Playing The Blame Game

By Charley Brady

Are you sitting down while reading this? I certainly hope that you are. Because it did come as a bit of a shock to me. Indeed, I had to lie down with a wet towel wrapped around my head since it turns out that in Ireland at the moment we actually have a finance minister. He's called Brian Lenihan.

He's also called a lot of other things but as this is a family newspaper I suppose that I'll just have to settle for calling him a windbag. He's also a cry baby who, when given a job that he is bloody well paid for, seemed to feel that it was a poisoned chalice.

Ah, Shakespeare, you have a lot to answer for; but even the genius that you were couldn't have foreseen Brian Lenihan coming along in all his glory.

Yes, it's true that Mr Lenihan has been educated at Belvedere College and Trinity College but when it comes to whining and crying about the bad hand that life has dealt by giving him such a job, while allowing him to pocket a REALLY substantial amount of loot from the people by whom they have been employed there are certainly no better chancers than he and his mates in Fianna Fail (fail being the operative word).

It makes me glad that I'm not "educated" when I see the shambles that this bungling, bunkum, self-inflated little Bonaparte who is currently pretending to be the Finance Minister has made of things. (By the way, Mr. Lenihan, just to save you straining that over- educated brain from too much in the old thinking department, bunkum is someone who talks nonsense and claptrap. Sounds a bit like you, doesn't it?)

Broadcaster Joe Duffy, who runs a daytime radio show which gives members of the public a chance to air their grievances about the half-assed way that our beloved leaders, the Fianna Failures, are running Ireland at the moment, suddenly found himself silenced and gagged this week for the simple reason that he was airing the views of people who were legitimately concerned about their hard worked-for savings going down the drain during the current economic meltdown.

It was a good program; yet instead of being a man the whining, arrogant so called Finance Minister felt that the proper thing to do was to go over Mr Duffy's head and get right on to the chief of our national broadcasters. He immediately neutered the following day's show.

Of course, this was of no surprise to those of us that diligently pay our €170 for a license to keep them on the air.

Indeed I would be under no illusions that if Mr Lenihan had asked the RTE chief to jump up and down while singing "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" at the top of his lungs that said gentleman would have said "Of course I will, sir, because you're the man in charge while the gobdaws who pay our wages are only clowns. Now, how high would you like me to jump while I sing this for you?"

I don't know who's worse, really: craven fools like the guys at the top of our National Broadcasting Service or flatheads like our Finance Minister.

I can only shudder when I imagine this joker at one of his colleges in his younger days.

Having seen at first hand his type and how they treat anyone perceived to be weaker than them I can just picture him as a smaller but no less deadly version of the whinging balloon head that he is today, terrorising the smaller kids through a mixture of perceived power and natural arrogance because his daddy was in thrall to Charles J. Haughey, one of the biggest crooks that this corrupt country ever produced.

Good news for a change!

There has been a festival of director Terrence Malick's films shown on the small screen here at the moment and if you haven't seen his absolutely glorious '70s movie "Days of Heaven", then rent it out or buy it immediately.

It is just such an elegy to days and a way of living that are long gone.

I have never for a moment believed in the ludicrous notion that there is a Supreme Being, but as an allegory of Biblical fables it is just so haunting and - wait for it - makes you actually think.

Needless to say, no one went to see it, despite it having a great cast that includes Richard Gere (back when he was acting rather than telling us how great the Dalai Lama is - what is that guy actually about anyway?) and the truly wonderful Sam Shepard.

They also showed "The New World" which stars our own Colin Farrell. Just a perfect film.

Just in case you think I'm getting soft over here, guess what? Our water in the Galway area is once again undrinkable. That is even when you boil it. No, it's not a Third World Country that I'm talking about; it is indeed Ireland in 2008.

On a different and even more sinister matter, I hate to say "I told you so" - actually I take that back because I like saying it, especially because of the abuse that I took from certain quarters - the piece that I did for these pages about a month ago is now being reported as 100% accurate.

The deliciously named Basque terrorist De Juana Chaos, has indeed been welcomed here by our own terrorists (sorry, I keep forgetting that the IRA doesn't exist anymore - not much they don't) and is now in Belfast while waiting to see if he can move on to Mexico.

My love for that country is well documented at this stage, so please Mexico, don't take in this hate-filled mass murderer.

This is the man who was released after 21 years of a 3,000 year sentence to complete outrage in Spain just a couple of months back.

He's been staying at the home of Jim Monaghan in north Dublin.

Surely you must remember good old Jim, because he was one of the three Irishmen arrested in Columbia while visiting his mates in FARC.

He was travelling on a false passport, but claimed that he was there bird-watching.

Yeah, of course you were Jim; and by the way that whirring sound you hear is that of flying monkeys coming out of my rear end.

On a final cheerful note, as I write this our beloved leader Brian Cowen, in the midst of absolute economic shambles in Ireland is flying out to you lucky people in New York.

Is there any chance that you can keep him there? Because we certainly don't want him back.

Thank you.

See you next week - same bat-time, same bat-channel.

P.S. As I'm writing this I'm just hearing of the passing of a true icon - Paul Newman, who has died at the age of 83.

Apart from his contribution to cinema he was a truly great friend to Ireland.

The manner in which he was instrumental in not just raising money for but in also making the dreams of thousands of terminally-ill children come true through his Trojan work at Barritstown in County Kildare in 1994 will never be forgotten.

You were considered a true hero here, Mr. Newman, and our thoughts are with your wife and family at this sad time.