Say "Hello To The New Year... Same As The Old Year"

"My biggest problem really is sometimes the company that he keeps. I struggle with that. Particularly the political people... Particularly Tony Blair - I mean, I think that Tony Blair is a war criminal. And I think that he should be tried as a war criminal. And then I see Bono and his pals, and I'm going "I don't like that".
- Larry Mullins of U2

And so as the New Year begins we bid farewell to the ever-angry Harold Pinter, one of the best playwrights that Britain ever produced and who died just before Christmas.

And how appropriate that U2's drummer, Larry Mullins, a man who keeps to himself and doesn't hog the limelight, should give a rare interview where he says that he "cringes" when he sees his lead singer asking we mere mortals to keep handing over the shekels while gracing the world's stage as its greatest known tax dodger.

That was a good start to the Christmas Season. Reality always kicks in though, doesn't it?

In the wink of a young lady's eye we suddenly found a Christmas message from His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI telling us that acts of homosexuality were equal in their evil to the destruction of the environment.

Run that past me again? Well, let me see, His Holiness believes that homosexuality is ordered towards "intrinsic moral evil" and that homosexuals themselves are "objectively disordered".

Bloody Hell, now I know that the wonderful gay neighbours close to me and who have been together for all of twenty-odd years (longer than most straight marriages last) are evil and that I should have nothing to do with them as they represent a "crisis" for the planet.

That's it, Pope Benedict; consider them shut out of my life forever. On your say so.

Could I tentatively suggest something however? Could you perhaps take your antediluvian belief system somewhere else?

I'm thinking of the planet Pluto or perhaps a time machine where you and your ignorant like-minded hate merchants would have a proper home - say, the Dark Ages?

I thought that Christianity was about love; was about accepting people for what they are as long as they don't harm others.

My mistake, obviously. It's about, according to you and your like, encouraging hate towards those who aren't, by your definition, normal.

Tell me, ex-member of the Hitler Youth Party that you are, what is normal?

A man who dresses up in frocks and breaks some unleavened bread while telling the gullible that it has miraculously metamorphosed into the flesh of their God? THAT'S NORMAL?

Why don't you just start by getting your own house in order, old man?

Come back Tom Cruise, all is forgiven.

Once I was human. Once I was normal.

But then one day I woke up with the hangover from Hell itself. Honestly. No one in the galaxy has ever suffered such a hangover.

Listen: I'm a man. I'm allowed to over dramatise things.

I'll give you an example: I recently woke up with a slight cold that I built up to be a case of triple pneumonia. All it got me was a slap on the head from my lady.

Women! What can you do with them?

Anyway, I felt as if I would never drink again (a lie) but by heaven it came close this day.

My morning papers had been delivered and, cup of extremely strong coffee in hand, with the toast and the porridge (with honey, naturally) ready to be devoured, what comes across to hit me but the awful smirking face of French President Nicolas Sarkozy holding his little French flag at a Press Conference while once again telling the peasants of Ireland how to behave.

I feel humbled by his words: "...if things happen as I want them to happen, the Lisbon Treaty will become a reality one year late".

"AS I WANT THEM TO HAPPEN?"

Have I fallen down Alice's rabbit hole? Can this little (I believe that even Bono has to hunch down when talking to him) Napoleonic short jaw be serious?

I must suppose that I'm not through the Looking Glass because the midget goes on to patronise us even further by saying: "When I suggested that we should consult our Irish friends again..."

Our Irish friends? By that do you mean the bunch of politicians that wouldn't be able to find their backsides without a road map? The bunch of inepts who have fewer spines than jellyfish?

Can you possibly be talking about that lot?

When will you ever get the picture? Let me spell it out for you, President Sarkozy: No means no.

That's it. That is what a democratic vote means. If it had been a "Yes" vote I wouldn't have liked it. But nor would I be whinging and scraping in the undignified manner in which our shower of supposed leaders are doing, that's for sure

By the way, I happen to be a regular visitor to France and they want you to get your own country sorted out first.

But Dublin is no longer the capital of Ireland. We are now ruled by a European superstate and that's the fact.

I have, in the last couple of years, been down at Shannon Airport to talk to young Americans travelling through on their way to Iraq. My heart broke for them and trust me, I don't have much of a heart.

But these were nice kids, looking forward to an adventure that I don't really think they had a clue about.

Having worked in some awful places myself, when I looked at their smooth, unshaven faces, my heart simply bled for them.

And then I look at outgoing President Bush giving the interview where he talks all of his claptrap about God and then says: "I am just a simple President". I have to admit that he finally got something right: "simple" is the operative word.

Just a crying shame that so many had to die in order for this simple guy to impress his daddy.

And what Christmas would be complete without Israel bombing the Gaza strip flat.

How do we feel about that here? Well, I know how I feel about it and it includes the words "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing". Come on. Let's be honest and call it what it is.

The jackboot is certainly on the other foot now when you see a man burying his five daughters following a bombing raid.

Don't you even realise that this just makes the endless cycle of violence and hate go on and on?

In Ireland we have some experience of this.

But let me quote Fred Johnston of Galway. I think that he strips it to the bone:

"Does one laugh or cry at the notion of Israel threatening to put Hamas leaders on trial for acts of terror?

"Has the world forgotten the massacres of Sabra and Shantilla? Who stood trial for that?

"Israel commits acts of terror on a daily basis now: for one thing, there is the collective punishment of civilians, which is a war crime, by depriving Palestinians of electricity, food, medical supplies and walling them into a ghetto.

"The world stands by doing nothing, as it did before. The U.S. is cowardly beyond words while the European Union stands browbeaten.

"We are witnessing an inexorable genocide of the Palestinians. We have learned nothing from history."

We have learned nothing from history. How true that is.

Oh, and by the way...

Happy New Year.