Friday 30 April 2010

David Curran and the killing of Marius Szwajkos and Pawel Kalite in Drimnagh

The first sign of Spring in the Irish Times letters page is usually the cuckoo calling, or some such. In real life, however, it is more likely to be when your train, on the way back from work of a bright evening, is pelted with stones by skangers. Welcome to Ireland, and Dublin in particular.

Sadly, Dublin is chock-full of skangers, and they perpetuate down the generations. If you were to ask me to go into how it happened – and I might do in another post – I’d say it’s because the Irish, in general, were encouraged down the generations to breed, pure and simple, without any further consideration.  Remember, contraceptives were banned – even in the Eighties – without a doctor’s prescription.

The other thing is the social-welfare dependent underclass we have created. Sorry, I know I’ll be called a right-winger and a neo-con for saying this, but it can’t be a good idea to reward people with housing and benefits on the basis of the number of kids they pop out. It can’t lead to responsible parenting, can it?

Let’s face it, there is a real problem here in Ireland, and we have to see why it is occurring. And you don’t have to tell me about our piss-taking, parasitic professional classes who have it all sewn up: our doctors, consultants, dentists, lawyers, bankers, politicians, publicans, teachers, gardai and all the rest. I know all that.

But how can we breed people like David Curran?  Charged in court with the murder, at the age of 17, of two Polish nationals who came to Ireland to work?  This scumbag, by his own account, spent the day in question drinking vodka from 10am, stealing a moped (which he said contained a screwdriver), “being present” when it was set alight, took 15 “tablets”, drank “six or seven” alcopops and smoked “seven cannabis joints” before ramming a screwdriver into the skulls of not one, but two, human beings that very same evening?  Two human beings who had come to this country to work.

Assuming that the toerag’s testimony is true, what kind of society have we created that produces such people?  How could he sustain his "lifestyle"?

What’s wrong with this place? 

See also Murder of Polish workers in Drimnagh, Dublin. Gombeen Nation, February 2008

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Tuesday 27 April 2010

Overheard in Dublin

People often remark in the comments section of the blog on how godawful a place Dublin is.

You know the story.  The skangers, the trigger-happy criminals, Dublin Corporation, the Dail, the litter, the druggies, the buggies, the crappy public transport, the awful, congested roads, the dreadful drivers, the high cost of living, the shiftylazy coppers, the weather, the general grottiness, and whatever else. And speaking as someone whose parents, his parents’ parents, and his parents’ parents’ parents were all from Dublin city, I find it very hard to disagree if I’m honest.

You’ll have heard of the book “Overheard in Dublin”? Basically it’s an annual (and highly successful) compilation of various snippets of clever conversation and Behanesque wisecracks our capital city’s denizens are inherently predisposed to utter. Supposedly.

Well, I was walking across Butt Bridge today and was treated to one such example of deliciously witty Dublin dialogue. For some reason, there is always a large gathering of tracksuit-clad individuals standing around that part of town and down along the nearby Liffey boardwalk.  I don’t know what they do, exactly, but they always seem to be in the throes of some very dramatic and animated conversations/transactions.  Maybe they are homeless and get turfed out by the Powers-That-Be to wander around and get up to things, or maybe they are just excitable – I don’t know.  In fairness, they’ve never actually bothered me, so I’ll leave it at that.

Anyway, as I ambled past a cluster of these characters one of them suddenly lifted up his trackie top to reveal a very blotchy, spotty back. Now, I wasn’t looking, but he was standing just a few yards in front of me so I couldn’t help but notice. I then observed that an accomplice was earnestly engaged in using the index finger of either hand to squeeze one of the numerous carbuncles on Lifted-Trackie-Top’s back.

Evidently, I had chanced upon some quaint grooming ritual, and had only time to avert my eyes before I heard the immortal, eloquent words: “Naaww, I’m norrrable teh geh tha one. Dere issin a head on ih yeh”.   Lovely.

The tourists should consider themselves lucky. What other European capital could offer that?

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Sunday 25 April 2010

Eamon “The Don” Dunne, Dublin criminal, downs his last pint.

Few will mourn the death of Eamon “The Don” Dunne, who passed away in a predictable manner last Friday at the Fassaugh House, Cabra, when two masked men walked into the pub and shot him eight times in the head. Evidently they weren’t taking any chances.

Today's papers claim that the gangland boss and drugs baron had ordered at least 17 murders since 2005.  Many of the victims were fellow gangland rivals or associates, but also included young apprentice plumber, Anthony Campbell, who was shot dead while fixing a radiator in the house of criminal rival Martin Hyland in 2006.  Another innocent victim was 28-year-old mother-of-two Baibe Saulite, murdered by a hitman provided by Dunne on behalf of her estranged husband. (Sunday Tribune).

It seems “The Don” was involved in several beatings and tortures too, and was a hated figure even among fellow criminals who resented the police attention his unrestrained killing attracted.  A thoroughly despicable character then.

Interestingly, "The Don’s" name came up once before on Gombeen Nation, back in October of last year, when the Evening Herald reported that three plain-clothes gardai based in west Dublin were arrested on suspicion of passing information to the criminal.  The arrests followed an earlier raid on a uniformed garda who was found in possession of a shotgun at this home, allegedly taken from an evidence room at a Garda station.  

The Herald report said that a file had been prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions, yet today’s Sunday Tribune mentions only that “internal Garda enquiries are under way to determine how successful he was at corrupting gardai”.

It is unlikely we have heard the last of Dunne, just yet.

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Thursday 22 April 2010

Hitler, his bodyguard, and Irish folk music.


Most of you will know that yours truly comes in for a certain amount of criticism from some quarters for not being Irish enough. You know the spiel - not showing a great enough appreciation for “Irish culture”, blood sacrifices, and all the rest of it. 

Well, apologies.  You see, despite being very much Irish – I regret to say I had no choice in the matter – a lot of that malarkey seems to have passed me by, and the very sight of a jigging dancer or the faintest drone of an uileann piper is enough to set me  retching.  My detractors tell me that this is caused by self-loathing.  I'd say it's just loathing.

Mind you, I’m sure there are Scots who feel the same when they see a bunch of half-wits strutting around Edinburgh in their kilts on rugby days, and I’m sure there are others who would flee for the top of Ben Nevis at the slightest hint of a bagpipe skirl. And when is the last time you saw an English person morris dancing? In seriousness, I mean?

You see, I don’t think that the Irish ability for embarrassment is sufficiently developed as yet… maybe that’s why we keep on making eejits of ourselves over and over again for the amusment of the world?

I’ve always thought the old trad thing to be very po-faced and joyless, anyway.  I once looked at some clips from an RTE archive programme showing some “session” in progress in the 50s (or maybe it was the 80s?) and you’d swear they could have cracked nuts with their arses, they seemed so uptight.

Of course, nobody did po-faced, joyless and uptight as well as Adolf Hitler and his band of Nazi chums – great folklore enthusiasts, incidentally.  You can’t imagine many smiles being cracked at the Nuremburg rallies, can you? Heads, maybe, smiles no.

But apparently the Führer had a great appreciation of Irish music, and if the following piece from the Daily Telegraph has any (unlikely) basis in fact, he was so begeistert by a bit of diddly-dyddely that he sacrificed one of his Leibstandarte bodyguards for a visiting Irish musician to rest his pipe-playing posterior on.

See below (big thanks to Paul for sending this one in).

***************************************************************************
Adolf Hitler would not have debased a Nazi stormtrooper for the sake of Irish folk music

By Guy Walters, Daily Telegraph, April 19th, 2010


Not a week goes by without some exciting new revelation about Adolf Hitler. Most of these “findings” are complete JH (junk history), and this latest example takes the whole pack of biscuits. According to an exhibition chronicling 120 years of Irish folk music in and around Dublin, Adolf Hitler supposedly ordered an SS man to act as a seat for a visiting Irish piper called Sean Dempsey. According to the story, “Hitler… ordered a hapless storm trooper to get down on his hands and knees so Mr Dempsey could sit and perform astride the man”. Dempsey then played a “haunting air” that quite moved the Führer, who presented the musician with a gold fountain pen.


I don’t believe a word of it. The idea that Hitler would have debased one of his elite guard to act as a seat strikes me as being extremely unlikely. There are lots of things about Hitler that are bizarre and outlandish, but when it comes to stories such as these, bring your salt cellar.

***************************************************************************

 Anyway, true or not,  that is a vision that will stay with me forever.

I'm just glad I didn't have to listen too.

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Tuesday 20 April 2010

Heyday - call for a general election



Gombeen Nation is on the campaign trail again, so thanks to T for bringing the following to our attention.

Most readers of the blog will have had it up to here with the Fianna Fail-led government that has been in power for far too long, and has saddled us bankers' and developers' debts for decades to come.

Somebody has set up a Facebook campaign to get Brian and Co out of the Dail's most potentially damaging seats  -  see the video above and the link below.

Now, while I'd be sceptical about the power of a Facebook campaign to effect any kind of meaningful change  - and would never underestimate the potential of the Irish electorate to vote the same shysters straight back in come the next election - it's still worth supporting, I think.  

Worth a beep or two, anyway, if you see them about.

Saturday April 24th 2010 - Call for a General Election
http://www.facebook.com/generalelection

Back to Gombeen Natiom main page

Sunday 18 April 2010

Irish to be laboratory bunnies for electric cars


Forget about the Germans, who claim to have invented the car. The Americans too, who say something similar. Disregard the French, the British and the Italians, all with their impeccable motoring heritage. Then there’s the Japanese, with their cutting-edge automotive technology. They are all in the ha’penny place in comparison to Ireland.

You see, Irish governments have always been highly innovative when it comes to the subject of motoring. Or, more accurately, they have always been highly innovative when it comes to devising ways of taxing Irish motorists, who pay far more to buy, run, tax and insure their cars than most other Europeans. But that’s where the Irish expertise on motoring ends.

Funny then, that energy minister Eamon Ryan thinks that we - ahead of the automotive manufacturing nations that actually make the vehicles - are somehow qualified to blaze a trail in electric car technology. You see, it looks like we are all to be volunteered as laboratory bunnies, with Ireland becoming a “testing ground” for the electric car (along with that other famous motoring nation, Portugal). “Bunnies” is the operative term, of course, given that we are talking about motor cars propelled by Duracells.

Of course the airy notion is that all our electric cars – and Ryan envisages 10% of them will occupy road space by 2020 - will eventually run on wind energy. In the meantime, however, they will work on electricity generated from fossil fuels – or imported from nuclear power stations in Britain. So they are as green as a peat bog.

The fact is, we are very lucky that electric cars are so crap, because if everyone went out and bought one, then plugged it into the mains, the national grid and the ESB would go up in a big puff of acrid, electric smoke quicker than you could say “AAA”. But that does not stop our tin-pot politicians from letting on that we are world leaders in a technology that’s about as high-tech as the old Scalextrix set I had as a kid.

Some manufacturers have been working on electric cars for years, but even so, most of them only have a claimed range of about 160 kilometres. Most have to be left plugged in overnight to achieve full charge from the mains – and try doing that if you live in an apartment in town – and most will take about half-an-hour to achieve 80% charge from the so-called “fast” chargers being rolled out… and that’s assuming any of the chargers are unoccupied and available. The truth is, if you tried to go any distance in an electric car, your nerves would be in absolute tatters by the time you arrived at your destination…. assuming you did.

Today’s Sunday Times claims that Richard Tol, research professor at the ERSI, believes that Ryan is “taking too much of a risk by investing so early in an “infant” technology”, pointing out that “other alternative fuel options, such as hydrogen, are also in development and that it could be 15 years before the winner emerges”.

I’ll hold off until then thanks, and not even a Tesla Roadster with a 0-60 time of 3.7 seconds would tempt me into its sterile embrace. What’s the point of that if you are going to conk out and be stranded a few miles down the road? In the meantime, I think leccy cars are best left to those who want to feel smug, and have something to talk about at cocktail parties.

And Eamon Ryan, of course.

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Thursday 15 April 2010

Government bail-out for mortgage holders?


It’s not too difficult to imagine the following…

LETTER TO BRIAN COWEN FROM A PROPERTY INVESTOR

Dear Brian. 

I was one of the Celtic Tiger go-getters who drove our economy when we were the envy of the world.  I was a risk-taker. A mover and shaker. A free-marketeer. A wealth creator.  And not just for myself, but for Ireland in general.

Some would say I was greedy, now that the zeitgeist has changed and we are all wise after the event, of course. But wasn’t it Michael McDowell, when he was your coalition partner, who said that greed was good?  Or was it Margaret Thatcher?  I get confused sometimes.

Then there were all the tax breaks your government had on offer, courtesy of that economic visionary Charlie McCreevy.  You see, as the self-employed owner of a small business, I never did agree with the principle of paying tax.   So I took advantage of a few of your government’s numerous property-based tax shelters to minimise my exposure.  I must introduce you to my accountant if things ever pick up again – he knows a trick or two!

To cut a long story short, Brian,  I built up an impressive portfolio of investment properties over the course of our unprecedented boom, many of them acquired through interest-only mortgages. At one point I was a millionaire several times over (on paper, anyhow).  I loved reciting my list of apartments to my friends, over a nice meal in Rolys, as we discussed the market and the next up-and-coming areas.  Clondalkin was one, I remember.  Halcyon days indeed!

I had all the trappings.  I used my property portfolio as leverage to get finance for a lovely Aston Martin DB9, and I traded in the E-Class every year on the same basis.  Those registration plates say so much about you.  Image is everything in the world of the entrepreneur!

But I did some good for society too.  I provided employment for two people in my once bustling coffee shop, and it might have been more but for the minimum wage.  I provided accommodation for our expanding labour force, and made sure that as much money as possible was coming into our economy by upwardly revising my rents every year, kicking out anyone who wouldn’t stump up.

Now, Brian, it’s all gone awry.  My investment properties have plummeted in value, I can’t rent them out, and the DB9 has been repossessed.  Now I am reduced to driving around in a 06 Merc, and I’ve had to take the boys out of St Andrews.

It’s not that long ago that one of Fianna Fail's greatest-ever thinkers, Bertie Ahern, was saying that the boom could only get boomier, and I didn’t doubt him.  Who would?   In short, Brian, I think your government led me, and others like me, astray.  You led us to believe, along with all those economists, that things could only get better. 

Your party has been very kind to the bankers and the developers, so what about the little man/woman like me?  We are the deserving cases, as we drove the whole shooting match.  We were the ones on the ground, making it happen. 

There has been considerable discussion in some quarters about the possibility of a bail-out for hard-pressed mortgage holders.  I hope you give such suggestions serious thought, and consider those of us who have multiple mortgages.   I think it is only right and proper.  After all, aren’t we the most hard-pressed of all?

There’ll be a vote in it for you.   Again.

G. Reed.
Dalkey.
Co Dublin.


Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Tuesday 13 April 2010

The RTE Angelus - for whom does the bell toll?

Religion should be a private matter, and unless you happen to live in Iran or Saudi Arabia it should not be an intrinsic component of state control. As far as I am concerned, you can believe what you want – whatever coping mechanism gets you through life is OK by me.

If you believe that taking a sick relative with strong religious beliefs to Lourdes might give them a psychological boost to cope with their illness, go for it.  If you think going to Alcoholics Anonymous and placing your recovery in the hands of a higher power will cure you of your addiction, don’t let me – or anyone – else stop you.

If your life won’t be complete until you visit Mecca, the Wailing Wall, or the Holy Lands, by all means factor the trip into your travel plans. But it’s your business, and your business alone. The only thing I would urge you not to do is go out killing people because God told you to. It won’t stand up in court.

Which brings me to the Angelus. We all give our money to the state broadcaster, RTE, whether we like it or not. When RTE is taking our money it does not ask us about our religious beliefs (if any). It does not ask if we are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sheiks, Jainists, Buddhists, Taoists, or any of the other religious franchises I might have missed. It does not ask if we are agnostics or atheists.

Therefore RTE should cease forthwith broadcasting the Angelus twice a day. It can then do one of two things: It can alternate time for all of the religious beliefs present in Ireland today, and allow humanists, agnostics and atheists a daily two-minute promotional slot too, or it can leave religious – or otherwise – reflection to the individual in their own time.

I don’t think any of us need to be reappraised of the dangers inherent in affording too much respect, prominence and influence to any church in state and public affairs. RTE’s Angelus harks back to a time when the Catholic Church had far too much of that - when its grip on public affairs was strangulating. It’s time it went.

There are two questionnaires at the URL below through which you can have a say on RTE’s programming and the service it provides (one appears to be more in-depth that the other, but either will do). Alternatively, you can email them at the address below that. You pay enough for your license fee, so you might as well have your say.  Submissions are open until July.

RTE Public Service Statement

yourviews@rte.ie

A big thanks to C for bringing this to the attention of the blog.

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Sunday 11 April 2010

Matthew Elderfield: going Gah-Gaa over Quinn?

Matthew Elderfield, who was appointed Irish Financial Regulator head in January, must be wondering what he let himself in for.

The country is hoxter-deep in financial ordure because of cronyism, clientism, and the unhealthy relationship between Fianna Fail, the construction industry and the banking sector. All dubious factors that the regulator of the time failed to address, resulting in ordinary people being saddled with debts, via NAMA, that the banks and developers will probably never fully pay back.

Elderfield’s brief was to organise a new, tighter ship; a financial watchdog that would sail a steady course, avoid the rocks and the sharks, prevent the whole economy ever being lost at sea again. Assuming it is ever fit to sail again, that is.

Now we have the Quinn Group fiasco. Under Elderfield's new watch, the Regulator has found it does not have enough reserves to honour all the insurance policies it holds. It is heavily in debt - despite Quinn’s claims that it is “profitable” – and owes €600m to bondholders and €700m to the banks.

According to the criteria required by the Financial Regulator, Quinn Insurance does not make the grade. It does not fulfill the basic requirements to operate as a seller of insurance, it is technically insolvent.  So, given the background of the mess we are in, and the lax standards of the past, the only option is to call in a permanent administrator, which Elderfield hopes to do tomorrow (Monday 12th April).

But lo! We now have various interest groups requesting that the regulator turn a blind eye to Quinn’s financial problems. Last week there were protests in Dublin and Cavan, where the GAA stuck its hurley in, with the Cavan County GAA Board chairman asking for “those in authority” to “take a holistic view of the impact that this decision [appointment of a permanent administrator] could have for County Cavan and the Quinn Group”.

A “holistic approach”, I ask you?   I think he means "a nod and a wink"… and look where that got us before. There is even talk of Anglo Irish, a bankrupt bank whose debts have been nationalised, buying out Quinn’s bondholders for €550m and injecting €150 million to deal with the company’s solvency issue. Bearing in mind that I probably have more cash reserves than Anglo has, that means the Government is thinking of using our money to bail out Quinn too. Our only hope is that Elderfield holds firm, and slaps them down. If that fails, we’ll need to look to EU competition law to be saved from our own gombeens.

It’s not that long ago since we had Mary Harney on TV telling us that we were economically closer to Boston than Berlin. That we were an open, business-friendly, laissez-faire economy – unlike the“socialist” economies of mainland Europe with their state support and subventions. If laissez-faire principles are applied, Quinn should go to the wall. As should have the banks.

Wonder what Harney is saying now?

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Thursday 8 April 2010

Toyosi Shittabey Memorial March, Saturday, 10th April

The family and friends of Toyosi Shittabey are organising a memorial march this Saturday, 10th April.

It will start at the Garden of Remembrance (top of Parnell Street and O'Connell Street) at 2pm, and continue to the Dail.

You should be able to see a scrolling PDF with all the details below.  If your browser does not show it, the details above should be all you need to show your support:




Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Wednesday 7 April 2010

Can you hear the master race? Fascists get it all wrong... again.

Thanks to F, an anti-fascist reader of the blog (and long-suffering Liverpool fan) based in England, for the following gem.

It’s a bit of a departure, insofar as the topic is not directly concerned with our gombeen little land, but it gives a unique insight into the confused thinking of one the BNP’s leading lights, Bob Bailey, who is the racist party’s organiser for the British Elections.  The British National Party is one that would-be Irish fash look up to longingly (see BNP and Irish racists - more in common than they'd like to admit   and would-be Irish National Party ), so this says it all really.

It seems that Bailey phoned up BBC London in a right lather, having heard that the broadcaster planned to run a report on the BNP expelling gay people from the party.  Now, the fash might well have a reputation for being rabid homophobes - as well as rabid bigots in general -  but it seems the BNP leadership is trying to play down its attitudes to “that type of thing” at the moment.

So Bailey was there shouting the odds at the BBC employee at the other end of the phone “We know you’re running it [the report] and we want a right to reply!” Despite repeated denials from the puzzled Beeb researcher, he continued his accusations.

Eventually the researcher went off to check with colleagues, who were equally bemused. Finally he/she came back to the phone with the answer.  The BBC were doing a report on two gays being expelled from a B&B  -  not the BNP.

So Bob’s hearing is as clear as his thinking, then.

With role models like that, eh?

See full article: Vote no to the BNP

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Sunday 4 April 2010

Racist killing of Toyosi Shittabey in Tyrellstown

Today's papers report that the death of Toyosi Shittabey in Tyrellstown may have been motivated by racism.  The fifteen year old, a talented footballer who played for Shelbourne’s youth team, was walking home from the swimming pool in Blanchardstown with friends when they were subjected to racial abuse by two scumbags in the Mount Eustace estate.

According to the reports words were exchanged and Toyosi’s group walked away from the scene, but the abusers, aged 23 and 38, went into their nearby house to fetch a knife and followed the youngsters in their car.   The young lad, known as “Toy”, urged his friends to walk away again but was stabbed in the heart by one of the scumbags.  Paul Barry, originally of Pearse Street, has been charged with manslaughter - which is puzzling in view of the pre-meditated nature of the attack which seems more like murder to me. 

“It was a racist attack.  He was a lovely happy-go-lucky boy”, a neighbour is quoted as saying in today’s Sunday Tribune report, which describes Tyrellstown as a middle-class housing estate with a “sizeable African community”.  The Sindo says the area consists of  200 households which are "50 per cent foreign nationals and 50 per cent Irish".

Referring to Tyrellstown as a middle-class estate is somewhat fanciful.  Indeed, the Garda have expressed  concern about tensions in the area and an official from its  Racial and Intercultural Office is working there.   It is one of many boomtime developments that shot up in the Dublin 15 area with no thought or planning.  Situated somewhere between Mulhuddart and Hollystown it has – in common with many new estates in the area –a large population of New Irish.

This blog has highlighted racist attitudes in Ireland before, both overt and concealed, and unless there are serious efforts made on the part of our rulers to integrate our new arrivals, and educate sections of our indigenous population, there will be serious trouble ahead. 

A prime element of racism and bigotry is ignorance, so it makes sense to address this issue through the medium of education.  And the best form of education is inclusive, secular (or, at least, multi-denominational) and one that integrates.

Educate Together is the only organisation offering such schooling in Ireland at present, but it is currently confined to primary level, to the best of my knowledge.  I understand that the group plans to move into secondary education in the near future.

I have no kids, and have no connection with Educate Together, but by my reckoning this is the way to go.  After all, this is about all our futures - together - and it might just eradicate the insularity, stupidity, ignorance and bigotry that robbed Toyosi of his young life.

Anyone interested in starting a new school group can express their interest here. 

Educate Together Start-up Groups

Gombeen Nation would like to extend sincere sympathy to the family and friends of Toyosi.

PS.  It has been brought to the attention of Gombeen Nation that a Paul Barry was previously charged under Section 2 of the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act (see comments), after a stabbing on Pearse Steet in 2001.  See Race attack on Pearse Street

Back to Gombeen Nation main page

Friday 2 April 2010

Irish pubs open on Good Friday - but don't expect beer


"Oh it's-a lonesome away from your kindred and all
By the campfire at night we'll hear the wild dingoes call
But there's-a nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear
Than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer"

Verse from “The Pub with no Beer” (Dan Sheahan/Gordon Parsons/Slim Dusty)

You don’t have to go to the Australian outback of the Second World War era to find a pub with no beer. Simply come to Ireland on Good Friday for a comparable “lonesome, morbid and drear” experience.  But it's not something Bord Failte like to shout about.

Thanks to the continuing influence of Catholic Church “values” in our supposedly secular republic, all the pubs in the country are forced to close on this day. Or at least not sell any alcohol. Here’s that phrase again, and the letters that compose it are practically worn away on my keyboard: Where else would you get it?

Some Limerick pub owners managed to get a partial exemption on the grounds that a big rugby match in the city constituted a “special event”, but the rest of the country will be dry… apart from the fact that people will be getting hammered on crates of beer and spirits in their living rooms, of course. I’m doing it just out of principle.

Far better, anyway, than sitting in a pub with no beer. It seems that some Dublin publicans will be opening their doors today, even though they will not be selling any alcohol. If you want to look at the match on the big screen you can go along to one of these and pay over the odds for soft drinks, and ingest stodgy pub grub. I’ll stay where I am, thanks. But looks as though there is a belated effort by some of the country’s vintners to oppose the archaic and sectarian Good Friday ban on selling alcohol.

And none more so than a Donal Nooney of Killimore, described on yesterday’s “Last Word” as a Galway publican who plans to defy the ban and open regardless – taking on the Catholic Church, the Garda, and the head shops. Hmmm. Sounds very dynamic for a publican to me.

Now, what was yesterday's date?


Matt Cooper, Last Word audio clip, April Ist



Back to Gombeen Nation main page