That was the year that was

The year began with contrasting and contradictory alignments. On the one hand, the United States were about to invest a new president, a young, rock’n’roll-loving sax-playing boyo from the south called Bill Clinton, offering the possibility of America as the last great hope again. And for once, January found the Irish in good heart as well. There was a new twist to politics as Fianna Fail and the Labour Party danced ever closer to a new era.

It wasn’t the outcome that anyone had expected. Fine Gael and the PDs were piqued beyond words, the chalice of power snatched from their grasp as they raised it in victory. Despite their abysmal showing in the election, Fine Gael clung to the belief that John Bruton should be Taoiseach, and that Labour should lie back and enjoy it.

It was not to be Rainbow coalition supporters in the media were equally sour. Despite the wave of good will that greeted the new programme for Government, cards were marked for the battles ahead. There would be no honeymoon.

* * * * *

You name it, they felt it. Currency wobblers, interpretative centre furies, rocketing interest rates, a consequent middle class revolt. And in time the Kilkenny rape case, for which the unfortunate Brendan Howlin got a lot of stick, even though it referred to a time when the Labour Party hadn’t even a sniff of power.

The rebellion of the middle classes on mortgage rates was particularly interesting, if you’ll pardon the pun, in that what they demanded, and got, was an accommodation from the State – a subsidy, if you like, to acquire property.

It led to yet another stupid whelk on the side of Irish economic policy, another income levy. The Labour Party is becoming inextricably identified with these absolute taxes which tend to be introduced when they are in Government.

And, despite what everyone promises, they don’t go away. Look at the Youth Employment Levy. Hence the unions’ implacability on a new PESP agreement.

The trouble with the Irish Republic’s tax system is that it furthers inequality at every hand’s turn. Mortgage relief is a perfect example. Why should anyone be subsidised in their acquisition of property?

The moral answer to the riddle? Abolish the 1% levy and mortgage interest relief. Increase VAT on fuel. Introduce a meaningful property tax, one that doesn’t punish those householders who improve the value of their homes, but which levies all property (say like works of art) with equanimity.

That argues for a tax based on the area, rather than the value of the property. Another useful side-effect of such an approach is that it would strike with vigour at those who leave property idle, whether in town or country. Those with energy and initiative would be rewarded, those without would not.

But would the present regime in the Department of Finance wear it?

* * * * *

Meanwhile, the horrors continued unabated in the Balkans. Each week brought yet more hellish visions. New explorations of human vileness and perversion were laid before our horrified eyes. Mass graves, starvation, mortars lobbed with precise indifference into market squares, casual snipers dispatching unknown and unknowing fellow humans into the great beyond. And always there was the implacable march of the Serbs and Croats towards a carve-up. There were no innocents here. Only the Muslims could claim any shred of self-defence. The others were offering simply another exposition of the murderous and hateful nature of fanatical nationalism. It was to continue unabated throughout the year. Moreover, we were to provide our own outrages to match . . .

* * * * *

February brought another vision from Mitteleurop’s dark heart. But this one was fictional . . . in theory at least. Francis Ford Coppola reinvigorated Dracula, highlighting the romantic side of this much-maligned anti-hero. It underlined once again the fascination we feel with the mysteries of life, death – and those areas of the imagination that skirt both so obsessively. The ‘look’ was in too, albeit fleetingly.

* * * * *

Biff! Take that you scoundrel!!! March brought fisticuffs to Dublin’s local government as controversy raged over land rezoning. Trevor Sargent waved a cheque in the air, asking if anyone else had received one from a property developer. It caused a riot. A number of councillors had to be forcibly restrained.

The row continued over the summer, with some of the more outrageous decisions made by councillors being overturned by An Bórd Pleanála. Sargent’s cheque turned out to be genuine, though not, it seems, a bribe. A number of people who were elected to be good clean representatives supported morally dubious rezonings, some of which seemed to economically favour members or supporters of certain political parties. Well, that’s the public perception, right or wrong.

All in all it was a distinctly unsavoury episode, and no advertisement for the democratic process at all. And what’s worse, we probably haven’t seen the last of it.

* * * * *

March also brought us the appalling story of an unfortunate Protestant who had been forced to drive for the UVF, had been caught, and had appeared in court on that charge. As if that nightmare wasn’t enough, he then found himself the subject of particular interest by the IRA, who tracked him from his court appearance . . . Can you imagine? Innocence is no defence.

* * * * *

Innocence is no defence indeed, as hundreds of victims of violence and abuse can testify. Southern society keeps generating socio-sexual horror stories: in 1992 there was the X case, and terrible experiences of the Kilkenny teenager Lavinia Kerwick, who made a stand after being raped. In 1993 Kilkenny featured again, this time for a numbingly horrible – no, make that grotesque – incest and rape case.

This time the victim was mature in years. She had been the subject of longterm abuse by her father. The case had lain, festering, unseen, one of those unbelievable tales that chill the mind every time they surface.

It is hard to believe that anyone could be so evil, or that others could effectively connive by turning a blind eye, through fear or ignorance or stupidity or self-deceit.

It’s an old story. We encounter it when a young girl dies giving birth in a midland grotto. Or when a priest is beaten to death in a bedroom. Or when a child dies in London, having been sent away by her family, her body showing evidence of neglect. And so on.

No society can be perfect. No society can realistically claim to be able to care for everyone. And we must always watch out for an overweening interest in other people’s business. But look at it this way. When a schoolteacher in New Ross was living with a man who was not her husband, she was dismissed from her job. The squinting windows got her. The lipsmacking prurients had no hesitation when it came to interfering in her life and that of her lover.

What was the difference? Why was Eileen Flynn fingered and done down, and the Kilkenny rape victim left to her fate?

There is no simple answer. Certainly it is not because the perpetrator was a man, although small rural communities would tend to be more circumspect about interfering in a family situation, especially where the suspected malefactor was the father. But the truth is far deeper and more ambiguous than that.

It involves many elements: small and inward-looking communities and their resentment of outside forces; sex and repression; religion.. Above all, there is the frequently malign force of the family, the so-called fundamental unit of society, to whose protection the Constitution of the Republic is dedicated. If walls could talk . . .

* * * * *

March brought a merciful relief to the embattled Irish punt, as the government succumbed to the inevitable and devalued. The relief was immediate and palpable.

Mind you, there was no impact on the unemployment figures. The same ineffectual policies that had led to the interest rate/devaluation debacle have proved completely barren regarding increasing employment.

The good intentions of the coalition are worth little in confrontation with the reductive world view which holds sway in the Department of Finance. In the face of a social catastrophe, all that was offered was more of the same. And more . . . and more . . .

* * * * *

March also saw an audacious attempt to attack the heart of the US economic system, when a bomb was planted under the twin towers of the World Trade Center. This mammoth construction is effectively a vertical city, and had the bomb delivered on its potential, it might have killed tens of thousands. The perpetrators are still unconvicted. Indeed, while Arab fundamentalists have been arrested, there is some doubt as to whether they are in fact the right people.

* * * * *

While the bomb in the World Trade Center represented an unfulfilled conflagration, the same cannot be said for the attempt to smoke the Branch Davidians from their headquarters in Waco, Texas. Yet another cult goes up in smoke, you might say.

But cultists have a right to a fair trial just like everyone else, and it seems clear that there was a lot of bungling in the early stages of the attempt to disarm the Branch Davidians.

Jim Jones. David Koresh. What is it that these people have? Why do people give up everything to follow them, including, if reports are to be believed, their wives and children? And why to the death?

Why, also, can law enforcement agents not find ways of comprehending the cultist mindset, so that this kind of holocaust can be forestalled? It is, as recent events in the Ukraine have shown, likely to be something that we will encounter with increasing frequency as the millennium looms. It was, apparently, the same a thousand years ago.

Some people never learn.

* * * * *

The bombs and bullets never really stopped. The first half of the year, however, brought one outrage that especially enraged public opinion. It was in a shopping street in Warrington . . .

The image of a small boy who had been scouting out a Mother’s Day card being blown to pieces by a bomb planted by someone purporting to represent the Irish people, and the usual lame apologia (warnings-were-ignored type of stuff, as though the person who planted the bomb wasn’t responsible) brought demonstrations for peace throughout the island, but especially, and to the great annoyance of Northern Catholics, in the Republic. Tim Parry RIP.

Northern nationalists complained bitterly, both at their derisive treatment by Southern crowds, and at the fact that the selective citizens of the Republic didn’t send flowers by the trainload north when Catholics were murdered . . .

Meanwhile, the southerners cursed this unresolvable imbroglio, and the intransigence of both ethnic groups in the north. New irritations entered the equation. The Hog’s column proved bitterly prophetic: “And now the Protestant terrorists have discovered a new amorality, a new conviction in their capacity to destroy and murder, an ability to match the Catholic Chetniks body for body, and then some . . . ”

* * * * *

In the midst of all this turmoil, it was a relief of sorts to have Annie Murphy arrive on the scene, promoting her published version of the Bishop and the Divorcee saga.

For the most part, Annie did the rounds. She didn’t appear entirely at ease with the circus, but proved game enough to carry on regardless. But it was her Late Late Show encounter with Gay Byrne which really set the visit apart. She met the Conscience of Middle Ireland in misogynistic mode. On this occasion, the grey eminence firmly believed he was talking with the agent of the Bishop’s misfortune, rather than the bould prelate’s victim. So he went for her in a backhanded kind of way, on behalf of all those (er) decent people who believed she had trailed her skirts and led the poor fellow astray with her coquettish ways.

The sour disapproving note of the exchanges was noted by many. Equally, however, Annie’s sterling self-defence won her plenty of new admirers. Probably helped shift a few books as well . . .

* * * * *

There were times during the year when it was hard to find good things to say about the male of the species. Yeah, yeah, the world is full of nice blokes and decent skins and gas men. But far too much of the horror which seems to attend our every waking moment originates in the testosterone tribe.

Northern Ireland is an example, as The Hog noted in late Spring. Although there are women terrorists, many of whom are the most vicious and ruthless going, the majority are male. So too are the politicians. Which may be why nothing has been resolved. They’re still at the stage where they keep pissing on the lamp posts to show who’s not going to back down.

So the Hog demanded, in this era of equality, and in pursuit of what the European Union calls Gender Proofing, that any future talks on the future disposition of Northern Ireland should have an equal representation of women and men. Nice thought . . . but you will presently observe that it hasn’t come to pass. If it had, I reckon we’d be nearer to a workable compromise . . .

* * * * *

Last year we noted that, disgracefully, the outgoing government had done nothing to bring Irish law into line with decisions of the European Court on the issue of homosexuality. But the Programme for Government promised action, and by April Maire Geoghegan-Quinn was getting ready. This, incidentally, was one of the early signs that the new coalition intended to deliver on promises. Furthermore, despite their many tribulations, if one looks at their legislative record, they have continued to achieve this objective.

Fearful that, perhaps, the dark forces that lurk behind every squinting window might hold sway, The Message vigorously marked the Minister’s cards. There was no need. Ms Geoghegan-Quinn delivered legislation that is among the most open and liberal of its kind in Europe, legalising sexual activity between consenting partners of the same sex, from the age of 17 upwards. In Britain, the age of consent remains, inexplicably, and insultingly, at 21.

Furthermore, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn propounded the logic of the government’s position on the issue with notable clarity and considerable vigour. It was not a complete breakthrough – the bill was compromised by the inclusion of reactionary provisions on prostitution. Clearly, however, new agendas were to be taken seriously.

* * * * *

HIV and AIDS just wouldn’t go away. While the impact of the disease has not followed the exponential growth forecast by the more pessimistic prophets in the mid-80s, the numbers dying from AIDS have continued to rise. At present, these deaths have been in the high-risk groups, but there is evidence of increasing infection among the heterosexual population.

This is not to say that there is unanimity on the subject. There is a spectrum of “expert” opinion, which ranges from the view that HIV is an infectious virus which is solely responsible for AIDS across to the more contentious view that HIV is a harmless “passenger” virus, wrongly blamed for a deadly condition which is not caused by a disease, but by excessive use of particular narcotics, including some used to suppress the immune system in haemophiliacs to make it easier for them to receive blood clotting agents.

The truth? Who knows. Either way, it is clear that people have got to practice safe sex and to exercise considerable caution with their recreational drug use, in particular heroin, cocaine (especially as crack), poppers (themselves capable of demolishing the immune system on their own, and a known cause of Kaposi’s Sarcoma, the rare skin cancer said to be a peculiarity of AIDS) and other more modern designer drugs.

The government set about another information campaign on the subject of safe sex in the early summer. It proved to be a further confrontation between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, when RTE refused to broadcast the TV ads because of their directness. The reactionary line on all this is that celibacy and abstention are the best policy, and that all ads and literature should reflect the moral teaching of the Catholic church ..

In yet another sign that there was a new sheriff in town, both Michael D Higgins and Brendan Howlin made it plain that if RTE persisted in its refusal, then the station would be ordered to broadcast the ads. Which they did.

The same period also introduced the Hog to some of the sensitivities of the whole arena, when the column reported on some astonishing evidence from the Thrombosis Research Unit in London that regular cold baths strengthened the immune system against a range of viral and bacterial invasions, among which was numbered ME, the so-called “yuppie flu”, also known as the TATT (Tired All The Time) Syndrome.

The Hog suggested that a HIV-positive person might consider this regime as a means of enhancing her/his body’s capacity to defend itself. The porky one was not for a moment recommending sexual carelessness or reckless drug use. Just passing on a possibly beneficial angle.

It didn’t go down so well among some, I’m afraid. Which puzzles everyone in the sty. I mean, cold baths or cold showers can’t do any harm, can they? And if there’s even a smidgen of truth in the results of the experiment, then the regime could be very helpful indeed. So why not?

* * * * *

And still the bombs went off. In June Belfast’s Opera House was damaged once again. We had to wonder: does nobody in Sinn Féin care about heritage? What would Sinn Féin and the IRA do if they got power? From the looks of it, they would blow up or burn out all buildings that were built since the Act of Union. Apart from those whose owners bought them off, that is.

* * * * *

June brought a sterling example of inclusive all-Ireland achievement when a team of climbers, led by Belfastman Dawson Stelfox and FÁS official Frank Nugent, conquered Mount Everest by the hardest route. Now, I’m no climber. But I’ve been up some of the innocent slopes that we Irish like to call mountains. And it ain’t easy. So I daren’t even imagine the scale of effort involved in reaching the summit.

But that effort also extends to the organisation, the funding, the whole co-ordination of a major team effort, and this is the area where the conquest of Everest represents a beacon of hope, a model action, for this island.

A similar, if more prosaic, and indeed destructive, model came in the final rugby international of the Five Nations Championship, in which an inspired Irish team knocked seven kinds of shit out of the favoured English. Worth waiting for . . .

And in July, Sonia O’Sullivan fought back from the brink of forever fourth, to take a silver medal in the 1500 metres at the World Championships. Earlier, she had been run out of her favoured race, the 5000 metres, by three indomitable running machines from China, the new world power in athletics.

A lot of sour grapes were in the air, and accusations of drugs came thick and fast. The truth is probably more prosaic: with quarter of the human race inside its borders, China is pretty certain to have a quarter of the potential world best.

And there is no reason to believe that the young women who burst on the scene like rockets will last. Already, in the case of one, she has had to lighten up because of shin splints, usually caused by running too hard too early in life.

Such injuries were said to have been part of the price paid by the great Kerry Gaelic football team of the ’70s. For whatever reason, the Kingdom’s successor teams have been unable to match the glory days, and not even the return of the Bomber Liston could swing it for them.

No, the spoils went north yet again, this time to Derry. Dammit, do we have to wait for Tyrone, Armagh, Antrim, Cavan and Monaghan to win, before the rest get a look in??!

And in hurling it was the aristocrats of Kilkenny who lifted the McCarthy Cup, as expected by all but the most fanciful. Fairy tales are all very well in the nursery, but out there in the real world it’s a different tale I’ll tell you ...

Finally, in a miserable summer, it was inevitable that the great indoors would prove as riveting as the great outdoors and Dubliner Ken Doherty did his bit to keep us all entertained with some exceptional potting on the green baize.

* * * * *

July is usually known as the Marching Season in Northern Ireland. The month revolves around the 12th of July. And that means fun for some and flight for others. One western town in the Republic found itself over-run by refugees on that weekend, and it didn’t like it. People sitting in their cars drinking cheap liquor, spitting and insulting passersby, pissing and vomiting on the paths, tossing rubbish out their windows. It was an army of occupation, and one reason among many why the locals there no longer fancy the thought of a United Ireland.

Of course the drunks who invade seaside towns aren’t representative, and in many cases, as the latter part of the year demonstrated in spades, many were getting out of the way of intimidation and possible injury or death. But that didn’t make the experience any more pleasant.

So much for that. In fact, 1993 proved to be much more significant for another, much more positive theme, The Handshake, when Mary Robinson, President of the Republic of Ireland, went to West Belfast to meet and salute the community there and met and shook hands with Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Féin. There was a whole plethora of reactions, mostly guarded. The President was adamant, however, and in the event the whole thing passed off without too much rancour. What the President intended was to salute the communal activities of people who have been under the cosh from all sides for a generation. If that makes them feel better about themselves, that’s a fine outcome. If it also focuses the official mind on the range of problems they have to face, so much the better.

The pity is that a series of appalling outrages, in which one or two members of that same community were involved, seem to have blocked plans for Mrs Robinson to visit the Shankill Road . . . some of whose community have also been involved in recent outrages . . .

The whole year in Northern Ireland brought to mind that famous film of the bridge that self-destructed. It was swaying in the wind and traffic for a good while, and then quite suddenly, the movement found the bridge’s frequency, and the whole thing began to vibrate and oscillate wildly, bucking up and down like a skipping rope being shaken by some vast malign genie, until it snapped.

Perhaps that’s the way it must be, but I’ve always hoped that some sense of reason might prevail, some higher human capacity to think and negotiate our way forward.

Hope springs eternal. Just about . . .

* * * * *

Meanwhile, another victim of The Troubles finally got his deserts. This time last year we expressed satisfaction that Nicky Kelly was to be compensated for his tribulations in the Sallins Mail Train Robbery case, though we quibbled about the amount that had been mentioned. This year, better news. Kelly has got £750,000.

* * * * *

For what seemed no very good reason, Bill Clinton authorised airstrikes on Iraq. Six civilians were killed, among them a woman artist of considerable renown.

But did it stop Saddam shelling the Marsh Arabs? Or loosing poisons into their watery environment? Or building a dam that will, in time, turn their marshes (where they have lived for thousands of years) into a desert?

The answer is no. The World’s Policeman was equally unsuccessful in Somalia, where the warlord Aideed proved unkillable and uncatchable. There were plenty of others who were not, and the UN effort in that blighted country was badly tarnished by unnecessary gunslinging and gunship diplomacy. There again, the UN didn’t go in swinging in Bosnia, yet the toll of death and destruction is just as high and just as unacceptable there as it is in Somalia.

Leave ‘em alone is probably the only answer. They should have armed the Bosnians and given money to individual Somalians. Years ago. But then, there’s nothing like retrospective wisdom, is there?

The Israelis did Clinton no favours either, with a brutish incursion into that part of southern Lebanon which they call a buffer zone. Shells were splattered all over the place, homes and farms were wrecked, and huge numbers were displaced, with the express intention of putting pressure on the Lebanese government to confront the “armed elements”, that is the gunmen of Hezbollah.

Some hope. In time, and in the face of international outrage, which likened the operation to the kind of ethnic cleansing practised in Bosnia, the Israelis withdrew. But not before they had caused fierce, and wholly unjustifiable levels of human misery.

* * * * *

By August it looked as if even the gods of the Americas were agin Clinton. The skies opened for weeks, emptying billions of gallons on the MidWest. The Mississippi/Missouri overflowed – in fact, it ran amok. A new Great Lake, they said. So much water hurtled down the mighty rivers that when it came to a tributary it drove the subsidiary waters back up to where they came from.

A catastrophe of biblical proportions. In fact, had the Branch Davidians not been wasted in Waco, they might well have seen this as the Second Flood. And, while the flood dumped unimaginable quantities of nutrients on land that had been pretty leached by over-cultivation, it bound it in a muddy silt that set like mortar. In time it will all be released, but for the moment you might as well try to plant in a carpark. Sing it: “My American dream, fell apart at the seams . . . ”

* * * * *

Some heat was generated by the new drink driving regulations that were mooted by the Minister for the Environment late in the summer. Let me reiterate the Hog’s s position: most deaths on the road do not involve drink. As usual, we’re all asking the wrong question. The real killer is bad driving. Bad driving in mouldy cars on crappy roads.

The real focus should be on safe driving. That includes not driving fast when you’ve had a few drinks, and not driving at all when you’ve had more than a couple. It means encouraging a sense of responsibility, rather than expecting the law to take responsibility. Know what I mean?

* * * * *

Norway doesn’t normally feature in The Whole Hog but it turned up twice in September, and both for really right-on reasons.

The first was when the Norwegian Environment Minister Thorbjoern Bernstein described his British counterpart John Gummer as “the biggest drikkshek I’ve ever met.” Well, talk about unparliamentary language!! A drikkshek is a shitbag!!! The outburst was over the British dragging their heels over a range of environmental measures. Blocking agreements. The usual.

Drikkshek. What a word. We’ll use that one again!

The second favourable intervention of the Norwegians came when the most amazing thing happened in the Middle East. The Israelis and the Palestinians shook hands. Call it war weariness, call it realpolitik. Call it what you like. It was a stunning turnaround. And the Norwegians were the midwives. They had brought the two warring sides together, and had nursed them and held their hands and wiped their brows while they wrestled with history and ancient hatreds towards an unbelievable rapprochement.

Yeah, yeah, I know. There’s a long long way to go, and many fences over which they might stumble. But even to have gone this far is a kind of miracle. Now we all wonder whether we should invite them back here for the first time officially since 1014. They might be able to help with our festering problem . . .

* * * * *

The latter part of the year brought Michael Jackson tumbling down to earth. The boy who never grew up has had all sorts of unsavoury allegations made against him. In recent weeks he has gone into hiding to deal with a drug problem. Pepsi have pulled out from his tour. That megabuck phase of his life looks like it’s over. A new Calvary awaits ....

Interestingly, though, a lot of people do not share the yellow press and litigant crony view of Micko.

In France, for example, most people regard the whole thing as an anti-Sony plot by American entertainment industry nationalists. And the fans, in general, seem loyal. Most people would agree that a man in his thirties who (apparently innocently) shares a bed (admittedly a giant one) with a twelve year old boy is a little short of savvy. But since when is that in itself a crime?

The charges of abuse seem a great deal more nebulous, and carry at least a whiff of malice, revenge or gold-digging.

Maybe they’ll turn out to be the tip of the iceberg. Maybe they won’t. But in the sex-and-abuse obsessed climate he faces in Los Angeles, it seems unlikley that Jackson stands much of a chance. No more than we do of knowing the whole truth.

* * * * *

In what seemed like a weird outtake of a home movie from Michael Jackson’s private zoo, it was revealed in September that turtles, or to be precise, terrapins were naturalising in Europe ... to the considerable discomfort of bathers in muddy waters in the south of France.

They’re all over the place, apparently, having been bought as palm-sized, slow-moving little pets for brats who like those appalling cartoon turtles that pollute our teevee screens.

When they get too big for little britches, they’re dumped in the local pond or stream. And in those parts of Europe that are warm enough, the little fuckers start to breed. Not only that, but they also start to grow. And grow. And grow. They can grow to several feet in diameter, quite big enough to nip off a juicy pink toe, should it be so foolish as to paddle past . . .

* * * * *

October saw the publication of the National Plan, the proposals drawn up by the government to maximise the national take from the new round of EC Structural Funds.

The government had made a bit of a deal of having secured the £8 billion over the previous year. Then it was to be £7.8 billion.

You couldn’t say nobody cared. But most voters just thought, well, it was an awful lot of loot. They, for the most part, just hoped some of it might come their way . . .

When it was published, the government said the plan was the business. The opposition said it wasn’t. Time, we supposed would be the judge. But a crueller fate awaited. Basically, a lot was riding on the apparent word of Jacques Delors, and his (witnessed) handshake with Dick Spring. But Jacques isn’t the force he once was, and the Irish plan ran up against the chilly wind of Mr Bruce Millan, the Commissioner in charge of the Structural funds.

So. The £8 billion that was in fact £7.8 billion became in fact £7.2 billion. It was all a tad embarrassing, especially since they had made rather a deal of it in the first place. But, does it matter? Will it make any difference? I think most voters would be happier with £7.2 billion spent wisely than with £7.8 billion spent foolishly. The proof of the pudding will be in the eating . . .

* * * * *

The essential backdrop to the National Plan is the festering wound of unemployment. The Plan’s success will be judged in the harsh light of reality, ie whether real jobs are created, and whether the average person is better off at the end of the century than he or she is now.

When people say “real jobs”, they don’t mean FÁS schemes, however worthy and progressive. They don’t mean endless training for possibilities that never become probabilities. They mean a job that they go to at a certain time, and that gives them status, a sense of community and a sense of stability.

See, when the great new technology movement began, the future that was held up before our eyes was that people would only have to work for half the time, they’d have more leisure time, cleaner environments, better health ..

But the capitalist system has only delivered on half the equation. It has only delivered on the automation and computerisation. Instead of making everybody’s life easier and the working week shorter, workers have been made redundant.

Automation and computerisation have become instruments of greater efficiency and profits, rather than the instruments of social improvement foreseen by scientists.

And nobody seems to understand that working class people, the ones most likely to be tossed away when the firm has found a cheaper way to do the job, don’t usually want to get filthy rich. Nor do they want to become entrepreneurs and go-getting ball-busting business people.

They just want to be treated with dignity and respect, hired to do work they can invest with some energy and interest, paid a decent wage and housed in decent conditions. Lots of people want to work principally as a means of getting the money to do the other things they are interested in.

Organised with a modicum of imagination, there is far more work that could be generated than is currently the case. The problem is, we’ve unravelled the carpet, and we haven’t the vaguest idea how to weave it up anew.

It should be mandatory for all TDs, Senators and senior policy-makers to learn weaving as a prerequisite for their jobs. Because, that’s what has to be done. Enough of this unit cost stuff, this localised budget micro-economics. Let’s get macro. Let’s get weaving.

* * * * *

And finally, and awfully, it came down to the wire. November 17th in Windsor Park, and the Republic of Ireland needed a win to ensure passage to the World Cup. Billy Bingham’s last match as coach of Norn Iron. Jasus, lads, this is stress on a colossal scale. And that’s the kind of game it was. The Republic got a result, Jimmy Quinn got a cracker of a goal, and was matched by Alan McLoughlin. Bingham got his farewell, Big Jack got his ticket.

But not everybody was happy. The main problem was with the crowd, who took tribalism several notches too far, and whose racist barracking of Terry Phelan and Paul McGrath was a simian throwback to the worst kind of hooliganism. But in the end, there was satisfaction all round. The Republic qualified. Northern Ireland gave as good as they got. Honour, as they say, was satisfied. If only everything else in life were that straightforward . . .

* * * * *

As long as humans have had the powers of conversation and recollection they have been saying that things are going from bad to worse. Every now and then something happens that indicates that maybe they’re right. One of these was the murder of toddler Jamie Bulger by two other children in Liverpool.

Every awful detail was played out in the court reports. And at the end the two were found guilty. One could only wonder at what it was that possessed them. What awful history had led them astray?

Chillingly, there was nothing truly appalling in their backgrounds. Indeed, one of them lived with a mother who seemed quite a concerned, if over-anxious, individual. Certainly not the drug-crazed fiend that Tory mythology might have suggested. Which leaves us back there, contemplating the most awful possibility of all, that each one of us is that close to the darkness ...

* * * * *

One man who knew all about the darkness was Pablo Escobar, the biggest dealer of the Medellin cartel of cocaine barons. A gangster among gangsters, Escobar ruthlessly established his industry, his sales routes, his transnational links, his alliances. And he rubbed out anyone, politician, priest, policeman or rival, who got in his way.

Just like Ferdinand Marcos, he was revered among his own as a Robin Hood. But the truth was different. Say what you like about cocaine, but its distribution, especially since crack struck the inner cities of the USA, has led to misery and viciousness and a particularly mean kind of murderousness. Escobar was killed in a gun battle with special services police in Colombia the other week. Regret at his premature departure is best left to his family. (And Sam Snort – Ed.)

* * * * *

The pace of dialogue and development which had been picking up in Northern Ireland over the year really took a major leap forward in October and November. The Hume-Adams dialogue, the Shankill bomb, the Greysteel massacre, the Six Principles, intergovernmental talks, the Unionist Veto . . .

Of particular importance has been the re-engagement by the south with the problem. But it might be a mistake to put too much faith in that. One would be more impressed if the citizens of the Republic showed an interest when there wasn’t a tragedy to spark their conscience..

As an index of their urgent concern, one might refer to the Irish Times/MRBI poll of last week, in which it was revealed that a clear majority of the voters in the Republic were willing to rewrite Articles 2 & 3 of the Constitution.

Indeed, if the “Don’t Knows” are excluded, there is a majority of almost 2:1 in favour of the change. Only 28% would vote to retain the Articles, compared with 41% in 1992 and 58% in 1991. That’s a major turnaround in a very short time indeed. So what does it mean?

Well, there are other revelations: 92% of the Republic’s voters believe that Sinn Féin should be involved in talks on the future of Northern Ireland, of whom 60% believe this should be after a renunciation of violence. Clearly there is an interest in assisting a settlement. But not at any price. Indeed, only 19% would accept higher taxes....

These figures suggest an impatient and possibly fickle electorate rather than a really committed society. I would think it a good idea to get a solution on the blocks sooner rather than later, because it just might be that the next step will be a complete emotional and philosophical disengagement, the kind that has already taken place in the UK.

* * * * *

In the midst of all the turmoil, in what is still constitutionally a part of the United Kingdom, it was salutary to be reminded of the priorities of the great unwashed across the water, with the publication by the Mirror group of photos of the Princess of Wales in her leotard, languidly lifting weights, or whatever. Taken by the gym owner, they were published on a variety of pretexts: she was the most beautiful woman in the world, we love you Di, or to expose security lapses.

It hardly matters. I have not much interest in the woman, but I have to say that the stocks are too good for the assholes who perpetrate this kind of press rape. There is something appalling about secretly snapping a woman in the unguarded world of the gym. I don’t give a toss who she is, it’s just not on.

At the time of writing, the victim of the prurience has decided to retire from active public life. One hopes to jaysus that the hyenas can understand what that actually means.

* * * * *

Then there was Bill Clinton, Winner. His Health Care Programme (his wife Hilary’s, actually, but never mind) has been pressed through, so has the North American Free Trade Area, and the Pacific Summit. And the figures for the economy are starting to look good.

Phew! What a turnaround! Only a couple of months ago we thought he was a lame duck. You could say he’s been lucky. But as with all these things, ya makes yer own luck.

* * * * *

1993 was also the year that South Africa abolished apartheid and installed a transitional government. It is, I suppose, a vindication of a many-pronged international subversion of the system as it existed, both through sanctions and economic support for the most peaceful of the opposition forces. It is also a victory for common sense. One likes to think that De Klerk would have gone that way by instinct. But without the pressure and the international odium, I don’t believe so. And then, of course, it is a particular triumph for Nelson Mandela. One hopes for a long life for him, beacuse he is the symbol that may hold the potential for madness at bay for the first crucial years.

* * * * *

The south coast of Ireland has always been a smuggler’s paradise, with hundreds of miles of indented coastline, and lots of quiet anchorages. So it’s not too surprising that cannabis is being landed and moved about through various southwestern landfalls. What is surprising is the scale of the operation.

Tonnes of the stuff are being hauled up out of the sea. Apparently it was dropped off the Cork coast with a homing device on board so that bales could be retrieved as required. A tight game plan, except that a French trawler stumbled in on the act. It’s like Whisky Galore. Bales and bales. Enough to get a football stadium stoned for months on end.

Seems a shame to just burn it ......

At last, in August ’93, Zooropa came home. U2 played two nights in Dublin’s RDS and one night in Cork’s Pairc Uí Chaoimh and, in the process, seemed to have the whole country eating out of their hands.

The show was everything it promised to be, and more: visual pyrotechnics, Las Vegas style showbiz and some great rock ’n’ roll, all delivered with ironic grins and four tongues placed firmly in four cheeks.

Later in the year, the band headed down under for the Zoomerang leg of their world tour and are, presumably, already planning the next chapter in their continuing process of self-reinvention and renewal.

Arguably, the scandal of the year from an Irish perspective is the British Government’s decision to extend the activities of the Sellafield Nuclear Reprocessing Plant with the imminent start-up of the Thorp facility there – a development which will inevitably result in a huge increase in the emission of radioactive materials, and multiply the dangers to Irish and British citizens alike to a frightening degree.

The Irish Sea is generally acknowledged to be the dirtiest in the world. The Sellafield plant is located just 70 miles off the Irish coast, and so poses a massive threat to the citizens of this country. It is imperative that the British Government’s decision should be reversed and that movement towards the closure of Sellafield should be urgently set in motion.

Meanwhile, in Chernobyl, the reality of what can happen in the wake of a nuclear accident continued to shock and chill all those who were alerted to it. The excellent documentary, Black Wind, White Land, which was screened on RTE, offered a harrowing account of one of the world’s forgotten disasters, cataloguing not only the immediate devastation which the Chernobyl fallout caused throughout Belarus in particular but also the terrible – and as yet unknown – price which the people of this blighted region will ultimately pay. Tens of thousands dead, disabled and sick with cancers, leukaemia and other dreadful diseases, the land poisoned, families torn apart, people uprooted and no end to the suffering in sight.

We can’t say we haven’t been warned.

IT WAS a case of The Begrudgers Boo Hoo Hoo this year when the novel, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha, scooped the £50,000 Booker Prize for its author Roddy Doyle.

Doyle may be a popular writer in the sense that his books sell by the van-load but he has never been liked by certain bluenoses, prudes and professional saviours of the Dubalin working class who decry him as an exploiter and patroniser of their people. Now that he’s a bona fide “respected literary figure,” however, they’re virtually crawling out of the woodwork to claim that they knew him when he hadn’t an arse in his trousers.

Meanwhile, the Stephen Frears-directed adaptation of Doyle’s The Snapper was one of the big hits of the year on TV, the big screen and video. A similar adaptation of his third novel, The Van, is also on the cards and a four-part series entitled, The Family, is currently being shot – it goes without saying that both of these productions, like The Snapper, are being made by the BBC. And as for our own national broadcasting organisation?

“Ineptitude and a complete lack of . . . lack of everything, that’s what seems

to prevail in RTE,” Doyle argued in Hot Press last June. “I’ve met producers from Britain, America, but nobody from RTE. I’m not being arrogant, I’m just stating the facts.”

Last May, a major diplomatic incident and a serious rift in Anglo-Irish relations were caused when BBC newsreader, Nicholas Witchell, asserted live on air that the 1993 Eurovision Song Contest was being held in “a cowshed.” This was a gross libel. The event was actually stage in a horse shed.

At a cost of £2.2 million, and at the instigation of the inimitable Noel C. Duggan, the 1993 Eurovision was held in the village of Millstreet, 40 miles west of Cork. 300 million people in 30 countries watched (allegedly), nobody scored null pints (though Turkey came close) and Niamh Kavanagh won. Now, RTE has to come up with the readies to host next year’s La La La bonanza.

So, bang goes the drama, comedy and investigative-reporting budgets yet again. Still, what’s another year?

“Hume/Adams” became one of the most over-used shibboleths in 1993. John talked to Gerry and Gerry talked back to John, but neither of them would tell us exactly what it was that they were actually talking about. Still, they both maintained that they had made “progress” and that their joint proposals offered the best opportunity for peace in Northern Ireland for twenty-five years. And only a fool or a lunatic would be prepared to dismiss a development like this, right?

Well, not quite. In Dublin and London, the Hume/Adams talks were treated as though they were a cache of Semtex. Nobody wanted to touch them. Nobody even wanted to be caught examining them. Gerry Adams’ fingerprints were even dragged into the argument – nobody wanted to handle anything which, at some earlier point, may have been handled by, or by someone who had themselves been handled by, Gerry Adams.

Then, John Major announced that “it would turn my stomach” to talk to Sinn Fein. This was interpreted as meaning that he wouldn’t, under any circumstances, talk to Sinn Fein. What was forgotten, however, was that Major comes from a family of circus performers in which stomach-acrobatics are probably second nature. Either way, it turns out that John Major’s government had been nattering away to Sinn Fein and the IRA for months and months. Funny old game, innit?

Of course, the ultimate absurdity has been the fact that the sound of Gerry Adams’ voice has been interned under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and that he can only speak on radio or television with the help of an actor’s law-abiding vocal chords. If you didn’t laugh, you’d have to cry.

At long last, Neil Jordan’s extraordinary talent as a film-maker was recognised by the Hollywood establishment and given the commercial boost it has so long deserved.

Jordan’s The Crying Game was one of the surprise successes in terms of Oscar nominations in 1993. For those with short memories, the movie was nominated in no less than six categories including Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actor (Stephen Rea), Best Supporting Actor (Jaye Davidson) and also in two technical categories. On the big night, Neil Jordan himself was on hand to pick up the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Jordan is currently working on Interview With A Vampire starring Tom Cruise, and in 1994 he hopes to bring Pat McCabe’s acclaimed novel, The Butcher Boy, to the big screen.