There is no doubting that politics is a dirty game. Everywhere. People here may sniff their superiority over the sleazebags in England and America, and how we don’t dump on a cabinet minister for bonking five secretaries and getting caught. But in truth it’s just as dirty on this island as anywhere else.
That is part of the price, of course. If ya can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen. And I suppose we should be thankful for small mercies: actually, there is little or no mention of the private indelicacies and pecadilloes of the public figures. At least while they’re alive.
Probably just as well. What would the gossipy insiders (aka the chattering classes) do if their scandals were the stuff of tabloid feeding frenzies?
I won’t be all that surprised if the next couple of years see a decline in standards. The size of the government majority in the Republic means that the opposition are likely to try to widen the scope of public debate from policy matters.
Mind you, they’re raising quite a storm there too. John Bruton has finally found an issue that he can champion. The property tax.
As Patrick Kavanagh used to say “the Irish forwards have it”. Dirty work at the crossroads, and barging in the lineout. Bruton is playing Meath football against a Kerryman. Why use your head when you can use your elbows?
Never mind that it isn’t a new tax, but a modification of an old tax that Bruton himself had a hand in. Call it new often enough and the punters might find a new truth. And see if you can isolate Labour as the villains of the piece while you’re at it . . .
The joint front with ACRA is quite a good wheeze too. ACRA have always tended to come out against householders paying for anything . . .
The fact that Fine Gael in goverment would almost certainly have widened tax on property doesn’t matter a damn. The scarcity of resources and taxable targets, and the clear evidence, attested by all the reliable commentators, that tax in general is being overhauled for the better is beside their point. They weren’t elected, so their job is to cause trouble. As the rugby players from one of Meath’s sporting schools exhort each other “spoil it, Navan!”
Spoil it indeed.
Incidentally, on the subject of gossip, one of the Hog’s close friends was in Paris just before Christmas, and came back with stories of an opposition politician who stepped a little out of line in the best known Irish bar in the City of Lights . . . if only this individual were selected for the European Parliament elections we might amuse ourselves a while over lunch. Oh well . . .

The showbiz welcome accorded partisan leader Gerry Adams in the US will have given the opposition another stick with which to beat the government. Mind you, how they could be blamed escapes me. But you know how it is: fling enough mud . . .
I’d like to see Mary Harney and John Bruton get up there and give Ted Kennedy what for. The cheek of him, encouraging Clinton to give Adams a visa. And while they’re at it, why not have a go at Clinton himself as well?
Good heavens! It’s Angry from Leixlip again! A fully paid up member of ACRA and Neighbourhood Watch.
The most irksome sound of all, though, was the jilted-bride sniffing from the Unionist parties, who resented, and not without reason, the frenzy that greeted the Sinn Fein leader’s arrival in the USA.
But let’s not forget, they were invited to go to the same conference to put their point of view. They were offered the same platform, and they sniffed and refused. They only have themselves to blame.
Mind you, I can’t say that Jim Molyneux or Peter Robinson would have excited the media sharks in the Big Apple as Adams did. Not only are they two of the most colourless figures you could imagine, but their cause . . . well, it lacks poetry. Which the Yanks really go for.
For better or worse, Americans rate the IRA. I’m not condoning that. They don’t have to contend with the regular horrors perpetrated by that bunch of terrorists. Thay also don’t have to deal with the endless cold brutality, the localised focused horrors, the slow silent ethnic cleansing (on both sides, one as bad as the other).
They’ve just seen the movies and heard the songs and read the poetry.
In terms of the mass media even John Hume couldn’t compete last weekend . . .
But it is just as important that the Unionist view is heard and articulated: a million people can’t just be wished away. It’s up to them. Ranting and raving and shouting the others down is no longer an option, any more than sticking your head in the sand.
Somewhere there is an individual who can articulate the joys of the union. A song like “The Ould Orange Flute” hints at a lively and engaging culture. The poet John Hewitt sprang, if I am not mistaken, from the same soil.
It can’t be left to bores like Robinson and Molyneux, snobs like Taylor or ranters like Paisley. It is very clear what these people are against. In the case of the IRA, they are right. But what, in terms of vision, of poetry, of identity, of soul, are they for?
Equally, the voice of the victims should be heard. There is a need to establish forums where the families who have been bereaved and intimidated by the self-styled freedom fighters can confront the idealised mythologies of Irish terrorism: let’s face it, outside of this country (until a couple of weeks ago) and the UK, the IRA have succeeded in selling the simplistic nationalist version of a “just” colonial war of independence, rather than a frequently brutish and sordid ethnic civil conflict. So: let’s give the defenceless a voice, shall we?
The vision question should be also be asked of Sinn Fein, although one suspects that one knows the answer. It is probably a mirror image of loyalism..
And both sides might well request a similar response from the (very different) South. Because it may be that each sees its own poetry, but not that of the others. But below the border a vision seems to be taking shape, a typical blend of pragmatism and romanticism and facilitation skills, given shape and expression by Albert Reynolds and Dick Spring.
Any psychologist or therapist or counsellor will tell you that the most important quality in their work is the capacity to be a good, active, non-judgemental listener . . . as both Taoiseach and Tanaiste seem to be.
Time will tell. In the meantime, returning to the American romanticisation of the IRA, one was struck by Edna O’Brien’s association of Gerry Adams and Michael Collins. She might be right. But the comparison tells us as much about Collins as Adams.
And it brings a challenge in its wake for Fine Gael: is it not time that they abandoned their homage to ruthless gunmen? Enough of this idealisation of terrorists . . .

And finally, speaking of terror: have we all gone to sleep on the threat from that pile of nuclear shite on the far side of the Irish sea? Are we all aware of the horrors that they have planned for us? Like the underground storage tanks for nuclear waste, which one expert believes could go critical?
And lest we forget, Irish doctors have reopened their exploration into the effects of the 1957 fire at Windscale, as Sellafield was then known.
Two clusters have been identified of Down’s Syndrome children born to mothers who were attending school in Dundalk on the fateful days when the wind was blowing straight across the Irish Sea from Windscale.
It’s too easy to think that these things won’t affect us, that somehow we’ll escape. But life doesn’t work that way.
Let’s get serious. Vigilance is the price of freedom. Remember Chernobyl: those people can’t go home for hundreds of years. Say NO to Thorp.