The millionaires are revolting

These tribunals have gone on for far too long. Nobody apart from journalistic junkies and political anoraks is interested any more. After more than 10 years, what has Mahon unearthed except triviality and tittle-tattle? Let’s wrap the whole shebang up and get on with running the country...

So runs the mantra of the media faction which maintains a steady barrage of abuse against efforts to uncover the sources of the huge sums of mysterious money which were sloshing around in the bank accounts, car boots and office cupboards of Bertie Ahern and others back in the 1990s.
But opposition to tribunals from the super-rich and their media mouthpieces cannot be based on the lengthy nature of the proceedings, or on the recent revelations of Ahern’s penchant for financial jiggery-pokery. Attacks on the tribunals were launched almost from the moment they were established.
In September 2000, when Mahon was little more than a toddler and whip-round and dig-out were still innocent phrases, Ryanair founder Tony Ryan told the Sunday Tribune: “I think it is time to drop them and put them behind us... Are we going to continue with investigations that could go on forever? The Irish just like this type of gossip.”
In the same Tribune feature, Monaco resident Michael Smurfit hit a plaintive note: “I would hope that this period that we are going through, this purgatory if you will, ends quickly. This is self-flagellation. As soon as these tribunals are over and done with, the better for everybody.”
Tony O’Reilly declared: “Tribunals are an instrument of politics, not of law. They are an opportunity for prurience, allowing people to look over the garden wall. There is a certain voyeurism about the notion of having a non-judicial body look into these things that is attractive to some people.”
Herein lies the reason for the assaults on the tribunals. The billionaire boors take exception to Mahon, Moriarty etc, for the same reason the better-off increasingly want to live in high-walled gated communities, festooned with flood-lights and security guards to keep the common folk at bay: they are angered at the very idea of the great unwashed – that’s us – being given a glimpse of how the other half (or half-percent) accumulate and use their riches.
Scruffs from Summerhill or Ballybeg or Blackpool gaining insight into the rich folks’ Taoiseach and his magic way with money. Bloody cheek. Allow that sort of thing, and there’s no telling where it would end.

I innocently turn on my television and who do I find if not David Aaronovitch explaining that the Iraq war was a splendid idea.
In 2003, Aaronovitch told us that there was no doubt that Saddam had stockpiles of them WMD. If we didn’t stop him, we’d be all blown to bits in whomever’s bed we happened to be in next Thursday morning. Only demented Trotskyites and supporters of the Mad Mullahs of Islam could possibly object...
Aaronovitch was so certain Blair was telling the truth (now there’s an odd phrase) that he wrote in the Observer: “If nothing is eventually found, I – as a supporter of the war – will never believe another thing that I am told by our government, or that of the US ever again. And, more to the point, neither will anyone else. Those weapons had better be there somewhere.”
Many’s the one made a wrong call on Iraq. But nobody apart from Eoghan Harris called it wronger than Aaronovitch.
But there he was, and not a bother on him, as he explained to BBC News 24 that even though Blair had been totally wrong he’d been proven absolutely right.
I say nothing of the hapless coterie of local hacks who confidently predicted that the only explosions to be heard in Iraq following the overthrow of Saddam would be explosions of joy and of love for their liberators in the hearts of the Iraqi people. But any cheek out of them and they’ll be named.

Bands come and bands go, but good musicians go on forever.
The thought came as I listened again to Pete Cummins’ lovely album, The Brilliant Architect.
Pete’s been around since the days when Grannie’s Intentions were honourable, The Fake were for real and all Olympian heads were Fleadhed out on Friday nights.
His 11-track collection (10 originals, plus a Johnny Cash cover) includes the single ‘Flowers of Baghdad’, which stayed for 34 weeks in Neil Young’s livingwithwar web-chart. But the glory of the album lies in its musicians, in the easy expertise and unerring instinct for a tune that comes from a working life in the business.
Tommy Moore, Ger Kiely, Trevor Knight, Ed Deane, Fran Breen. Pete. Between them, they’ve played in a hundred bands, of all arts and crafts and genres and styles. None of them is what you’d call a star name. But there’s nobody on the scene who doesn’t know and reckon each of them a mighty musician.
When you’ve listened to the songs, lay back, close your eyes and savour the precise and delicate interweave of sound from artists who are in tune with the spheres, who know exactly what they are doing, and are utterly at ease with one another.
The Brilliant Architect showcases the best of the best that we sometimes miss because we’ve come to take it for granted.
Pete will hate me for calling his album lovely. But it is.
In next issue’s all-action column – the Golden Age of Northern rock. Fighting with Wire! The Jane Bradfords! Mantic! Organised Confusion! Faro! Skruff! And more! Plus the inside story on the strange disappearance of the Karma 45 album. Unless it turns up in the meantime. Oh, and Terry Hooley at 60. Only a pup.