Brian Cowen - An Fear Gan Aithne Air

Theip ar Brian Cowen mar Thaoiseach go h-uile is go h-iomlán. Is léir sin do chách. Ach an rud nach léir d'éinne ná cén fáth gur theip air chomh dóna sin? Cén fáth nach bhfuil cara dá laghad ann a sheasfaidh leis anois? Cén fáth nach bhfuil aon duine ann a rachaidh ina chosaint?

Tá an t-Iar-Thaoiseach sa nuacht arís agus agallamh leis chun chraoladh i gceann dhá lá. Tháinig scéalta ón agallamh - ar Chomhrá, ar TG4 - amach sa meáin an seachtain seo caite. Ní dúirt sé go raibh brón air, a thuairiscíodh. Cén fáth nach bhfuil brón air?

Ní raibh suim ag éinne sa méid a dúirt sé - ag fánacht ar an dólás amháin a bhí na meáin. Ní raibh spéis dá laghad acu le cad a bhí le rá ag Cowen, agus ní raibh ó 2008 nuair a tharla an tubáiste.

A leitheoir dhílis, an bhfuil fios agat cad é an rud is spéisiúla domsa maidir le filleadh gairid Brian Cowen sa saol pobail? Go ndearna sé as Gaeilge é.

Cén fáth Comhrá ar TG4? Is é Brian Cowen atá i gceist - dá gcuirfeadh sé glaoch gutháin ar eagarthóir ar bith in Éirinn beidh an príomh-leathanach aige agus gach leathanach istigh mar ba mhaith leis. Brian Cowen ab ea an chéad aoi ar an Late Late Show le Ryan Tubridy - nach síleann tú go mbeadh an dara fáilte ag Tubs dó? Cad faoi Marian, máthair faoistine na bpolaiteoirí le sách fada an lá? Cad faoi Pat Kenny, agus a chlár nua ar Newstalk?

Ach níor bhac Cowen le éinne acu. Shuigh sé síos le Máirtín Tom Sheáinín Mac Donnacha, fear atá chomh fada le galántacht Bhleá Cliath 4 mar ab fhéidir a shamháil.

Is dócha go bhfuil an tuairim amach go raibh fíos ag Cowen go ngeobhadh sé agallamh níos boige ná mar a gheobhach sé ó Marian nó Pat Kenny. B'fhéidir. Ach rinne Tubs iarracht a thaispeáint go raibh carraigeacha aige san agallamh úd sin ar an Late Late ach níor bhuail Tubs sonc dá laghad ar Cowen. Is é Brian Cowen an fear a rinne agallamh ar Morning Ireland agus póit damnaithe air - má tá peacaí air, níl faitíos roimh an micreafón ina measc.

Tá go leor rún ann maidir leis an Taoiseach is míchlúití riamh. Cén fáth gur theip air chomh dona? Cén fáth go raibh sé chomh soineanta maidir le cúrsaí polaitiúla, ina bhfuil an blás níos tábhachtaí ná an briathar, mar a bhí sé? Cén fáth gur chaill sé a ghuth nuair a cheapadh ina Thaoiseach é? Bhí clú ar Brian Cowen roimh a cheannaireacht gurb é ceann de na polaiteoirí is cliste sa nDáil, go raibh meas ag an lucht polaitiúla air mar pholaiteoir agus mar fhear smaointe. Cén fáth ansin go bhfuil an tuairim amach go docht daingean anois gurb amadán an bhaile é?

Cén fáth, cén fáth, cén fáth. Tá scéal mór le insint, agus cinnte an leabhar polaitiúla na hÉireann is fearr le scríobh ag Brian Cowen, más mian leo. Ach tá sé damnaithe deacair a thuiscint cad is mian leis an Taoiseach rúnda seo.

Seachas rud amháin. Tá rud amháin cinnte faoi Cowen tríd is tríd, ón a chéad lá mar Taoiseach go dtí an lá a d'fhógraigh sé an toghchán ina bhain an pobal a ndíoltas amach air, go dtí an agallamh seo le Máirtín Tom Sheáinín a chraolfar i gceann dhá lá. Is fear tírghách go smíor é, agus meas sách laidir ar chultúr agus ar teanga na nGael.

Tá súil agam go scríobhfaidh sé an leabhair. Agus má scríobhfaidh, scríobhfaidh sé as Gaeilge é.

Brian Cowen - There Let the Way Appear

Brian Cowen, that unlucky man, should change his party piece from Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore to Nearer, My God, to Thee. The tune that serenaded the sinking of the unsinkable ship seems a little more appropriate for the leader of the Legion of the Rearguard at this extraordinary moment in Irish public life.

When the Titanic sank, ninety-nine years ago this coming April, the band played on like it was just another night for the luxury liner. Yesterday evening, Brian Cowen addressed the media and the nation like a man that is utterly unaware of the iceberg that’s looming over him and his party.

The four days gone by have been Brian Cowen’s Premiership in microcosm. The nation wonders what’s going on and why it’s been kept in the dark. By the time Brian Cowen did turn up to state his case, the audience had long given up on him.

Yesterday evening, it took Brian Cowen fifteen minutes to say what he was there to say, that he would hold a motion of confidence in his own leadership on Tuesday, something he could have said in ninety seconds. But after fifteen minutes, such viewers as had tuned in had moved on, to graze the long acres of Sky or MTV.

The arguments that Brian Cowen is making now – refuting the notion that Fianna Fáil put party above country, explaining the strategy behind the bank bailouts and the rest of it – are arguments that he should have made two years ago. But they weren’t made two years ago, and that fight is lost. The horse is bolted, the milk is spilled, the field is lost. The debate has moved on.

What Brian Cowen does not seem to realise is that the goalposts have moved. A civilised debate on policy isn’t going to happen in the coming election. The people are in the mood for blood and Cowen doesn’t seem to know it. The hammers that built the construction boom are now building gallows in every constituency with the letters FF carved into the crossbeam as the people wait for revenge.

Brian Cowen may think he’s be Bruce Willis in the Die Hard movies in the coming general election, coming out to kick some ass in his best Biffo mode, but he’s wrong. Whoever the leader of Fianna Fáil will be, he’ll be more like James Franco in 127 Hours, having to hack off a limb for the rest of the body to survive.

Brian Cowen has been treated shabbily in public debate in the past ten years. Abuse has been heaped upon him that he doesn’t deserve, abuse that stepped well beyond the bounds of robust political debate. Commentators have lined up to take free shots that were never answered.

But Cowen’s tragedy is that he has never taken the criticism seriously. He seems to see the criticism as beneath contempt and not worthy of the nation. It’s hard to believe a politician – a Fianna Fáil politician – could be so very naïve. Some intellectual from Trinity in the Labour party representing Dún Laoghaire might think that nobody listens to the baying of the mob. But an FF man? Incroyable.

Communication is the lifeblood of politics. Brian Cowen should have been on the television and radio constantly from when the crisis started in 2008 to reassure the people. His press staff should have had spokespeople in ever media to explain what was going on, and to put out fires before they raged out of control. But it didn’t happen.

There was an early disinclination to address the nation because of the legacy of the Charlie Haughey “living beyond our means” speech but that went right out the window with the bank bailout and the country suddenly found itself on a very steep learning curve to understand high finance and international banking.

The people never had a chance. What do any of us know about bond markets, really? This is just down to a matter of trust now, and for Brian Cowen all trust is lost. The battle is over. The people want to ease the pain, if only for a moment. They want revenge.

History will sit in judgement on Brian Cowen, and I hope it’s kind to a good man who’s talents were overwhelmed by circumstances. If he survives the vote on Tuesday, he’s mortally wounded anyway, and is just staggering through the bushes now on instinct. Only history can ease his pain.

As for his party, if Fianna Fáil elect a new leader before the election, he or she may be the shortest lived leader in the party’s history, as the parliamentary party that assembles after the election will be vastly different from the party that may depose Cowen and elect a new leader this week. If there is a party left to assemble in the first place.

Burning the Wrong Witch - the Need for Irish Political Reform

Whatever else may befall from the events of this recession, the single thing that seems to infuriate people most is this idea that financial speculators are being rescued for backing the wrong horse. That people will see schools close and taxes rise in order to pay off the infamous bondholders.

Ireland, however, is not paying the price for the Mr Monopoly’s reckless speculation. Ireland is paying the price for our own inability to regulate our own banks, our own financial system and our own system of politics.

There is a worrying air of politics as usual about everything that’s going on in the country. Brian Cowen put in his best performance on TV at the press conference yesterday evening, when he resisted his hopeless jargon addiction and spoke plainly and in detail about the details of the bailout.

Two little too late for the misfortunate Cowen, of course. Any chance he had of saving either his Premiership or his job as leader of Fianna Fáil is long lost. Time doesn’t wait for someone to get his act his act together. It rolls on relentlessly.

Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore, rather than leading and risking a prize that's more or less impossible to lose, are just staying out of trouble and waiting for power to fall into their laps.

But where the people are being sold short is in thinking that the problem begins and ends with Brian Cowen and Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil will take their hammering at the polls in February but it will not be a wipeout.

And in the next election, who will bet against a Fianna Fáil Taoiseach taking the salute at the GPO in 2016? The lesson of history tells us that Fianna Fáil, though damaged, will survive, and come back to win the next one. That has been the case since 1932.

To understand how we got into this mess the nation has to realise that our whole way of doing business is fundamentally unsound and admit our own culpability in this. We are paying for the banks because we couldn’t regulate the banks. We couldn’t regulate the banks because we are, as a nation, a little too open to corruption and sharp practice.

We don’t think politicians should be on the take. But if a man wants a few pound for himself, like, that’s not so bad. Sure wouldn’t we all do that?

It’s been the case for over two thousand years, since before the fall of the Roman Republic, that elected representatives should be held to higher account than ordinary citizens – that even Caesar’s wife should be above suspicion, let alone Caesar himself.

In Ireland we repeatedly elect and re-elect politicians who not only put their own local and personal needs above the greater good of the nation, but shout from the rooftops that they do this, and are hailed for it.

Ireland isn’t a democracy of ideas. It’s a democracy of tribes – where local tribal chieftains fight over the spoils of the nation, and return to the village with rewards of patronage for the in-crowd. This is why the banks are in a mess – because actual fair regulation leaves no room for wheeler-dealing, cutting corners, horse-trading and nodding and winking.

This failure exists across the party system – why else didn’t the opposition call a halt to the disgraceful tribunals, if not for fear of being themselves exposed? Why aren’t the opposition now shouting for root and branch reform from the rooftops, other than the fact that the system suits them just as well as it suits Fianna Fáil?

The perception exists now that the bondholders are the bad guys, holding Ireland up to ransom. But the Irish ourselves that are the bad guys, because we regulate our affairs according to who you know and what deals he or she can cut.

And as a nation, we bitch and moan and rage about Brian Cowen and the bondholders and Fianna Fáil. But the sad truth is we are so blind to the true nature of our politics that we can’t even tell who’s holding the blade that’s currently slicing us up like a Christmas turkey.

Political reform now.

RTÉ Complacency, Incompetence Symbolic of the Greater National Malaise

RTÉ’s stunning and repeated coverage failures for one of the historic days in the history of the state is further evidence of just why we’re in the mess that we’re in.

The Observer hit the bulls-eye in its editorial yesterday. This isn’t just the failure of one Government, but the failure of an entire political culture. The media is part of that culture and, as the national broadcaster, RTÉ has a duty above and beyond all other media outlets to tell the people what’s going on. They failed in that duty.

Instead of having live coverage from outside Government buildings from when the cabinet meeting started yesterday afternoon, the national broadcaster decided instead to show Ireland’s Greatest Talent Show, Reeling in the Years and Fair City.

Aware that they were in danger of being scooped by both the BBC and Sky News, RTÉ managed to cancel Gaybo Laughs Back at half-eight to show the Government press conference live. Or almost live – the RTÉ feed was about a minute behind the British broadcasters. Evidence that RTÉ were really caught on the hop.

And then, the most astonishing decision of all – RTÉ cut from the press conference just as Vincent Browne was getting medieval on An Taoiseach, in order to interview their own correspondent. For no apparent reason.

The Nine O’Clock News did not reflect the momentous events of the day and RTÉ appear to have been quite content to go through the motions with a pre-recorded Week in Politics were the eternally mischievous Vincent Browne not hosting a special edition of his current affairs show. RTÉ appeared plenty interested in spiking Browne’s guns.

This is why the state is so deep in the soup. Because the higher echelons of Irish society – the banks, the broadcasters, the politicians, the legal profession - are all comfortable while the general population is utterly lost in what’s going on and genuinely terrified for the future.

Ireland needs a new politics. This is bigger than a single Government. The civil war politics has run its course and it’s time for new beginnings.

In Ireland, it’s more or less impossible to start a new party from scratch, for lots of reasons. The only hope is that one of the three major parties throws up a Gorbachev, an FW de Klerk or a John Hume.

Men who see the big picture and realise that they have to put a bullet in their own party to destroy their own politics to build a new system, as the old one is dead and stinking. We can only hope there’ll still be an Ireland when he or she rises. Go bhfóire Dia orainn.

Hoarse Sense - The Taoiseach Has a Duty to Engage with the Nation

The controversy over Brian Cowen’s interview on Morning Ireland yesterday is about judgement, not drink. The nation is sufficiently steeped in booze to know the difference between a hangover and a headcold.

Drink isn’t the issue. At the height of the Celtic Tiger, the nation was at its ease on Saturday nights knowing that our Teflon Taoiseach was swallowing well earned pints of Bass in Fagan’s of Drumcondra as quickly as the barmen could pull them.

Fifty years before, Pat Lindsay famously realised that the first inter-party Government was out of touch with the people when he discovered that James Dillon had never been in a pub other than his own and John A Costello had only been in a pub once, and hated it. This distance from pub culture put that first inter-party government seriously at odds with the nation. Paddy likes a pint.

Nobody in Ireland is going to hang Brian Cowen because he likes a pint, a smoke and a song. But what is going to cost him his position and, potentially, his legacy is what is either his inability or his refusal to engage properly with the nation who will sit in judgement on him very shortly indeed. Yesterday’s interview on Morning Ireland was another example of a golden chance to address the people that was not only wasted, but a self-inflicted wound.

Brian Cowen seems to hold the media in contempt on the odd occasion he thinks about them at all. He may very well be correct in his assessment. The problem is that Brian Cowen is not currently in a position where he can decide whether or not he likes the media. He stuck with them. He can’t do without them.

As Taoiseach, Brian Cowen has a duty to engage with the nation he leads and it’s only through the media that he can do that. For the leader of any democratic Government to despise the media to extent of only ever dealing with it at arm’s length is like a farmer despising cows. He can’t do it and be a farmer anymore.

Brian Cowen does very few media appearances and when he does do them he insists of speaking in nonsense jargon – the modalities of the situation moving forward in their totality, and so on and on and on. And this isn’t good enough.

The country is mired in recession, and people don’t know what’s going on. They’re frightened and confused by what they’re reading and the more they read, the more frightened and confused they get.

This is a quote from an Irish Times story last week about Irish bond yields: "The spread between the benchmark 10-year bond and the German bund was 372 basis points this afternoon, while the yield earlier rose sharply, by over 30 points, to a new euro lifetime high of 6.011 per cent at one stage, before falling back to 5.98 per cent at 5pm."

What does spread mean? What is a ten year bond? Why is it benchmarked? How many other bonds are there? What is a bond in the first place? What is a German bund? Is “bund” the German for “bond”? If it is, why doesn’t it have a capital letter like all German nouns? What are basis points? What is a yield?

Ten questions from one sentence. A question mark for every five words. And that is what people have been bombarded with for three years, incessantly, with no hope of respite. Who could possibly keep up?

People want to be told what’s going on in language they can understand. The nation can deal with being in a heap, if we are in a heap – eight hundred years of foreign oppression builds up a certain resistance. But there is an absolute duty on the man in charge to tell the people what’s going on. Brian Cowen is the man in charge.

Brian Cowen needs to treat with the media. He needs to tell the people he leads what’s going on in language they can understand. The best thing Brian Cowen could do this week is to return to the Late Late Show this morning and say the following:

"1. The country is in big trouble, and we’re all going to be cutting back big style for quite some time.
2. Fianna Fáil are to blame for the mess. We were in charge, we should have cooled things down and led the nation, rather than following an international herd.
3. Having broken the country Fianna Fáil are now fixing it. Ireland is still better off than it was in the past, and our position in the EU, the fact we speak English and our attractiveness towards foreign investment means that we can recover relatively quickly if we take our medicine now.
4. I don’t play golf, chess or bridge, go to the opera or put ships in bottles. I like to relax with a drink and a smoke and I don’t think I’m the only one. Not only that, but once this interview is open, I plan to go home to get to the Brewery Tap in Tullamore for a few scoops before closing. If that’s a problem you may express disapproval at the ballot box in the next election. I gotta do something to keep myself sane.
5. On the way to Tullamore I will stop off in the Park to ask the President to dissolve the 30th Dáil and call a general election for four weeks’ time. It’ll be a long campaign to give the nation time to decide as a nation if we want to be fiscally responsible, or if we want to do whatever it is the other crowd want to do, as they don’t seem to have a plan."

That’s what I’d advise Cowen to say. He’s the leader of the country. He has to show leadership. Ordinary people are very scared for their future and need to be reassured in language they can understand, rather than have jargon mumbled at them by a man who’s acting like he’s at the dentist. Their Taoiseach owes them that.

The Morning Ireland interview yesterday was an opportunity to do just that. Instead, he’s made it worse, and given ordinary people more to worry about. We didn't need that. We have enough to worry about as it is.

The Sow's Ear Year - Will Brian Cowen Ever Catch a Break?

The Celtic Tiger, such as it was, was fuelled by the Jumbo Breakfast Roll. Two scholastics from two entirely different schools, Mr David McWilliams and Mr Pat Shortt, both identified the Jumbo Breakfast Roll as the very asphodel of the Irish economic revolution.

If the country were not catapulting to Hell in a handcart at a genuinely astonishing rate of knots, this would count as a delicious irony in the light of the weekend’s pork recall. Instead, the very word delicious will only serve as a goad to the memory of the fries that were not eaten this morning in Erin, and the tears return again.

Bertie Ahern gloried in the nickname of the Teflon Taoiseach, as everything he touched turned to gold. Bertie’s greatest gift was his singular ability to always steer clear of disaster. His successor, in marked contrast, seems to attract disaster the way Newry attracts shoppers.

The late John Healy wrote at the height of the GUBU crisis of 1982 that if Charlie Haughey had ducks, they would drown; to borrow from the great man a quarter of a century later, it seems fair to say that if Brian Cowen had ducks, not only would they drown, they would pollute the lake, kill the fish, sink the final nail into the coffin of Irish tourism, the only industry left, and would then turn out of to have copped it in the first place because they were being fed on that diesel-flavoured feed as well.

A week without fries the country could survive. Porridge is fine food, irrespective of Doctor Johnson’s teasing of Boswell. But my Lord and my God, Ireland Inc does not need another industry to collapse after the building industry went to the wall.

This is the point. While the empty shelves, such as Tesco’s in Phibsboro, D7, above, are evocative, the bigger picture is that the world woke up this morning to the news that Irish pork isn’t safe to eat. No matter how that’s qualified as the week rolls out, that’s what people will remember. After the collapse of the building industry, and the sudden ending of the many streams of revenue that industry supplied the public purse, Ireland Inc now faces the prospect of hard times for another major industry and the double jeopardy of another queue of people outside Government Buildings looking for compensation.

This is in keeping with yesterday’s protest by the INTO on O’Connell Street. If An Spailpín were in danger of losing his job he wouldn’t like it either, but it was hard to disagree with Brendan Keenan of the Irish Independent on RTÉ Radio 1's This Week this afternoon when he queried where exactly the INTO thinks the Government will get the money to pay their salaries?

Charles Dickens has Mr Wilkins Micawber, that marvellous man modelled on Dickens’ own hopelessly profligate father, explain the simple facts of life to our protagonist in David Copperfield, a lesson to which the nation could do with hearing right now:

“‘My other piece of advice, Copperfield,’ said Mr Micawber, ‘you know. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen, nineteen and six; result, happiness. Annual income twenty points, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six; result, misery.’”

It really is as simple as that. An Spailpín would have some sympathy for the teachers, as they provide a vital societal function. But if every dog and devil on the public purse thinks that benchmarking can continue in the teeth of current events, then they are living at a considerable remove from the real world. Don’t forget, the people whose job it was to stop illegal feed being fed to pigs are benchmarked; they will get their hearty pay rise this year same as ever, even as the country collapses around their ears.

There are 350,000 people employed by the Irish state, between civil servants, public servants and whatever one calls a person that works for a quango – leisured servants, perhaps? That’s enough votes to elect ten to twelve new TDs, or else show the road to ten or twelve in there already. Something else that Brian Cowen will be all too sadly aware of as he munches his kiwi and grapefruit tomorrow morning, neither much of a substitute for the rashers and sausages.

The Taoiseach’s party piece is Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore; perhaps in the light of current events, he’d be as well off to consider a change to Born Under a Bad Sign? Right now, the refrain of “If it wasn’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have no luck at all” seems all too terribly apt.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, pork recall, Brian Cowen, Charles Dickens, David Copperfield

An Spailpín in the Irish Times

An Spailpín Fánach is flattered once more to be published in this morning's rather historic Irish Times, as one Taoiseach moves on and another is appointed. On the eve of Brian Cowen's ascention, and in a cynical age, it's only fair to take our hats off to the Taoiseach-elect's commitment to Irish and its role in the State as the first language. You can read the full piece here, or for romantics who enjoy the print edition, it's opposite the letters page / the Bertie Ahern supplement.





Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, Brian Cowen, Gaeilge, Irish Times