Beating the brand

It goes on and on. Strange world. You get a furore over Porky the Pig, adopted ( you might say) by Brigitte Bardot, and he escapes the chop. Meanwhile, people are executed in the USA, Iran and China. Millions starve. And nobody notices. This is how it is.

Well, at least there’s chaos in London at May Day. And aren’t those cops in riot gear so Star Wars, so butch? Mmmh!! I mean, really.

I like this No Logo movement. It’s asking some very pertinent questions about the way we live. I mean, the Irish, in stark and staring contrast to their history and image, are getting heavier, and less healthy. Eating too much shit, to be honest. Too much branded crap masquerading as food. If you have a problem, what do you do?!? Eat! And get branded!

Do we need to? The fuck we do. But look around. Check the beef.

It is one of the things that those Irish who are smart enough and mobile enough to travel in Third World countries, like Laos, or Sri Lanka or northern Pakistan, always say. There are no fat people in these countries. And it’s true. Less fat, less sugar, less junk.

Economists are revising our growth rates downwards. Down to six percent. And you have to ask: do we need it? Is growth essential? Is there, somewhere, a limit to growth? I mean ... growth uses more and more water, right? You need it for factories. So, in this world, dried up and distressed as it is, where will we keep getting the water?

Some people, and a few of them are in Government, think we can keep on growing forever. Or until they retire. Well, let’s be clear. Without some serious rethinking on water supplies, Dublin will suffer exactly the same shortages and chaos that UK cities endured in their economic boom in the 1980s.

And water is a metaphor for everything.

This idea of endless growth is the heart of the capitalist myth. It’s based on the view that there are no limits. But there are. We only have so many trees. We only have so much oil. We only have so much water. We only have so much air.

The cost of growth is untenable, really. It’s traffic. Pollution. Water shortages. Greed (financial and gormandising), violence, aggression, racism, exploitation. It’s the Third World within. And it’s all there, in your face, in Dublin 2001. Elsewhere, it’s down your way tomorrow. At the latest.

The other side to the May day protests is the photo-images of the rozzers. Very techno. Very Hollywood. Very Vader. I say, boys ...

Somewhere, I guess, we’ll have to deal with this. The closest so far has been the Abbeylara shooting of John Carthy by members of the Emergency Response Unit. But it’s there or thereabouts all the time. The idea that the police must protect property and the vested interests, and be equipped and uniformed to do just that, is not a new idea.

But many questions hang about in the air about Abbeylara. I don’t want to prejudge or prejudice anything, so I’ll go no further for now. But questions need answers, and trust doesn’t just happen. It has to be earned. Someone should let the GardaÌ know.

Meanwhile, Martin McGuinness has tipped over a hot pot with his revelation to the Bloody Sunday enquiry that he was second-in-command of the IRA on the day. Well, a lot of that was known. What’s interesting is the way it’s being received. As much fascination as rejection.

But, equally, there is a sense that this is actually something new and that members or former members

of terrorist organisations normally don’t acknowledge their histories until they have moved into a new zone, a new phase. Until, in other words, they have left that stage behind.

There will be many tests for this view. Like, membership of the new police force in Northern Ireland, for example. Who will have left what behind?

And then there’s the question of drunken Celtic fans in Dublin. You’ll know my views on this. So-called Old Firm clashes are an excuse for the worst and most debased form of sectarianism. They are an abomination. Why anyone in this jurisdiction would want to be part of such appalling stone-age triumphalism is beyond me. But they do.

And why the burghers of O’Connell Street, who want to ban all assemblies of more than six people, haven’t had their tuppence worth, I don’t know. Haven’t they any values at all? Would they not lean on the pubs that show the Celtic matches???

Mostly, of course, it was handbags at twenty paces. But it was interesting to note who was involved. I think we all assumed it was drunken Scots, but it wasnae. It was Irish people, many admittedly from more (ah) sect-conscious places across the Border. And a lot of them, according to a spokesman for Sinn Féin, quoted in the Irish Times, were members of ”Ógra Sinn Féin.

Not that they’d be sectarian, or anything like that. Oh no, never.

They haven’t gone away you know. And their (in a sense) cousins have been disgracing themselves again, ripping up the remembrance garden in Omagh, and putting real and hoax bombs on the Dublin-Belfast railway line. Such a fucking nuisance.

After all that, the fuss over the Bertie Bowl, aka Campus Ireland, seems timid. But there’s an issue there. Sure, the costs should be kept under control. But there’s a fundamental question and it’s to do with ambition, and vision and values. Do we value sport? Do we want to compete with the best? Are we serious about this or just pissing about?

I think we’re serious. When we cut the crap and the point-scoring, we want to be up there, cutting the mustard. If I’m right, then to hell with the politicking and the begrudgery.

Let’s go for it. And with as few logos as we can. b

The Hog