Category: General

President Hillery’s passing brought me back to the time I met him sometime in the early 1980s.

I was serving on board the LE Emer at the time and he boarded at Dun Laoghaire for a round Ireland trip. The man was a gentleman in every sense of the word, very relaxed, no airs or graces and seemed genuinely delighted at the opportunity of getting away from all the official stuff for about ten days.

Irish naval ships are relatively small so the captain, who has the biggest cabin, gave over his accommodation to the President for the trip. Unfortunately, this cabin sits astride the only passageway to the bridge and in a silly worry that the President might be disturbed all personnel were barred from using the route.

This meant that everybody who worked on the bridge or adjoining areas had to exit a hatch at the stern and make their way forward on the upper deck. During daylight this was no problem and even at night personnel only had to be a little bit more careful as they made their way to their places of work.

After a few days, however, the weather deteriorated making the daylight trip somewhat dodgy and at night, downright dangerous. A ‘delegation’ approached the senior officer who had made the decision, views were exchanged and sanity prevailed.

The President, of course, knew nothing of this minor controversy and I’m sure if he did he would have been outraged that anybody would be so inconvenienced on his behalf.

A nice man, may he rest in peace.

Congratulations to all the winners and to those who organised and presented the Blog Awards on Saturday night. , it was a very enjoyable event.

It’s always interesting to meet the faces/personalities behind the computer screen. Myself and Gavin had a really interesting conversation, ranging across politics, religion and war with Michael Nugent of That’s Ireland. John Waters also came up for analysis and I mentioned an article that Waters had written in April 2006 for the now defunct Catholic newspaper, The Voice.

Waters was writing about David Beckham’s admission that he suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Beckham had spoken about how he was addicted to rearranging hotel rooms and lining up cans of soft drinks to make ‘everything perfect’.

Most of the article is taken up with an explanation of OCD and how the condition affects people. Here’s how Waters concludes the article which is entitled –

Beckham’s obsession is a God complex.

“But there are ways of seeing such things other than in a clinical context. What is called OCD, if it should appropriately be called a disease at all, is quite manifestly a disease of the spirit.

Yes, it can be tracked in a clinical context, but excessive emphasis on this aspect can obscure the fact that it is one of a host of escalating symptoms of atheistic society, in which the contagion of disbelief is placing enormous and unacknowledged or misdiagnosed pressure on the individual to become the ‘god’ of his or her own life. Other such conditions include alcoholism, drug-addition, gambling, over-eating and excessive dieting.

One does not have to be a David Beckham, and be described in newspapers as ‘godlike’, to suffer from these modern afflictions. And while they may indeed be relatively amenable to clinical diagnosis and pharmaceutical or therapeutic treatment, the result of such interventions can frequently result in the suppression of symptoms while the underlying condition is left unaddressed.

The desire to impose order on the universe and to become unsettled at our inevitable failure to do so is ultimately a symptom of the compulsion to take over from a God we no longer know.

In the modern world, saturated with unbelief, this can afflict both believer and unbeliever. Denied the certainties that informed the serenity of our ancestors, we feel increasingly pressured to occupy in our own lives the throne where once we would have acknowledged the presence of our creator. The self-imposed pressure to become the ‘god’ of our own lives is, literally, driving us mad.

There is but one solution, and it is neither a pill nor a therapy: the idea that there is One who has all power, in whose hands all order is ultimately decided.”

Clearly, David Beckham is not the only one suffering from a psychological imbalance.

“Have you no shame about the way you’ve talked about our children, they’re Irish children, they’re American children.”

This was the cringe inducing challenge made to Presidential candidate Mitt Romney by Ciaran Staunton of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform (Six One News, 1st item).

While Staunton was delivering his whine several of those present reminded him that the people he represented were illegal.

The whining of this group who believe the illegal Irish in America should get special treatment is an embarrassment.

Romney replied, to loud applause, that there should be no special pathway placing the Irish ahead of the millions who are waiting legally in line around the world.

The group is, of course, entitled to lobby just as other countries do but the key point is that they actually believe the Irish should be placed first, that somehow the Irish are more entitled, more deserving, that they should get special consideration above and beyond everybody else.

Anyone willing to listen is solemnly informed that the 50,000 or so Irish illegals in the US are suffering terribly because they can’t come home to Aunt Mary’s funeral or young Jimmy’s First Communion. Such torture, surely there’s a case here for intervention by the United Nations.

Meanwhile, many of the other 12 million illegals in the US, mostly from Latin America, face abject poverty, torture and even death if they are forced to return to their home countries.

But sure what’s that against missing young Jimmy’s First Communion?

Christmas cheers to all and best wishes for the New Year – even Bertie

The grants scheme for inter county players in the GAA continues to be divisive.

I tend to agree with the purists who feel that the move will undermine the amateur status of the games. The decision to pay the players but call it a grant is a typically Irish solution to an Irish problem.

Another point that hasn’t been mentioned is that, in effect, the players are been paid directly by the taxpayer. Now that’s a slippery slope.

We would like to lend our support to Digout Day. It follows an excellent post over at That’s Ireland, Fianna Fail’s Fifty Ways to Laugh at Voters.

I guess the only problem I would have with the post is that it only covers some of the scandals that have happened, especially since 1997. Would it be better to create a Wiki or individual collaborative post detailing every single political scandal since 1997, or better yet since 1980?

Update: A video version is now available:

I’m a great fan of black comedy, especially when it’s performed by somebody who is being serious and has no idea how funny the material is (Playwright, Shea Lenihan, RTE ‘The Living Word’, 23rd Oct.).

I’m getting a T-shirt made with the logo, ‘Proud to be a loser’.

We Irish used to sympathise with the underdog. As a community we felt diminished when one our own was diminished, we were aggrieved. Our natural instinct was to consider it either bad luck or injustice or a bit of both.

Now we are proud to be winners and fearful of being called losers as though one category could possibly exist without the other. I don’t think you can own anything worth owning in this life until you’ve lost it first and found it again or at least found a part of it.

The fact is you don’t appreciate anything, even life itself, until it starts to slip away and slip away it surely does. You never really escape anything. The knocking in the engine never really just goes away, the twinge in the knee isn’t a pulled muscle, the tightening in the chest isn’t wind. There’s a reckoning that awaits us all.

We’re not winners and losers, we’re all losers. That’s what defines us and unites us and ought to make us proud to be us. We should all be fighting to wear that T-shirt.

We struggle to be born, we struggle to die and in between, if we’re lucky, we struggle to maintain a little dignity in a hard world. And somehow, amazingly, all this makes us better people and that’s the way life is and that’s the way we are.

And those who think they live another kind of life, a synthetic life not governed by these laws. Well, maybe they’re the real losers, the biggest losers, the ones who, temporarily at least, have lost their way.

To understand where Mr. Lenihan got his (hilariously) dark attitude to life, listen to his equally funny contribution on the 24th Oct., where he describes his father’s attitude to death.

Great material for any aspiring comedian