On The Record »

• We all protested

  January 23, 2012 @ 9:03 am | by Jim Carroll

  After the parties come the protests. In the last 12 months, you were no-one if you didn’t get out there, do some fuming, shake your fist and say that you were as mad as hell and were not going to take this anymore. Students, old age pensioners, the residents of Ballyhea and Clontarf, the various Occupy banner-holders, the Vita Cortex and La Senza workers, hospital patients, Dubs with bins, rural dwellers with septic tanks, well-heeled dog-owners and everyone else seemed to get annoyed, irked, unhappy, cross and raging (and even a mite dirty, in the case of the bins and septic tanks). People who don’t normally protest, really. We all protested.

  In some cases, the protests had the desired effect. A massive nationwide unhappiness with what happened towards the end of 14 years of Fianna Fail-led governments resulted in the Irish electorate turfing out the FF dynasties and failures last February to replace them with a Fine Gael and Labour government.

  Within six months, though, we were protesting at that FG/Labour government and the measures they were taking. The house never loses, but the government of the day who end up having take unpopular, unpalatable decisions which were agreed with our new paymasters under the previous regime and which never formed part of their raft of election promises can never win. It’s the reason why we don’t protest at the opposition all that much. Suddenly, the bet that FF will be back in power after the next general election doesn’t look as much of a wildcat punt as it did a year ago. We’ll probably protest about that too, if it happens because we vote for it, with those politicians whose default setting is protest (probably protesting at the fact that they’ll never get into power) leading the way.

  But while protests are a handy guage of popular anger about an issue of the day (or the issue of the day which gets the oxygen of a Liveline outing), you have to wonder what gets changed in the long-run. We’ve had the protests, but what’s next? Sure, there are short-term victories – for instance, Clontarf residents will point to the lack of a big wall blocking their houses from the sea as a victory, though none of them were getting too exercised about this three or years ago when it was first mooted – but such victories are more kick-the-can-down-the-road affairs. What will happen the next time that Dublin Bay decides to sweep across the Clontarf Road? Will every closed-down shop now mean worker sit-ins like La Senza before they get wages and payments to which they’re legally entitled?

  The bigger issues remain as constant as they’ve always done, yet our failure to tackle those issues is never quite addressed because we’re too busy fuming about other stuff. Take that well-worn, right-on political meme about the need for reform. Most of us pay lip service to this, but the truth is that we know full well that turkeys don’t vote for Christmas. The people who can make the move on political reform are the politicians in power and we all know how that one goes. Political reform is a great aul’ argument to throw out when the chattering classes need something to chew over, yet the public appetite for it just isn’t there no matter what we think. If it was, movements like We (Some of) the Citizens would have greater strength and support. It’s a big issue, it’s an important issue, but it’s not an immediate issue so it gets kicked down the road.

  It’s easier to protest about stuff other than the stuff which really matters because we know in our heart of hearts that we haven’t got the will or the way to change the bigger picture. The big issues, the economic and political stuff of the nation, remain the same from one protesting or accounting period to the next. It’s as if we fear what might really happen if these were to change. We will fume and fumigate about the austerity budgetary measures being taken and extra taxes being applied to allegedly get this country out of the economic mess it’s in. We cheer when a couple of lads from various troika organisations who are sent out to answer a few questions get Brownebeaten on TV. We give it all a dirty look and let that pass for protest. You see, despite what we might think, we still have too much to lose to go hell for leather down a road which leads to the kind of change we think we’re for.

  It’s when you’ve nothing to lose and everything to gain that protest really works. Look at the changes in the Arab world in the last year. Look at the chances and sacrifices and blood, sweat and tears it has taken to transform countries which many though would never change. From Egypt to Libya, the protests happened and changes, in one way or another, occured.

  In 2012, there will be many more protests in this little country. More taxation and punative measures to pay for the high jinks and gallivanting of the 0.5 per cent will mean more anger, but probably little resolution or change. At some stage, though, the question needs to be asked: we’ve all protested, so what the hell is next?

  Comments (39)

• Quality vs quantity

  August 15, 2011 @ 9:34 am | by Jim Carroll

  We have reached the promised land when it comes to music. If you have the time to devote to listening, you will most certainly find enough music to occupy every scintilla of that time. Whether it’s new or old stock you’re after, it’s coming at you, endless wave after endless wave. Just keep clicking.

  For those of us who possess a passion for new sounds, this is nirvana beyond our wildest expectations. All the music you can eat and enough to go around several times. You dive in, you find something you like, you feast on it, you move onto the next table. You keep on trucking.

  But if it’s all hunky-dory on the quantity side of the equation, what about the quality? How does our desire for quality dovetail with the abundance of music which we encounter every day, every week, every month? More importantly, because we still gravitate towards quality music, has how we guage quality changed?
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• What’s next for los indignados?

  May 31, 2011 @ 10:05 am | by Jim Carroll

  There is nothing like the sight of a bunch of riot police armed with batons and rubber bullets wading into the middle of a peaceful protest to change public opinion within 24 hours. All was quiet on Thursday afternoon at the protest camp at Barcelona’s Placa Catalunya, with a couple of hundred “indignados” at most present. Some simply sat around chatting to oneanother. Others handed out leaflets, put more posters on the ropes which crisscrossed the square, dozed in the afternoon sunshine under the canvas and plastic awnings which had been put up in the square, worked in the communal kitchen or tidied up the camp. It may not be what the local tourist chiefs wanted to see in the city’s main square, but it was a peaceful, good-natured protest. It didn’t look or feel like a hotbed of angry anarchists hellbent on taking down the government.

  When you talked to some of the protesters about why they were there, you got a variety of answers. It would probably have been the same list if you spoke to the protestors in Madrid’s Puerta del Sol or any other square in any other Spanish city which currently features one of these camps. They wanted jobs (44.6 per cent of Spain’s under 25s are unemployed). They wanted changes to how the government was running the country, especially change in the austerity measures introduced to deal with Spain’s economic problems. They wanted better standards of living. They basically wanted a better country to live in. They had seen the mess which the existing parties had created and they wanted something else. Hence, the protest, the tent cities and the anger.

  Like I said, it really was a small protest. While the protesters occupied the centre of the square, normal life went on all around Placa Catalunya. Tourists wandered into the Hard Rock Cafe, shoppers headed to the El Corte Inglés department store and taxis waited for business on all sides. A typical day in Barcelona, albeit with a ragtag camp in the middle of the main square which people seemed to be tolerating.

  By Friday afternoon, there was a much different mood in Placa Catalunya. Earlier that day, riot police had moved in to dismantle the camp and the protest. The local authorities said they wanted the square to be cleaned ahead of the Champions League final on Saturday night and were not seeking to evict the protestors, but it looked like an ham-fisted attempt to end the camp. Nearly a hundred people were injured as the riot police did what riot police are supposed to do. As we’ve come to expect in 2011, the heavyhanded police actions were filmed and on the internet within minutes, leading to more and more people arriving at the square. Everyone was an indignado after watching those videos. By 7pm that evening, there were thousands of people protesting.

  At the time of writing, the camp is still in place with protestors in Barcelona and elsewhere in Spain deciding to continue their sit-in for now. It will be interesting to see how the Spanish authorities deal with this. As we saw with the Barcelona camp on Friday, any attempt to break up the sit-ins using the police will only lead to a huge outbreak of public support for los indignados and see the protest get more oxegen. Leaving the camps in place and hoping that the protests peter out and the protesters leave is probably a better option, though there are probably many city chiefs who shudder at the thought of those “eyesores” remaining any longer in the middle of their cities.

  What los indignados themselves are going to do in the medium term is equally unknown. There are undoubtedly romantics amongst them who hope that their protests will emulate the popular uprisings which occured in Egypt and Tunisia earlier in the year and there’s certainly a lot of public support for their aims. But Spain is a democracy and it takes a great leap of imagination to imagine a situation where public protests would change this. Los indignados have made their point, but it remains to be seen if there is anything else to be done beyond making that point.

  Some of the protesters hope that other European countries will follow their lead. Indeed, many of the people I talked to in Placa Catalunya wondered why the Irish weren’t also on the streets. After all, as was pointed out to me a few times, the Irish austerity measures are just as bad as what the Spanish are experiencing and yet, the Irish are not protesting, even though it wasn’t the Irish people who created the mess in the first place. I should have pointed them towards Laura Slattery’s excellent post about why the Irish are not like the Spanish in this regard. Laura lists a bunch of reasons why Irish indignados are not taking over Stephen’s Green or Eyre Square and most readers will probably agree with her list. One other reason I’d add to her list is that while the Spanish protest on the streets and squares, the Irish form of protest is to emigrate. Or talk to Joe. That’s really where you’ll find the Irish indignados.

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• That queen and this country

  May 18, 2011 @ 9:36 am | by Jim Carroll

  During yesterday evening’s news, RTE reporter David Davin-Power made an interesting observation. Talking about the huge security presence which meant that the streets were not thronged with onlookers, Davin-Power reckoned that the streets would have been empty anyway, even if the city hadn’t been on the kind of lockdown usually seen in films involving an invasion of mutant aliens. There was never really going to be thousands of happy Dubliners wearing Union Jacks at Queen Elizabeth as she drove in her jeep up and down O’Connell Street.

  On the flipside, there was also never going to be thousands of angry-as-hell Dubliners protesting at the visit and waving their fists at the royal cavalcade. Capital city citizens have better things to do. The antis were always going to be largely represented by the usual hooded and masked coterie who come out on occasions like this. Dissidents and dissenters will be with us forever and will enjoy “sneaking regard” support from certain elements of the community. They’ll exist and get publicity and attention and enjoy the right to protest, but they’re a minority of a minority of a minority.

  However, there was never really going to be a huge public fuss over this visit. Nice old lady who is head of state of big country next door to Ireland comes to town. Nothing really to see here, bar 10,000 gardaí and Defence Forces personnel standing around, whinges on Twitter about problems getting around the city and complaints on The Frontline about the cost of it all. Life goes on.

  Of course, I’m not denying that there is huge symbolic importance to this visit and carefully stage-managed appearances at the Garden Of Remembrance and Croke Park because it puts the cap on the normalisation of relationships between the two countries. Yesterday’s wreath-laying ceremony and bowed heads were greatly significant, as every talking head on the radio and TV kept saying, and acknowledge what happened in the past, but it’s time to move on. The vast majority of those who live in this country (and on this island to boot) have long moved on.

  The normalisation of relationships between us and them happened a long time ago and in the simplest and most unpolitical of ways. It happened through culture, sport and the general yin and yang of everyday life. We watch British TV shows, we follow British football teams, we listen to British music. There are over 110,000 folks who consider themselves to be British living amongst us, according to the 2006 census. Some of us may even be married to them. We’ll still rib the Brits and their national sports teams and sportsmen when they wobble and lose their bottle in major tournaments, but that’s just inter-country japery. Once it’s over, we’ll take down the Jamie Oliver cookbook and prepare a nice supper.

  No doubt, the peace process in Northern Ireland helped matters too, but nornalisation was in train long before that long, tortuous process from terrorism to the ennui of everyday politics began. The biggest effect of the peace process for many of us in the Republic is that it means we can stop pretending that we care about what happens up north. We rarely voice that opinion, but deep down, the North is way down our list of priorities.

  Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth will get on with her visit. She and her husband will head to Croker and the horses and the Rock of Cashel and Cork, like any other senior British couple on a midweek break to Ireland. There will be a couple of boring dinners and probably some muttered complaints between the pair of them over breakfast about the springs in the bed in the guest bedroom in Farmleigh. It’s a state visit. Nothing really to see. Time to move on.

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• Cheering on the homebirds

  April 19, 2011 @ 9:53 am | by Jim Carroll

  There are several moments which stick in your mind from a performance of “I’m A Homebird (It’s Very Hard)”, which closed its run at Dublin’s Project on Saturday night. There’s the Nadine Coyle love-in, the championing of the Girls Aloud hoofer by Homebird writer and performer Shaun Dunne. There’s the ease at which the three onstage flit from monologues to choreographed dance moves. There’s the non-stop rush of ideas and notions and thoughts which come out in a flood of emotion, just as they would in real life when you’ve a bunch of twentysomethings discussing whether they should stay or go.

  But there was one line towards the end which was still running in my mind the following day: “there’s a fucking renaissance going on”. That comes in the middle of Dunne’s final speech before the stage goes black, as he talks about the reasons why someone should stay in Ireland rather than joining the thousands who’ve already left or are planning to depart for London, Germany, Australia, Canada and other places out foreign. Homebird is about that choice, but that particular line puts another iron in the fire.

  There’s no blame game in Homebird. As the notes which go with the show put it, “it is not about guilt or judgement on those who have have to leave; the reasons are completely understandable”. You only have to look at the headlines of a morning to see the extent of Ireland’s economic woes and you don’t have to be an economist to work out what this means for the generation of kids who are about to start or who have been looking for work. No-one is asking why these kids are leaving instead of staying. We know the reasons all too well.

  But Homebird is about making a very deliberate choice to go against the grain and then standing up for that choice. Not everyone is leaving, not everyone is taking the road which Irish Times’ letter writer Cian Caffrey described the other day, where you take “your skills, your education and your work ethic and apply them in a country where you are appreciated” (in his case, Australia). Instead of doing that, Dunne is making a stand for those who are vehement about staying here and making a difference, about taking their skills, their education and their work ethic and applying them in a country where they are needed, instead of seeking appreciation elsewhere. Again, from the show notes, “we have the choice to make things better, to redefine what we have here, to be both realistic and more idealistic about how we can begin to build Ireland again”.

  While it’s clear that Homebird doesn’t play the blame game about those who have left, it does baulk at those who sneer at those who remain and the Ireland they left behind. We’ve seen this aspect of the emigration game again and again in the last couple of years and it’s understandable because those who left are bitter about why they’ve had to leave. Yet, as Dunne points out, such an attitude is infuriating to those who remain. There’s a job of work to be done and it requires people with new ideas, fresh thinking and innovative methods. You don’t get that amongst the lads and lasses in the Dail, that’s for sure. But many of those with the ideas and will to change things are leaving and trash-talking the country as they do so. It’s easier, after all, to give out than contribute.

  Dunne’s enthusiasm for a renaissance isn’t just some sort of dramatic trope. There is a change in the air and there are people (the kids that Dunne’s work is aimed at, mostly) doing new things in art, theatre, music and performance. These endeavours are happening well away from the mainstream because that’s the place where you can go to develop and finetune your work at your own pace. It’s also happening there because those involved don’t really want to have any truck with the mainstream for now and the mainstream certainly is in no great hurry to embrace them either.

  Homebird makes you think about people we don’t think about all that much. When people talk about the lost generation, they’re usually refering those who’ve left this country and have no firm plans to come back. Sure, changes in technology and transport means they’re in constant contact with the country and can come back here at the drop of a hat on a cheap Ryanair flight. But there’s also a significant proportion of that generation who haven’t gone anywhere and have no plans to go anywhere. Perhaps it’s high time we concentrated a bit more on those who’ve stayed here, and like Dunne says, cheer them on. After all, it’s these homebirds rather than any diaspora-in-waiting overseas (who think virtual ballot boxes are the way forward) are the only ones who can help us get out of the mess created by our elders and so-called betters.

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• The business of doing business

  November 1, 2010 @ 9:59 am | by Jim Carroll

  There are times when you can sense the indignation from the radio long before the text messages start to roll. Last Saturday morning, property developer Simon Kelly, a dude who says he owes €200 million to the banks, got a taste of what Seanie Fitzpatrick and, in a much earlier time, Joe Jacob experienced on run-ins with Marian Finucane.
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• Won’t be fooled again?

  October 5, 2010 @ 2:17 pm | by Jim Carroll

  It was the ultimate GateGate. At 7.30am last Wednesday, a dude drove his cement truck towards the gates of Dail Eireann. The truck was decorated from head to toe with various banking tags (tags of the toxic bank variety) and, hugely topical given the Ryder Cup was around the corner, references to golf and golf balls.

  Cue online and offline media meltdown as the truck dude became the latest cipher for all the anger, rage and unhappiness in the country at the thought of our feckless, careless, useless politicians using our cash to bail out the feckless, careless, useless gamblers in the banks. Call it Cementgate, Gategate or Truckgate but it was the story of the morning.

  Of course, many people applauded the actions of Joe McNamara, the lad in the lorry. There were letters to the editor calling him a “hero”, loads of tweets praising his action and plenty of after-the-fact applause.

  But, as Mick Clifford pointed out in the Sunday Trib at the weekend, it’s not as clear-cut as it looks. Per Clifford, McNamara turns out to be a property businessman who did his level best to make hay while the sun shone during the boom leading to him to over-estimate his prowess as a developer. “Like a lot of others, it now appears he was in over his head. His beef with Anglo concerns a debt of €3.5m, which he borrowed to develop properties.”

  When you take a different look at the incident – property developer and businessman who owes money to the bank and council because he overstretched himself drives lorry towards gate – the praise and “hero” worship looks slightly different. After all, isn’t it lads like Joe the Developer, people who were happy to take the money on offer from the banks in the good times to make even more money and then couldn’t pay the loans back in the bad times, who are also to blame for the mess we’re in?

  Yes, we’ve already put the bankers and politicians up against the wall, but they’re not the only ones who are complicit in the current multi-billion mess we find ourselves in. If we’re to give the bankers and the politicians a well-deserved lash for their deed (the over-the-top reaction to Bertie Ahern doing a R Kelly and getting trapped in a closet shows we haven’t forgotten his antics), we should remember that they’re not the only guilty parties. That many are willing to view a delinquent developer as a hero because he drives a truck towards a gate says a lot about misplaced anger.

  It’s also worth bearing in mind that a lot of this anger is, of course, expressed in hindsight. As this fascinating analysis on the back of last week’s Irish Times’ opinion poll shows, the Irish electorate (or at least that part of the electorate tapped for their opinions in these polls) were always happy with our leaders when times are good.

  Even more telling was a table in last Thursday’s paper – which I can’t locate online, apologies – showing the huge level of support which Ahern was receiving all the way through 2007 and the first half of 2008. It was only when the shit really hit the fan in September 2008 (and when Ahern had skipped government buildings) that the Irish electorate turned on Fianna Fail. Sure, we may have suspected that something was up, but we were prepared to do the dog and horse it around like everyone else. It’s only after the fact that we began to fume and roar and shout. Naturally, we won’t be fooled again….will we?

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• Whipping boys and scapegoats

  August 19, 2010 @ 9:16 am | by Jim Carroll

  Are you right there Michael, are you right? Chances are, like all returning holiday-makers, former banker Michael Fingleton had a lot of things on his mind when he landed at Dublin airport yesterday. He was probably trying to remember where he had left his house-keys, hoping there was some grub and a nice bottle of white wine in the fridge and wondering if he could have a lie-in the following morning.

  As he walked off the plane, in his canary-yellow holiday gear and Panama hat, the last thing he expected to see was a RTE camera crew. David Murphy’s report on last night’s news was one of those pieces of footage you know is destined to be played over and over and over again. Murphy pursued the reticent banker up stairs and out doors, with Fingers trying desperately to shake him off without (a) hitting him or (b) telling him to PFO. He muttered a few comments but nothing we didn’t expect to hear. We have seen this kind of footage before as a news crew go in pursuit of the latest public scapegoat or whipping boy like greyhounds after a hare at a coursing meeting.

  Thing is, though, Fingers, his buddy Seanie Fitzpatrick and Paddy Kelly, the Desperate Dan of the developing classes, are just the thin edge of the wedge. In golf clubs and living rooms all over the country, other potential scapegoats probably watched the footage, raised their glasses and said a quiet hurrah. Someone else is getting it in the neck and they’re escaping. You’d hurrah too if it was you.

  It’s easy to blame all our woes and ills on a dastardly trio like Fingers, Fitzie and Kelly. They’re the ones we saw flaunting things when times were good and even when times were bad (see Kelly knocking back at the champers in Glenties a few weeks ago). They were always going to be first up on the gullotine when the good times came to an end. Things like Fingleton’s pension and Kelly’s BMW have become Irish versions of Nazi gold, things we believe they plundered from us and we want back.

  But, let’s be honest here, there’s a hell of a lot more characters who need to be brought to account as well as those three stooges. I’m not saying that the three lads are innocent victims – far from it – but they’re not the only ones. The more we concentrate on a couple of eejits who lived life high on the hog and allowed the publicity and accolades go to their heads, the more we’re avoiding the bigger issues. Look at who has replaced the likes of Fingleton and Fitzpatrick in the banks and look at their track records. We seem to be replacing like with would-like-to-be-like. There’s no sign of the radical overhaul of the banking sector which you’d think events of the last two years would call for. Instead, our Fianna Fail and Green Party government keep pumping cash into a dead bank and are happy for the public and media to take out their ire on Seanie and Fingers. It seems to be the Irish way: when things go bad, identify a scapegoat and let rip.

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• The changing face of Main Street Ireland

  July 19, 2010 @ 4:11 pm | by Jim Carroll

  Last week’s news that Dublin’s Road Records would be closing for good caused a predictable wave of sadness and regret. Another record store bites the dust. Another essential component of the Dublin music community disappears. Another small independently-owned and operated store goes out of business.

  That last point is one which doesn’t just apply to record stores. As Niamh noted, “it really feels like a part of Dublin has died along with the closure of Road”. The same feeling applies to streets up and down the land. Small shop owners are putting up the shutters and throwing away the keys. Social and economic changes mean they just can’t compete with the bigger stores. The streetscape is changing and we don’t seem to be able to do anything about it.

  And it’s not just happening in cities. Driving around the west and northwest at the weekend, I lost count of the number of villages where the only shop now is the local petrol station. Main streets which once had a few thriving wee shops are now empty, with all commercial business kept to the outskirts of the town. It’s probably not as pronounced in the cities because the trade continues despite the change of owner – foreign brands or chains simply move into spaces which were once occupied by indie businesses – but the overall trend remains the same as the small, local store gives way to the bigger operator where economies of scale and profit margins are all that matters. Staying in business is hard work – see Alexia’s post about her mother’s bookshop, for instance – but some continue to persevere in the face of diversity because of customer loyalty.

  “Customer loyalty”, though, is easier said than done. When a shop like Road closes, we wring our hands and bemoan the loss. Of course, we’ll say, there are reasons why we didn’t shop there any longer ourselves, but we’re still sad to see ‘em go. We wanted them to remain because they provided an intangiable feel-good factor. But the feel-good factor about having an independent bookstore or cafe or grocery on your Main Street will never be enough to keep those businesses open. If we’re really serious about local, independent shops, the ones which are different from the pack, we need to spend money in them. And at a time when value-for-money is the new national mantra, that may not be as easy to do as we might hope.

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• Where’s your head shop at? Probably closed for now

  May 11, 2010 @ 2:28 pm | by Jim Carroll

  There are times when the Irish government moves fast. While our elected reps may take their time when it comes to dealing with, oh let’s see, criminal bankers, delinquent developers, drug dealing on Dublin’s Talbot Street and large potholes, it’s a different matter when it comes to synthetic cannabinoids, benzylpiperazine and piperazine derivatives, mephedrone, methylone methedrone, butylone, flephedrone, and MDPV GBL and 1,4 BD.

  Thanks to a government order, the sale, importation, exportation, production, supply and possession of these substances is now an offence under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1977. It would be interesting to know what legislation has been put on hold so this order can be rushed through.

  This probably means an end (for now) to one of the weirdest chapters in recent Irish life as head shops slowly became part and parcel of the urban landscape. Usually located between your local Spar and chipper, the head shops became ubiquitous around the country because of the huge demand for products which said one thing on the label and did something else completely when ingested. There was obviously serious money to be made from this sort of thing – 24 hour shops are not open for any other reason – so the supply was upped to meet the demand.

  Leaving aside the fact that the righteous fuming over these products is never applied in the same way to the products sold in the local pub which are just as lethal and dangerous when misused and abused (in fact, many pub owners could be heard giving out yards about how these shops were taking away custom), head shops were another classic Irish solution to another Irish problem. They allowed Irish people to get out of their heads while believing that they weren’t dealing with nasty drug dealers.

  To many, it was just a laugh and giggle. Sure, it’s just bath salts or fish food, they’d say, chomping down on God knows what. It was a different matter for the poor sods who went along with the giggle and ended their night carted away in an ambulance. That was not the trip they had in mind when they handed over a few tenners for a powder they didn’t have a breeze about in the first place. No amount of legislation is going to make people cop on about that sort of thing.

  No doubt another set of dodgy legal highs will replace that list above. No doubt, another piece of legislation will be rushed through to deal with the new menace by concerned politicians, only too happy to spend time on a populist issue like this rather than tackling the real issues of the day. And, no doubt, we’ll have another day out fuming about head shops in the future. You can bring the plant food….

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• Going forward, moving backwards

  April 6, 2010 @ 2:55 pm | by Jim Carroll

  Perhaps the most striking element of the entire Sean Quinn fandango over the last week was his admission that he lost €3 billion gambling on Anglo Irish Bank shares. The media thought I’d lost one or one-and-a-half billion, Quinn said in his interview with Sean Whelan on RTE News (an interview which was far more noteworthy than Charlie Bird knocking up to a house in Cape Cod and getting nowhere), but I actually lost three billion.

  There you go, he seemed to smirk at us, those media boyos got it wrong. I don’t know about you, but if I lost a three billion punt on a rogue bank, I’d be staying schtum about it. It’s a far cry from those folksy Tuesday night poker games.

  In yesterday’s paper, John McManus nailed what I’m sure many people are thinking. With a track record like this, who the hell would let Quinn in charge of a sale-of-work in the local church hall, let alone a large company?

  Sure, Quinn has transformed the border area and has given employment to many thousands of people, but is this really enough to excuse his headstrong, silly run on Seanie’s blackjack tables? You could argue that it was his own money and he could, if he wished, spend it anyhow and anywhere he wanted to. Problem is, though, we now know, far too late, how Quinn and Anglo Irish Bank operated and what it means for the citizens of this country. Even the whole issue of tax on Contracts for Difference, the mechanism which Quinn used to build his stake in Anglo-Irish, shows the remove between Us and Them.

  Of course, Quinn was not alone. During the good times – remember the good times? – a micro-class of Gordan Gekkos sprung up in this country. Greed was not just good, they implied, greed was your national duty. There’s no need to go the detail the long, never-ending litany of madness which ensued here during those years, except to note that we’ll be paying for this binge-gambling for many, many years to come.

  But as the payback begins and we face into what seems like years of hard labour, you can be sure that Quinn and his peers will be around to pick up the pieces and the cheap deals which will inevitably fall out of the NAMA shakedown. For all the outstanding loans and debts, you can bet that these lads will be the ones chomping at the bit to get a share of the action when the time comes. And for all those oustanding debts and loans, debts and loans which are so large that the mind boggles trying to get all those figures to make sense, they will still have cash or access to cash to leverage those deals. I’m sure if any OTR reader fell behind with a loan, the banks would be around first thing tomorrow to get their pound of flesh, yet there appears to be very little effort made to do likewise with our Gordon Gekkos. And don’t start with the line that “sure, they don’t have it”. Please. Tell me that when all attempts at forensic accounting have come up with nothing.

  Yet, there is no doubt that we do have to move on from all of the above. I’m someone who doesn’t really think there’s much to be gained endlessly reviewing the past and raking over old ground. However, it’s abundantly clear that there’s such an amount of anger out there about how this country was mismanaged since the mid-1990s that moving on is not as simple as it sounds. Mananging the two – the public desire for retribution and the need to kickstart the economy again – is going to take some doing. And “retribution” means a lot more than just calling in little Seanie to have his collar felt in Bray garda station.

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• Why the political dramas of the last fortnight don’t really matter a damn

  February 24, 2010 @ 11:11 am | by Jim Carroll

  My name is Jim and I’m a political junkie. This is not new news to OTR readers, of course, who’ve seen this blog follow the twists and turns of a remarkable 16 days in Irish politics. Those of us who treat political jigs and reels as a form of blood sport haven’t had so much fun in years. Your man from RTE throwing his toys out of the pram, Deirdre de Burca’s icy daggers, Willie O’Dea’s wibbly-wobbly fall from grace and, now, the Minister for Parsnips and Turnips Trevor Sargent standing down in bizarre circumstances: it has been one hell of a month for the Irish political system.

  Let’s be clear about one thing, though. As we watch personalities, characters and chancers on Kildare Street huff and puff on and off the plinth, the big issues remain unresolved, untouched and unmentioned. These haven’t gone away just because polticians are preening and falling on their swords and carrots. The lack of jobs, the numbers on the dole queues, the state of the banks, the inertia in the economy and the general national mood of helplessness are still present and correct.

  No-one in power is doing anything constructive or innovative about these issues. Oh sure, they’ll issue a few press releases about “hundreds of green jobs” and get caught up in ridiculous chararades with airline bosses, but this is just shadowboxing and window dressing. Those allegedly in charge of this little country has no solutions for the problems we face and show little sign of changing that state of affairs. We know this and, worse, they know it too. A stalemate has developed and neither side has a rashers about the next move to make.

  Instead, we, the people who elected the current shower on both sides of the divide on Kildare Street, whinge. We moan and grumble and give out. We turn to those temples of gloom, Liveline on the radio and The Frontline on the telly, to bellyache. In other countries, they take their protests to the streets; here, we talk to Joe. If it’s not the old wans giving out to Joe Duffy, it’s various reps from the so-called lost generation grumbling about their sense of entitlement to Pat Kenny.

  Leaving aside how quickly Kenny and his team have allowed The Frontline to become Liveline-TV, it was illustrative to see Monday’s night “youth” show (good to see The Frontline are getting their ideas from the Gay Byrne era of The Late, Late Show, eh?) descend into a predictable national moan. We have covered the complaints of the lost generation before and I really don’t want to go back over old ground. Thousands are sailing again, but the whinge generation that are leaving this time are doing so with an awful lot of negative baggage. Word up: you’re entitled to absolutely nothing just because you have a degree under your oxter. It’s those who’re choosing to stay behind to try to sort out the mess that really should be getting the attention.

  One issue which has come up again and again and again as the Celtic Tiger and the good times have exited stage left is a disengagement between the political system and the people. We think we know what the system should be doing, but it doesn’t appear to be doing that. You could hear tones of this in GLXTD’s parting shots and it’s present whenever two or more gather to moan. The “all those bleedin’ politicians are the same” line sums this one up as we contemplate a political system still dominated by the Civil War politics which was bequeathed to us by our grandparents and great-grandparents. There have been many attempts to change this picture via new political parties and movements – including, I understand, one in the last six months which never left the planning stages despite the best intentions of all concerned – but nothing has happened. We continue to re-elect different sides of the same coin.

  The problem is that you need to be in the system in order to change it. Those on the outside clamouring for change and calling for a second republic and advocating new ways of doing things unfortunately don’t have the power to do anything. Those on the inside, those who have played the system and won, have no desire or need to change the status quo. Even though the numbers might say something else, we’re stuck with the system we have and, like an omnibus episode of Eastenders, we’re going to continue to encounter the same characters, the same drama queens and the same plotlines for some time to come. Meanwhile, the bigger issues continue to fester….

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• John Lydon was wrong: anger is not an energy

  November 10, 2009 @ 3:39 pm | by Jim Carroll

  Over the last few months, the Irish nation has morphed into Howard Beale. We are, as Beale roared, as mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more. With every passing week, every passing live current affairs show, every passing protest march, the anger mounts.

  This anger is applied indiscriminately left, right and centre. We’re angry with politicians, highly paid TV presenters, unions, highly paid union leaders, rich folk, folk who used to be rich, poor folks, builders, developers, emigrants, immigrants, public sector workers, private sector workers, bankers, footballers, football pundits, the FAI, Morrissey, neighbours, relatives and friends. Oh, and journalists too. It’s an equal opportunities kind of anger.

  But the problem with anger is that it doesn’t get you anywhere. You vent, rant and fume but, when you’re finished venting, ranting and fuming, you’re still in the same pickle that you were in when you began. It may be entertaining to watch someone go off on one (as last night’s episode showed), but it does absolutely no good whatsoever.

  Some would argue that this anger is part of a cycle of coming to terms with the demise of the boom. We’re already had the denial and we should be preparing ourselves for bouts of bargaining, depression and, finally, acceptance. It’s going to be a long wait.

  Anger won’t get rid of this catastrophe of a Fianna Fail/Green Party government or bring your job back or eliminate this recession or reduce the pay of your favourite broadcaster. Anger won’t bring more people out on the streets to join unions marching up and down our grey boulevards. Indeed, it’s obvious that protest fatigue is beginning to set in as people realise that marching is not actually getting anything sorted. And then they’ll get angry about that.

  You wonder if those we’ve elected to govern this little nation and those who try to run government departments have any idea how to deal with this. Are they simply waiting for the anger to die down and move on? Do they envisage this anger actually turning into the kind of mass action we’ve never had in this country (drunken Celtic fans going a bit loopy on a Saturday morning does not count)? Do they believe that the Irish people are happy to fume and roar and shout, but will never go beyond that? Eventually, they think, life will go on. Budget cuts will be made, certain taxes will be increased, public services will be sliced, but life will go on. The anger will pass.

  Or, as usually happens, the public rage will find a new target. There will be another set of reactions as opposed to actions. Cue more calls to Liveline, more outbursts from the audience at a TV show, more ROFLOL online reactions to all of the above. No-one ever learns. Unlike Beale, we keep on taking it.

  Maybe it’s time for this to become the new national anthem

  

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• The latest lost generation

  November 3, 2009 @ 3:30 pm | by Jim Carroll

  Many of you will have already read Shane Fitzgerald’s opinion piece about increasing numbers of Irish folks, like himself, who are leaving Ireland for better prospects abroad. To be honest, you probably didn’t need his article to know that emigration is back with a vengeance.

  Fitzgerald said he felt “cheated” after spending three years studying for an economics and sociology degree and not finding a job at the end of his studies. “I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I was on a promise with the Government”, he wrote, “but I was led to believe I would be getting more action than this once I graduated. I realised I wasn’t going to get a decent job anytime soon and it became clear that the only boom taking place was in my overdraft account.”

  A lot of people agreed with his point of view and the article received a good slew of comments – yesterday’s paper had a selection of them. Most readers echoed Fitzgerald’s point of view and said they too were forced to move away or were planning a move abroad. Nearly to a man and woman, everything was blamed on the current Fianna Fail/Green Party government (one poster went to far as to blame it on “the Government, banks, business, police, law, and even the Catholic Church” to make sure all corners were covered).

  There will always be people willing to compile a blame report of this sort because emigration remains a hugely emotive subject in the Irish psyche. There can’t be a household in the land which hasn’t had some family members going abroad to find work or, in recent years, advance their career.

  Even after the huge emigration surge of 1980s (which reminded older folks of the one in the 1950s), there were still thousands of Irish people taking the boat or plane out of here for a myriad of reasons. Many of the people I know who’ve left in the last 12 months did so because they wanted to work in areas or at a level in their industry which was just not possible in Ireland. They wanted to avail of opportunities to live and work elsewhere and have a range of experiences which they just couldn’t get in Ireland. Staying here, regardless of the economic situation, was not going to keep their brains and enthusiasm levels engaged. They were always going to go. They wanted to go. I know myself that I headed to London in the 1990s because I wanted the kind of music and media industry experience I just couldn’t get here at that time.

  However, Fitzgerald is really writing for and about the new wave of emigrants who are leaving here because they just can’t find any work. They’re different to those who were happy to go of their own volition. These involuntary emigrants wanted to stay in Ireland, work in Ireland and live in Ireland, but found that they couldn’t do any of the above due to the current economic shit-storm. Sure, there’s economic doom and gloom elsewhere, but it doesn’t seem as bad, prolonged or unyielding as the Irish mess so they’ll take their chances elsewhere.

  For more on why this is happening, see a report in today’s paper from a meeting of the Dublin Economic Workshop. David Blanchflower, a professor of economics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, focused on how “those who have really been hurt in this recession have turned out to be the young”. With youth unemployment currently standing at 27.6 per cent in Ireland, it’s no wonder so many are heading away.

  If you needed even more reasons for the exodus, Elaine Byrne paints a fairly depressing picture of the auld sod in her column today: “this is an Ireland that gathers in her thousands to the shrine church in Knock on the say-so of a clairvoyant, in the desperate hope of a miracle, of anything. An Ireland that worships tree-stumps in Rathkeale. An Ireland that has had a 43 per cent increase in the numbers taking their own lives during the first three months of this year. An Ireland that is preparing to strike and polarise itself even further. An Ireland that seeks to abolish democratic institutions.”

  But, as Byrne notes, “negativity will not save us”. Repeating over and over again that things are bad is not going to solve anything. Yes, emigration has many ramifications for both the individual and the society which remains behind, but there are also positives as well as the over-riding negatives.

  As happened in the 1950s and 1980s, there will be just as many bright sparks who will stay here, stick it out and put their own projects into play despite “the Government, banks, business, police, law, and even the Catholic Church”. They will persevere with their plans because they have the ideas, the determination and the ambition to do so. Over the last few months, I’ve met a huge range of people who’re very happy to stay here and make the most of every opportunity this recession brings. And, as before, some of those who left will come back with new ideas, fresh thinking and a desire to contribute.

  It’s really up to the latest lost generation to decide if they want in or if they want out. Either way, dropping that sense of entitlement would be a good start.

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• Etc

  March 21, 2008 @ 4:10 am | by Jim Carroll

  The UK Office of National Statistics has dumped the CD single from its list of goods and service used to measure inflation. Other items chopped include ready-made meals, camera film and microwaves.

  Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee and Berlin-based music-maker Henrik Schwarz will host a Red Bull Music Academy workshop at Dublin’s Spy on April 12 for aspiring Irish producers. Email for more info.

  RTE’s various digital radio stations are now broadcasting in the Cork and Limerick areas. Lets hope there’s even more content on the way, particularly from the excellent 2XM indie station.

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