There will be some of you who will seek to excuse your shabby and inexcusable behaviour of me by saying that I have been, to use a cliché, the architect of my own misfortunes, I’d just like to say in reply. “Which came first: the chicken or the egg?”
The results of a recently released survey have found that something like forty per cent of Irish males experience difficulty with maths. I think my post about Bread and Circuses shows just how prevalent this is. Not alone do senior members of county council executives have serious issues with basic literacy and letter-writing skills (not to mention wiping their arses), but many of the hoors can’t count. Ah, but then they know that the true value in any balance sheet comes in the “Below-the-line” or maybe in the “Off-balance-sheet” items – sure fuck it! Isn’t it only monopoly money anyhow?
This is the reality under which so many people in Ireland have to suffer, and to be honest it’s getting a bit tiresome being lectured to by that pampered cancerous poseur intellectual Brian Lenihan Jr. I don’t carte at those who will be outraged by what I’m about to say, but Being Brian Lenihan Sr’s son may have helped you get “Schol” in Trinner, butt could it stop you getting pancreatic cancer? Illness or disability is nothing to be ashamed of, I think most decent people will agree. It’s no joke for anyone, but why should Brian Lenihan Jr., the Minister for Finance, who is doing the country down with such arrogant aplomb, be any different from a man or a woman in the street who’s been working hard all their lives and who never had the chance to attend Trinity College, far less become a “scholar” there be any different? So why should such unfortunates have to suffer as a result? Maybe not at Brian Lenihan or any other government minister’s directions, but at the hands of their employees in the Public Service? You see when I was in Trinity., studying in the library on a Friday night, I thought I was a true scholar. But no! The only ones entitled to sup at the banquet of riches are the members of “The New Class”; not the New Red Class of Milovan Djilas, but the new Green Class, or here in Cavan the New Blue Class. whose fathers are politicians in either national or local government,. Clever and all that I thought I was I somehow missed that.) You see I could have become a legal practitioner, but I realised, perhaps in time, that I loved justice too much (and myself not enough) to become a lawyer.
I want to take this opportunity to wish my good fried Jonathan Smyth all the best of luck in his talk on Thomas Barron tomorrow night in Bailieborough. Jonathan is to be truly commended in helping to bring to the attention of the public the achievements of this overlooked genius.
Such an epithet truly belongs to Tom Barron, but given the quiet, self-effacing nature of the man he would have been perhaps the first to reject it as misapplied. His intellect was enormous, allowing him to see far beyond the narrow, artificial constructs imposed on him by pseudo-academia and their mercenary foot soldiers. If I may transcribe Sir Issac Newton. He once wrote that if he had seen further it was because he had been privileged to stand on the shoulders of giants. Tom Barron surely did stand on giants’ shoulders,; the shoulders of the common people of Knockbride and Bailieborough, for so long despised (even to this day. He was possessed of the perspicacious eyesight of an intellectual giants and there were few giants who could have stood taller.
As is so often the case in Co. Cavan, there are the detractors, those who are not and never were entitled to tie his shoelaces, who have attempted with their habitual cowardice to besmirch him and his reputation, even though he cannot defend himself from his tomb. I know that I can trust Jonathan to do Thomas Barron’s memory prou.
Bread and circuses
It’s amazing what you hear in Cavan, I mean the scurrilous rumours. One relates to why so many of Cavan County Council’s workers, that is, people who get their hands dirty (unlike the pen pushers whose alabaster-skinned hands can never be soiled by manual labour,) have been put on short time. This is because of, you’ve guess it, the fleadh. It seems as if the whole thing went way over budget and the inevitable cuts have to be made where they hurt ordinary people, and not in any way that might impinge upon the publicans and other hangers-on in whose interest the fleadh took place.
But how did such budgetary overruns occur? Poor or non-existent management I say. I’ve written a bit about management (especially strategic management) and if anyone were to ask me to define the manager’s role, I’d say he or she is like an orchestral conductor in charge of a myriad of differing, sometimes conflicting resources. It’s the manager’s job to ensure that the various resources, human, technical, intellectual and financial (to name but a few) combine effectively and efficiently. It’s hard to single out any one resource as more important, but I think that many would say that finance is pretty big. If you don’t have cash how can you stay in business, pay wages, order supplies? So any manager who allows budgetary haemorrhages on his watch is a pretty poor example of the species. You don’t have to have an MBA to know this – but I’d love to have one nonetheless. (It should be obvious I’m not talking about Cavan County Council here: I mention “intellectual” resources.
Maybe I’m being too idealistic here. I’m talking about managers in the private sector who have to operate against the buffets of an ever-changing market landscape Budgetary overruns don’t matter if the institution concerned can act with impunity, like so many in the public service. Such managers can (and frequently do) say “Ah sure fuck it, it’s only the public’s money…”(followed by drink-sodden laugh). Such public service managers may hypocritically claim that they are operating within a climate of unprecedented economic pain (Jaysus! That’s a good one! Same again is it?) but in reality these people can act as it likes – because they can – and no one can stop them or question them, least of all our castrated pubic (sic!) representatives – even if they had the ball to , which they haven’t.
And the money that was overspent can be made up out of the government’s “reptile fund” ;or failing that, through hospital and school closures, or through unemployed people being bumped off the live register because their faces don’t fit or their welfare officers don’t like them.
I shouldn’t be asking these questions ( me? A cripple? Now I’m being silly – but I like it). What do I know about management? – a good deal more it seems than some managers in Cavan. We must believe that the fleadh was a success and anyone who doesn’t accept that is obviously a whinger, motivated by begrudgery. The people of Cavan should just accept how great it was and not worry about cutbacks – until they affect them. And if we all wish real hard we’ll get it next year, so that the mayhem can be revisited upon us and certain publicans can rip off their customers. Juvenal must be smiling. It is further proof of how you can attempt to fool people with bread and circuses.
PS. There is only one reason why I feel in any way positive about the fleadh. It’s got nothing to do with the obese, flatulent – yes – bastards associated with it. It’s just that I happened to spy this girl. I think she was a busker, as she had a fiddle strapped to her back as she walked towards Cavan town. She was really cute we exchanges smiles and … well, everyone knows my weaknesses for pretty women who play stringed instruments and the way their fingers move down the bridge of their instrument and …. We could have made beautiful music and the fleadh could have run three six five, twenty four , seven …
One of the most egregious examples of the way in which the achievements of Cavan’s disabled have been rubbished came last March. The National Council for the Blind, the largest Irish charity working for the benefits of blind and partially sighted people in the country, wanted to hold a meeting in Cavan’s County Library, run by Cavan County Council. They were encouraged to organise a talk on “local history”. However, they didn’t turn to the partially-sighted holder of a PhD in history in their midst, someone who had years of experience as a writer and lecturer on the subject, (myself) but to the council’s dream-boy Dr Brendan Scott, son of Councillor John Scott of Belturbet. Unfortunately the NCBI’s organiser here in Cavan, Ms Helena McDonald, did not realise how she was being set up, and I didn’t realise what was happening until I received an invitation to the event, featuring the aforementioned Scott as “special guest”. Alas Dr Scott, though holding a doctorate in history, is such a craven example of humanity that he felt it was but one more occasion for him to humiliate me and to repay me for the “trouble” that had existed between me and the museum (though before his time), that he jumped at the occasion to give a talk on Cavan’s “Franciscan abbey” (wherever that was). He accepted this invitation so as to rub in my disability to me and at the same time to say that, even though I had a doctorate and considerable experience as a historian, he stood higher amongst the miserable scum of Cavan Co. Council’s establishment. Years of experience has shown that many of the greatest academics are not people you’d willingly associate with, but I wonder do Dr Scott’s colleagues realise what a craven piece of excrement he is? I’ve never met him but since his appointment to Cavan’s County Museum he has pursued a vendetta against me, something in which he has been aided by many in the county council’s executive, including its highest members.
Now I had thought of Cavan County Library as a home-away-from-home and its ever-helpful staff as friends. I had enjoyed carrying out research there. Sadly, one of the other users of the library did not feel I belonged there, and complained of my whispering into my hand-held tape-recorder. I do not know the identity of my accuser, but I think I’d be able to pick him out in an identity parade. Libraries can be noisy places, yet I ensure that I do not add to the existing background noise level in any way. It was quite clear that I was a wheelchair user and that I needed to use a low-vision aid in order to read text, but a fellow human being responded to my plight not by seeing whether he could help me in any way, or even ignore me, but by making a complaint that I was causing a disturbance. I can assure my readers that my whispers were less loud than the noise made by him and his troupe of hangers-on, who seemed to think that they owned the library’s research area and to resent the presence of strangers there. This was disturbing, but more disturbing was the fact that the library authorities took these vexatious complaints on board. This was enough for me to be banished from the library to the eyrie of the Genealogical Office that has a rather disturbing view over the County Council car park, and it can only be reached by a rather narrow and awkward lift. I was rather embarrassed when I was told of my fate, for no matter how justified I personally felt it was as if I were a schoolboy who had been caught out picking my nose during Morning Assembly. My non-presence ion the public parts of the library frees the county library of the obviously too distressing visage of a partially sighted library user. How capricious is Father Time. I have in my possession a photograph from the Anglo-Celt from a number of years ago, showing me using a piece of magnification equipment in the main body of the old library. I am obviously an inappropriate fixture of the newer library.
(Let me add that I do not blame the rank-and-file of the library’s staff for this sea change in my fortunes. I feel that this has come from higher up, and from those who do not like being called “Whacko Jacko”. Let me assure him that this epithet is mild compared to the one I feel he is more entitled to.)
One of the most egregious examples of the way in which the achievements of Cavan’s disabled have been rubbished came last March. The National Council for the Blind, the largest Irish charity working for the benefits of blind and partially sighted people in the country, wanted to hold a meeting in Cavan’s County Library, run by Cavan County Council. They were encouraged to organise a talk on “local history”. However, they didn’t turn to the partially-sighted holder of a PhD in history in their midst, someone who had years of experience as a writer and lecturer on the subject, (myself) but to the council’s dream-boy Dr Brendan Scott, son of Councillor John Scott of Belturbet. Unfortunately the NCBI’s organiser here in Cavan, Ms Helena McDonald, did not realise how she was being set up, and I didn’t realise what was happening until I received an invitation to the event, featuring the aforementioned Scott as “special guest”. Alas Dr Scott, though holding a doctorate in history, is such a craven example of humanity that he felt it was but one more occasion for him to humiliate me and to repay me for the “trouble” that had existed between me and the museum (though before his time), that he jumped at the occasion to give a talk on Cavan’s “Franciscan abbey” (wherever that was). He accepted this invitation so as to rub in my disability to me and at the same time to say that, even though I had a doctorate and considerable experience as a historian, he stood higher amongst the miserable scum of Cavan Co. Council’s establishment. Years of experience has shown that many of the greatest academics are not people you’d willingly associate with, but I wonder do Dr Scott’s colleagues realise what a craven piece of excrement he is? I’ve never met him but since his appointment to Cavan’s County Museum he has pursued a vendetta against me, something in which he has been aided by many in the county council’s executive, including its highest members.
Now I had thought of Cavan County Library as a home-away-from-home and its ever-helpful staff as friends. I had enjoyed carrying out research there. Sadly, one of the other users of the library did not feel I belonged there, and complained of my whispering into my hand-held tape-recorder. I do not know the identity of my accuser, but I think I’d be able to pick him out in an identity parade. Libraries can be noisy places, yet I ensure that I do not add to the existing background noise level in any way. It was quite clear that I was a wheelchair user and that I needed to use a low-vision aid in order to read text, but a fellow human being responded to my plight not by seeing whether he could help me in any way, or even ignore me, but by making a complaint that I was causing a disturbance. I can assure my readers that my whispers were less loud than the noise made by him and his troupe of hangers-on, who seemed to think that they owned the library’s research area and to resent the presence of strangers there. This was disturbing, but more disturbing was the fact that the library authorities took these vexatious complaints on board. This was enough for me to be banished from the library to the eyrie of the Genealogical Office that has a rather disturbing view over the County Council car park, and it can only be reached by a rather narrow and awkward lift. I was rather embarrassed when I was told of my fate, for no matter how justified I personally felt it was as if I were a schoolboy who had been caught out picking my nose during Morning Assembly. My non-presence ion the public parts of the library frees the county library of the obviously too distressing visage of a partially sighted library user. How capricious is Father Time. I have in my possession a photograph from the Anglo-Celt from a number of years ago, showing me using a piece of magnification equipment in the main body of the old library. I am obviously an inappropriate fixture of the newer library.
(Let me add that I do not blame the rank-and-file of the library’s staff for this sea change in my fortunes. I feel that this has come from higher up, and from those who do not like being called “Whacko Jacko”. Let me assure him that this epithet is mild compared to the one I feel he is more entitled to.)
As I have said before, Cavan’s disabled are to be seen and not heard. They are not expected, and indeed are discouraged, from adopting too independent a stance. Those confined to a wheelchair should see this as their fate. What’s more they should not complain about just how bad footpaths are in Cavan, or the bizarre location of dished footpaths: “Society” owes them nothing. Instead they should pursue a paternalistic lifestyle, perhaps under the aegis of the local branch of the Irish Wheelchair Association. They should accept their role as second-class citizens in Ireland, as the manifestations of the accursed of God. They should not attempt to mix within society as a whole, but should see their world as inhabiting a shadow-world, where they are collected each day by the IWA bus, the Cuchulann, and are driven to the IWA headquarters at Corlurgan on Cavan town’s outskirts, there to engage in exercisers and games under the constantly fluctuating moodscapes of the centre’s director. And when their time at the centre comes to an end, they can look forward to being taken home again and dispensed by the aforementioned Cuchulann. Naturally they are expected to feel gratitude for this treatment. (Please forgive me. Many may consider this a worthwhile form of existence and who am I to disagree? But it is the nearest thing to Hell on Earth I can imagine.) They have experiences to tell, but they are like children, and have been presented as incapable of doing this on their own, without the introduction of a professional writer to interpret their grunts and gestures into a format that is comprehensible by the general public
And what is more they may have been persuaded to add their names to Cavan Co. Council’s housing list – even though few houses are being built. But should they be so rash as to consider complaining about the quality of access for disabled people in the county, their temerity will be dissuaded by the knowledge that they are harming their places on the housing list.
Perhaps this is their journey.
The following are the observations and experiences of one disabled person in Cavan. They do not pretend to be universal, but they should not be rubbished and discarded because they relate just to one person.
I don’t want to keep going back to the fleadh, but I consider that it was used by some to slap me in the face. I would have been more than able and w2illing to give guided talks about the history of my native town, but obviously the thought that these were being given by someone in a wheelchair was too much for some in Cavan County Council. The Fleadh attracted visitors from far and wide, including continental Europe and beyond, and I would have been able to give such talks in a variety of European languages.
I was due to give a “walking tour” of Cavan town in February 2009. Unfortunately this had to be cancelled at the last moment because of a freak snowstorm. (In fact the County Arts Officer, Ms Catriona O’Reilly was advised by the Gardai to cancel all other events on the day because of the inclement weather.) I was assured that the talk would be rescheduled for a later date. When I heard that the fleadh was going to take place in Cavan town I thought this would have been a perfect opportunity, but alas the organisers saw differently and both native and visitor to the town were denied the chance to hear an entertaining presentation on the history of the town which I would have been only too happy to give. These people could not say that they didn’t know of me, or that they didn’t know whether I’d be able to give a talk, considering I spoke as part of the long overdue commemoration of the victims of the fire in Cavan’s convent in February 1943. Like many others associated with this commemoration I was anxious that it should not become a finger-pointing or blame-apportioning exercise, but should be used to remember the lives of the unfortunate victims. To be cynical the organisers of the fleadh and their backers in Cavan County Council obviously thought that I had no business talking about any aspect of my town’s history.
For “the powers that be”, i.e. those with their paws on the lever of power and the sources of funding, it is important though, that Cavan’s disabled be presented as a group on the margins, existing purely by the goodwill of those in authority. They must be shown as having no skills and no ability – unless they are lucky enough to have a parent who is a local politician.
Poet Noel Monahan, a good friend of mine (or at least I think he is – I can’t take anyone for granted amongst Cavan’s artistic set) once wrote, if memory serves me correctly, about Black James’ town” where pigs are holy cows. Blessed bovines are a problem throughout Cavan. Certain institutions and events, usually organised by local government agents, take on a veneer of holiness and incorruptibility. They are perfect. No criticism can be allowed because none is warranted. Constant genuflection becomes a canon of and their praise is constantly rehearsed. Consequently anyone who does not join in the adulation, or anyone who (God forbid) might actually voice criticism, is considered a crank, a deviant and an enemy of the people more or less. They are excluded from “official” activity as if they never existed.
One such long-grazing holy cow is Cavan County Museum. For someone to allege that there had been “trouble” between the museum and an individual (even though it was before his time) is equivalent not so much to a sentence of death but to a sentence of “non life” in Cavan.
I fear that the recent fleadh in Cavan town is going the same way. Its success was due to the participation of thousands of talented musicians, accompanied by fun-loving and excitement-seeking spectators. It had nothing to do with Cavan County Council, which is now trying to bathe in the glory of the event. Its success was if anything threatened by those publicans who, in spite of having wallowed in County Council largesse still felt the need to charge exorbitant prices. Thankfully many of those visiting the fleadh did not go into the pubs, – they would have had difficulty entering anyway.
I wasn’t able to attend the fleadh, in part because of access issues. Emma Breidin has produced a survey to discover what these issues were and how they might be addressed, and I will certainly help in a constructive spirit. I fear however that my contribution will be immediately discarded, not by Emma but by others within Cavan County Council. These are people who recall the vicious rumour that there was “trouble between him and the museum”. This would be enough to invalidate anything I might say, and indeed render useless any contribution I might make as a disabled person. These are people who prefer Cavan’s disabled to be “seen but not heard”. The disabled were given their very own opportunity to contribute they will argue, in the form of Bridget Boyle’s little theatrical piece. Those like myself who have always sought to pursue an independent journey outside the paternalism of the Irish Wheelchair association are ignored.
One of the overlooked aspects of the fleadh was the impact it had on mobile phone services in the area. The users of one service, Vodaphone, are suffering problems with dropped calls and delays in test messages (although I’ve heard users of other networks are experiencing issues). Vodaphone staff in the town say that the problem was caused by overuse of their services during the fleadh, which led to the suspension of two mobile ‘phone cells. Did no one foresee that this fleadh would have led to the town being inundated with people, many of whom would want to use their cellular ‘phones? Once again there doesn’t seem to have been much forward planning here.
Ciaran's Peculier [sic] Blog 