An each- way bet

I was relieved, delighted and excited to discover there was no substance to rumours of a settlement in the dispute between the oaf and bully Alex Ferguson and Charlie Haughey’s tax-free accomplice John Magnier. This one, I hope, will run and run. My plans are laid to take time off to travel to Dublin for the court battle which, I anticipate, will be a glorious occasion, featuring exchanges of ugly personal insults, snarls of outrage and blood and snotters on the wall.

The last occasion when I looked forward so keenly to a court clash was the libel action taken by the oleaginous Longford pet-food mogul Albert Reynolds against the Antipodean lout Rupert Murdoch’s rag, the Sunday Times. I quite forget what it was the Dirty Digger’s semi-literate trash-sheet was alleged to have said against the man who had been cleared by Liam Hamilton of all wrong-doing in the Larry Goodman beef export scandal and whose government promptly appointed Hamilton Chief Justice. Ho hum.
Whatever it was, the dog-meat magnate was mighty sore and allowed it to be known that he was going into battle against the Aussie oik not for money but for the, er, honour of Ireland. Laugh? I was spitting carpet-shag for a fortnight.
What was wonderful about the Reynolds-Murdoch clash was that we knew from the outset that whatever grief we might experience at one of them emerging triumphant would be joyously off-set by the other coming a costly cropper.
I seem to recall likening the event to the 1980s dispute between two rival garda representative organisations in which I attempted to mediate by suggesting that they line up at either end of O’Connell Street with drawn batons and beat the shite out of one another as a change from beating the shite out of working-class youngsters upon whom the wrath of the Sunday Independent would descend if they dared complain, the body to which the last man left standing belonged being declared the winner. Ah, dreams.
A couple of months back, somebody asked Gerry Adams on radio, after he’d denied point-blank ever having been in the IRA, why he didn’t sue newspapers which claimed he had been IRA commander in Belfast in the 1970s: because, replied the hirsute philosopher and pacifist, hadn’t that great Irishman, “Taoiseach Reynolds”, been done down by a bigoted English jury when he’d sued the Sunday Times? It’s little remarks like that that reveal the real person.
Matter of fact, none of us anticipated the moral grandeur of the London jury, Solomons come to judgment one and all, who found in favour of Reynolds and, in the end, awarded him a penny. Reynolds had been traduced right enough, they reckoned. But his reputation wasn’t worth tuppence.
Now, I ask you: was this not a decision of exquisite subtlety and delicate balance? Far from suggesting a lack of objectivity on the part of English juries, might it not prompt us to hope that a Dublin jury in the Ferguson-Magnier case would match the wisdom and emulate the congruous harmony of the 12 good Cockneys and true?
Attaboy, Fergie, say I, stick the boot into the parasitic tax-avoiding bastard!
Go for it Johnnie, rip the fucking head off the mingy Scots scrounger!

Bertie Ahern is slouching towards Dublin Castle to be shorn of credibility.
Which is not to say he’s set to suffer serious Tribunal damage. In the neck of the political woods where Ahern and his henchpersons skulk, cred is an optional extra. What matters is the brute will to survive. Tony Blair is as low on credibility than I am on sanctifying grace, but he’s still there. This despite New Labour apparachiks being no match for Fianna Failers in the brazenness stakes.
So, it’s odds on Ahern to remain Taoiseach until the opportunity arrives for the plain people to tramp the dirt down on the coffin of his career.
Tom Gilmartin says he told Ahern about the 50 grand he’d bunged Flynnstone. Ahern said he did no such thing. Then he said he couldn’t remember. Now, evidence supporting Gilmartin having come to light, Ahern still can’t recall the conversation but accepts Gilmartin is telling the truth.
Ahern’s memory is as blank as the wads of cheques he signed for Charlie Haughey to fritter on personal foibles. Fifteen hundred (1,500) chickens’ necks Ahern inscribed for Haughey during his stint as party treasurer and he says it never once occured to him to wonder what the money was for. Some believe this. A man living outside Cloonfad, it’s said, and a woman in Cahirciveen. Mad, the pair of them, apparently.
I allow my mind to slide across the front pages of the Sunday ’papers and discover it everywhere asked – what is it about Irish political culture and/or Fianna Fail which makes it so easy a mark for the brass neck, the back-hander and the brown envelope? But let’s not beat ourselves up.
What is it about Italy and Forza Italiana which made the impeachment of Berlusconi and the multi-billion Parmalat prat-fall inevitable?
US vice-president Dick Cheney’s Halliburton company has been fingered for finessing more than $100 million to officials in Nigeria to smooth the way to a gigantic gas plant contract. Does this say something specific about the US and/or the Republican Party? What?
Israeli property developer David Appel has been indicted for slipping $700,000 to the son of Premier Ariel Sharon for help in pressurising Greek officials to green-light a casino-cum-hotel on an Aegean island. What does this tell us about Likud and the culture of Israeli politics?
The Bank of England was complicit in the Bank of Commerce and Credit International sting. BCCI turned out not to have been a bank at all but a scam from the outset, set up solely for siphoning zillions from victims worldwide: the success of the scheme was down to its BofE certification as a sound institution. This says what about Brit political culture?
Then there’s Mikhail Khordorkovski fretting in a Moscow cell on theft and corruption charges involving sums of roubles beyond the range of imagination. This may exemplify something about Russian political culture: but what?
Don’t start me on China, Brazil, Japan.
Everywhere, commentators wonder what it is about their country or political parties which has facilitated fraud. But if the explanation is to be found in a particular political culture, how come the phenomenon is seemingly everywhere? Isn’t the explanation likely to lie not in what’s specific to this or that political culture but in what’s common to the countries concerned?
All across the globe, ideas bow down to market forces. Commentators who worry one day about the source of corruption the next day pour scorn on any notion of regulation or control. The dynamic entrepreneur fixated on quick profit and with no time for petty restrictions is the hero of the hour.
What is there of relevance that’s shared by all the countries mentioned above? A prevailing political culture which holds that market forces must be given free rein.
This isn’t the conclusion I find in the Sunday ’papers. Because the ’papers are product and purveyor of this culture.
Which, in turn, is why cred isn’t the sine qua non of survival. b