Dublin's Burning

Dubliners celebrated Hallowe'en last night in the
traditional way of the now famous 'Celtic Tiger' :

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright...

People really made a great effort and went all across the city
with huge Irish enthusiasm and plenty of pints of Guinness.

They burned down one pub, one block of flats,
and - as the coup de grâce - a whole factory.
As a side-show they also torched 50 cars,
which is quite an achievement in one night.

They stabbed 15 people and beat up 2 Gardai and 1 fireman,
which are still in hospital to show that Mary Harney cares.

They made sure that our emergency services work hard for their
wages and that Eircom gets a fair share of trick-or-treat money:
There were 800 calls to the Fire Brigade
and 500 calls to the Ambulance Service.

Happy Hallowe'en!

See how they run...

Nearly 12,000 people with nothing better to do were running around Dublin today.

They call it the Dublin Marathon, and most of the runners taking part have not the slightest clue what the name means and where it comes from. They are just happy to run 26.2 miles and exhaust themselves once a year.

They have no idea that the first Marathon was run by only one man, a messenger, who ran from the battlefield at Marathon in Greece to the city of Athens to bring the news that their army had just won a huge victory against their arch enemy, the Persian Empire. And they also don't know that the runner collapsed and died shortly after delivering his message.

Maybe human beings are not meant to run 26.2 miles in one go.

But now it's a popular fashion and thousands do it every year, with no connection to the historic event, and no understanding what they are actually doing. The Jones' are running, so we have to run as well. What's the point?

Oh yes, I almost forgot, it's all "for charity". That's alright then, yes? We torture our bodies in a way it is not prepared for, so some more lazy gaffers will give us a few Euros for it...?

We must be totally mad. If people want to donate money to charity, they can do it any time and very easily, without thousands of sports freaks running around, blocking Dublin city for a whole morning and making a show of themselves.

And not enough with that, some really silly buggers are running the Marathon in stupid outfits or awkward costumes. Those idiots should really be rounded up and put into a lunatic asylum. Then they can run around all day wearing silly costumes, and no-one is bothered.

If you want to know why this country is in a crisis and running out of money as well as common sense, just look at events like the Dublin Marathon and you have your answer. We have become brainless lemmings, running blindly after something or someone who tells us it's fashionable. It may be a Marathon today, or a housing bubble tomorrow, and the need for more holidays or a new SUV next week. We no longer think for ourselves and just follow whatever is advertised as "the thing to do".

When the original runner from Marathon delivered his message in Athens, he collapsed and died. And when the lemmings reach the coast, they jump over the cliffs and die as well. What a great way to live our lives... I hope you enjoy the Bank Holiday.

Three Cheers for the Old Folks !

Ireland is not (yet) a racist country, but we are the world champions in ageism.

More than half of our population is under 25, so once you get into the higher numbers, you are supposed to disappear and not spoil the show for the 'youth orchestra'.

Once you pass 40 they look at you with suspicion. What's he still doing here?

If you manage to hold on past the 50 line, the looks will become more annoying. Unbelievable - he's still about. Shouldn't he be well dead by now?

Anything after that is just a mixture of neglect, ignorance and hostility. Nobody takes any longer any notice of you once you pass 60, and at 65 they give you a free national travel pass and a free TV licence. That way they hope you'll either get lost on the buses up the country, or you may die of boredom in front of the dumb-box.

Seven years ago Fianna Fail was short of votes, so they decided to win over the 'grey power' by giving everyone over the age of 70 a free medical card.
The old folks liked that. They'd been ignored for decades, and now they felt that someone was in a sensible way looking after them.
But now the government wants to take these medical cards back, in order to save € 100 million a year. Apart from the fact that it's wrong to rob the elderly of their health care security, it's also a most idiotic political move. Only an imbecile of great incompetence and no political talent at all could come up with such an idea.

But the Irish are no fools, even though the government treats us like such. We are not playing ball with the little bully boy from Offaly and his piggy-bank carrier from Dublin!

Yesterday they tried to undo the damage with a 30-minute press conference that told us nothing but the fact that even the Taoiseach and some of his senior ministers have not a clue about this matter and how to get out of the hole they have dug for themselves and the country.

But then the people took over and completely sidelined the press conference at government buildings.

More than 5000 senior citizens, including quite a few sitting in wheelchairs or walking with Zimmerframes, crutches or sticks, assembled outside Leinster House and demonstrated against the government and the threat to their medical cards. On Monday 1800 elderly people had already voiced their anger at a meeting in Dublin, which was organised by 'Age Action', the 'trade union of the elderly'.

This is a level of activity the government never expected. And indeed such an amount of elderly people on a protest march was a novelty, never to be seen before in the Republic, or anywhere in Ireland.
The old folks did not just march, they also carried placards and shouted slogans. One of the large placards carried said: "Why don't you just shoot us? It would be cheaper!" And that sums up the general feeling of anger, fear, disappointment and distrust that the government has spread in the elderly population.

None of the senior government ministers had the guts to come out and face the demonstrators. Not only are they mean and cruel, they have also exposed themselves as spineless cowards.

Eventually a woman called Máire Hoctor was sent out. Nobody had ever heard of her before, but apparently she's one of four junior ministers in Mary Harney's Health Department, responsible for "older people". Not for old people, mind, but for "older people"... whatever that means.

But the angry pensioners were not in the mood to be lectured and patronised by a second class Fianna Fail apparatchik and told her to shut up. On Monday Hoctor's colleague John Maloney had a similar experience. He was sent to the meeting of 1800 eldery people in a Dublin church, but also was told to get lost when he tried to patronise the gathering. Selecting him as an official government representative to 'Age Action' Ireland was in fact an insult, as Maloney is junior minister for Mental Health and Disability, commonly known as 'minister for the mad and lame'.

The only mad people in this affair are the members of the government, which is a 'lame duck' administration without precedence in Ireland.

It needed the older people to come out and expose the government as the incompetent bunch of nitwits they are. Well done!

Let's have three cheers for the old folks!

They built this country, demonstrated against the Vietnam War and in support of the hunger strikes in the North, worked hard to survive and bring up children. They paid taxes all their lives and are the backbone of the state.
That they have shown once again with the meeting on Monday and the demonstration yesterday morning. Well done, indeed! I salute everyone who was there and showed great courage.

And well done also the 10,000 students who demonstrated two hours later in protest against the government and it's education policy. Next week there will be another march by angry teachers, and in the meantime the farmers have come out of the woodwork as well and contemplate a demonstration, too.

It's early days yet, but when the books will be written on our era, this day - October 22nd, 2008 - might be recognised as the first day of the second Irish Revolution.