move a box two yards, and you wont even connect me? No, that is not our responsibility. <br /><br />But a thousand euro, I cried, this is obscene. Well, in any case, the voice said wryly, we need to have your gas installer certify it for safety. Wait a minute, I said angrily, are you telling me that the only major gas company in the country cannot move a pipe by two yards and verify that it's safe? That's ridiculous, I said. <br /><br />My protestation was to no avail of course. This is what monopolies do: rip people off. What I had experienced was a taste of say, 1986. Back then most of the big service and utility providers were monopolies. It could take months to get a phone installed and when you did the costs of using it were astronomical. But Telecom Eireann didn't care - the last thing that mattered to them was happy customers. <br /><br />So far, however, Bord Gáis has managed to maintain its monopoly over gas supply. They can defend their position under the pretense that there is competition by virtue of the fact that people can choose coal or oil. But this falls apart simply because coal and oil aren't gas. Bord Gáis and BP and Topaz and Bord na Móna now call themselves 'energy providers' as if a customer rings up an asks for three thousand kilojoules. It's absurd. For a start, coal and oil are far dirtier than gas. Plus Bord Gáis has an installed base of pipelines to houses in cities. And finally, the raw materials are priced differently. So Bord Gáis saying that users have choice is patently false. It would be like Telecom Éireann saying in 1986 that as an alternative users can choose carrier pigeons.<br /><br />But anyway on the appointed morning my Bord Gáis team turned up to move the metre. (And nice chaps they were too). I asked one of them if they would be finished that day. Today, he laughed, I expect to be out of here in an hour. I have seven of these jobs to do today. <br /><br />So there we are. Bord Gáis charged me a thousand euros for what it took these two men to do in an hour. Now I don't know what those men were paid, but I would presume it falls considerably short of 500 euro an hour.<br /><br />To finish the job, I had to pay a gas installer a further three hundred euro to reconnect my metre to my house - along the path which Bord Gáis had just dug up.<br /><br />Overall 1300 euro to move a pipe by two yards. The Celtic Tiger might be gone, but Rip Off Ireland is alive and well.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-17174303566160011582010-05-05T09:17:00.000-07:002010-05-06T02:48:21.439-07:00Father and SonWhen I was about three years old my father, directly after coming home from work or just after dinner, I'm not sure, used to sit me up on his knee and tickle my ear with his tongue. Then he would tell me a story. Sometimes this took place lying on the couch, for I remember my father tucking me in beside him. This is a recurrent and favourite memory of mine, and is both vague and brilliantly clear. I have no clear idea of exactly when my father began - or stopped - showing his affection in this way, and I cannot recall any great 'visual' detail. I don't remember any one of these occasions in particular and can only guess what my father might have been wearing, or how the room in the house was decorated. I think I know how the furniture was arranged, and I certainly remember that the couch was facing a window, in the direction of the kitchen. I always imagine my mother standing with her back to the window, as a silent observer, in silhouette. Her position there, standing watching father and son, cannot be a faithful memory. I now realise that she would have had better things to do with her time, being in charge of two boys under three and a nineteen seventies father who worked hard oursite the home, but who never interferred, we would now say helped, in domestic affairs. But the memory also has great clarity. I can hear and feel my father's tongue in my ear, and I hear his voice say hickory dickory dock, the mouse ran up the clock.<br /><br />This is one of serveral very clear - and very dear - memories that I have of early childhood. Another is one of me playing with my grandfather's pocket watch. He passed away in 1977, when I was four. In another memory I am riding a cart behind a donkey with my uncle, who was only 9 years my senior. This was on my grandparents' farm where the donkeys were pushed to extinction in the middle to late seventies by the arrival of a diesel tractor. (A David Brown 770 which has since mostly melted back into the earth beside the byre, also in a state of decay).<br /><br />My early memories are very precious because they connect me with people, allive and deceased, who were near the centre of my life at one stage or another. Yet these memories are terribly fragile. I know that people often have false memories of childhood (Scientists of memory say that we often create these memories unconcsciously from a mix of real memories and suggestions by others. This often results in impossible memories, which are recalled episodes which could never have happened, like being present at an event which took place before you were born. This is down to a thing called source confusion where the rememberer cannot recall the source of the information. It could have been a story someone told or something they read, and in the mind it got inserted with other real memories of self).<br /><br />Even if some of my early memories are false, I don't necessarily want to find out. They are like pillars that are now built into my life story, and I cannot bear to imagine them being torn away. <br /><br />When my father became seriously ill lately I found myself revisiting a lot of my childhood and teenage memories that involve him. The process happened of course unconsciously and over a period of weeks. I might be waiting for a meeting to start at work when I would remember my father, wearing a yellow vest, his white shoulders exposed to the July sunshine, and hunched over a turf spade. His hair is dishevelled, but thick and ungrey. His motion is fluid and silent, though from time to time I hear the slap of peat on peat. <br /><br />Or I am getting ready for bed and another memory arrives: he and I are sitting on the pier in Killybegs, hot summers day, me seven or so, and both eating ice-lollies. Mine is an orange ice thing, his a choc ice or a brunch, or one of the more adult ice creams that I couldn't manage. There is no sound but he must be telling me about the boats, the great fleet of trawlers that packed into the harbour then but which are long gone now.<br /><br />Or while driving alone I suddenly recall my father perched on the tiny stage of the local pub, his <span style="font-style:italic;">paolo soprano</span> accordion strapped on his shoulders, his eyes are fixed in the distance as he inhabits his music. <br /><br />These are a few examples of the many memories which have bubbled to the surface over the past few weeks since my father suddenly became ill. Thankfully he is making a good recovery now and his prospects are reasonably good. But his close call has vivifyied him in me, and I fell I need to be near him more than before. <br /><br />The inability of Irish fathers (and sons) to communicate is a well known source of anguish. My father, despite all those shared memories and experiences, remains far too much unknown to me. It hurts to admit that I still can ask, who is that gentle, patient, loving, man that tickled my ear? Or what might have been on the mind of the robust, big-hearted man throwing the sods onto the turf bank? Or where does his music take him? <br /><br />It is a lonely thought that I might never really get fully inside those memories, never really acquire a fuller understanding of the figure that made them all possible. I had always thought that those memories, which are shared experiences, even if some are unreliably remembered, are a kind of collage which, when viewed from afar would form a meaningful picture that isn't visible in any single part. Yet I feel that I am standing here squinting at the grey and blurry distance.<br /><br />Now more than ever I want to know my father better, to learn about his inner life and how he views his own life, and mine. But maybe I'm wrong to even try - maybe knowledge is not the currency of love. Perhaps the opposite is true. Maybe it is the mystery, and the unfathomable that sustain love. <br /><br />Yet the power and immediacy of those memories create a yearning for something more. Something bigger and more complete. So I feel I will go on trying, desparately, to discover more.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-31348176384043621742010-02-15T09:27:00.000-08:002010-02-15T09:29:29.664-08:00Open Letter to Deirdre de BúrcaDeirdre, a chara,<br /><br />When, or if, the Greens decide to bring down the government it will likely be as a result of an accumulation of breaches of trust. That is always how it happens. But they must carefully choose which the issue that they allow to break the camel’s back. <br /><br />In your own case, whatever the merits of your argument about there being a pattern of Green submission to Fianna Fáil, you chose an issue which entirely centred upon YOU. I’m afraid it just looks so bad – for you that is. <br /><br />Your timing too: the week George Lee quits. Celebrity cum superhero Lee emerges as a political idiot and sets this weeks theme music: self-obsessed clowns who cannot take the heat of political life. Then you throw out your rattler over a plum job in Brussels. <br /><br />Knowing too how terrible the collateral damage your party is absorbing from being in power, and how your exit would hurt them, this is an immensely selfish act. You have hurled yourself into the political abyss, and you may well help bring your colleagues in after you. Well done!<br /><br />Le dea-ghuí,<br />TomaltachTomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-2155023917483541662010-02-08T06:42:00.000-08:002010-02-08T06:49:09.565-08:00Can the Left capitalise?!In a <a href="http://www.progressive-economy.ie/2010/02/where-have-all-taxes-gone.html#comment-form">comment on a progressive</a> blog I lamented the fact that the left seems more hung up on holding or increasing current spending levels than it is concerned about service levels and value for money. One response to my comment ran that 'yes, but few here are really more concerned about spending levels per se'.<br /><br />I know that the left is not obsessed simply with spending levels : but that too often is how it seems. It appears to me that much of progressive opinion seems embattled and defensive, and in its moment of seige it is unwilling to concede anything: even the truth. The mentality is that the wagons are closely circled, and all will be defended. This must explain how the broader left can defend the scandal of social partnership. <br /><br />If there has been criticism from within, it certainly has been muted. The McLoones, Beggs, and O'Conors, co-opted by the Ahern governments, and complicit to one extent or another in its disastrous economic governance, remain unscathed. Similarly no one on the left pointed to the grotesque spectacle of Higher Civil and Public Servants (among the highest paid public servants in the world in a bankrupt country) inviting those in all jobs and in none to join them in the march on PS pay. As another commenter pointed out, the same applies to calling underperforming service providers. And I am decrying the same uncritical approach to spending: the mantra is always for more spending, regardless of the evidence of chronic mispending of moneys currently allocated. The fear of course is that scrutinizing spending will lead to questions on pay, work practices and conditions. <br /><br />In all of these cases the public sees a defence of the indefensible, and turns way in despair.<br /><br />I don't understand why the left needs to be so defensive, especially now. True, at a time when the neoliberal dogma of the self-correcting, free market, arrogantly bruised aside skeptics with swagger and media-pumped bluster, it was understandable that the retreating left took defensive positions. <br /><br />But now, with free market ideology badly shaken, it is time for progressives to go on the offensive. And in my opinon the only way to do that is to admit present and past shortcomings and to campaign with honesty and with a view to persuading the neutral ground. The time for pandering to its own constituency for the sake of survival is over. The imperative for the left to re-invent itself couldn't be more urgent because if it fails now to refresh its ideas and to bring them into force, the crisis in the current capitalist model will be an interlude not a watershed. <br /><br />In Ireland the left seems to me to be represented by entrenched, self-serving, and mostly public service unions on the one hand and an opportunistic, wavering, and power hungry labour party on the other. (then there is the fringe, from Joe Higgins to SF, the People before Profit, all of whom, I hope, remain nothing more than a fringe). <br /><br />We cannot be surprised that PS unions are self serving - in essence that is their purpose. Nor can we be surprised that the Labour party is power hungry - politics is about power after all. Still, I would have hoped that the Labour party could have by now worked out a viable and coherent narrative not about what kind of society it strives to achieve - we all know the mantra about fairness and equity - but how it can be brought about and in particular what kind of role the state should play in achieving social and economic objectives. <br /><br />The right succeeded admirably in crafting a narrative about the virtues of the market: the market always allocates resources more efficiently, the market gives choice to the individual, the market requires but also copperfastens freedom, the market drives innovation. Why can the left not similarly frame its ideas in cogent arguments which can be made to look no less self evident?Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-74046699501773852302010-02-03T00:29:00.000-08:002010-02-03T00:41:35.725-08:00Bás na GaeilgeChualamar na scéalta céanna fiche uair: go bhfuil an Ghaeilge ar shéala bheith marbh sa Ghaeltacht mar theanga phobail, go bhfuil deighilt mhór idir phobal labhartha na Gaeilge sa Ghaeltacht agus lucht Gaeilge na gcathracha, agus gur orthu siúd, Gaeilgeoirí na mbailte, a bheidh todhchaí na Gaeilge ag brath. Bhí na barúlacha seo le cluinstin ó thús ré na hathbheochana i leith agus, má choinnigh an Ghaeilge ag meath mar theanga phobail, mhair sí i mbéal na ndaoine sa Ghaeltacht. Glactar go forleathan anois, áfach, go bhfuil stáid na Gaeilge sa Ghaeltacht ina géarchéim teanga.<br /><br />Murar féidir a rá go bhfuil fíor-dhíospóireacht náisiúnta ar siúl faoi láthair faoi thodhchaí na Gaeilge agus na Gaeltachta (ní dóigh liom go mbeidh a leithéid de dhíospóireacht ann feasta), tá an réadúlacht agus an t-ionracas le sonrú anois san áit a mbíodh an siabhrán agus an séanadh. Faoi dheireadh tá daoine ar spéis leo cás na Gaeilge ag dul i ngleic leis na fíricí loma.<br /><br />An rud is suntasaí faoin phlé a dhéantar ar an Ghaeilge le blianta beaga anuas ná go bhfuiltear ag cur eolas na teangeolaíochta chun tairbhe, go hairithe an méid a bhaineann le teangacha atá i mbaol, nó go fiú, an tuiscint a bhaineann le bás teangacha. Ba chúis mire é an chaoi a mbíodh daoine ag dul i muinín fhigiúirí an daonáirimh ar úsáid na Gaeilge chun cur i gcéill go raibh an teanga ag seasamh an fhóid. <br /><br />Tá stáid na teanga sa Ghaeltacht geal soiléir faoi láthair. Seo an méid a bhí le rá ag an Staidéar Cuimsitheach Teangeolaíoch :<br /><br />“Is é tátal lom shuirbhé na ndaoine óga nach bhfuil ach idir 15 bliana agus scór blianta fágtha mar shaolré ag an nGaeilge mar theanga theaghlaigh agus phobail sa chuid is láidre den Ghaeltacht”<br /><br />B’fhíor don Dr John Walsh “géarchéim teanga” a thabhairt ar chás na Gaeilge sa Ghaeltacht san alt leis a foilsíodh ar beo.ie roimh an Nollaig. Agus ní iontas ar bith é gur scríobh Seán Tadhg Ó Gairbhe ar an Irish Times le déanaí gurb ann do “bhliain chinniúnach na Gaeilge”. <br /><br />Ón uair a thuig mé go raibh an Ghaeilge i mbaol is iomaí uair a smaoinigh mé ar an chuma a shíl mé a bheadh ar dheireadh na Gaeltachta. Ar an cheo ar fad a bhain le cás na Gaeltachta le blianta, sílim anois go n-aithním dé deireadh na Gaeilge mar theanga phobail. Don chéad uair tá an cainteoir dúchais ag sleamhnú as amharc i bpolasaí teanga an stáit. San alt céanna le Ó Gairbhe fiafraíonn sé “cad a d’imigh ar an gcainteoir dúchais, duine go mbíodh an-chaint go deo air i dtuarascálacha fadó?”. Tháinig an cheist chuige nuair a thug sé faoi deara nach bhfuil táisc ná tuairisc ar an chainteoir dúchais i nDréachtstraitéis Fiche Bliain don Ghaeilge a d’fhoilsigh an Rialtas i mí na Samhna, 2009.<br /><br />Ní hionann é sin is rá ar ndóigh nach bhfuil cainteoirí dúchais fós ann. Tá gan amhras, buíochas do Dhia. Ach is cosúil anois go bhfuil tús áite caillte ag an Ghaeltacht maidir le todhchaí na teanga. <br /><br />Ó thús ré na hathbheochana bhí teannas agus míthuiscint idir mhuintir na Gaeltachta agus lucht foghlamtha na teanga sa Ghalltacht. Má bhí ceannródaithe na Gaeilge sna cathracha dílis agus díograiseach, bhí siad rómánsach agus idéalaíoch freisin. Ba bheag an tuiscint a bhí acu ar an anró a bhí á fhulaingt ag lucht an tsaibhris teanga a bhí scaipthe i measc na gcnoc lom sna háiteanna is iargúlta in iarthar na tíre. Bhí bearna mór cultúrtha eatarthu freisin. Bhí an sean-traidisiúin fós beo sa Ghaeltacht fad is a bhí an nua-aoiseachas ag bualadh na gcathracha. <br /><br />Bhíothas ag súil an t-am sin go ndúnfaí na bearnaí seo faoi dheireadh. D’fhéadfaí na síolta is áille agus is mó luach den traidisiúin a shábháil sa Ghaeltacht agus a chur sa Ghalltacht (smaoiním ar dhearcadh De Valera). Agus d’fhéadfaí an chuid is éifeachtaí agus is iontaí de shaol nua na mbailte a thabhairt do mhuintir na Gaeltachta (monarchana, teilifís, cumarsáid). Ní raibh a fhios áfach cén chaoi a d’imreodh na hathruithe casta sin ar a chéile ó thaobh cúrsaí teanga de. Tá tuiscint níos fear anois ann ar cheisteanna sóch-theangeolaíochta, agus tuigtear go mbíonn brú millteanach ar mhion-teanga nuair a chuirtear gréasáin nua (bóithre, fón, idirlíon) in áit na sean-ghréasáin (idir dhaoine muinteartha, inmheánach don phobal). <br /><br />Is léir anois nár éirigh linn deireadh a chur le meath na Gaeltachta. Is léir freisin nár éirigh linn an deighilt idir mhuintir na Gaeltachta agus Gaeilgeoirí na gcathracha a fhuascailt. Léiríonn <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2010/0116/1224262447899.html">alt spéisiúil</a> leis an Dr Brian Ó Broin (Irish Times 16 Eanáir) go bhfuil bearna mór teanga idir chainteoirí dúchais na Gaeltachta agus chainteoirí cumasacha na gcathracha. <br /><br />De réir Uí Bhroin is gránna le cainteoirí dúchais Gaelscoilis na mbailte. Is minic a bhrúnn siad cnaipe an rialaitheora nuair a thosaíonn cainteoir a d’fhoghlaim a chuid Gaeilge ag caint ar an teilifís. Ní thaitníonn Gaeilge na Gaeltachta le go leor foghlaimeoirí ach an oiread. Dar le Ó Broin tá an chaint dhúchasach deacair dothuigthe i gcluasa an fhoghlaimeora. <br /><br />Rinne Ó Broin anailís ghrinn theangeolaíoch ar shamplaí de chaint na gcathrach agus de chaint na Gaeltachta. Dar léis tá difríochta móra foghraíochta, deilbhíochta, gramadaí, agus comhréire idir an dá chineál Gaeilge. Tharla an éabhlóid seo de bharr a laghad teagmhála a dhéanann an dá phobal lena chéile agus dar le Ó Broin d’fhéadfaí ‘pidsean’ a thabhairt ar an teanga nua atá i mbéal mhuintir na cathrach. (Teanga neamhsheasmhach le gramadach shimplí agus a cruthaíodh in áit na mbonn chun cumarsáid a dhéanamh is ea pidsean).<br /><br />Ba é an fhís a bhí ag lucht na Gaeilge i gcónaí ná go mbeadh an Ghaeltacht ina thobar ag foghlaimeoirí agus gur ó chaint na Gaeltachta a bhfaighidís an saibhreas agus an snas. Is léir nár tháinig an fhís sin i gcrích. <br /><br />Mura féidir le foghlaimeoirí saibhreas, iomláine, agus áilleacht theanga na Gaeltachta a thabhairt leo, an fiú an Ghaeltacht a chaomhnú ar chor ar bith? Nó an é go mbeadh Gaeilge na gcathracha ní ba bhoichte fós murach an Ghaeltacht bheith ann? Nó an bhfeidhmíonn an Ghaeltacht ar leibhéal eile in intinn an fhoghlaimeora, go seasann sí mar bhun-chloch faoi choincheap éigin a bhaineann le féidearthachtaí teanga, sé sin gur mó an tábhacht a bhaineann leis an Ghaeltacht atá i samhlaíocht an fhoghlaimeora ná a bhaineann leis an fhíor-Ghaeltacht féin?<br /><br />Mairfidh Gaeilge éigin ag cainteoirí aonáracha ar fud na tíre, ach is dóigh liom féin gur beag seans atá anois ann go dtiocfaidh an Ghaeilge slán mar theanga phobail. Goilleann sé go mór orm an méid sin a rá. Is iomaí uair a smaoinigh mé ar cén cineál báis a cheap mé a bheadh ag an Ghaeilge. Ag amharc ar na léarscáileanna a léiríonn na limistéir a raibh an Ghaeilge beo iontu ón naoú haois déag i leith, samhlaítear dom i gcónaí leac mhór oighir ag leá. Níl fágtha den leac anois ach giotaí beaga atá fós ag leá agus tá teas an Bhéarla, mar theanga dhomhanda, ag scalladh fúithi níos tréine na mar a bhí riamh. Is gearr nach mbeidh againn ach lochán uisce.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-42546770942517981632010-01-27T12:26:00.000-08:002010-01-28T00:52:53.553-08:00Falling out of Love with PoliticsI sat up half the night on April 9th 1992, waiting on the very tight British election to be called. It was supposed to be a narrow but comfortable win for Labour after thirteen years of Conservative rule. But in the end, it went to the wire and Labour lost. <br /><br />Since then I have waited up on many an election, including the 1997 Irish election, when I think news emerged that Fine Gael's Nora Owen lost her seat. (Her constituency was one of the trial constituencies for electronic voting).<br /><br />Over the years I have always tried to keep abreast of key political developments in Ireland, Britain, America, and, during and after living there, France. I was never a true political anorak, however. I always failed to muster the interest in peripheral figures or precise election tallies for example.<br /><br />I became (an inactive) member of a political party, though again, I failed to be interested in the down and dirty of local political activism. I have a deep admiration for those volunteers who organise, discuss, canvass, and so on. They have amazing perseverance and unshakable resolve. They are truly remarkable, and they are the life blood of democracy. But unfortunately I found the minutiae and machinations of local political life terribly boring. Local constituency meetings often get bogged down in mind numbing procedural and organisational matters. A bewildering diversity of opinion is aired at them, and much of it is pretty bland, and a lot of it, I have to say, is downright lamentable. Some one will pipe up about economics without the faintest idea of how economics works, someone else will rage about banks, or someone will issue a general fatwa against farmers. It isn't an enlightening place to be. One interesting thing is how the multitude of voices, noise essentially, gets filtered as it passes up through the layers of an organisation, to emerge at party level at something that is coherent enough to call a policy. <br /><br />Eventually I had to admit to myself that I'm not really a political animal and that my interest is more in the theory than the practice! <br /><br />Nevertheless, I managed to remain very interested in the theory part! And I kept hooked in to the main national, and party, debates. But over the last 12 months I have noticed a change in myself. I am reading the political sections of the newspapers less often (I used to track them religiously), and I'm finding myself less and less in front of a political program on TV (Despite making a brief contribution myself to a recent edition of the Frontline). I think that unconsciously I have begun to tune out from politics.<br /><br />I think I know why. Pure disillusionment. I have ceased to believe that any substantial change is possible no matter who you vote for. The structure and culture of say the Irish political system is set in thick granite. It cannot be shaken. A decade and a half or tribunals revealling the noxious relationship between politics and business has not lead to a new dawn. In fact, bar minor changes, the old system rolls on. And on political reform one report after another rolls out (on say Seanad reform) only to be quietly shuffled off to gather dust. And make no mistake - the proposed banking inquiry will deliver the same quantity of change: none.<br /><br />Regarding the theory - I am still fascinated by the big questions. About the shape of a constitution, the structural biases of a polity, how much the state should be involved in the economy, where the line should be drawn between the rights of the individual and those of the collective, the efficacy of supranational organisations, the effect of globalisation on the state, and so on.<br /><br />But on the practical side and the nitty gritty, I feel that life is far too short. It might be fun to know how a glacier shapes a valley over a million years, but few would derive much excitement from watching its progress in a day. The same is for me and political change. It just feels as though it isn't happening, so I am not going to bother watching too closely. I will continue to vote and keep an eye on developments, but my passion for politics has cooled. <br /><br />In a way I feel a little liberated, though perhaps it is only a fool's paradise. I can gladly miss the six o'clock news (like I did today, home early from work and got back into a fantastic book) and I can mostly forget about the papers! A great ocean of time has opened up before me and I feel free enough now to explore it without being weighed down by the most common emotions relating to Irish politics - frustration, bewilderment, sadness, embarrassment, and often, anger. Time to forget about political life and get on with the real thing.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-65086477054682573982010-01-05T14:16:00.000-08:002010-01-06T00:38:11.729-08:00A Short Reflection on 2009As we start into a fresh and challenging decade I am tempted to look back at the last ten years of my life. But even a cursory glance back is enough for me to realise that a great number of chapters were added to my life over the decade – some delightful and others less so – to pore over the details here. (The truth is that right now I have neither the mental energy to relive and reflect on a full decade nor the physical time to document my meditations.) Instead, maybe I can take a peek back at 2009 just to see if it will reveals whether it was, as it sometimes feels now, a year of heavy lifting, or just another typical year in the middle of life.<br /> <br /> On the whole 2009 was stressful. I have had to work harder, by an order of magnitude, than ever before. I now work in a small firm whose very survival depends on the next generation of its product which is a couple of years behind the ideal market window. The team is small – about ten – and we have had to work about an extra day each week for far too many months. Perhaps an extra day a week doesn't sound like much, but there was on top the incessant intensity of the work. This is not the place to go into the details of that story, but I think the burden has begun to take its toll on my mental state and even perhaps on my physical health: I have gone down with a number of severe cold/flus over the last month. This might be pure bad luck with what has been a bad winter for bugs, with swine flu and so on, but I feel that I have succumbed more readily this year than before. Just today our boss has impressed upon us the importance of, to use his words, “keeping our foot on the pedal” until the end of January. The trouble is, that was the message for November and none of us believe there is less than another two or three months of heavy hours ahead.<br /><br /> But the main story on the work front in 2009 was that I had some! In the autumn of the year before I was laid off and was very fortunate to start a new job in January '09. To start a new job in in 2009 and still be in it at the end was, given the wretched economic climate in Ireland, a considerable achievement.<br /><br /> But January of 09 brought a more sobering experience too. I visited a friend of mine, I'll call him John, who was severly ill with lung cancer. He had been ill for about a year. I hadn't seen him since about the time he was diagnosed (he was abroad for a good part of the time). His wife let me in and I passed in to the living room where John was sitting with a blanket over his knees. A warm but emaciated smile greeted me. I found it hard to conceal my shock at the feeble, emaciated figure before me. From one angle John seemed to have aged by about twenty years.<br /><br /> Outwardly at least he was in good spirits, and spoke as loquaciously and intelligently as ever. But I wasn't close enough to him to learn the of what must have been his inner horror. His wife showed as much a sign of the strain as he did: she seemed worn and embattled, and it was clearly a big job to manage John's illness both physically and mentally. <br /><br /> John's two teenage children returned for lunch from school. I didn't know them that well, but at least to my eye they hadn't yet realised how gravely ill their father was. <br /><br /> I thought I detected a distance in his eyes when John said that he was now beginning a six month schedule of chemotherapy, and then that “after that we'll see”. (his cancer had already spread and this was his second series of chemo). <br /><br /> Eventually I had to leave to catch a train and at the same time John's wife was reminding him that he was already late for a hospital appointment and that they had to leave immediately. So we left together and I walked them to their car. I said good bye as normal, but it wasn't a normal good bye. I think both of us knew. After I had walked off I turned to look back, and John was slowly bending to climb into the car. That would be the last time I would see him.<br /><br /> I don't know whether John's death caused my perspective on life to shift or whether it merely accelerated a change that was already under way, but over the last year I have been engaged more than ever by nagging questions concerning the direction of my life, my priorities, and what shape real tragedy takes. I have become a bit more anxious, more pressed to realise approximations of happiness, more worried about trying to weave all the ungovernable strands of a modern life into a some kind of reassuring fabric. Probably the biggest change over the last year is a realisation that old recurring dreams should be shelved in favour of more modest, but more achievable destinations. Yet when I do this exercise – banish the romantic to make way for the pragmatic – all I'm really doing is learning to grow old.<br /><br /> But the two greatest things in my life, bean Thomaltaigh, and my son, mac Thomaltaigh, help make growing old a pleasure in itself. They both made 2009, despite all its shadows, a very rewarding place to be alive. Bean Thomaltaigh, possessed of that silent, inner strength, that voracious instinct for life that only women have, was a support without which I could scarcely have faced 2009 let alone survived it. Bean Thomaltaigh is loved and lovable and capable of sustained generosity. And mac Thomaltaigh, now two, is at the right age to be a perfect antidote to self-doubt, age, and existential uncertainty. I see in him the mad, carefree, and relentless hunger for life that is possible only in youth. His disarming innocence, his tumbling and frolicking, all have made our living room a surer and more fun place to be. <br /><br />[ There was loads more of course, and I hope to come back to this and add a little more later]<br /><br /> When I look at it in the round I see in 2009 a plodding, difficult year. But in the grand scheme of life, it was a year that gave as much as it took. During the year I think I've grown (as well as grown older!). In some ways it was a year I set out to survive, a holding period, a place to seek refuge in a storm, but it gave its joys as well, and even getting to its end, intact, if a little battered, gives a sense of achievement. It taught me (again and more deeply) that this is life – vagarious, relentless, rewarding, punctuated with great joys and wrenching pain, bearable, unyielding, in short, very livable.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-63805498153757122502009-08-14T03:34:00.000-07:002009-08-14T03:44:04.358-07:00Saoire in Éirinn<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnBzzvZy_JqHbTZzgUrZ6Vo8sqLkFtAL8ORB2nw3cKHhmcrvflPr44zeGS0OLbmQuRsmfFUXsKLuGVltib6mgG9rh9D8rjI2AFMk-VFymhqCSDERbUwSWEkN_IePuIOlPINVnp0-TpMWFC/s1600-h/Grainan_of_aileach.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 135px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnBzzvZy_JqHbTZzgUrZ6Vo8sqLkFtAL8ORB2nw3cKHhmcrvflPr44zeGS0OLbmQuRsmfFUXsKLuGVltib6mgG9rh9D8rjI2AFMk-VFymhqCSDERbUwSWEkN_IePuIOlPINVnp0-TpMWFC/s200/Grainan_of_aileach.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5369767923706343922" border="0" /></a><br />An bhliain seo caite thug mé féin, Bean Thomaltaigh agus Mac Thomaltaigh, thug an triúr againn cuairt ar Iar-Thuaisceart na Fraince. Ligeamar ár scíth i mbaile beag cois farraige ar feadh coicíse. Thug mo thuismitheoirí cuairt orainn don dara seachtain - faoi mar a rinne tuismitheoirí mo mhná le linn na chéad seachtaine. Bhaineamar go léir an-sult as.<br /><br />Ach i mbliana ní rachaimid thar lear. Fanfaimid ar an tseanfhód - ar feadh coicíse. Tá fúinn cuairt a thabhairt ar oirthear na Gaillimhe ar dtús (ón lá amárach). Thart fá Ghleann na Madadh a bheas muid - ceantar dúchais bhean Thomaltaigh. Áit bhreá chiúin le scíth a ligean. Iar-fheirmeoir é athair bhean Thomaltaigh agus tá eallach aige fós, cé nach bhfuil i gceist ach cupla ceann chun deis a thabhairt dó leannacht lena shean-cheird. Tá dúil mhór ag mac Thomaltaigh sna hainmhithe agus cuirfidh an chuairt seo gliondar ar a chroí (níl ag an chréatúr ach dhá bhliain d'aois).<br /><br />Is deas an rud é freisin seal a chaitheamh i gcuideachta daoine a bhfuil táithí an tsaoil acu, go háirithe daoin muinteartha. Is breá an fear é athair bhean thomaltaigh agus é i mbun scéil (rugadh é sa bhliain 1933 agus ar ndóigh tá cuimhne mhaith aige ar Eirinn a d'imigh uainn ó shin). Agus tabharfaidh mathair mo mhná cúram maith dúinn fosta. Bean bhródúil bhríomhar í agus nós aici béilí breátha a réiteach.<br /><br />Ina dhiaidh sin tabharfaimid cuairt ar Chathair na dTreabh, áit a mbuailfimid le sean-chairde, daoine ar chuireamar aithne orthu nuair a thugaimis 'baile' ar an chathair chéanna. Ní thugaim cuairt ar an chathair sin gan smaointiú ar na seanlaethantaí - sé sin, laethanta móra geala m'óige. Caithfimid béile i gceann de na bialanna is fearr sa chathair (más féidir) agus, le cuidiú Dé, ólfaimid pionnta nó dhó i gcuideachta <a href="http://anghuianiar.blogspot.com/">Na Guí Aniar</a> agus a bhean. Daoine a chuireann fearadh na fáilte romhainn i gcónaí.<br /><br />Uaidh sin, tabharfaimid ár n-aghaigh ar Thuaisceart na Tíre. Caithfimid cupla lá i dTír Aoidh (sé sin, an 'barony of Tír Hugh' mar a thugadh na Sacsanaigh air!) i nDeisceart na Condae. Sin áit dhúchais Thomaltaigh. Táim ag súil go mór le tamall a chaitheamh i gcuideachta m'athar (fear mór a' bhocsa ceoil) agus mo mháthar, bean a bhfuil an speís aici i dtaisteal ar fud na condae! Tá sé ar intinn agam caitheamh aimsire a bhíodh ag m'athair athbhunú, sé sin an iascaireacht. Tá an t-uafás aibhneacha agus locha breatha thart fá dheisceart na condae agus ba ghnach le m'athair gabháil ag iascaireacht acu - nós a lig sé i ndearmad nuair a chuaigh sé anonn i mblianta agus go háirithe tar éis bhás uncail liom a raibh dúil aige san iascaireacht fosta.<br /><br />Más féidir fosta ólfaidh mé cupla pionnta i gcuideachta m'athar - thar rud ar bith eile ba mhaith liom fáil amach, óna chroí féin, goidé mar atá sé ó scoir sé i dtús na bliana seo (tar éis dó beagnach 50 bliain a chaitheamh ag obair).<br /><br />Fágfaimid Tír Aoidh inár ndiaidh agus rachaimidh níos faide ó thuaidh - caol díreach go barr tíre! Ceann Mhalainne in Inis Eoghain. Níl eolas ná aithne agam ar an taobh sin - taobh amuigh de Shamhradh a chaith mé ag obair i mBun cranacha nuair a bhí mé óg. Is ar Bhaile Lifín a thabharfaimid ár n-aghaidh. Caithimid roinnt laethanta ansin in óstán breá. Ó, mo dhearmad, tá sé ar intinn agam An Grianán Ailigh a fheiceáil ar mo bhealach ó thuaidh - sean-dún a tógadh san Iarannaois agus a deirtear atá thar barr ar fad.<br /><br />Siar linn tar éis an tamaill sin in Inis Eoghain, siar frí cheartlár na condae - an bealach garbh, sléibhtiúil idir Leitir Ceannainn agus Gaoth Dóbhair. Is ó bhéal cruite do bhean chéile chara liom ó Chondae an Chláir. Cónaí orthu anois i mBAC ach caitheann siad seachtain gach samhradh i dTír Chonaill. Tabharfaimid cuairt orthusan. Súil agam go mbeidh an aimsir measartha maith nó tá an taobh sin tíre go hálainn ar fad. Tránna breatha geala tréigthe i measc na gcnoc cois farrairge.<br /><br />Ar an bhealach ó dheas caithfimid oíche eile le muintir Thomaltaigh. Sin an tsaoire atá romham i mbliana.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-87959939717478989692009-07-02T08:59:00.000-07:002009-07-02T09:04:46.288-07:00Journalism in Irish: Waste of TimeWhen I put the headline on this post, I thought, cheekily, that I could have gotten away with just saying Journalism in Ireland: Waste of Time. It would still be a launch pad for a viable post: over the last number of years, journalism in Ireland hasn't been a pretty place. The big broadsheets - have all had a major slimming down, with budgets cut and hundreds of journos turfed out. That was happening before the recession - it was part of the ongoing 'challenging' environment facing print media. But now with the recession it can only be accelerated. And of course it has spread to TV and Radio. Newstalk and Today FM have had layoffs and merged their news team (same owner, Denis O'Brien), and of course we all know that RTE is running a deficit of 68m and has begun a major belt tightening operation, so there aren't going to be major opportunities there for a while. Plenty of gloom there alright, but I wanted to talk about Irish language journalism.<br /><br />I see that the major universities are still busy running<span style="font-style: italic;"> Cúrsaí san Iriseoireacht</span> (Irish language journalism). UCG has a couple of comms/iriseoireacht diplomas, UCD has one, DCU. There are probably more I don't know. Which makes me wonder where do all these aspiring <span style="font-style: italic;">iriseoirí </span>think they are going to get a bit of work.<br /><br />Almost all third level education is heavily funded by the tax payer, no doubt these cúrsaí are too, and perhaps they get and even higher percentage since they are ar son na cúise.<br /><br />One stark figure should be enough for all those cúrsaí to simply close their doors - it is the number of full time Irish language journalists who make a living from the written word: one. Yip, just one. And that's the Irish language editor of none other than the English language paper, the Irish Times. His name is Pól Ó Muirí and he became the last surviving member of a species that is one heart beat from extinction - the full time Irish langauge journalist.<br /><br />About six months ago the always-struggling daily <span style="font-style: italic;">Lá</span>, published in Belfast, shut down. And last weekend the Irish language weekly, <span style="font-style: italic;">Foinse</span>, running since 1996 shut down. It's advertising revenue collapsed and the grant money from Foras na Gaeilge wasn't enough to keep it alive. So plimp, it's gone.<br /><br />We know that in the present climate there is no way the substantially funded Irish language project, for want of a better term, is going to get more money. But the issue is, given the level of wasteful and frankly nonesensical spending on Irish elsewhere, why funds couldn't be found to keep the weekly paper going.<br /><br />Apart from the courses I mention, money is still dished out to absolutely hideously bad private operators for unused online courses and the likes.<br /><br />But this exposes the insanity of the way the Irish language strategy has been piloted. All sorts of grants were available for Gaeltacht schemes - even thought about 70% of the Gaeltacht is now a fiction - and money doled out on making Irish a working Eu language. Imagine - the intricies of Eu protocols being tranlsated into Irish by Irish-trained linguists in Brussels while the last remaining Irish language news publication is allowed to die. There is no more perfect symbol for the self-defeating, wrong-headed, vested-interest driven thing that is state policy on the so called preservation of the Irish language.<br /><br />There is some dignity in a genuine failure, an honest best-effort which just cannot succeed. But there is nothing noble about the shambolic, incompetent, rivalrous, clique-infested, and costly failure that is our nation's effort to preserve its still-dying native tongue.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-89877056545415563732009-06-29T09:07:00.000-07:002009-06-30T03:59:59.883-07:00Little Boy Time: Childhood under AttackPerhaps it's because I'm just finishing off reading Huckleberry Finn, or maybe it's because my own son, Mac Thomaltaigh, at two, is beginning to develop his own little appetite for exploration (he seems to be particularly interested in the little area behind the wooden shed where I have put old pipes and bricks out of sight), or it could be none of these things, but I have been thinking quite a lot about childhood lately.<br /><br />Maybe it's part of that nostaligia thing that I'm going through, these vivid imaginings of episodes and relationships from my childhood that I'm denying has anything to do with the concept of a mid life crisis! (In coversations with self I convince myself that my life isn't in crisis - this cannot be a crisis, for if it is then I can imagine that it will throw me into pure calamity when more nasty things happen, as they surely will. So not happy to concede on the term crisis, I tend to settle for the softer 'defining period'.)<br /><br />One way or another childhood has been on my mind lately, which is probably what drew me towards Huck Finn (I had never read it). It's a beautiful and amazing work and I am enjoying its every line. But in this frame of mind a personal essay about Childhood by Michael Chabon in the NY review of books caught my attention.<br /><br />In a beautiful piece Chabon talks about one essential component of childhood - the freedom to head off, through streets or woods, with others or alone, every or most days, and just conduct a little adventure. This aspect of childhood, according to Chabon, and I tend to agree, is, sadly, almost a thing of the past.<br /><br />Chabon talks about his pursuits in Woodlands near his early home, and then antics round a more urban environment later on. The sense of adventure wasn't just spontaneous, but inspired by stories - from legend to history to childhood myths about other adventurers. He described this experience as being his "Wilderness of Childhood" and is now struck by the incredible degree of freedom his parents gave him to roam there. But ... "A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.".<br /><br />Now it's all about control ...<br /><br />Nowadays, "we schedule their encounters for them, driving them to and from one another's houses so they never get a chance to discover the unexplored lands between. If they are lucky, we send them out to play in the backyard, where they can be safely fenced in and even, in extreme cases, monitored with security cameras."<br /><br />And it's all about irrational fear, especially the that seems to have taken over these days, fear of abduction...<br /><br />Yet "in 1999, for example, according to the Justice Department, the number of abductions by strangers in the United States was 115. Such crimes have always occurred at about the same rate; being a child is exactly no more and no less dangerous than it ever was."<br /><br />The freedom Chabon enjoyed was "a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible."<br /><br />He then mentions taking his daughter for a trial on her new bicycle in their leafy neighbourhood on a beautiful afternoon. What stunned him most was the absence of other children. There were none in sight. The streets were empty.<br /><br />It would be easy for us to lament the lack of community in the states and how different it is here. Thankfully, it is different, but the trend, in urban areas at least, is towards something approximating Chabon's descriptions of childhood taken over by adults and under continual surveillance.<br /><br />Mac Thomaltaigh isn't old enough yet to be on the street, so I have no idea of the pressures involved or how real fears are of calamity or just malign influence. But from friends and neighbours who have kids I know that there seems to be a huge level of parental intrusion into 'child time'. In some cases it is security related - text me when you leave the concert, text again when you're on the bus, and I'll pick you up at the bus stop. And so on.<br /><br />But some of it is pure ambition to create the best possible future for one's children. Here in South Dublin you are either careless or broke if you don't bother to send your kid to a good fee paying school. And bring them to piano lessons. And do three soccer runs a week, and two karate, or whatever. The kids must enjoy all of this. Surely there'd would be feedback from them if they didn't? And surely it would be heeded if it were given?<br /><br />But in some instances I sense a parent who is living vicariously, seeing their own child as a vehicle for fulfilling the dreams they, the parent, had for themselves but which, life in all its vagaries, frustrated. A sense of pushing them - not in the direction they necessarily would like to go (as if they should have any choice!), but where oneself wanted to go once upon a time.<br /><br />This is probably a real temptation - and isn't nessarily always negative. But looking at it as I just head for that territory, I feel myself wondering if childhood has been over colonised by adults. And if, by falling prey to hyped fears, and our own weaknesses for status and advancement, we aren't robbing our children of something that is precious;<br /><br />Aparrently in Japanese they refer to childhood as 'little boy time' or 'little girl time'. It is precious territory and we would do well not to conquer it fully. After all, it is not 'little adult time'.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com72tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-16833108086500721392009-06-17T06:24:00.000-07:002009-06-17T06:27:37.440-07:00The Anglo TruckWhen I was a young fella we used to make little <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">trolleys</span> by fixing the axles and wheels of a used pram to a wooden frame that served as a chassis. We called them trucks. (In <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Donegal</span> the word truck is never used in place of lorry.).<br /><br />You steered the truck by pulling on twine that was attached to the left and right side of the front axle which could pivot to give direction. The truck was simple yet <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">frighteningly</span> effective down the steep hilly roads of South <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Donegal</span>.<br /><br />Our trucks had two flaws. One was born of youth's immunity to fear - they had no brakes. We probably could have fitted some kind of crude brake, say a lath that would press against the wheel, but we never did. No brakes were fitted because we never assessed the risk - and even when the risk of a potentially terrible crash was obvious (like long steep hills with a corner at the bottom, round which a car could appear at any instant) we <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">ignored</span> it. The bigger the hill you took on with your truck, the more daring you were, not the more insane.<br /><br />The truck's second flaw was that it was hopelessly unstable: it was too narrow and, with one or more bodies sitting atop, its centre of gravity was too high. A sudden turn made a tumble certain, and many a time I took such a roll. The result was usually a lot of bruising, and often a torn jumper or trouser knee - which meant more pain later, particularly if they were new!<br /><br />On a very large hill you sat at the top, peering down into the abyss. You knew your ride was going to be perilous, you nerved a bit, but your young mind was unable to muster enough fear to do the wise thing. You pulled left and right on your twine, like a pilot checking his rudder, then straightened up, lifted you legs, and away.<br /><br />Even if you had launched from a particularly scary hill, there was no going back. You were rapidly picking up speed and hurtling towards some kind of disaster. You had only two choices - to bail now, which meant taking a certain amount of pain, or carry on gaining speed and losing control, and rushing headlong into an even greater horror.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-78897638696862218412009-06-16T04:58:00.001-07:002009-06-16T05:04:00.248-07:00An Léitheoireacht agus Imní FáisnéiseUaireanta buaileann imní fáisnéise mé. Im' shúile, téann an domhan i méid, é ag fás agus ag borradh faoi mar a bheadh mórtas farraige ann. Agus tchím mé féin ag sleamhnú go tóin poill agus balla uisce ag briseadh orm, agus mé á bhá ag an aineolas agus ag oll-líon na gceisteanna.<br /><br />Nuair a thagann an bhail sin orm is ionann mé agus duine nach bhfuil ach seal beag fágtha aige agus é faoi bhrú a oiread eolais agus is féidir a chur ar an tsaol. Brú ama atá i gceist. Sílim go gcuirtear ina luí orm na babhtaí sin go bhfuil saol an duine teorannta, go bhfuil deireadh leis, i mbeagán focal, go bhfuil an duine básmhaire.<br /><br />Agus mé buailte ag an imní fáisnéise téim ar thóir an eolais mar bheadh fear mire ann. Ní féidir liom siopa nuachtáin a fhágáil gan gach nuachtán a bhfuil acu a cheannach. Braithním ar na hirisí, agus dar liom, bíonn fáisnéis agus eolas in achan cheann acu atá de dhíth orm. Ní hea go bhfuil an t-eolas seo spéisiúil - tá sé riachtanach. Gheobhainn bás gan é!<br /><br />Smaointím ar fhiche réimse eolais a bhfuil spéis agam iontu nó atá tábhachtach chun mion-eolas a chur ar an tsaol - ar an chruinne, ar stair an duine, ar bhealaigh an tsaoil: an stair, an eolaíocht, an tsocheolaíocht, an pholaitíocht, an eacnamaíocht, an t-airgeadas, agus ábhair eile nach iad. Ceol, cultúr, cócaireacht. Matamaitic, tíreolas, teangacha. Agus sa deireadh caillim smacht ar m'intinn féin, bíonn an t-easnamh ar m'eolas ró-mhór, agus briseann an balla uisce orm, agus ansin, caithim seal, cúpla lá gruama, ag smaoineadh go bhfuil teipthe orm mar dhuine. Agus sa deireadh, de réir a chéile, éiríonn an ghrian, scaipeann na scamaill, agus tagann lonrú ar an tsaol arís.<br /><br />Is ansin, agus loinnir ar an domhan, a thuigim nach féidir 'an t-iomlán' a thusicint. Agus níos fearr, gurb í an fhoghlaim an rud is tábhachtaí, agus ní an t-eolas féin : an turas seachas an ceann scríbe.<br /><br />Caithim amach na nuachtáin (go minic, nár léigh mé), agus fágaim na leabhair fháisnéise, nó neamh-fhicsin ar leataobh. Agus déanaim an rud a mhol cara liom : "má tá tú ag iarraidh eolas a chur ar an tsaol nó ar an duine, léigh leabhar maith ficsin nó filíochta". B'fhíor dó.<br /><br />Sin an rud a rinne mé cúpla mí ó shoin nuair a chuir mé an babhta d'imní fáisnéise tharam. Agus léigh mé rudaí a chuir iontas agus gliondar ar mo chroí: The Great Gatsby, Leaves of Grass, The Scarlet Letter, Stepping Stones, Out Stealing Horses, Cúirt an Mhéan Oíche, agus Huckleberry Finn.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-4769515539730857522009-06-04T08:47:00.000-07:002009-06-05T04:01:49.201-07:00O Heart!I'm in the office, it's 4pm, and I'm utterly exhausted. I blame that swollen, fatty, beating heart that I saw a few weeks ago when channel four screened live open heart surgery.<br /><br />Some of my readers will have seen that I suddenly lost my job 9 months ago. With it went the only exercise I ever get - cycling to work. For pretty much most of my adult life I've cycled to work or college. (In fact I only learned to drive a couple of years ago when Bean <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Thomaltaigh</span> announced that Mac <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Thomaltaigh</span> was on the way. It was an unstoppable train that no excuse could deflect- I had to learn to drive or else. I'm not, announced Bean <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Thomaltaigh</span>, in a tone that sounded final, going to drive myself to the maternity hospital. That was that).<br /><br />But even after I got my license I continued to cycle to work - and continued to enjoy it. Or most days anyway. Only a few times did I let the weather or a hangover serve as an excuse. And even then I preferred to take the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Luas</span> instead of the car. (You can listen to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">podcasts</span> easier on the train or walking. I find that when I'm driving anything engaging is lethal - my concentration drifts to whatever topic is at hand. I confess to shooting through an unnoticed red light once because someone said something interesting on the radio. Terrible I know, but there you are. To remove the temptation of anything engaging I now listen to the impeccably boring Mary Wilson on drive time.)<br /><br />A few months ago I was fortunate enough to find a job, but at a location about 50% further from home. My previous job was, I thought, at just about the right distance for cycling to work. I could tolerate a further kilometre or so but scarcely more. So when I began at the new place the bike never really figured. I would see it in the garage, and I'd often feel a faint nostalgia for it. The crisp mornings, the extra adrenalin from getting moving in the morning, the passing of motorists stuck in traffic. Though never far behind was the wet gear, the dark, damp winter mornings, the puncture. So in the end I found it easy enough to let the bike slip back, to let my cycling days drift back in memory, to shuffle all that back from a part of me that I still possess to a chapter of my history.<br /><br />Then came the swollen heart. There it was live on TV, open heart surgery. By the time I joined the spectacle, the whole chest had been cut open. There was nothing but a red-raw, rather unreal cavity which contained a rather large and shapeless pulsating muscle.<br /><br />They were about to repair a valve it seems, but in order to do so they had to drain and stop, yes stop the heart. When the artificial pump had been plumbed in they sucked out the remaining blood from the chambers of the heart and then the surgeon announced, in a way that someone would normally speak of a farm animal, that he was now going to put it to sleep. They poured a large jug of ice-cold saline solution over the heart, then poured and poured again. And all the while the vigour just ebbed away from the once impressive throbbing. Slower, slower and weaker until it just lay there like a fresh steak. Then they drained off the saline solution and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">proceded</span> to repair the heart. (I didn't, perhaps couldn't, watch the <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">nitty</span>-gritty of that part of the episode but I heard later that they restarted the heart by simply letting it warm up, but that <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">occasionally</span> they have to give it a squeeze or two. At its most basic the life force is as mechanical as a coiled spring).<br /><br />But it was the fat around the heart that shook me. This gentleman's heart was wrapped in a swathe of fat, big soft, globular, sinister fat. And I remembered I had put on several kilograms since I had put aside my bike, so I thought of my own heart, and I imagined that it too had become choked in fat. I could see it in my chest, tired, squelching in that same horrid fat, struggling to press the next <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">beat-full</span> of blood around my body. There it was, my life-force, straining to keep going, but not even <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">getting</span> a chance. I had to do something to help it.<br /><br />And that's what made me return to my bike and make that first exhausting journey today, the first I hope of many. And by this I hope to support and fortify my own beating heart, to tell it, O great indomitable life-force, be strong, keep going, beat on.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-79305518900813320772009-05-28T01:04:00.000-07:002009-05-28T01:08:34.229-07:00Krugman on the Great Recession<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />"By most accounts, most projections say that the European Union is going to have a somewhat deeper recession this year than the United States. So in terms of macromanagement, they're actually doing a poor job, and there are various reasons for that: the European Central Bank is too conservative, Europeans have been too slow to do fiscal stimulus. But the human suffering is going to be much greater on this side of the Atlantic because Europeans don't lose their health care when they lose their jobs. They don't find themselves with essentially no support once their trivial unemployment check has fallen off. We have nothing underneath. When Americans lose their jobs, they fall into the abyss. That does not happen in other advanced countries, it does not happen, I want to say, in civilized countries.</span> <p style="font-style: italic;">And there are people who say we should not be worrying about things like universal health care in the crisis, we need to solve the crisis. But this is exactly the time when the importance of having a decent social safety net is driven home to everybody, which makes it a very good time to actually move ahead on these other things."<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></span></p><p style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family:courier new;">Paul Krugman, 2009 Nobel Laureate in Economics</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></p><p style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /></p>Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-69655994437080366372009-05-21T00:32:00.000-07:002009-05-21T01:01:50.158-07:00Ireland and the Children: Slavery and TortureSystemic torture and slavery of children by religious <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">institutions</span>; Callous indifference and collusion by the state; and a society silent and in denial. This is the essence of the recent Report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse.<br /><br />The<a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0521/1224247034262.html"> Irish Times <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">editorial</span> strikes</a> a <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">poignant</span> and <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">thoughtful</span> tone, and if you have time to read nothing else, give it a browse.<br /><br />I am brought back to the story of poor Peter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Tyrell</span>, who spent seven years in the awful hell that was <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Letterfrack</span> industrial school in the 1930s. Shortly after leaving Letterfrack, Tyrrell joined the British army and fought in the second World War. He was captured, but described the German prisoner-of-war camp as a tea party compared with Letterfrack. His experience in the school caused him <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">irreparable</span> damage as a human being. In the 60s he tried to speak out and made several attempts to raise the issue with the authorities in Ireland. But he was stone-walled.<br /><br />In 1967, with no indication that anyone had taken his accounts of brutality and rape in Letterfrack seriously, Peter Tyrell committed suicide by setting himself on fire in London's Hampstead Heath. He was so badly burned that it took London police almost a year to identify his body. They traced the unburned corner of a postcard in his pocket to his friend Dr Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, himself a noted campaigner for reform in this area. Sheehy-Skeffington was able to confirm that he had indeed sent the postcard, and that the body was that of Peter Tyrell.<br /><br />When Letterfrack finally closed in 1974, the Secretary of the Department of Education sent a glowing letter of profuse thanks and praise to the Christian Brothers. The Department, he said, was deeply appreciative of the great care given by generations of Brothers to the boys at the institution.<br /><br />Below is an earlier post I made in response to a piece by Mary Raftery some years ago when she began to delve into the whole child abuse scandal.<br /><br /> ***************************************************<br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Mary </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" style="font-family:arial;">Raftery</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> recently likened the dreadful experience of Peter </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" style="font-family:arial;">Tyrell</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> to that of </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" style="font-family:arial;">Primo</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> Levi . After hearing extracts from </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" style="font-family:arial;">Tyrell's</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> book on the radio the other night, I was struck by the aptness of </span><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" style="font-family:arial;">Raftery's</span><span style="font-family:arial;"> comparison </span><p style="font-family:arial;">Both men, through no fault of their own, found themselves locked in a nightmare. They suffered appalling brutality and humiliation. They were stripped of their dignity and lived in sheer terror.</p> <p style="font-family:arial;">The comparison doesn't end there. In both cases society closed its eyes. The extraordinary way in which a combination of hatred and cowardice gave rise to collusion in Nazi Germany is well documented. But if it is true that ordinary Germans knew well about the horrors inside Dachau, here in Ireland ordinary people knew about places like <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Letterfrack</span>. Worse still, they colluded in it. A <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">garda</span> would assist in rounding up boys for industrial schools. A farmer would hand over escapees that he found on his land. All in full knowledge of the cruel regimes to which the boys were being returned. Politicians rounded on anyone - and they were few - who dared to speak out. The Catholic Church, cruel and tyrannical, defended its regime with ferocity.</p> <p face="arial">As Peter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_15">Tyrell</span> sobbed after his brutal drubbings, he must have wondered what kind of people lived in the little cottages all around. He must have asked himself how a Mass-going community could allow an enclave of brutality in its midst. His heart must have been continually breaking as he wondered what he had done to deserve this cruelty.</p> <p style="font-family: arial;">Levi suffered a similar collapse in his faith in mankind. But at least he had the satisfaction of seeing the demise of the sick regime that was responsible for his suffering. Poor Peter <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_16">Tyrell</span> had been brave enough to raise his voice against the tyranny only to be shouted down.</p><span style="font-family:arial;"> In his quest for justice he met a stone wall, thick and steadfast like that of a church. We are still dismantling that wall and it is essential that we try to understand how it was built.</span>Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-79210780450158239192009-05-14T07:05:00.001-07:002009-05-14T07:08:46.905-07:00Pondering Political ReformThis is a response to a <a href="http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2009/0514/1224246456490.html">thought provoking article</a> on political reform which appeared in the Irish Times. Dr Murphy raises a number of interesting points which have been missed by a series of previous commmentators on this subject over recent months. Notably, she brings up the subject of whether the Irish people have an appetite for serious poltical reform.<br /><br />In all probability they don't. First, people have an affection for our current system, and they would be wary of proposals to push them from familiar territory. Second, while there is widespread anger at the way in which our political (and financial) leadership have contributed to our economic destruction, most of the anger is probably directed at individuals (bank execs or senior ministers) or parties (FF) or organisations (the banks, the regulator). Third, most voters have probably not given much thought to the question of how the quality of our government and leadership is a function of our political system and indeed our political culture. As Dr Murphy says in relation to some changes, such as the move from the current electoral system, even political scientists cannot agree on the likely consequences.<br /><br />That the electorate does not pine for change, however, is not a reason for our political leaders to shy away from the subject. Perhaps if the subject can be opened up enough - by contributions such as that of Dr Murphy - then the debate could gather enough momentum to make its way onto what might be called the national agenda.<br /><br />Dr Murphy points out that any significant change, whether it requires constitutional change or not, would have pros and cons that would have to be carefully weighed up. Yet I think it is fair to say that our political machinery has shown itself wanting for the complexities of twentieth century government. In that context I think it is time for a public debate on how the quality of our governance, the very effectiveness of our democracy, is hindered by the nature of our political system - from local to national in all its facets. In terms of effectiveness I am thinking about the quality of both executive decisions and legislation; transparency, responsiveness, and accountability; the ability to form and carry out effective long term strategies; the degree to which the system allows for sensible regional development; and so on.<br /><br />I would agree with Dr Murphy that the Irish people hold dear the easy access which they have to their elected representatives (though for all its charm, I doubt if this has as much merit as we imagine). But having said that, there must be some formula for tiered government possible which can retain reasonably good access and yet allows sufficient distance for decisions that are in the national interest. And it should not be forgotten that direct access, without sufficent transparency and accountability can be more of a negative force than a positive one.<br /><br />Dr Murphy's warning rings true that says certain reforms, such as a better scrutiny of legislation or improved executive accountability likely have down sides in terms of speed or simplicity. But that shouldn't daunt us. Speed isn't always of the essence, and it is hard to see how effective government in today's hideously convoluted world, would not itself be rather complex.<br /><br />In short, I think the innards of our political machinery are badly worn and have evidently let us down badly. We need a refit in order to make the thing fit for purpose in the world of the twenteth century. The optimist in me believes that as a people we are ciapable of remaking our system to deliver better results. But after a moment's pause, as my thoughts drift from the mechanics and theory of change to the practical reality of political inertia, voter apathy, and party self-interest, my belief in the possibility of change dissolves.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-80163097223780292042009-05-12T06:52:00.001-07:002009-05-12T06:56:44.317-07:00Lee the Candidate<div class="entry"> <p>No small amount of furore surrounded George Lee’s putting himself forward as a candidate in the forthcoming by-election. It made big news with his former employer for obvious reasons, not least that he gave them practically no notice. The story made headlines everywhere. Lee was talked about in canteens and snugs and both up and downmarket coffee shops. Sunday paper and Irish Times columnists weighed in. And of course the political blogosphere revved up with its spin on Lee’s sudden emergence.</p> <p><span id="more-5627"></span></p> <p>The initial burst of excitment subsided, giving way to a more sober analysis which in turn is now giving way to less generous comment which is beginning to be laced with the Irish version of cynicism; that is to say, cynicisim with wee doses of begrudgery and ill wishes! (though I accept RTE should have a tighter rule book and Lee a better awareness of the ethical issues in the step between journalism and poltics)</p> <p>When all is said and done I welcome Lee’s decision to contest a Dáil seat. The reason is simple and has nothing to do with how early Lee, with vetinary precision, diagnosed the ill health of our Celtic Tiger. Nor has it to do with his politics (After all he has joined Fine Gael!). Lee is unlikely to suggest any major change in the balance of power in Irish capitalism. He’s more likely to advocate more of the same model, just done better and with tigher ethical standards of governance.</p> <p>So the reason I welcome Lee is neither politcs nor economics as such. I welcome Lee because what Irish politics desperately lacks is the ability to attract people who have seasoned experience and tested competence in diverse fields. Recall, we live in a country where, owing to parish allegiances and our peculiar political culture, people are elected for who they are, not what they know or how they are qaulified. Our ‘top three’, Cowen, Lenihan and Coughlan inherited their politcal dynasties. And in the two upcoming by-elections, one is being contested by the brother of our former Taoiseach and the other by the son of the former occupant. In other words, our political culture has a particular capacity for replicating the same genes over and over. (And I want to say, the two men involved have every right to run. And there are other candidates in the fold).</p> <p>But I say Lee’s decision is positive if it can represent even a slight change in the profile of those who run for public office. Surely it would be for the better if we could see accountants, architects, business people, community activits, pyschologists, etc. etc. making their various expertise and experience available to help govern the country. Yes, we have lawyers, teachers, doctors, accountants, etc already, but the bulk of them are those who trained but came from a political background and entered politics early. I am talking about finding highly successful and talented people — from any field — and getting them to switch to take on elected office.</p> <p>Back to Lee. The hype surrounding his announcement showed how truly unusual it is for a well known figure to enter the fray. And yet in terms of what he represents the whole thing was vastly overdone. Vincent Browne lamented that Lee has now tied his great talent in the chains of party dogma and his contribution to this country in consequence will be greatly diminished. What a load of rubbish!</p> <p>First: Are we saying that George Lee’s early call on the Tiger tells us that he is some kind of one in a million guru whose wise, independent voice is now needed to guide us to safety? The truth is that almost everyone knew what Lee knew. And those who didn’t were willfully ignoring the reality. We had the OECD, ESRI, IMF, National Competitiveness Council and swathes of independent (?) economists studying our economy and giving us warnings and advice. (In fact, all Lee was doing was reading these reports and passing on the message - can no-one else be found to do that?).</p> <p>Second, Browne implys that the best or wisest voices should be kept out of the political system (so they have no direct access to power). But locking out wisdom - as our political culture does — sits tightly among the chief causes of our political paralysis.</p> <p>And that is why we need new voices, new talent, a wider net for drawing in seasoned experts from all walks of life, into the heart of our moribund political clique. but we need many more if they are to sweep into our system and blow it open.</p> </div>Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-39847635520868051922009-05-06T12:48:00.000-07:002009-06-05T00:43:08.185-07:00Job Loss V<a href="http://fichefocal.blogspot.com/2008/09/job-loss-part-i.html">Job Loss I</a> - Shock<br /><a href="http://fichefocal.blogspot.com/2008/09/job-loss-part-ii.html">Job Loss II</a>- Acceptance<br /><a href="http://fichefocal.blogspot.com/2008/11/job-loss-part-iii.html">Job Loss III</a>- Reflection<br /><a href="http://fichefocal.blogspot.com/2008/12/it-was-second-round-interview-non.html">Job Loss IV</a>- LumenTomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-802872038675042201.post-40433995998964548122009-05-04T05:49:00.000-07:002009-05-04T05:52:27.607-07:00Cuckoo CallWhen I was about four on my granny's farm, the cuckoo called.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">What is that? </span><br />A wee bird.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And where is it?</span><br />My father pointed, and from low down I thought he pointed at the sliver of moon.<br /><br />Ever since when I see the sliver of moon I hear the cuckoo call.Tomaltachhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06472288290882778889noreply@blogger.com0