G'Day From Downunder

How time flies and we are well into the New Year already. So get the kettle on and let's have a good old chat.

I'd like to think that I'm a fair-minded person and not too many things get on my goat. Though there are a few exceptions. These are mainly banks and credit cards providers.

In my life as a business and financial planner I too often see the cruel results of "forced lending" inflicted on people who over stretch themselves. Then there are the mistruths of politicians. But the one that gives me the most concern is the drug problem in our society today. And it's just not confined to any one street, city, state, nation or region of the world. Sadly it's in epidemic proportion in most places.

I recently watched the chilling movie of Veronica Guerin the brave Irish journalist who went about exposing the drug trade in Dublin in the 1990s and she paid the ultimate price for doing so. You may remember that she was assassinated by motor cycle gun men whilst sitting in her car at traffic lights in the Naas Road just outside Dublin.

If she had not sought to expose the drug trade some say she would likely be still alive today. Maybe so, who knows? The sad part is that for far too long too many people stayed silent and that is the very thing that drives the problem to staggering proportions.

In 1987 while on a holiday in Cork, my native city, I was appalled by what I saw in a local nightclub. I'm not squeamish by any means, but, what I saw there was unimaginable. I've been to most of the not so squeaky clean sides of cities across the world and nothing compared to what I saw that night in Cork. It prompted me to write this poem that was published in my book of Poems titled "Window to My Soul"

Now if I could see what was happening in Irish Society way back in 1987, why couldn't politicians and society leader also have seen the potential disaster looming? A problem so obvious a blind man could have seen it. I have to ask did it take ten years and a journalist life for the penny to drop? What price does society pay for silence? How many lives does the drug trade have to take away from us before enough is enough?

I know it's a monumental problem and there are no easy answers. I also know you can't leave this problem to politicians and the law enforcement because corruption runs rife in the drug trade. We, you and I, have to take responsibility for ourselves and our families. Education first and foremost! Education is everything. Remember the Crosby Stills and Nash song from the sixties "Teach your Children Well"? Ask yourself why did you have children. I'm sure you, like me, wanted to love, nourish and inspire your offspring to do a little better that you did. None of us imagined that they may fall victim to the drug trade.

I say this because I believe that, according to current statistics, at least one of your grandchildren will become a drug addict and I'm sure that's not the future you saw for them the first time you looked into their baby eyes. Didn't society close its eyes and ears to the tobacco industry? The loss of lives is immeasurable. Both the drug trade and tobacco industry make wars look tame when it comes to loss of life?

I'm not suggesting for one moment that anyone should go out on the streets and take radical action to put their lives at risk. It's time for a different approach to the problem!

Let's start at the start as all things should. EDUCATION not solutions. Solutions only fix problems. Let's not start problems and we won't need solutions. Let's Educate, Eliminate and Eradicate and let all our children and grandchildren be Drug Free.

Just a few tit bits to bring you up to date with some previous stories - Damien Leith the Irishman who won the Australian Idol is still riding high at number One. His sixth week in the Aussie charts. I told you he would hang around for a while. Oozing in talent this lad!

My new abode is progressing sometimes forward, sometimes sideways. The new proposed moving in day is, would you believe it, St Patrick's Day? Now wouldn't that be a challenge to an Irishman? Goes to show architects and builders sometimes find it hard to see the light of day. An Irishman moving house on St Patrick's Day - they must have dropped all their marbles.

The possibilities of getting me to move house on that day of all days is like trying to get the Pope out to a Dublin nightclub on Christmas Eve. No Hope!

I will however keep you updated with the progress be it as looney as it is and even though my friends say this whole project has me knocking at the door of the asylum.

Now I did give you plenty of notice of the Australian pies pending invasion of the USA. I hope you were diligent and watching the media last week, because The G'day USA contingent of Australian celebrities Naomi Watts, Russell Crowe, Olivia Newton John and Terry & Bindi Irwin, The late Steve Irwin's (crocodile man) American wife, now Australia's new 'Ambassador', and Steve's talented daughter were over in LA and New York promoting everything and anything Australian. Lurking in the midst of the high profile razz a mataz was the humble Aussie icon, the innocent looking pie that I wrote about some weeks ago.

So I suppose you could say I'm working in the outpost keeping an eye out on things for you just like in the good old Cowboy movies of years gone by.

I hope you kept that article on the Pie 'cos if you haven't and you decided to buy the Aussie Gourmet delight you'll need the instructions I gave you, or you're going to make an awful mess of yourself in trying to scoff it down.

The sports world is a buzz about the David Beckham's $300million plus deal with the LA Galaxy Soccer team. In this modern day of commercialisation I don't see what all the fuss is about. The people who negotiated the deal aren't idiots, you wouldn't think so anyway. They must think he's worth it and they can make money otherwise they would not have forked out megabucks, now would they? After all look what the top golfers, the top basketballers, formula one drivers etc. get paid, so why not Becks? Good Luck to him.

He served Manchester United and England superbly and if Real Madrid didn't use his talents to the maximum that's their problem.

Did someone say something about loyalty? What's that word doing in a commercial world? It doesn't exist anymore in sports. It's all about TV rights and selling merchandise. Loyalty went out the window years ago when TV started paying big bucks for the rights.

If you want to reminisce about the old days of Manchester United and manager Matt Busby and The Busby Babes in 1958, or captain Danny Blanchflower's successful Tottenham Hotspur in the '60s, then that's an entirely different time and game. That's when the locals used to have their few pints,a packet of cigarettes and then wonder down to their football match on a Saturday afternoon. And all of us in Ireland who loved the game had to wait for the Sunday papers to get the results.

How cute, quaint and cheap the game was then to those of us who got to see some of the good teams in the good old days. it was intimate - no problem getting autographs and slapping the player on the back after the game, win, draw or lose.

Many a time I stood in Dalymount Park watching Ireland play in that warm friendly atmosphere. But long gone are those days now it's corporate boxes, season tickets package deals and you have to book weeks, months and even in some cases a year ahead.

So who's kidding who about modern day sport? I remember Chelsea when they didn't have and couldn't afford a foreign player. Now I think they have only one or two locals and that goes for a lot of other teams those days, so David Beckham is only falling into line with modernisation in today's sport just like all the other top sports stars.

I don't think for one moment Tiger Woods would feel guilty if he changed from his famous Nike brand tomorrow and moved to a competitor.

So let's not get too hung-up on it, let's just appreciate the talent they have and good luck to them.

Until I talk to you again in a couple of weeks, keep a song in your heart and Slaiñte from Downunder.