Moriarity the Mystery Cat

An Spailpín Fánach has been having a bad day. Perhaps this would explain my confusion at the publication today of the Moriarty Tribunal Report, or, to give it its full title – big breath – the “Report of the Tribunal of Inquiry into Payments to Politicians and Related Matters Part I.” The Part I is significant, as we shall discover.

There has been a big media brouhaha over this publication – Charlie Bird, RTÉ’s Chief News Correspondent, was on Morning Ireland this morning, breathlessly telling the nation what to expect from the Tribunal report – or at least, that part of the nation that a, doesn’t know full well already and b, still gives a toss. Charlie Bird fascinates An Spailpín, you know – how many other journalists need a ghost writer to write their “auto” biography? His own life story, and he can’t tell it? I don’t know. But back to the other Charlie.

It seems clear that the Moriarty Tribunal has identified our late Taoiseach as a bastard, a bollocks and a son of a bitch. Fair enough. As the good book says, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God (Paul to the Romans, 3:23, you know). But there was one name that An Spailpín heard on a report this morning that’s been puzzling him all day, so I thought I’d throw it up here and see if anyone salutes.

Lowry.

Why isn’t anybody talking about Lowry?

Former Fine Gael TD and party fundraiser extraordinaire Michael Lowry is the reason that we have the Tribunals in the first place. If it weren’t for Lowry’s gross incompetence in the stroke department, not only would Charlie have got the State funeral he got anyway, but there might even have been human sacrifice thrown in as well, with maybe the whole thing turning into a riotous bacchanal just this side of a Mel Gibson picture. But instead Charlie was caught in the undertow in the Lowry mess and now the coffin dancers are limbering up once again for a jig and a reel.

Which is another part of what’s bothering your faithful correspondent. It’s the Part I of this report that I mentioned earlier – why is Haughey Part I, and not Lowry?

Now, the obvious answer is that it’s because Haughey is by far the bigger of the fish – he did the State some service, whereas Lowry did it none at all. But the thing is, the Tribunal has been dealing with Lowry and Lowry-related issues for far longer than it has Haughey. Also, Lowry was in there first. In fact, it’s been some years since Lowry was before his honour so you’d think the typing could have Ben Dunne (oh God, I’m good) by now. But it’s not. Instead we get the usual stuff about Haughey that the world and his wife knows already and that doesn’t matter a tu’penny damn to anyone’s life. And if anybody thinks all this chat does make a difference, maybe he or she can drop me a line and explain it, as I’m damned if I can see.

The only reasons that I can figure out for giving Charlie another couple of welts in the guts and kicking the Lowry thing even further into touch is because either a, Lowry is still alive and might remember where a few bodies are buried yet, b, Fine Gael is in such a heap that the spotlight is taken off them out of sheer pity for the wretched of the earth or c, both of the above. But that’s all I can figure. If anybody reading this thinks that Irish political graft and corruption is over now that Charlie Haughey is six feet under, drop me an email – I have a little parcel of land you might be interested in buying.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, politics, Charlie Haughey, Moriarity Tribunal

Law and Order? More Like Laurel and Hardy

What a terrible week it’s been in Ireland. Murder is now a common or garden occurrence, with €10,000 reported as the price of an assassination.

Earlier this week, your faithful correspondent was thinking of calling for Internment. An Spailpín is always intrigued, when reading in the papers that such and such a person was “known to the Gardaí,” especially when they can list off as worrying a list of offences/accusations has have been associated with Martin Hyland, who was shot dead in his bed in Finglas on Tuesday. Mr Hyland “was known to every detective in the city,” reported the Irish Times on Wednesday. Mr Hyland “had an impressive property portfolio and was more involved in gun crime and top-end drug dealing than any other living criminal of his generation.”

And every time he reads something like that, a voice goes off in An Spailpín Fánach’s hopelessly innocent little head that says “well, if he was known to be such a gangster, why in God’s name wasn’t he in prison?”

So An Spailpín thought of using this platform to call for a return to internment, that all these pookies be rounded up and camped out in the Curragh, as in the dear old days of the 1930s, 50s and 70s, and see if that would settle their hash. Happily, An Spailpín has been a little too busy for writing lately, and this has now saved my blushes. Because it is now clear to An Spailpín that this will never happen.

It’s the Pádraig Nally case that’s made it clear. Nothing to do with the case itself, but to do with one detail of the case, which is this: the late John “Frog” Ward, aged forty-two, had approximately eighty previous convictions over 38 court appearances.

Eighty previous convictions. Think about that for a minute.

That means that, presuming the convictions dated from when Mr Ward turned 18, Mr Ward broke the law on average 5.71 times a year, every year, for fourteen years. Those are facts – he was convicted in open court. These aren’t accusations or bias or anything else – the court records are there. And yet, with eighty previous convictions, he was still running around loose until he met his end.

And that then begs the question – just how many convictions to you need to have before the courts decide that the penny isn’t dropping for you, that you are a persistent offender, and that it’s time to lock you up for good? 100? 150? 200?

This puts An Spailpín’s internment theory into its proper perspective. There is no point in locking people up on the presumption that they have no regard for the law when we have people whose thirty-eight court appearances and eighty previous convictions prove beyond all doubt that they have no respect for the law, and yet are still free to roam where they will.

It’s a joke, and we’re kidding ourselves. God help us all in this banana republic, ten days from Christmas.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, society, crime, recidivism

Three Words Guaranteed to Get a Laugh

Graham Geraghty, parliamentarian.

An Unfortunate Realisation

An Spailpín Fánach got his new 2007 Office Diary today. Black bound covers, A5, one day per page, lovely. And as I was enthusiastically filling in the significant dates around which my working life of next year will revolve, I suddenly wondered: was Ben Hur half as happy anytime they gave him a new oar? Oh God oh God oh God....

Technorati Tags: culture, work, office, diary

Genius in Our Midst - Time to Acknowledge Super Mario

An Spailpín Fánach was disappointed to read a rather sniffy profile of Mario Rosenstock, eminence grise behind the Gift Grub comedy sketches on the Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show on Today FM. For An Spailpín’s dollar, Rosenstock is the most inspired and reliable comedian we have produced in Ireland for quite some time, and deserves to be acknowledged as such.

This acknowledgement will be some time coming from the Phoenix. As well as a biographical profile of Rosenstock - that sounded dreadfully familiar to one written by Stephen Price in the Sunday Times Culture Section a week or two ago - the Phoenix sniffed at Rosenstock for “lack of bite” and a vulgar need to try and turn a few bob from the gig.

To condemn a comedian for lack of bite, by which is meant a lack of a political viewpoint, seems rather beside the point to An Spailpín’s old grey head. Surely it’s the same as chastising Francis Fukuyama was not writing more zingers in his copy? I would like to think that if some comedian did possess the sort of political insight that is apparently currently desirable in a comedian, he or she would hang up their microphone, put away the Peter Cook DVDs and maybe run for election, so the nation could benefit. Wouldn’t it benefit them that much better than trying to do funny voices in the early morning rush hour?

Not that there isn’t more to Rosenstock than the funny voices, although his gift for mimicry is quite stunning, just as the late Dermot Morgan’s was. Anyone that thinks that writing a Bertie Ahern parody version of Lily Allen’s LDN, as Rosenstock has recently done, ought to take out their pencil and paper and send their efforts to me via email, and we’ll see how easy it is then.

It’s not just that Rosenstock is supremely gifted; it’s that he’s supremely gifted five days a week, just like any other working slob. This is not enough for the Phoenix, which turns up a haughty snout at the notion that “Rosenstock has shown himself to be all too willing to flog his routine on the corporate circuit.”

The ads in this week’s Phoenix, reading from the back: Audi A4 limited edition, Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Day Sale, Michel Lynch: The Bordeaux Collection, a chartered surveyor, a private stockbroker, Halton Kelly Independent Property Services, Goodbody Stockbrokers – not a lot there for Jem Casey, the Workman’s Friend, to rhapsodise, I think. Pot, kettle; kettle, pot.

As with Dermot Morgan and Scrap Saturday, we will only miss Rosenstock when he is gone. Just how far back the chasing pack are can be seen by a visit to The Panel, RTÉ’s worse than appalling answer to Have I Got News for You. But please, don’t watch too long, or else you will surely lose all will to live and hope for the future. Rosenstock is operating at a completely different level, and he should be acknowledged as such.

An Spailpín’s own favourite comic? Why, Tommy Cooper, of course. Different class.

Technorati Tags: Ireland, culture, Today FM, Gift Grub, Mario Rosenstock

How Very Embarrassing

As anyone that has flown recently knows, things have become very strict as regards what you can or can’t carry onto a plane, and what you can or can’t do once you’re on the plane itself. And this can lead to unfortunate situations such as occurred yesterday on American Airlines flight 1053 from Washington to Fort Worth, TX.

The flight had to make an emergency stop at Nashville, about half-way through its intended journey, because somebody on the plane got the smell of matches burning in the cabin. Concerned that a hijack or similar attack was imminent, nobody was taking any chances and down the plane came, where the FBI were waiting.

And there Mulder and Scully got to the heart of the matter. It turns out that one of the passengers had a big feed of curry, and peas, and porter, and beans, and every gassy stuff of which you can possibly conceive before getting on the plane. Once in the cabin, the inevitable happened – the poor think starting breaking wind the way that Steven Segal used to break heads in those fabulous old movies.

As we all know, botty burps come in two distinct varieties, so dissimilar that they make the Bactrian and dromedary camels seem as identical twins. The first is the loud but harmless – it’s frightfully embarrassing, of course, to sit there making a noise like someone has stuffed a bass tuba up one’s jacksie, but worse things happen at sea. In fact, if everyone enters into the fun of the thing, one can have a very jolly competition to see who can rip the loudest.

Unfortunately, just as Superman must face his evil opposite from the Bizzaro world, so the jolly, prrapppt! fart has its own evil doppelganger, known only by the acronym SBD – Silent But Deadly. Where the loud fart leaps into the spotlight, the SBD hisses quietly into the world. And hiss it must, for it will not find a welcome. The Silent-But-Deadly, you see, has travelled all the way through the intestine from the pit of the stomach itself, picking up the various odours along the way, until hissing sibilantly into the mortal realm. But once you get the appalling, who opened the sewer stench, you’ll know that someone has been chuffing on the sly, and is producing SBDs by the cubic metre.

Which is exactly what happened this poor woman on American Airlines flight 1053. Fearing the social ostracisation that would inevitably follow her discovery as the releaser of the SBDs into the limited cabin space, she took the only recourse she could – she lit match after match, desperately hoping to burn up the methane that scientists are convinced are the active ingredient in SBDs.

What she forgot, alas, is that is no longer as safe to fly as it was, and her embarrassment lead to the forced landing, and came within an inch of being responsible for a considerable spell in choky. In the end, though, the Feds thought about all the beer and tacos that’s gone over the red river with themselves and, while banned from American Airlines for about a thousand years, the anonymous passenger retains her freedom, liberty and, to some extent, her dignity. Spare a moment to think of her tonight as the pints are drawing.



Technorati Tags: Flying, etiquette, social error, SBD

Baby, It's Cold Outside

December 1st, 2006. How very distressing. Still, let's make the best of it and enjoy "Baby, It's Cold Outside," as sung by the Prince and Princess of Wales. Marvellous.



Technorati Tags: YouTube, Music, Tom Jones, Cerys Matthews