Of starfish, masochism and a final call

OK people. Der Tag minus 2 and counting. Forty-eight hours from now will find me girding what are left of my loins and heading towards my native town of Omagh. Shortly after getting there I will force my ageing body into two hours of serious pain which will end either with a discreet funeral (no flowers please) or my form collapsed in a corner of Omagh Leisure Centre sucking on a free bottle of Lucozade and trying not to slip into unconsciousness.

Either way it'll all be in, as they say, a good cause. I'm indulging in this masochism to raise some money for Trocaire, who do sterling work in the developing world. OK, OK, I know - it's all only scratching the surface of things, governments should be driving global reform, trade should be organised so that charities to developing countries become superfluous. But they aren't and it isn't.

It's like the man who came on this young boy on the beach.  There are hundreds of starfish hpelessly stranded in the sand and he's picking them up one by slow one and throwing them back in the water. The man says "I can see you've a kind heart but you do realise  there are thousands, maybe millions of these stranded starfish all along the coastline? What you're doing will really make no difference".  The kid picks up another starfish and lobs it back into the sea before replying: "Well, it made a difference to that one".

So please, please, PLEASE click your way to the donation site. You'll see my goal is £1000 - not a lot of starfish there - and I'm still that bit short of it. If you don't want to think of your contribution as pushing me over the line, think of it as pushing me over a cliff. OK? But. Just. Do. It. You'll be literally saving/making lives that, without you, would struggle to get through another day.

The site is   http://www.trocaire.org/sponsor-me/judejcollins/omagh-half-marathon

Time is running out. I'm in your hands.

I'm doing this for you. Honestly.

It’s a clenched-teeth laugh, the way politicians try to dress up self-interest as selflessness/ sacrifice in the party’s/country’s interests/ a decision taken with a considerable degree of reluctance.

Take David Milliband. He’s quitting British politics and going to the US.  His wife is American, both his children were born in America. But nice young(ish) David still makes it sound as though he’s clearing off for the benefit of his brother and the Labour Party.  It seems he ‘passionately’ wanted Labour to return to power and that he’s ‘proud’ of his brother Ed’s leadership. (David’s wife, on the other hand, is mooted to have described Ed winning the Labour leadership as an act of ‘unforgivable treachery’.)  While David’s been kicking his heels on the back benches of the House of Commons, he's managed to make near to £1million (on top of his MP's salary) on the speech-giving circuit  (£20,000 a pop, apparently). But if you think that's nice money, get this.  In the country he’s heading for, CEOs in big companies earn an average of nearly $13 million. You don’t need to be a mathematical whizz-kid to spot the difference. David’s on record as saying he felt he could be “most helpful to the [Labour] Party on the front line, in South Shields and around the country”. It’d be reasonable to assume that pulling  an annual $13 million salary would be even more helpful to the David Milliband household. 

Meanwhile, Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness were in Downing Street, trying to persuade David Cameron to let them lower the the corporation tax here. The south of Ireland has a 12 1/2% rate, as you probably know, while the north here is saddled with the British rate of  24%. Again, you don’t need to be a mathematical genius to see which is more attractive to investors. Cameron didn’t say yes - he said I’ll tell you after the Scottish referendum, which is well over a year away. Did he say that because he’s concerned for our economy here in the north? Uh-uh. He did it, not surprisingly, in Britain’s interests - or more specifically in England’s interests. Peter and Martin were disappointed, it’s said. They shouldn’t be. Yes, they’re right that a corporation tax of 12 1/2% , like that enjoyed by the south would have been beneficial here in the north. But surely they weren't  surprised that Cameron acted with an eye to England/Britain’s welfare rather than that of the north. Self-interest: that’s what David Milliband went for, that’s what David Cameron went for, that’s how the political world works.

Which is another good reason for us running our own affairs. 

Immigrants - what a shower, eh?

I’ve just come off the Nolan show on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster and I’m still hopping mad. Not because of the show itself but because of the topic. It was David Cameron’s immigration speech yesterday. 

David McNarry, who quit the UUP and, in search of a home, found UKIP, was also on, doing his best to make a case for (i) a lock-down on immigration into Britain; (ii) an exit from the EU by Britain. Both daft proposals, but UKIP have got the wind up Cameron, especially since the Eastleigh by-election, when UKIP took a massive 14% bite out of the vote. 

Cameron in response used his tough-on-immigrants speech - not unlike Enoch Powell’s infamous rivers-of-blood speech in 1968.   The impression left by Cameron’s speech was that immigrants were entering the UK and sucking on its life-blood through abuse of its social services. What's more he, Cameron,  was the man who would put a stop to it.

As is often the case with the British prime minister, pure waffle. The facts from his own government departments contradict him. Contrary to Cameron and popular mythology, immigrants to Britain over the past ten years are not welfare scroungers. Of the two million immigrants , a total of some 13,000 claimed Job Seekers’s Allowance - about half the rate of the indigenous population. Contrary to Cameron and popular mythology, immigrants are not a burden on a sorely-stretched NHS.  In fact, most immigrants are healthy young people who have little reason to use the NHS. All of 0.06% of the NHS budget goes on immigrants. 

Their contribution to the British economy, meanwhile, is considerable. The people who come to that country are in the vast majority of cases intent on securing a job. When they do, they pay taxes, they help revive the economy, they add energy and hard-work to the drive to bring Britain out of recession. And as the British population continues to age, they add their number as young people to support the increasing number of old people.

On the Nolan Show, David McNarry said he hoped I wasn’t associating him or UKIP with “rivers of blood or anything like that”. I didn’t get a chance to answer that so let me do so now. I am.  Powell’s speech and Cameron’s speech and the thrust of UKIP policy is anti-immigration. That’s not just misguided. It’s dangerous. 

Irony? No thanks, we're English

The English comment from time to time on the American inability to do irony but from time to time they show themselves numb to its existence. There’s a good example in this morning’s Guardian. The headline is ‘England-only MP votes needed for English legislation, commission says’ and it’s a report which looks at that old chestnut, the West Lothian question. Why, for example, should Scottish MPs be able to vote in the House of Commons on an issue affecting England but not themselves? This of course is what happens when you have devolution, so a commission headed by Sir William McKay says there should be restrictions on the rights of Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish MPs to influence or determine purely English legislation. It seems 81% of English voters either agree or agree strongly that Scottish MPs shouldn’t be allowed vote on English laws. 

You can see their point. No country likes to feel that foreigners are making decisions for them. The article goes on to remember how this controversy erupted a number of times in the past - “Once when John Reid, the Labour MP for Hamilton and Bellshill became English health secretary in 2003”.  You could see why the English were cheesed off - Scottish health was a matter for the Scots in the Scottish parliament, but English health was a matter for the English and the Scots in the UK parliament. 

And the irony? John Reid was Northern Ireland Secretary of State from 2001-2003. In other words, the people of the North of Ireland were having their affairs looked after by a Scottish MP. Although the Scottish bit was a coincidence - mainly they’ve been English. Humphrey Atkins, Peter (Clementine) Brooke, Douglas  Hurd, Tom King, Peter Mandelson, Theresa Villiers...To list more is beyond my energies. But while Northern Irish MPs are as much use in the Commons as a gaggle of eunuchs in a harem, the (usually English) Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has all sorts of powers -including the power to send people to prison.  Ask Marian Price if you don’t believe me. Meanwhile the scorching irony of the  situation - the endless procession of English/Scottish/Welsh Secretaries of State flying in to decide the affairs of the people on this side of the water - just passes the English by. 

You’d laugh if it wasn’t so serious.

Education? Mike'll fix it

So.  Now it can be told: Mike Nesbitt is going to sort education here. “Give it to us and we’ll fix it” he declares.  Mmm. That merits some thought. 

Firstly, is education here broken? I don’t think so.  I’ve seen the inside of more schools and classrooms here than most people, and  by and large, the pupils here are being served by teachers whose efforts sometimes qualify as heroic and habitually qualify as organised and intelligent. Which bit needs fixing, Mike? Anything to do with the odious 11+? 

Or maybe it’s dealing with the pressing problem of empty school places. I saw and heard John O’Dowd talk about same this morning on the telly and he made perfect sense. He said when he would decide which primary schools would close, he made clear that economics and numbers were only one or two among a range of criteria, that the schools which seemed under threat would have an opportunity, along with the surrounding community, to make the case for their continuance, and that only in the light of those conversations would he decide next autumn which would have to close. Sounded eminently reasonable to me. Maybe Mike things differently.

Of course the UUP leader is the product of the grammar school + Oxbridge system, which existed during his time and still exists to cream off the quality and the devil take the hindmost. A lot of working-class parents have been brain-washed into believing that their children “wouldn’t be fit” for the intellectual demands of grammar school, and the general population of the UK has been brainwashed into believing that an Oxbridge education is as good as it gets. In both cases, total balls. Ability responds to a whole range of elements, including expectation, support and self-belief. The child who was a bumbling  C-  can become an A+ or an E, depending on what and who surrounds him or her. As for Oxford and Cambridge colleges, many of the lecturers there  are so busy doing their research that their teaching is appalling, their rapport with students non-existent and their famous one-on-one seminars with students little beyond the student reading aloud an essay s/he’s written and the lecturer/prof  pointing out weaknesses. There are exceptions, of course, as there are in any situation; but the notion of Oxbridge invariably giving students a stimulating and wonderful education is a dreaming-spires myth. 

So I’d suggest Mike’s educational background might be more of a liability than anything else, in terms of the fixing-education issue.  Certainly he's done and said nothing so far to suggest he’d see to the heart of things where others have failed. No, what Mike’s doing is trying to grab at a Big Idea and use that as a life-belt, because he can feel his party and himself being whirled relentlessly towards the plug-hole of history. Let the UUP fix our education system? I wouldn’t let them fix a puncture on my bike.

Learning Irish: talk about pointless

What do you think of Gerry Adams’s Irish? You know, when he stands up in the Dail and talks for the first minute or two in the Irish language, before lapsing into English? 

Some people like it. More say they find it embarrassing - so clumsy, so unmusical, so...Northern. Get that last bit? Denounce the use of Irish because of the accent of the speaker. Especially if it's northern.

Although I can see why the nay-sayers say nay. Gerry Adams’s rumbling bass  in truth is not the most musical of sounds, and compared to the Irish of, say, Michael D Higgins, it’s primitive. But so what? God gave us all a voice (and  face) with which we're stuck.  Gerry Adams’s Irish may be unmusicaI or sometimes halting but it’s a damned sight better than my Irish. Or maybe even yours. Follow the criticisms lobbed at his Irish to their logical conclusion, you end up saying if someone can’t speak glittering, graceful Irish they shouldn’t speak it at all. Which is a bone-headed thing to say in any language.

Meanwhile that man of wisdom Kevin Myers was last week lamenting in his column that he hadn’t been able to appear on an RTÉ’ programme last week which examined the Irish language. It seems the poor man was chopping logs and would you believe it, a sliver of wood jumped up and hit him in the mouth really, really hard. (No, Virginia, it is NOT polite to say what you've just said.) Kevin’s view  on Irish, which he would have given if he hadn’t got that dig in the gob from the wood? Criminal waste of money. Stupid trying to revive it. Exercise in futility and hypocrisy. 

Dear Kevin, like so many others, works from the basis of Irish-as-something-useful, which is the wrong place to start from.  Not everything has to be ‘useful’. I’ve a photograph of my parents on the wall which I glance up at now and again. Some days you’ll find me out in the garden staring at my wind-whipped crocuses and daffodils. Other days you’ll find me reading a bit of poetry. None of those activities falls into the Useful category  but I wouldn’t be without any of them. In fact, some of the most important things in our lives don’t qualify as Useful :  giving a child a hug, listening to music, looking at a great painting.

So if Irish never becomes the everyday language we use to get things done, I’ll not be too bothered. On the other hand, if steps aren’t taken to ensure that the Irish language survives, I’ll be leppin’ mad. Each language has its own  unique take on the world. The very thought of letting something which comes to us across so many centuries, that delivers the world to us in a uniquely Irish way - the very thought of letting something so glorious and complex die is verging on sacrilege.

But if you're talking about the teaching of Irish, there's room for thought. Back in the 1950s tough-knuckled Irish teachers  taught many of us quailing  before them just one thing: to hate the language. Mercifully the brutality of those  days is gone;  but wouldn't it be great if we could teach Irish here the way English is taught in the non-English-speaking world?  Because at the present time, continental visitors  put our Irish fluency to shame with the fluency of their English.  

It’s good that all those buildings all over the world got lit up in green last Sunday. It’d be even better if the elegance and wonder of the Irish language could be spot-lighted in a way that’d help us see  the treasure  we have right under our nose. And then change language admiration for language mastery.

Health provision: it'd make you sick

Maybe you saw it. It was on BBC Newsline 6.30, I think, some days ago: a map showing how the proposed development of hospital provision would look here in the north. The suggestion seemed to be that hospitals would consist of a series of central hospitals, like the RVH and Altnagelvin, with satellite hospitals linked to them. 

Two of these hospitals caught my eye: Altnagelvin and the one in Fermanagh. Why? Because they were so close to the border. Clearly the Health Minister has in mind organising things so that the best care is available to people in the north through careful planning of provision. Fair enough - nothing makes more sense. You have to have your development and provision in the place where sick people need it. 

But for the greater part - in fact almost entirely - the concern is with people living in our little northern statelet only. There are exceptions - for example the radiotherapy unit in Derry also serves patients in Donegal and Sligo. But by and large the north plans for the provision of health services to people north of the border, the south to people south of the border. Where facilities are shared, as in Derry, it’s on an ad-hoc basis. In other words, the isolated case is so blindingly obvious, it’s accepted. 

Imagine if you had two businessmen working in the same village, offering the same service. From time to time it’d be glaringly obvious that co-operation would allow them to secure a contract that, acting alone, they never could secure. What would the businessmen, if they had half a brain, sit down and do? They’d map a strategy, looking at possibilities for working together over the next ten years, say, and they’d build their businesses with this co-operation-to-mutual-benefit built into it.  They wouldn’t wait for the opportunity to come up and bite them in the bum, galvanising them into action. They’d have foreseen or even created opportunities by joint planning. 

Is that happening now? I’m open to correction but I very much doubt it. Edwin Poots is fearful of what his electorate might say if he got too close to the Health Service in the south and was seen to be planning medium and long-term provision, as distinct from immediate needs. In fact our health service in the north is built as though we were exactly like the rest of the UK. We’re not. For a start there’s a large body of water lies between us and them, making the journey to avail of services across that water daunting. The obvious logic is that more attention - planned, long-term attention - needs to be paid to using and developing all of the health facilities on this island. Sick people don’t give a damn if something doesn’t look well politically speaking. They just want the best provision.  And a major part of that is, how easy is it to get to the treatment. Right now we’re wearing blinkers - or rather the two health departments are wearing blinkers - that allow them to see only that which is directly beneath their noses. I bet  Edwin Poots’s party doesn’t do its political planning in such a perversely purblind way.