Some fell among thorns

America I've given you my all & now I'm nothing.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
-- Allen Ginsberg


And he spake many things unto them in parables

Shameless

Sindo editor Aengus Fanning helps Phelim and Cliodhna Drew to reflect on their father.

Mr Fanning was at Ronnie Drew's side for 'seven months -- seven months of terminal illness -- that it took to record his last album.' The editor 'found himself taking on the role of an errant son, working as driver, dogsbody and amanuensis.'

The accompanying article was written by Donal Lynch, who doesn't feature in the photograph. Note the air of easy gaiety that Fanning creates, as Phelim Drew casually plugs his father's biography. Drew's last recording lies on the table, while a portrait of the Dubliner hangs above Cliodhna. The photograph was posed in O Donoghue's pub, well known for its Dubliners decorations.

Remembering Ronnie:

http://www.independent.ie/entertainment/news-gossip/remembering-ronnie-1550180.html

Change

'He has successfully projected a rhetoric of change as a function of greater coherence and managerial efficiency, rather than as a means of much more radical departures from established policies.

…regeneration the US infrastructure, health and educational systems have caught the popular mood...

It has been a brilliant campaign, which has marshalled the energy of a new generation...if he can deliver he would provide a stimulus for a world which seems to have reached a policy impasse on how to escape from recession or prevent it turning into depression.

- Irish Times on the election of Bill Clinton, 3 November 1992

Budget Glas

The Finance Bill published today has a distinctly green taste.

1 aim, 4 objectives
Announcing the Bill Mr Lenihan said he wants:
to put in place measures to enhance our economic performance,
to maintain and enhance our international competitiveness,
to support enterprise
to restore stability to the public finances

4/7 Green measures
The Bill contains about 7 headline makers, 4 of which will please green supporters:

€200-a-year levy on car parking spaces in urban areas
€10 departure tax on airline passengers
Tax incentive for certain energy-efficient equipment
Tax relief of up to €1,000 a year for the purchase of bicycles and cycling equipment.

AMDG measures
Two more are concerned with social justice:
3% levy on incomes over €250,000 (should bring in €60m)
Minimum wage earners excluded from 1% income levy.

Finally the Capital Acquisitions Tax, which covers inheritance and gifts, increases by 22%.

The Next Steps:
The rest of our near future will be decided by the governor of the Central Bank, the Financial Regulator and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Mr Lenihan received all three yesterday, and is expected to either decide a way forward based on what they tell him or commission a report which will put their opinions in a glossier format.

Sensing a bargain, international private investment firms are expressing an interest in buying stakes in one or a number of our banks.

The brightness that was before

The Taoiseach today told the Dáil that the Government is:

Considering all options on Irish banks
Wants to minimise the exposure of the taxpayer.
Has received a report from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The report said:

The 6 banks covered by the State guarantee scheme had more capital than required by the regulator on September 30 when the scheme was announced.
The banks will have enough capital until 2011.

What does this mean? The Taoiseach trenchantly reaffirmed in the Dáil that he is unsure. But he is sure of the following:

The banks’ capital is diminished.
Irish banks need a lot of capital.
If they don’t get it, they will have to reduce their loan books.
Unless the banks’ loan books are big the economy will be crushed.
Businesses will be starved.
And Ireland shall become heaps,
A dwellingplace for dragons,
An astonishment,
And a hissing
Without an inhabitant.

Recapitalisation is not a panacea, said Mr Cowen, though he conceeded that the brightness that was before is now a thick cloud.

Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny launched a blistering attack on Moloch, the near eastern deity that requires costly sacrifices:

‘Moloch whose mind is pure machinery,’ said Mr Kenny. ‘Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone. Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks. Moloch in whom we sit lonely.’

In response to this unprecedented criticism Mr Cowen could only say ‘international market expectations in relation to capital levels in the banking sector have altered and meeting these expectations may be challenging.’

Haughey nostalgia

'There is no avoiding them and anybody who suggests that they can be avoided is misleading the public. It is absurd for some people to say that they are in favour of reducing Government expenditure in general, but then oppose every single particular reduction that we make.'

- Taoiseach Charles J Haughey, 14 October 1987
(six months after the MacSharry Budget)

On this day £485m cuts in Government expenditure were announced. It was touted as the severest measure in thirty years and 8,000 State jobs would be lost as a result. Agriculture spending was down 18%, roads and housing down 11%, education spending down £86m which would mean 2,500 fewer teachers in the next academic year. The Government expected 256,000 unemployed in 1988.

The following April a deal was struck with teachers unions and parents representatives that would guarantee a maximum primary school class size of 39. The deal was welcomed.

*

There are a number of remarkable parallels between the preceding few months and the events of 1987.

Financial meltdown of Black Monday, 21 October 1987
The Government fights a Europe referendum
Huge opposition to the Budget cuts.

May 22 1987: 15,000 protest in Dublin against the health cuts. Minister for Health Rory O Hanlon’s response? – This year’s constraints are likely to be a feature of next year. Cries of ‘shame on you’ and that threat the public should never issue: We won’t forget this!

Meanwhile the Government is looking to see which State bodies it can scrap. Haughey circulates a note to his Cabinet:

‘A radical approach should be adopted and no expenditure should be regarded as sacrosanct and immune to elimination or reduction. We do not want a series of justifications of the status quo or special pleadings,’ it says.

This is more of the same. Fianna Fail had come to power on a wave of discontent with the Coalition, which was so disunited that it made only the slightest of efforts to get a Budget together, knowing the harsh measures needed would would collapse it. Just before the first MacSharry Budget at the end of March one backbencher said: 'we’re going to make the other crowd look like the Vincent de Paul.’

*

With hindsight, the same old issues come up before the Single European Act. Haughey had little time for them.

Fears about our neutrality are only ‘foolish’, he says. ‘Don’t let that keep you from ratifying it. Sure look at Austria, nice and neutral and hoping to get in.’ An even better rebuttal of the other side was this: ‘Some opponents of the Treaty are ‘really opposed for ideological reasons.’

The Week Ahead

Monday
Daily Mail leads with headline ‘RIPD’

Louis le Broquy’s 92nd birthday – the artist unveils a simple computer programme that can reproduce his portrait style after he’s gone.



Second installment of RTE’s Bertie. Meticulously researched on wikipedia, with interviews of Drumcondra intimates for colour. The first episode took us from 1977 – 1989 and ‘revealed’ that Mr Ahern was ambitious from the get go, went with the anti-drugs semi-vigilante vibe in his constituency and cut his negotiating teeth as Minister for Labour. Music by Yann Tiersen adds depth and feeling to clips of Ireland before the boom.

Mr Ahern, who has reviewed books for the Irish Independent (on Man Utd) and the Irish Times (on Jack Lynch), and who has hosted Up for the Match, listens to supporters’ concerns that media bias may be a stumbling block to his bid for the Presidency.

Tuesday

Czech President Vaclav Klaus takes a break in his State visit to dine with Declan Ganley in the Shelbourne. John Drennan and Brendan O Connor hang around the bar, wondering what Aengus Fanning will make them write about next. The word ‘lurching’ is sure to be in there somewhere. Barry Egan drifts in.

Wednesday:
95 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer. Mary Harney reveals she never believed in the PDs.

Rupert Murdoch reveals headline of the year for 2011: ‘Shortchanged.’ It will lead a searing indictment of Barack Obama’s first two years as President.


Thursday: Articles ‘informing’ us that ‘Obama’s biggest is test yet to come’ continue to be published.

Gerald Kean is interviewed on Prime Time about comments he made in the Sunday Independent. The celebrity sollicitor feels the Government is ‘terrifyingly out of touch’ with the electorate and that the standard of hygiene in Irish hospitals is poor.

Kean also peddles Haughey nostalgia (CJH had creativity, you can’t knock that) – a bold contrast to the Ahern nostalgia (we wouln’t be in this mess if Bertie had a been here…the medical cards would never a happened for one) currently doing the rounds.

Mark Little earnestly lists the similarities and differences between Obamanomics, Cowenomics and ergonomics. The world financial crisis, according to Little, is ‘as complex as the Gordian knot.’

The Mullingar Accord launches an attempt to transfer Obama’s message of change to an Irish context.

Friday:
The indignation and solidarity that Roth, Rushdie, Coetzee, Marquez and Pamuk feel about the Kundera ‘affair’ peters out.



Sean Dunne annouces plans to build another 37-storey tower, this time in the Garden of Remembrance. Earnest debates begin – is a public park really the most appropriate place for such a development? Dunne assures locals that Remembrance Tower will bring 5,000 jobs to the north inner over the next six years. He admits to a personal wealth of € 477m, and to owing the banks €624m, but doesn’t ‘see that as a problem.’

Saturday & Sunday:



Tens more books are reviewed in all the newspapers. Topics include:

the struggle for liberty & justice at any time in human history
the messy birthplace of the modern intellectual world (place chosen by author)
the obscenification of everyday life
the fratious and febrile year of [choose year]
more ‘magisterial’ biographies
the Third Reich

We were the Leopards, the Lions

Health Minister Mary Harney told delegates in in Mullingar this morning that she ‘feels like Gorbachev in 1991. I’m basically a Minister without a party. It’s time to face facts.’

‘The PDs were born by the vexation of Dessie O Malley’s soul, to oppose wickedness and deceit-uttering tongues. We cut rivers from rocks. Our eye saw every precious thing, and refrained from taxing it. We walked with uprightness.’

Ms Harney recalled the highs and lows. The media honeymoon in early 1986. The subsequent decline in popularity and dismal opinion polls of 1988. Their policies had found no favour with the electorate – she recalled the Godless constitution fondly.

Then there was the threat of extinction in 1989, the loss of Michael McDowell and Geraldine Kennedy. The party would have petered out were it not for the intervention of an unlikely benefactor. How O Malley praised Haughey’s ‘courage and skills’ for going over the heads of his party to create the first Fianna Fail coalition. But it wasn’t until 1997 that the PDs came into their own, and for a decade brought a Reaganite sensitivity to the health service, and a Thatcherite tolerance of Berlin as well as Boston.

‘The PDs are a testament to the democratic process,’ said Ms Harney. ‘What power we wielded, what change we brought, what moulds we broke, and will such a small percentage of electoral support.’

‘We have always said that self-interest blinds some, but enlightens others... We did what we came to do, and after twenty-three years, despite I believe it is time for us to call it a day. Let us consult together with one consent. We were born amid a stubborn and tumultuous generation. We leave Ireland happier, more prosperous, more pacified, more jealous of their graven images, more stout-hearted, more glorious and excellent than it has even been.’

400 delegates are expected to attend today’s meeting and a result is expected around teatime. The party is due €250,000 a year in State funding until the next election.

Beef industry to subsidise flatulent cattle

Minister for the Environment John Gormley said today he was ‘very surprised’ to learn how Agriculture Minister Brendan Smith argued against reducing cattle numbers.

‘I’m near speechless,’ he raged, cracking a pencil in two and flinging it from his Custom House eyrie. ‘Smith knows about the Government’s sub-committee on climate change.'

According to Mr Gormley flatulent cattle account for 27% of all our greenhouse emissions, which Ireland has pledged to reduce by 30% by 2020. Green orthodoxy has it that unless the number of cattle in Ireland is drastically reduced, most of the profits from the beef industry will go towards offsetting carbon credits.

‘If we cut our cattle numbers, our beef would simply be replaced on world markets by beef produced in a much less sustainable way - actually making the global climate change situation worse,’ Mr Smith told Teagasc.

'Typical Fianna Fail stroke politics. I should have known,' Gormley screamed, before attempting a pun with the Fianna Fail leader's surname that was related to the topic.

Dances with Waves

The Garda National Drugs Unit launched Operation Fluorine yesterday. Twenty-two so-called ‘head shops,’ which stock herbal products that might cause a natural high, were targeted around the state.

Gráinne Kenny, international president of Europe Against Drugs, congratulated the Garda on yesterday's operation. She said many shops around the country were ‘selling drugs that are potentially very risky.’

Europe Against Drugs (Eurad) is a Wango (World Association of NGOs) member and held its conference in Bucharest this September. Founded in 1988 Eurad believes that Europe’s ‘drug problem is like the Black Death’ of our times.

Ms Kenny, who believes that all drugs are bad and cannabis is a drug, strongly favours the elimination of potential risk in all areas of life, especially for the youth.

West rebukes Chinese Premier

Western leaders have reacted badly to a Chinese proposal on climate change. Premier Wen Jiatao yesterday called on rich countries to abandon their ‘unsustainable lifestyle’ and help poor nations who bear the brunt of Western energy abuses.

An angry missive was penned just minutes after Mr Jintao’s remarks. Bank ki-Moon, Nicholas Sarkozy and Speaker Nancy Pelosi drafted the note, which has been signed by over fourteen rich nations, including all G8 members.

‘China doesn’t tell us what to do,’ the note begins. ‘Hey Jintao, since when did the East become the moral conscience of the world? Where was China during Srebrenica? Or when the Hutus massacred the Tutsis? Or when Serbia needed bombing? Who came up with Kyoto? Or the idea of halving poverty and disease everywhere by 2015? Sure we’ve had our faults in the past. But by-gones, Jintao. Let's turn our eyes instead to the recent past. In the last ten years China has become one of the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide in the world...’

Mr Jintao suggested that wealthy nations divert 1% of their economic worth to paying for clean technology transfers and helping the Third World overcome damage from the rising temperatures.

This Chinese obduracy recalls a ten day environment conference held in Stockholm in 1972. The 120 nations were having difficulty getting a final declaration and China was blamed for having issued two unreasonable demands. Firstly, it wanted the United States and the Soviet Union to admit they bore the largest part of guilt for the destruction of the environment in the Third World, and secondly, the Vietnam conflict, which the Americans didn’t want to talk about, should be discussed. Mao was never strong on diplomacy.

EU Supremo Nicholas Sarkozy told a press conference in Paris: '1%?! Has no one told him some of us already give 0.7% of our GDP for pete’s sake? Do you think we can afford some quixotic chinoiserie at a time like this?'

Then Mr Sarkozy addressed the Chinese Premier directly:

‘You’ve had your Olympics Jintao, and you’d better learn there’s a time to keep your mouth shut.’

Sheriff of Wall Street an 'okay guy'

The U.S Department of Justice has unveiled a ground-breaking new filter system for the prosecution of crime. Prosecution of infringements can now be dropped if the Department decides that public interest doesn’t run high enough in the matter.

The first beneficiary of the new system is former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.

U.S. Attorney in Manhattan Michael Garcia explained:

‘In light of the policy of the Department of Justice with respect to prostitution offenses and the long-standing practice of this Office, as well as Mr. Spitzer's acceptance of responsibility for his conduct, we have concluded that the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter.’

Mr Spitzer, never one to shy from the prosecution of white collar crime when in office, resigned as governor in March when it emerged that he regularly employed a $1,000-an-hour prostitute. Yesterday the 40-year old ‘Sheriff of Wall Street,’ revealed his participation in a sex ring known as the Emperors Club VIP.

‘Listen,’ said Mr Garcia. ‘We did a thorough investigation and found no evidence of misuse of public or campaign funds. It was more a case of a hypocrite brought to light than anything else. And I stress, the public interest would not be further advanced by filing criminal charges in this matter. Spitzer's an okay guy who just took a wrong turn.’

The DPP, Mr James Hamilton, is looking into the matter and has signalled that this jurisprudential shift may become part of Irish law in the near future.

Obama concedes victory

'Ain't no mountain high, ain't no valley low, ain't no river wide enough, to keep change from coming,' an emotional president-elect told his ecstatic Chicago audience last night.

'There is no wind, there is no rain.' he continued. 'Our love is alive. Way down in our hearts although each change is miles apart. If any friend ever needs a helping hand we’ll be there on the double. As fast as we can. There ain't no mountain high enough to keep me from getting to you.'

The 47-year old first-time Senator, who has a penchant for lists, went on:

'Young and old, rich and poor, happy and sad, tired and emotional, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Jewish, Quaker, Native American, descendents of Aztecs, gay, straight, transexual, the severly, moderately and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be the United States of America.'

Listeners went wild at the prospect of the United States of America always being the United States of America.

'No doubt some of you are wondering: where will I invade? What will be my Vietnam, Afghanistan, my Iraq? Where will I intervene? El Salvador, Nicaragua, Serbia? Who will be my Pinochet, my Marcos, my Hamid Karzai?

Let me tell you. I will not mess up the presidency like LBJ, Nixon, Clinton and Bush. I will not continue unpopular wars or tap phones. I will not fornicate with interns. I will not send the proceeds of covert arms sales to guerrillas in Central America. I will not run up a deficit like Reagan. And I will not be forgettable like Ford, Carter and Bush Senior.

John McCain and I fought a hard battle. Turned out he fought like Michael Dukakis. But no more of that. The true victor is Change. Cambio. Wechsel. It's been a long time coming. But now, together, we're gonna make a Bureau de Change out of the White House.