A crack squad of medical researchers led by Dr. Graham Giles discovered a while back that the more a man masturbates when young, the less likely he is to develop prostate cancer later. Dr. Giles reckoned that six wanks a week between puberty and 30 was ideal. This sounds about right.

I didn’t know about Dr. Giles’ research when I was 15 going on 30, but I had a firm grasp of the concept.
The subject came back to mind recently as I pondered the observation of Delaware Tea Party Republican senatorial candidate Christine O’Donnell that masturbation is wrong “in all circumstances” because “it doesn’t involve sexual conjunction with a married partner”. Or, as she ought to have said, in the interests of doctrinal exactitude, with a partner of the opposite gender to whom one is married.
O’Donnell’s down on masturbation has provided irresponsible elements of the US media with the most enjoyable story they’ve gotten their hands on since Bill Clinton made Monica Lewinski come to work wearing knee-pads. It’s worth noting, though, that very few from the same liberal section of the media came to the support of surgeon-general Jocelyn Elders when she was fired by the Clintons in 1994 for saying that masturbation could prevent young people from engaging in riskier forms of sexual activity and that, therefore, “perhaps it should be taught”.
O’Donnell is currently being pilloried in the press, too, for confessing in 1999 that as a teenager she had “dabbled” in witchcraft but “never joined a coven”. A somewhat more plausible and less insulting line of chat than Clinton’s claim to have smoked dope but never inhaled. And anyway, Chrissie O’Donnell never had a missile launched to kill an innocent man in a faraway land in order to divert attention from a semen stain on somebody else’s clothes.
So I am not one to diss Ms. O’Donnell just on account of her cranky convictions. I do draw the line, though, when she pledges to fight “to the death” against federal funding of stem-cell research. Asked to explain, she declares that, “If we approach this complicated bioethic issue with our heads in the sand, the other end is in the air. American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains.”
Mice with fully functioning human brains, indeed! Sounds like Willie O’Dea, apart from the fully functioning bit.

If the popular singing group U2 care to pay my way to whatever exotic location they are next scheduled to croon in, and if they provide me with the class of accommodation Mary Harney thinks the taxpayers of Ireland should cough up for her to stay in, and if they allow, nay encourage, me to hang out and act hail-fellow-well-met with a swirling constellation of A-list celebrity stars assembled for the purpose, then I am willing to consider – no promises, mind – passing off as a “review” the sort of shameless shite which has been smudged onto newsprint and splurged across television screens this past month.

Which brings me to Peter Sutherland.
Sutherland is a former Irish Attorney-General, a Knight of the British Realm, and Consultor of the Extraordinary Section of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See. Not to mention an offensive low-life, a bumptious ignoramus, a lump of lard in a pinstripe suit.
The Gonzaga oaf was boss of British Petroleum during the years (1997 to 2009) when it consolidated its position as the planet’s number one polluter, chairman of Goldman Sachs International (“a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money” – Rolling Stone) since 1995 as it stuffed the global elite with gold alchemised from the pain of the mass of humanity, chairman of Allied Irish Bank from 1989 to 1993 when it inflicted a multi-billion fraud (the DIRT tax scam) on the Irish people. I once crossed swords with him in debate. I think it’s fair to say I kicked him all over the room before sauntering off triumphant without breaking sweat.
The same bag of blubber was back in Dublin last month addressing the insanitary pests of the Institute of Directors on ways and means of preserving their position as Ireland’s top parasites. The only hope of averting catastrophe, he informed the dregs and scourings of moral slumdom before their annual pig-in, was to slash even deeper into public spending and drive wages further down.
As boss of AIB and then president of the Irish Banking Federation, Sutherland chose to sing dumb and do nothing when alerted to the banking tax rackets which were defrauding the people and pushing the economy towards ruination. Afterwards, he told the Dáil public accounts committee: “If I were to do it all over again, I wouldn’t change one iota of the steps that we took in terms of having an objective analysis of the situation and coming to a fair and proper conclusion.”
It can convincingly be argued that this global scrounger has been the single most influential figure in creating a culture of cynical greed and anything-goes in Ireland, and bears huge personal responsibility for the fearsome prospect which looms over the land. It is a tribute to the long-suffering forbearance of the common five-eights that he is allowed to walk the streets. But for how long, friends, how long?