Gerry Adams on the Marian Finucane Show

   I caught only part of that interview today of Gerry Adams on the Marian Finucane Show. What I heard followed the usual pattern, much of it about Adams’s past in or not in the IRA. And there was some stuff about him having a holiday home in Donegal, which I gathered by inference is something you’re not supposed to have, and about him having been treated in a private medical clinic in the US, which apparently is something you’re not supposed to do either, and where did you get the big money for that anyway?

But while those were interesting questions and the way Adams dealt with them was interesting, I thought the key moment of the interview was when Adams said a word I don’t think I’ve heard on Finucane’s show before. I can’t remember what the question was but I remember the Sinn Féin president’s answer.

He was talking about the day the British Army came to his family home and arrested, I think he said, his father and his brother. “They wrecked the place completely.  They shit on the couch, they urinated on the curtains, they smashed religious pictures and statues. They wrecked the place completely”.

I’ve put that in quotation marks although I’m not sure if those were his exact words. But that was the essence of what he said. 

I thought it was remarkable because it brought alive, maybe for the first time to a southern audience, what life was like for many nationalists and republicans during the years of the Troubles. Everyone or nearly everyone has a home. And most people have small things - pictures, ornaments, furniture - that they’re fond of and sometimes proud of. What Adams’s sketch of what happened to his parents' home did was ask an unspoken question: How would you react if some people came into your home and did that?  To which he might have added “And how would you feel if 30,000 British soldiers took over South Dublin?” 

I do hope that helps bring home to southern listeners the sense of helpless rage that so many people must have felt, after being paid a visit by British squaddies. Of course, in comparison to the lives that were taken on all sides during the Troubles, the trashing of a house is nothing. But it’s still an interesting question to ponder: How would you react if that happened to your house?

(I know I shouldn’t but my inner teacher demands I do: the past tense of “shit”, Gerry,  is “shat”, not “shit”. Just sayin’, like.) 
Here's the interview link - thanks to Paul Evans : e http://www.rhttp://www.rte.ie/radio1/marian-finucane/

Normal service etc

Apologies if you've recently posted a comment that doesn't show. There's some glitch in the system which I'm hoping will be repaired swiftly.  Meanwhile, take out your 2-minute packet of popcorn, settle back in your two-minute seat and have a good laugh/nod approvingly/ shout obscenities at the clip below...

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/4thoughttv/4od

Michael Noonan: man of analogies

I expect you have an Economics degree. You haven’t? Me neither. Which means we’re probably equally confused by the deal the twenty-six counties has just brought back from Brussels.

Michael Noonan at a press conference  yesterday explained what it was and what it wasn’t.  It wasn’t what Pearse Doherty said it was - kicking the can further down the road, agreeing not to pay off a huge chunk of debt more or less right now but agreeing to pay off a huge chunk of debt several decades later. 

Michael used two homely comparisons that an economic illiterate like myself can at least try to grasp. The first was “Supposing I said to Pearse ‘I’ll lend you €1000 and you can pay me back next month or  in forty years time' - which do you think he’d take?”  I could follow that. Pearse would take the second option, because in forty years time even youthful Pearse mightn’t be around. I had a private thought that Pearse’s children and grandchildren might be around and mightn't thank him, but I pushed that out of my mind, seeing Michael hadn’t mentioned it. 

The other homely analogy was with, yes, Michael’s home. He explained about how he’d bought a house forty or something years ago, and it cost him £3,000. So he paid a manageable mortgage for several decades, but when it came to paying off the principal sum, it was just a month of his wages as a teacher. Inflation, you see, after forty years, making what looks big potatoes forty years ago turn out to be small spuds today.

I found those two analogies helpful as long as I didn’t start thinking around them. The “I lend you €1000” one, for example. Great in one way - but the €1000 is still going to have to be paid off, so I’m saddling my yet-unborn children/grandchildren with my debt.  Mmm. Don’t like the sound of that much. And by the way, if you get a loan from people, don’t they usually ask you to pay interest on it? My bank does, anyway. Funny Michael didn’t mention the interest. He probably forgot, what with all that chatting up and out-manoeuvring all them foreigners.

The one about the house is a good one too - even with the housing crash, we still marvel at the price we paid for our house thirty or forty years ago, compared with what even a modest house costs now. But then I began to think about the many ‘How To Manage Your Money’ columns in weekend magazines that I’d read over the years, and how they’d all urged me to get shot of debt - on my credit card, on my car, on my house - as quickly as possible, because interest piles up the longer you leave it. In fact, I remember doing a tot-up on my own house and discovering that with interest, I was paying more than twice as much for it. And I remember not too long ago - oh happy day! - when  I finally got finished with the goddam mortgage, and the relief of taking that particular financial albatross from around my neck. 

So I was just wondering, like: has Michael done a tot-up of how much money the Irish people will be shelling out in interest over the years? And we’re really talking years and years here - I’ll certainly be dead before the debt is finally paid, and chances are you will be too, except you’ve got a face still spattered with adolescent acne, in which case why aren’t you out having fun instead of reading this?

I’ve thought and thought about it and I’ve decided that there’s a curse on the Irish people. One minute they’re one of the richest countries in the world, the next they’re landing head-first in the financial basement. And it’s going to take until 2056, I think Michael said,  before finally getting out of that basement. So here’s the thing: what did the Irish people do to deserve all this suffering and deprivation, to be handed on from generation to generation? Well, nothing really. It was the banks and the big developers who somehow landed the twenty-six counties’ people in this awful financial debt. So what else would you call it, if  from earning a decent wage you’re suddenly told you’re up against the wall and you and the fruit of your loins will have to start paying huuuuuge sums, even though some other sons-of-bitches ran the debt up, not you? And the government manages to present this information in a way that makes it look like a huge success! 

I think Michael should take on that curse idea as well as the lending-€1000-to-Pearse and his Me-And-My-House story. Blame it all on a wicked fairy, Michael. We’re as likely to believe that as the line we’re presently being spun. 

Scot Nats: from vision to nuts-and-bolts.

Well, well, well. You have to hand it to the Scot Nats. Not only have they screwed an independence referendum out of David Cameron, to happen next year, but they’ve now provided a detailed programme of what would happen until Scotland formally declared itself an independent nation. And that would be? The Spring of 2016. To quote our former President of Ireland: wow. And wow again.

Needless to say,  the opponents of the Scot Nats, the Labour party and what’s left of the Tories, are full of condemnation for this sort of talk. It’s a distraction, they say, from the real concerns people have, which are economic.

Well, if they’re right, the Scottish people will ignore all that planning-for -independence  and let the Scots Nats know so at the polls next year, when their independence referendum is held. Of course, Labour and the Tories in Scotland assume that the Scottish populace are incapable of thinking of and dealing with two things at the same time; that they can be and are concerned for their jobs, for housing, for education - all the bread and butter stuff - while at the same time having a real and passionate interest in whether they should run their own country or not. 

All of this, of course, will have considerable repercussions for us in the north of Ireland. Alex Salmond has given the Scottish population a two or was it three-year run at the independence referendum. If we can manage to  um, screw assent from the lovely Theresa Villiers, then we’d be having our own independent Ireland referendum around, um, Spring of 2016. Should the Scots vote in favour of independence, they will be putting in place their full independence in the same year and at the same time of year that we’ll be (i) Commemorating the men and women of the 1916 Rising; and (ii) Looking across that narrow strip of water and noting how the removal of Scotland will have turned Great Britain into Not-Quite-So-Great Britain. 

All this is predicated on the Scots voting for independence next year. If the polls are to believed, at present 47% of Scots don’t want constitutional change and 32% do.  So are the Scot Nats not counting their cake before the thing is even baked?

Well not necessarily. They have over a year in which to turn around those figures, if as I say they’re accurate. There will be the mother and father of all debates about the issue in Scotland,and assuming that the Scottish people are open-minded and prepared to look at the facts, a year could seem a very very long time in politics, especially for Labour and the Tories. 

Should Scotland vote for independence? I think they should, not because   I’ve done the math, as the Yanks say, but because I think grown-up nations should be allowed to act grow-up. But the worst that could happen from the point of view of pro-independence Scots is that the case for independence will have been looked at carefully by Scots, compared with the present arrangement, and a decision arrived at. That’s so much more adult an approach than dealing in slogans or pointing to media polls.  

And what’s sauce for the Scots goose is surely sauce for the Irish gander?  If the Scots were to make decisions by opinion polls, they’d scrap their plans for implementation of  independence and they’d bin the whole idea of a referendum as well.  But being a sensible people, they know that decisions are best made in the ballot box. And that its verdict, whatever it is, will be respected by all Scots.  

Would it be asking too much that our border poll should follow similar lines and after careful and extended discussion, the choice made by the people and the democratic verdict of the people accepted?  History offers us a dusty answer to that one, I’m afraid. 

Bluff, the border and Nigel

Just heard a very informative interview on Raidió Uladh/Radio Ulster. Or two, I suppose, since Karen Patterson was interviewing  Nigel Dodds and Mitchel McLaughlin along side each other. The subject, of course, was this poll the BBC has conducted, which shows, according to the BBC website, 65% of people here would vote to stay in the UK if a  border poll was held tomorrow. Pretty convincing total indeed.

But that wasn't the informative bit. That came when we heard Mitchel McLaughlin calling firmly for a real referendum poll, since BBC or  Belfast Telegraph  or other polls don't actually count when it comes to realpolitik. That's the point where the first interesting thing happened: Karen turned to Nigel and asked him why he didn't "call Sinn Féin's bluff" and have a poll. That's a phrase the media have conceived and which they use with regularity  - "Sinn Féin's bluff" on a border poll. In other words, the Shinners don't really want a poll. Give that a bit of thought and you might see a bit of wishful thinking. A border poll would force parties to lay out, with facts and figures as well as calls to adult political responsibility, maitre chez nous and who knows what other arguments for and against. In short, the Shinners would have the border issue on the agenda, which at present it's not. So Karen and all you other hacks, don't call something a  bluff except you've incontrovertible evidence to justify so doing. Otherwise people might think you were being a bit lop-sided.

The second informative bit came when Mitchel McLaughlin said that, were the border poll to be held, he and his party would abide by that decision, whatever it might be. Karen then asked Nigel if he would respect the outcome and Nigel said...Do you know, I do believe Nigel ducked the question? Instead we got a smokescreen about Catholics voting for the DUP and a very content six counties and an end to pie in the sky. Now why would Nigel want to duck a question like that? Aren't they a democratic party? It's the D in their name, after all. Well, it might go back to the unionist response to the democratic decision on flag-flying over Belfast City Hall, it might even go back to the signing of the Ulster Covenant. History shows that unionists have a track-record of strong advocacy for democratic politics until the decision goes against them. At that point, you tend to get violence or threats of violence if things aren't arranged according to their wishes. There's a word for that approach to politics. It's called fascism.

Crucify him! Crucify him!

There are few things as funny as the English nation with a piece of moral indignation between its teeth. Chris Huhne may struggle to see the funny side of that but he’s certainly experiencing it at the moment. 

Huhne was  got for speeding ten years ago and claimed his wife (now ex-) was the driver, not him.  He consistently said it wasn’t him guv, until yesterday, when he ‘fessed up. The judge has told him in so many words he can expect a prison term. Nick Clegg and every other politician and pundit is nodding wisely and saying Huhne's sins have found him out. 

Oh come on. I know speeding’s a bad thing. I should do - a couple of years back I was sent for a day of re-education and got fined for doing 37 mph in a 30mph zone. And it’s true - speed can kill. But just as I’d have been outraged if I’d been landed in the clink for that offence, I think the same applies to Huhne. I expect he did something terrible like lie in the witness box or told the House of Commons a porky pie - but does he deserve prison for that? They’d have to expand the jails dramatically to accommodate all the politicians who have lied over the past ten years. 

But none of that matters. The Great British nation has got a principle clamped in its gob and is galloping madly towards a place called Retribution. God spare us all from such hypocritical bastards. 

Where does it hurt?

There’s a danger when you feel strongly about something that you'll see attacks and opponents where none exist. Which is why I try to check my initial reaction to a lot of the things I encounter in the media.  Last Thursday was an example.

I was watching The View, the BBC’s successor to Hearts and Minds. (Ah, taximan, where are you now? Endlessly prowling the streets of Belfast, talking to yourself...)  John O’Dowd was on with Edwin Poots and Mark Carruthers was interviewing them about Gerry Adams’s apology in the Dáil for the killing of Garda Jerry McCabe. For years,  Sinn Féin have been criticised for their claim that the killers of McCabe should have been released under the Good Friday Agreement. But they weren’t, probably because it was kept in the public consciousness by the southern media in a way that no other death in the Troubles was.  Much ink was spent on condemning the heartlessness of what happened,  so  you might have expected that Gerry Adams’s apology would have been welcomed as a sign that the Sinn Féin leader and his party shared at least to some extent, the feelings of horror and dismay that the killing evoked. But not so. Since that apology was made, Adams has instead been the focus of relentless criticism.  The View  quickly fell into the same pattern.

John O’Dowd was asked in so many words to explain Gerry Adams’s hypocrisy in doing such a thing. O’Dowd responded by explaining (or trying to explain) that apologies and dealing with past hurt should involve all those who had suffered.  Edwin Poots was then asked his thoughts and he in so many words rejected Gerry Adams’s hypocrisy in offering an apology, when he hadn’t apologised for all the IRA-related deaths in the north. 

It’s at this point that I had to check my initial reaction. And then check it again. And a third time. Because it seemed to me that Carruthers was grilling O’Dowd  but letting Poots simply join him in the grilling rather than pressing him on the need for apology to be many-sided. What I saw was a seriously lop-sided interview, with BBC balance conspicuous by its absence.

As I say, there’s always a danger that when you’ve strong feelings on a topic, you see attacks and opponents where none exist. I know Mark Carruthers and I’ve always found him a pleasant, friendly guy. But it still seems to me that The View  last week was one-eyed where it really should have been two-eyed. Tell me I’m wrong.