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Tuesday January 22, 2013

Talking Sense; It'll Never Catch On Here

Is this where we are now?

By Charley Brady

I wonder if the great HP Lovecraft would have gotten a story out of this week's upset at horsemeat turning up in our favourite pre-packaged burgers; and what title would he have given it? The Horsemeat Horror, perhaps? The Doom that Came to Supermarkets? [Or, perhaps just 'At the Mountains of Madness' - Ed.]

Didn't we get ourselves into a terrible old strop over this, just the same? To hear the way that some people went off on one you would swear that they were under the illusion that all fast food was the epitome of healthy eating? What kind of cabbage patch were these good folks born under, for heaven's sake? I mean, it's not as if they had just discovered that they had been scoffing large quantities of Soylent Green, is it?

To the best of my knowledge the DNA of Jimmy Hoffa didn't turn up in any of them. Or even Lord Lucan for that matter.

Oh hell, I'd better stop it. That sawing noise I'm hearing is probably the humourless PC Brigade sharpening their little claws at my poor taste. Ah, I've done it again: "poor taste!" It's impossible to write anything about this that doesn't make you want to put in a bad pun. Come to think of it, it may even become socially unacceptable to say that you're so hungry you could eat a horse. Yes, there's the next thing: let's put those kind of comments on a par with disparaging ethnic minorities! There's no escape!

Come on with you, now. When I lived with someone, I enjoyed cooking. It wouldn't have occurred to me to buy packaged burgers; but I'm an adult, I know that if I did then the least of my worries would have been having horse as one of the ingredients.

Anyway, home-made just tastes better. It stands to reason. Living on my own I find it hardly healthier, but a damned sight easier, just to stick something in the oven for half an hour or - oh, dare I say it? - throw it in the microwave for five minutes.

Of course there has been criminality going on here, I'm not disputing that; and that has to be dealt with. What I do find pathetic is the amount of people who seem to be horrified that some of us are eating animals! There can't be THAT many vegetarians around the place, surely?

Didn't they come out of the woodwork in all their smugness as well this week? It was like something that they had been waiting for all their lives. In fact, listening to their sermons, I believe that if I wasn't already a savage meat-eating barbarian I would have become one. Just in case I was to be associated with them. It almost makes me glad that I'm a warped individual. Man, it must be awful tiring to be utterly perfect all the time.

So now millions of burgers, tons of perfectly edible food has been withdrawn from the shelves; and because of the revulsion of a group of people who don't have a problem with eating chickens, cows, pigs (that's where bacon comes from, apparently) and dozens of other life forms this food will be dumped - and it will have to be seen to be dumped.

I think that this is deplorable; so does Oliver Williams, who runs several soup kitchens here in the West of Ireland:

"It can't be dumped, it's not right. I have people who would be glad for that food. You can't taste it - it is good food at the end of the day... I was thinking about it with all the people who are hungry out there."

He added that he would make sure that people knew where the food was coming from. Ah, Mr. Williams, there you go trying to talk sense in Ireland and saying that people should have a choice. That'll never catch on.

Happily, our political masters will not have this ethical poser put in front of them.

Apparently all the meat that is served in the Dail is completely traceable to source, which has me kind of puzzled because I thought that the idea was that ALL meat - even just the stuff that we peasants have to eat - was supposed to be traceable.

It's not been all bad, though. I think that any day when you learn something new is a good day. But who knew - not me, your Honour-that there are people who check in supermarkets to make sure that any alcoholic beverages they are buying contain no hint of animal product in them.

Can this be true? Maybe there's a reason. I know that if I saw some bloke checking this I wouldn't be thinking: There's a person facing an ethical conundrum responsibly. I'd be thinking that there was a fella that should be sectioned.

I just know that I'll get into trouble for that one too. Please, it's just my opinion.

And did you see the photo of our beloved Taoiseach Enda Kenny running around like a mad thing whilst chasing a couple of geese at Tayto Park last Thursday? I know the guy would do anything for a photo opportunity but I swear he looked as if he was going to eat the poor things raw!

To paraphrase George Orwell, I looked from the man to the goose and from the goose to the man again; but already it was impossible to tell which was which.

Dail Ethics Committee (Seriously)

Meanwhile, as these fun and games were going on, Independent TD Michael Lowry was having a go at the media again.

He just can't help himself. He had been a little bit quiet there for a while after his attempt to sue journalist Sam Smyth for telling the truth about him; and then when he lost and still tried to avoid paying the man's costs he got a slap on the wrist and told to mind his manners.

The Dail Ethics Committee: there's another of those committees that you just love to love. Dail AND Ethics in the same sentence; it's an oxymoron really. Just savour it again. Dail... Ethics, a contradiction in terms. I love it.

This week though he was a little encouraged. You see, a while back there his fellow Independent Luke 'Ming' Flanagan - although I imagine that Lowry would put himself in a different class to Ming - made a formal complaint that said that old Michael had been -ahem - remiss in reporting all of his doings to the Dail's registers of members' interests. And it turned out indeed to be the case.

It had completely slipped the poor fella's mind to declare his shareholdings in a refrigeration company called Garuda Ltd. And didn't he go and forget altogether that he was a director of Abbeygreen Consulting Ltd. You know how it is. It might seem a big deal to the likes of you and I, but our Lowry is a bloke that doesn't like to stand still. You wouldn't expect him to keep up with everything that is bringing in the loot for him. He had also failed to mention an interest he has in eleven acres of land. In fact he forgot all about that every time he declared from 2006 until 2011. As you do.

But he needn't have worried. This is Ireland and we all know how tough we are on... eh, 'forgetful' politicians here. So after he was found guilty on the first two counts last month he had a bit of an oul' finger waved at him by the Dail Ethics Committee for breaching their rules by failing to declare corporate interests.

He's all sorted now, of course. Sure, they were only "minor" and "inadvertent" and didn't he act "in good faith" after all.

The Dail Ethics Committee: there's another of those committees that you just love to love. Dail AND Ethics in the same sentence; it's an oxymoron really. Just savour it again. Dail... Ethics, a contradiction in terms. I love it. I'll bet that Paul Begley who got six years in jail for importing garlic and "inadvertently" forgetting to pay tax on it is sitting in his cell wondering how these guys do it?

Mr. Begley, you will recall, was given the horrendous sentence despite the fact that the tax was paid back; that Judge Martin Nolan told him it gave him "no joy at all to jail a decent man"; that he considered him to be a "success story" and an "asset to the country"; but he was still slapping the maximum sentence on him.

And here we are with Independent TD Mick Wallace still sitting there in the Dail, a man who has admitted to tax evasion and to threatening to hire a hit man to kill someone. And not a bother on him.

So yes, I really do wonder too. Beloved Taoiseach Enda Kenny has not even ruled out the possibility that Lowry, the man who a tribunal labelled "corrupt", might be allowed to rejoin Fine Gael. Makes you think, so it does. Well, suspicious little creep like me, it makes me think about what he has on some of our main players.

I mentioned here last week that Lowry has been making noises about writing a tell-all book. He started making them at the right time, I'd have thought. Perhaps nothing will come of it but it does no harm to remind certain others that you know where a lot of bodies are buried.

After his latest slap on the wrist Lowry said: "The outcome from my perspective is very satisfactory."

I'll bet it is, Lowry. I'll just bet it is.

You can contact me at chasbrady7@eircom.net or follow me on my blog at www.charleybrady.com

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