Clouds Lift On A Meditation In Black

"The key to understanding the Cowen/Lenihan debacle is this - they must preserve everything as it is, as far as possible.
"The same people, the same structures, the same inequality, the same unfairness whatever the cost. The mugs will pick up the tab for the greed and foolishness of the elite.
"This isn't simply because the Cowen/Lenihan regime is evil - this is simply their view of the world. They believe in inequality as an economic dynamic. They know no other philosophy."
- Journalist Gene Kerrigan, "Sunday Independent" *

By Charley Brady

There are some things that seem to be almost against Nature. Stuff like advertising. Or specifically cheesy advertising that features an actor that you like and who doesn't even need the money.

I'm obviously not talking about creepy guys that you don't like representing Nike... oh, off the top of my head let's just say it's Tiger Woods invoking the shade of his dead father. This isn't just cheesiness. This is taste so appalling that obviously Nike and Woods were made for each other.

No, I'm talking about greats like Robert De Niro advertising American bloody Express. That is just so fundamentally WRONG on every level. "My city, my card." Ah no, Bob; you're breaking my heart.

Or how about the fine Irish actor and personable human being Colm Meaney telling us to put all our loot into Halifax Building Society? Are they in or out of trouble at the moment?

The latest one to be irritating me on a grand level is Kevin Spacey looking for the perfect seat. It turns out that somebody or other is flying him around the world business class and Kevin is happy out with the seating arrangement.

My jaws were so wide open and my brain was so numbed that I didn't even catch what airline it was.

Like Paris Hilton, this is a crime against Nature.

John Gormley of the Green Party is a thing against Nature. I'm obviously not saying that he is man not born of woman or anything like that but there's just something - well, off, about him.

He was on the Late Late Show on Friday night and it is a very disconcerting experience to look at him as he grapples with the truly alien concept of giving a simple "yes" or "no" when asked a question.

He begins to babble inanities and look as if he's only here for a short time from whatever lentil-munching, sandal-wearing dimension he has just transported in from.

I have to hand it to presenter Ryan Tubridy. When he took over the show I thought he would be too lightweight for the bigger interviews but he was like a dog with a bone last night; not that it got him any clearer answers by the way, but at least it wasn't for want of trying.

He has proven to be quite a hard-hitter with guys like Brian Cowen but he did let us down when questioning Bertie Ahern. Then again, trying to catch that chancer is like picking up mercury.

I don't wish John Gormley and his Green Party too much ill will at the next election. I simply want to see them decimated. Wiped out. Annihilated.

It's the least that they deserve after selling out every principle that they never had in order to keep the little teeny bit of power they are allowed under their ruthless masters, Fianna Fail.

I want them to go into extinction in the way that the Progressive Democrats have done. Even more so since THEY left us the ghastly Morticia Mary Harney of the Health and Death Department and there's just no getting rid of her.

There's no point in even filling her mouth with garlic and driving a stake through her heart; she would only ask for seconds on the garlic front and mistake the stake for a steak. (Ouch, Brady, that was bad!)

His latest and ongoing piece of tomfoolery concerns the ancient Irish tradition of cutting the turf.

For centuries Irish men have cut and saved the turf but because it has now been deigned to have a perceived and very miniscule effect on the environment it is to be outlawed.

So to hell with those who have walked the bogs since the time of their great-grandfathers and probably before that. Tradition? Well, I can think of some nonsensical ones that I wouldn't mind seeing the back of but to wipe out such a part of our heritage for so little reason is obscene.

Of course it is our faceless masters in Brussels, many of whom will never set foot in Ireland - and if they do you can be sure it won't be on a bog - who are demanding this; and since John Gormley never saw an ass that he couldn't kiss he was the first in to congratulate them and tell them that we would be good boys and girls and not make any fuss over this small thing. Well, maybe not in those words but that's what it amounts to.

The last people to be surprised by him of course are country people. At this point Gormless has made it pretty clear that he wouldn't feel bad at all about wiping out the rights of any muck-savages.

To highlight the kind of brain-dead Party of cretins that he has the distinction of leading here's one of his Green ministers who obviously didn't take his medication before getting onto his Twitter page on Friday night.

While thousands upon thousands of air travellers all over Europe had to contend with the fall-out of ash from the volcanic eruption in Iceland, Ciaran Cuffe told us gleefully: "Every (volcanic) cloud has a (low carbon) silver lining." He then has a little picture of a boat and a lecture on why it is better to go by water than by air.

God help us: Ciaran Cuffe, Planning Minister and all- round comedian.

Simple justice demands that every stranded air passenger be given the opportunity to plant a really, really hard boot up this buffoon's backside.

I would suggest the boot land somewhere more painful but this is a family newspaper.

Once again we see the difference in the rarefied air breathed by the politicians and those of us on the ground (pun intended).

The Green Party has been in thrall to the Fianna Failures for so long now that it is hard to tell them apart in their arrogance.

Passengers trying to get back home, airlines looking at a hit of €200 million... yeah, it's pretty funny, Cuffe, isn't it?

I guess that your smirking leader, Gormley, isn't quite as worried about carbon emissions as you are (and let's be honest, if you were really concerned then you would keep that big trap of yours shut) since we find THIS out about him in the same week that we learn how fond Bertie is of his 24-hour stand-by, chauffeur driven Mercedes.

Gormless may never tire of lecturing we poor peasants on how we are responsible for carbon emissions and that we are to blame for basically every thing that is wrong with the planet.

But what's this?

According to figures from the Defence Department he has such a fondness for travelling by Air Corp Agusta Westland AW139 that he took three flights by the army helicopter in the ONE WEEK.

It cost the taxpayer €13,560. That's more than - oh, let's see: Cowen, Coughlan, and O Cuive...

Wait a minute! It's more than all the rest of the eleven ministers cost us, who used choppers last year.

Hell, John, what about the carbon emissions? If it's OK for you does that mean it's OK for us? What's that? Oh, sorry. I forgot. You're important, we're just plebs. Sorry to have brought it up.

Now to say something approaching "nice" for a change. Just approaching, mind. I'm still suspicious.

While Brian Cowen continues to blame the rest of the world and anybody but himself and the bankers, developers and miscellaneous chancers who were wined, dined and feted by FF, Finance Minister Brian Lenihan surprised everybody by actually giving a pretty decent apology for the whole mess in which we find ourselves.

"I was a member of the party throughout that era," he said on Thursday; "and I'm certainly sorry for what happened - no question of that.

"I might not have been in a position of responsibility, but in so far as even I was a member of the governing party, as a deputy supporting it or Minister for State supporting it, I have to take the responsibility."

I wonder what brought that on. Of course an illness such as Mr. Lenihan is suffering from tends to sharpen the perceptions; and perhaps he remembers that this political party was not a friend to his father during his own illness and may not be to him in the future.

However, I prefer to think that here is a man whose eyes are finally opening as to how Paddy and Brigid are feeling.

This leaves a pretty interesting situation. Will they all come out of the woodwork with their apologies now? Will Cowen? Will this turn into rent-an-apology week?

If so then it is too late. Brian Lenihan has done it first and done it at least half right.

[As I send this Cowen, sweating and looking like something that's been dragged out of a swamp backwards, has indeed started semi-coherently babbling an apology. Jeez, that must hurt. Is there one of these sods who could just once come up with an original flaming idea?]

Finally, a memo from me to the Holy Catholic Church:

Please, PLEASE stop giving me new ammunition every week! I want to leave you alone and get back to having a go at mad Muslims and talking about who has upset Muhammad's faithful this week. (Hope they were watching the 200th episode of South Park.)

How can I do this when you keep trundling out anachronisms like 81-year-old Bishop Giacomo Babini of sunny Tuscany?

Last week the American Jewish Committee caught up with the bishop emeritus (they're giving these titles away these days) on the Catholic website Pontifex where he is quoted as saying that a "Zionist attack" is implicated by the "powerful and refined" nature of some of the comments that Pope Bennie and the Jets have been getting aimed at them lately.

"They do not want the Church, they are its natural enemies. Deep down, historically speaking, the Jews are God killers."

Always nice to see such a sophisticated and well-reasoned argument.

Babini is howling that he said no such thing; but defending itself Pontifex has printed a statement from the Bishop at the beginning of the year where he is reputed to have said: "The Jews are not our closest brothers, they overslept on the arrival of Christ and the Old Testament; in doing so, they then chose not to be our closest brothers."

Interestingly, the Holy Man is not denying this one.

I just love it when points of doctrine, racism and intolerance get thrown into the mix. It normally lifts me up from my usual Meditations in Black to a shinier, happier world where all religions - who supposedly believe in Love and worship the one Deity - put the Blessed Knuckle-Dusters on and start putting the Ecclesiastical Boot into each other.

Ah, yes. Looking out of the window I see that the clouds have lifted and it's going to be another glorious day.

Hope to see you all again next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net

* If you haven't read Kerrigan's great crime novels of modern Ireland try starting with "Little Criminals and "The Midnight Choir"; if you want to split your sides laughing at Irish politics have a go at "Never Make a Promise You Can't Break" or - hell, just about anything by this guy. No, I don't know him and I'm not on a commission!