Life at the bottom

I have to admit that the cut in my Blind pension, compounded by the disgraceful way in which the minister for social affairs has lied about it, has left me reeling. My self confidence has taken a knock. I certainly feel far more uncertain about myself.

 I’m nearly forty-five, an age at which many people take stock of their lives. I’ve achieved much, and done a lot I can be proud of, but in purely financial and material terms I am no better off than I was when I was 18. My sight seems to be holding its own, but I have been diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a disease of the nervous system which will get steadily worse (unless some miracle cure is discovered). My medication has succeeded in slowing down and ironing out the degree of relapse, but I am realistic enough to know that eventually I face complete paralysis maybe in the medium term. But the Irish government has so far responded to me not by giving me more but by taking away the little it gives, so that I anticipate in the coming years the prospects of being a penniless and helpless cripple, unable to work, indeed unable to do anything for myself. I will probably be housed, if I’m lucky, in a home where I’ll be the recipient of the mixture of care and indifference such places provide. Of course I will be looked down upon , and treated with condescension.

 This is not the life I had planned out for myself. I have never considered myself imbued with extraordinary intelligence, but I always worked hard at education. This was for a very simple reason. I didn’t want to live in the twilight world of a cripple. No, I wanted to contribute fully to the world around me and earn adequate amounts of money; I knew it would be tough with my sight problem, so I thought that if I have grades and qualifications of a higher level than other people it will force society and prospective employees to give me a chance and treat me as an equal. How naïve I was! In all my hard work in education I was only fashioning a rod with which others could beat me.

 In Ireland disabled people have very few rights in employment. All the cards are held by the employer. If he or she has the slightest hunch that a disabled person will not be able to do a job they are perfectly entitled to sack the disabled person, or, as happens fare more often, not give the disabled person a job at all. I was not considered for a job because I was “not a driver and able to get around,” even though the job was not that of a chauffeur. I was very well qualified for the job in question, and I was then intended to do much of the work the successful candidate couldn’t do, but for a far lower wage than he received.

 But those disabled people who are in employment are made to feel that they are lucky. Certainly they are in a minority. One of the reasons often put forward for the higher level of unemployment amongst disabled people is lack of skills. This may be true, but dare I say again look at me. I have a PhD, as well as diplomas in proofreading, copy editing and public relations. I have a knowledge of over a dozen European languages, as well as a keen interest in areas like management studies and world trade. Am I any better off? I know I should have paid more attention to scientific and technological subjects, but I honestly feel that I would be equally “unemployable” in the minds of many employers if I had a Masters degree in information technology. I have made mistakes in life, but none of them are so serious that they must be punished by a life sentence of poverty. And exclusion

 Many disabled people are confined to employment ghettoes, doing low=skilled and badly-paid work without prospects of promotion. This is especially true of the public service, and is a situation that has been allowed to continue with the connivance of the trades unions. These jobs are often entirely unsuitable for the particular disabled people who get them. In one local authority I know of a girl who is a university graduate who has a job in the motor tax department. She is partially sighted and finds the work tedious, as well as placing great strain and stress upon her eyes. In the local authority concerned there is only one disabled person employed in a higher, supervisory, role – and he is the son of a former TD and County Councillor (a man who, by the way, has worked tirelessly on behalf of his son, for which he deserves much praise).

 I like to see myself as standing up to evil but I’m no hero. Yest, I am afraid, because I see those in positions of power and influence as being very evil, wicked and cowardly people who cover their nefarious activities. They are as evil as the likes of Osama Bin Laden, but though evil they seldom have courage, certainly not the courage to do anything on their own bat. No, they much prefer to act in consort with others who are similarly stained by evil. In this they remind me of the phenomenon recognised by Hannah Arendt in the likes of Eichmann; an evil which is banal, not very spectacular, but which is nevertheless capable of causing great harm.

 I gain happiness from my marvellous partner, Rosie, our family of three dogs and five cats, my family and close friends. But I feel so vulnerable. The rulers of this country and their advisors are a group of cowardly, selfish, vicious and hypocritical thieves who are able to act with impunity. Nobody comments any more on how bad things have got, because they know they can’t change anything. The media seem to have gone into abeyance. An opinion poll hasn’t been published in months, and won’t be until it is favourable to the government. The country as a whole chugs along motivated by a culture of botch and mediocrity, which can be summed up in the phrase “Ah sure fuck it, it’s bollixed but it can’t be helped an’ anyway it’s not my job.” In many of our bigger towns and cities  there is an out-of-control crime wave, with tit-for-tat murders occurring nightly, while our police are scared shitless of any real crime because it would be a challenge to them to actually do something instead of riding around in their squad cars. Visits to my local hospital in Cavan are prohibited for the forseeable future, bceause of another outbreak of the “Winter VOmitting bug.”  This must make a stay in hospital more akin to a prison sentence for patients, whether they are on trolleys or are lucky enough to have a bed,  It’s a bit of a joke isn’t it; you go to a hospital to be cured, but in Ireland you may come out seriously ill.

For me personally the feeling of vulnerability is compounded by the knowledge that the various charities and voluntary organisations who supposedly campaign for the disabled have thrown in their lot with the powers that be and are far more interested in raising funds to keep their officials in employment.  Sometimes my fear at the situation leads to panic.

Living in a republic

The Murphy commission report pointed to an inappropriate relationship between the Catholic archdiocese of Dublin and senior

Up the Republic Dermot?

members of the Irish police force. The report should have been more candid. These senior figures in the Gardai were often members of Catholic lay groups such as the Knights of Saint Columbanus, and often owed their positions and promotions to such membership. And when the church wanted something hushed up they could be relied upon to do it,  You had a situation – in some places you still have a situation – where the legal system was infected. The colonisation of areas such as the judiciary and the police force essentially meant that the clergy as well as other members of these lay groups, were beyond the legal pale and could do what they liked. Such a form of infection is invidious and has nothing to do with Christianity.

 As someone who belongs to the Catholic branch of Christianity I am appalled by the actions of some of its bishops in league with well-placed members of the laity, but my horror is not recent. Oh no, I have observed the hypocrisy, the double standards, for years. I have kept silent because to do otherwise would be to invite victimisation, and sadly the victimisation has come anyway.

 I have nothing in common with these people in the Knights or Opus Dei or any of the plethora of Catholic Masonic groups. They have no part in the version of Christianity I subscribe to. In fact, I see them as fifth columnists, people who have infiltrated the Christian religion and who clothe themselves in a selection of its rituals and who pervert its doctrines in order to conceal their own baseness and evil.

 Irish Justice Minister Dermot Ahern, in presenting the Murphy report, attempted to come over all radical, as a child of Rousseua and Voltaire. Instead of demanding the crushing of infamy he stated that we live in a republic where none are beyond the law. But yet how is it that his colleague Dr Michael Woods made such a nice deal with the religious orders so that they escaped having to pay out too much in redress to their victims. There wasn’t much sign of a republic there. Let us recall during the shameful referendum debates of the 1980s when Archbishop McNamara’s de facto political spokesman was that wonderful politician from the west Padraig Flynn who brought his children up so well, inculcating one of them with the belief that tax evasion was a worthwhile endeavour. Then there was senator Don Lydon who regaled the Irish senate with his homosexual fantasies, not to mention the late Jim Tunny. Former deputy for Dublin North West Michael Barrett who took part in the picket objecting to the screening of the boring Je Vous Salue Mariez, which, because it was denounced by the Vatican, acquired a notoriety it never deserved. I could go on, and on and on, but it would be boring. So, before Dermot Ahern starts trying to fly the flag of enlightened republicanism, he must dwell on how many members of his party, at all levels, are members of right-wing Catholic lay groups whose unspoken policy is to subborn the state to the Catholic church. No wonder Protestant bigots in Northern Ireland are able to snidely remark that Home Rule still means Rome Rule, while forgetting the nefarious influence of their Orange Order.

Proposed prescription charges – a double whammy

As a recipient of a means-tested benefit I am looking forward to having the miserable pittance on which I survive cut still further. And now I learn that the minister for Health plans to introduce a per item prescription charge for medical cards. Since my diagnosis with Multiple Sclerosis I have been prescribed a Beta-Inferon preparation which so far has regulated, though not eliminated, relapses. But I am going to be penalised. This government, not content with spitting in my face by reducing my blind pension, seeks to harass me and many others. Does the minister think that I am misusing the medicines I receive? In that it improves my quality of life and keeps me alive, I suppose I am misusing them according to her perverted lights. The bitch really has a brass neck to pontificate on such a subject. The really frustrating thing is that thyi9s prescription charge will help to pay for the minister’s five-star champagne lifestyle as well as pay the salaries of some HSE employees so that they can continue their criminal activities.

 Where might I ask are the Unions? Are they so selfishly myopic? Are they only interested in the lot of their members? And as for the Party of Slime who sit at the cabinet table with these bastards they have shown themselves up for what they are.

 This criminal government should be – must be – overthrown BY ANY MEANS – before it can do any more harm to the Irish people.

 I suppose I can expect a visit from the Gardai for the above statement – maybe at 1,30 in the morning.

 

 

After dark

Mad uncle Frank

Francisco Macias Nguema, was Equatorial Guinea’s first president. In the eleven years he held the post he was responsible for the deaths of 50,000 people, as well as sending thousands of others into exile. Before his overthrow and murder by his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema (who is still in power) the country had earned the unwelcome epithet of “the Dachau of Africa”. Amnesty International’s annual report were full of the heinous acts of human rights violations carried out by Macias, not t mention the crimes against humanity to be laid at his successor’s door. He oversaw one of the most bizarre personality cults in history – so bizarre because it was so unmerited. He adored bestowing grandiose titles on himself, yet he was barely literate. It is said he failed the colonial exams to become an office clerk three times and was only successful on the fourth because of some positive discrimination. He was given to violent swings of personality and received treatment in Spain and the United States for unspecified psychiatric problems; towards the latter years of his life he had acquired some unidentifiable disease

Not really like his uncle?

which may have been AIDS-related.

His hold on power was maintained through fear, not only of his loyal thugs but of Macias personally. He deliberately cultivated the belief that his father had been a witch doctor and sorcerer, and that he had inherited many of these gifts. He was rumoured to have drunk the blood of some of his political opponents, and he kept a large stockpile of human skulls at his presidential compound, alongside all of the country’s foreign currency reserves and medical supplies. Macias loved the dark and detested light; a Spanish airline pilot was arrested and tortured when he accidentally shone his ‘plane’s headlights on Macias’ jet as it sat on the airport tarmac one night. In 1977 a visiting researcher was told that “… you may be against Macias while the sun shines, but after dark you have to be for him,” Even when overthrown and sentenced to death, no locals could be found to man the firing squad, and the task had to be performed by Moroccan soldiers.

Macias  Nguema’s preference for the dark reminds me of the activities of a solicitor employed by the Irish health Service Executive, who is sadly well-known to her victims, and who seems to delight in working in the hours of night, well after “The Bard’’s witching hour. Does she feel that her victim are more cowed by the inky blackness, and less able to put up a defence to her machinations when they are awoken suddenly by the headlights of the garda cars ferrying her to the scene of her nocturnal sacrifices? or is there a yet more sinister reason for this, tied up perhaps with practice of the dark arts?

While the sun shines it is easy to be against Ms Helen (or is it Ellinor?) Stone, but after dark …

I wonder what she’s doing for Halloween?

 

True courage

The decision by Donal Og Cusack to admit to being gay is a tremendously courageous one. But his sexuality shouldn’t have

Doma; Og Cusack

anything to do with the fact that he is a great Gaelic games player. Hopefully it may provide an alternative role model for players at all levels of the game. They’ll now realise that it is possible to operate at the pinnacle of the sport while eschewing the long-accepted and too long tolerated stereotype of the GAA player i.e. a heavy-drinking, philandering, wife=beating thug who nevertheless sits beatifically through Mass, and who is willing to do anything his church tells him. Let’s hope more players are able to stand up to the hypocritical homophobes in the association, most of whom would shit themsel at the sight of a ball hurtling towards them.

It’s a sin to tell a lie

 

This weekend’s revelations about ministerial beauty treatments in five-star hotels, trips on elephants to India etc., show us one thing. Not only are our rulers robbers: they are also shameless LIARS! But then, I suppose what better type of person to have at the head of that crowd of liars the HSE.

And then there is Minister Parafin in India. I for one wouldn’t mind if she was participating in a suttee ceremony. Maybe she was on a fact-finding mission after which she would have told social welfare recipients about the joys of lying on nails.

But you know, if I were an employer trying to fill vacancies there are things which would automatically exclude certain candidates. If they had to deal with money I would certainly not employ anyone about whom there was even the whiff of dishonesty, while anyone with criminal associates would definitely not be taken on. But even though our government ministers are supposedly – theoretically – our servants, we can’t get rid of them. In fact we are being held hostage by a criminal clique And anyway those waiting so eagerly in the wings to grab power are as bad if not worse than those already here.

In the past I have referred to the Minister of Health as Mary Hernia. I think a far more apposite name would be Hairy Mary.

As for the Greens, I wonder whether John Gormley remembers what Michael Collins said after signing the Treaty in 1921? Clue: it was something about death warrants. Well gormless Gormley has not only signed his own death political death warrant, but that of the Green Party as a whole. As they say in Italy. Chi va con lo zoppo impara zoppicare.

Darkness visible

There’s husbandry in heaven –
Their candles are all out..

I want to tell you a story; let me assure you that every word of it is true, no matter how fantastic it may appear.

 Recently Rosie and myself have had a couple staying with us who have been attempting to liberate their son from care, into which he was delivered on the flimsiest of reasons. One of the couple established a website in which he attempted to publicise their plight and that of other families in similar situations.

 Last Thursday, Ms Helen McGovern, solicitor for the Health Service Executive, succeeded in extracting a High Court injunction against the website. The manner in which this injunction was subsequently delivered beggars belief in a free society. At approximately 1.30 am on the following morning all of the residents of the house were awoken by the arrival of Ms McGovern, accompanied by no less than four gardai. Ms McGovern obviously does her best work after dark, but I cannot for the life of me see why they had to be served at such an ungodly hour. I also fail to see why she had to be accompanied by such a large force of police. Did they believe that the couple were going to “make a run for it”? or that they would be offered physical resistance? One of the garda squad cars had come all the way from Navan with Ms McGovern. Most people know that sadly, Co. Meath is awash with illegal drugs. The gardai respond as well as they can, though they are often hampered by insufficient resources. On the morning of Friday, September 18^th, their ability to fight not only the drugs problem but crime in general was severely hampered by allocating one squad car with two gardai to accompany Ms McGovern’s nocturnal frolic. The forces assigned for this visit were equivalent to those for a raid, yet this group presented the unedifying spectacle of skulking  through the blackened Cavan countryside asking for directions. Obviously the Gartda Siochana haven’t heard of GPS yet.

 Luckily I wasn’t in residence at Putiaghan Upper that night. I would have been terrified to be disturbed by the headlights of police cars. The whole thing would have reminded me too much of a scene from Alan Parker’s film Mississippi Burning. Both Rosie and myself are law-abiding people, without so much as a parking ticket to our names, so to be treated in this shameful manner by the police is intolerable. My first reaction upon hearing the front door being knocked in the middle of the night would have been to seek the protection of the gardai by telephone. Imagine how I would have felt on learning that those who were disturbing my peace, those who were frightening me, were the very people towards whom I looked for protection, I feel that my customary civility towards the Civic Guards would have been stretched to breaking point.

 On the following evening, at approximately 10.30 pm our peace was again disturbed by a Process Server delivering additional court documents. Why can documents only be delivered at night? The Process Server, who seemed genuinely embarrassed, explained that the late hour was caused by the delay in preparing the documents. This preparation had been so rushed that they hadn’t been filled in properly or signed.

 The serving of the papers at such an unorthodox manner on the morning of the 18th, accompanied by such a large contingent of police, was a clear and deliberate attempt to intimidate the couple and my partner Rosie. Ms McGovern’s visit was no act of charity; she will indeed seek and no doubt receive handsome payment of expenses for her after hours’ exertions by the HSE. How can the HSE don the poor mouth, citing lack of money when cutting back vital and essential services, but yet they have money to burn on such non-vital expenses? Is it not true that at a time when we are told we must swallow “tough” decisions regarding public spending, which will cause genuine hardship, our public servants and those whom they employ can waste as much money as they can?

 I wish to stress that everything I have said above is factually correct. When (or if) Ms McGovern reads it I am sure she will be enraged, and as a well-connected member of the judiciary she will possibly seek to gag me by undertaking legal action against me. She may labour under the mistaken belief that I can be frightened into silence, as was her intention in visiting our house at such an inappropriate hour. But if the truth hurts don’t blame me. Furthermore I believe all the comments made to be fair in the circumstances. The above statements are not motivated by malice, but by a desire to expose abusive behaviour by the executive, including an abuse of judicial process, I am also conscious that in writing the above I have not made myself many friends amongst those who seek to dominate our lives. Let me remind everyone that we still live in a free society – just.  Amongst the freedoms we take for granted are not just freedom of speech, but the freedom to enjoy an undisturbed night’s sleep.

 

.

The prize for failure

I see on the newst section of the Northern Sound site that those Cavan County Councillors who were rejected by the electorate at the recent elections are entitled to a gratuity amounting to 110,000 euro. This is only payable to people given a complete thumbs down. Those councillors who lost their seats at county council level, but who were nevertheless considered eligible to serve at town council level won’t get a cent.

At a time of economic hardship these payment, and what’s more their receipt, is not only outrageous but immoral. The electorate must recognise that members of our political elite still control what little money there is, and they will make sure that they have first call on it. And don’t forget, this money is tax free and not subject to any means test.

Those luckier to get elected though have the opportunities not only to grab scarce financial resources but also to provide jobs for family members and relatives; as one of them would put it: “Ah sure ya might as well.”

As for the great majority of people in the country, many of whom have no jobs, they must grit their teeth and accept being treated like trash, and maybe having what little they are entitled to grabbed from them by the evil, semi-literate pen-pushers of the Department of Social, Community and Family Affairs. But they are doing it to please the rabid bitch who sits at the department’s helm.

Fianna Fail’s death-wish

Why has there not been a national outcry? Brian Lenihan has announced his plans for social welfare cuts. He believes the high levels of welfare payments are preventing the country from getting out of the recession, and like a good Thatcherite believes that current levels of welfare benefits are a disincentive to work.

 (This isn’t a Ciaran Parker hoax: it can be read here.

 While he is busy spending the country’s money on bailing out Anglo Irish Bank, it may have slipped his attention that there are very few jobs out there. So are people to starve? In many cases it is not the high level of welfare payments that are acting as a disincentive, but the fact that those seeking the few jobs available often find relatives of Fianna Fail (and Fine Gael) politicians always landing the jobs in front of them.

 

It seems that efforts have been made to keep this news story off the front pages and the television news. The Fianna Fail party obviously realise that were it to be generally known their opinion poll ratings would be in negative figures, so they wish to deceive the voting public.

 

I honestly think that Fianna Fail has been taken over by a Doomsday Cult. I don’t think they will care if they suffer electoral meltdown. After all they’re in government, and who are the electorate? A crowd of whingers. But while they may feel county councillors are an expendable group of yokels with no real power vis-à-vis local government executives, they should remember that they are the people who elect the bulk of An Seanad. I would not be surprised if, following the next general election – which may be sooner than later), there will be numerous Fianna Fail TDs looking for a back-way into the legislature through being elected as a senator.

 

These statements of Lenihan have nothing to do with economics. They stem from social prejudice. Also, let us remind ourselves that Lenihan is a lawyer and not an econom9ist. He is a hostage of the senior, well-paid officials of the Department of Finance, and he is demonstrating a bad dose of Stockholm syndrome.

 

Lenihan really has a cheek. A man who had his university fees paid from his third year in College (as well as free rooms in Trinity), and this as a result of a scholarship awarded on the results of an examination. This wasn’t a state examination like the Leaving Certificate, or an end-of-year examination where members of staff from other universities act as consultants or advisers, but an internal examination, marked solely by members of the College’s staff  – in this case the staff of Trinity’s Law Department. There was no secrecy here. Brian Lenihan’s identity was clearly evident to the examination markers. They could plainly see the papers belonged to the son of one of the country’s leading politicians. The markers did not have to think whether he was good enough for the scholarship; rather they had to wrestle with what might happen if they didn’t give him the scholarship, and how this might affect funding to Trinity in the future were Fianna Fail in power.

 

My personal recollections of Brian Lenihan Jr in Trinity College in the mid ‘80s was of an obese oaf. I recall how at cumann meetings (yes, I attended them) he would sit Buddha-like, surrounded by is arse-lickers and groupies, hanging on every word of drivel as if it were an intellectual pearl of great price.

Tea for two

In Chile a former conscript has been charged with the brutal murder of popular singer Victor Jara in the immediate aftermath of General Augusto Pinochet’s fascist putsch in 1973. Victor Jara, among with hundreds of others, was brought to Chile’s National stadium where he was subjected to an orgy of mindless thuggery and violence before being shot forty-four times.

And the man who masterminded the coup and who was the intellectual author of Jara’s murder and that of thousands of others sipped tea in the cosiest of tete-a-tetes with that rabid bitch Margaret Thatcher. He was also the darling of members of the Catholic right in England and Ireland, such Norman Lamont. I remember how I was told by a member of the Knights of Columanus that Pinochet had “rescued Chile from communism” and that most of those who were murdered by the military were communist sympathisers who deserved what they got.