No, not violence, though we occasionally see that rearing its ugly head - remember the misbeggoten Free Ulster riot some years ago. (more…)

Broken man: LBJ listens to Richard Nixon inaugural speech, January 1969

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 Tá Máire réidh! (more…)

I  watched Morning Ireland for the first time ever this morning, on its webcast (to find it check it out here). It was great to see David Hanly and great to hear that voice like a door on a rusted hinge. RTE peoople describe the above pic of Hanly and a gloriously moustachioed David Davin-Power as the ‘Starsky and Hutch’ pic.

I toiled in the Morning Ireland vineyard for over two years between the Spring of 1996 and May of 2008 when I moved back to the rediscover the glory of the printed word, with The Sunday Tribune.

It was a great place to gain experience of broadcast news and current affairs (my contacts book was bulging afterwards)  though I never really felt as comfortable on air as I did in print.

Still they were great years. My own two highlights were a series that Niall Martin and I did on life inside the walls of Mountjoy Prison in 1996,  and a series I did from Sarejevo and Bosnia for Christmas 1997.

 Workwise, it was a hard hard station. As a reporter, you worked the four o’clock shift which meant you were working until midnight, but often well after that. The other shift started at 6am. It was unrelenting. The pressure of turning around the programme each night  was constant. We had a team of four or five working to fill an hour and a half (as it was then).

My very first day on the job was traumatic to put it mildly. I was handed a Sony professional recorder and a microphone and sent out to Castleknock to interview the then Taoiseach John Bruton. He was canvassing with then Fine Gael candidate Tom Morrissey for the Dublin West by-election. My orders were to ask him nothing about the by-election but to quiz him on the Northern peace process which was going through a particularly sensitive phase at the time.

I located Bruton in a suburban housing estate. Initially, he was glad to do the interview and was all cheer and bonhomie. But when he realised that I was going to ask nothing about Morrissey or about Dublin West, his countenance darkened and he whispered through gritted teetch (and I took it he was no longer in a mood of bonhomie)  that he didn’t want to answer questions about the North and why didn’t I ask about Tom Morrissey?

I was nervous to begin with. I had never used a professional tape recorder before and didn’t have a clue about adjusting the levels. And because I had come from slovenly newspapers I didn’t have the crispness of question delivery that broadcasters all acquire. And Bruton’s countenance was that of a man who has just realised his pocket has been picked. I stammer and stuttered out the questions, none of which made much sense.

It was terrible. The questons were terrible. The levels were wrong. Bruton was so annoyed that he spoke in a barely audible voice. You could hardly make out what he said. I winced listening back to my own shambolic questions.

Fine Gael contacted the Morning Ireland editor as I drove back to complain about him being ambused in that fashion by a nincompoop who asked nonsensical question. The editor on duty that night decided to drop the item, a decision he would have made anyway upon listening to the unbroadcastable quality of the tape.

The following morning, another programme editor Donal Byrne asked me how I had got on. I told him my sorry tale and how intimidated I had been by both the technology and the glowering presence of Bruton.

“It was like being thrown in the deep end,” I said.

Byrne replied quick as a shot. “You learn very quickly in this game that there is no such thing as a shallow end.”

I have never forgotten those words.

Happy Birthday, Morning Ireland.

“Obama One Year  Later,” it reads. “The Audacity of Winning vs. The Timidity of Governing”.

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I remember distinctly the moment when the potential of the internet for journalists became clear. I was standing in the newsroom in RTE circa 1996 as a colleague scoped a newly-acquired internet-enabled computer.

He checked out the search engine du jour of the time (altavista) and turned round to me with an excited look on his face.

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Chewing garlic ensures they stand well back! (Photograph by Bryan O’Brien) (more…)

But the theory surrounding her candidacy is fascinating. It goes like this:

If she is offered the job, Cowen rids himself of a recurring headache in Cabinet - her poor and unauthotitative performance as Tánaiste.

Her move to Brussels would also tick the gender balance box.

Thirdly. Agriculture will be one of the key portfolios on offer. Who better than the politician who cann deem herself a success in that job.

But what about the by-election? Didn’t Seamus Kirk’s elevation to Ceann Comhairle put paid to any TD getting the job?

Well. Yes, but…. Couglan is from Donegal and her constituency Donegal South West is unusual in this respect. There is already a vacancy in the three-seater following Pat the Cope Gallagher’s ection as an MEP.

If Couglan was appointhed, we would have a brand new animal in electoral history, a by-election for two seats in one constituency.

There would be only one election. Under our STV PR system, byelections for one seat are held exactly like multiple seat elections. That would mean one election for two seats. That would mean the FF candidate would require to win 33 per cent of the votes plus one vote rather than 50 per cent plus one in a one seat election.

Doable, say some. If Pearse Doherty romps home FF will benefit from his surplus more than Fine Gael.

It’s not going to happen, in my view. Coughlan will stay put. Cowen knows that even in Donegal 33 per cent may be too much to ask given the Government’s unpopularity.

Pat Cox is my guess on the basis that he has been instru
ental in steering Lisbon through. Maire Geoghegan Quinn has been too long away from the public gaze.

Crematorium at Belsen

A friend send me on this Irish version of Shakespeare’s the Seven Ages of Man.

The Mattie McGrath inspired Fianna Fail version could conceivably cut it back to three. You take a drink and when you sit behind the wheel you are relaxed - so relaxed in fact that you close your eyes and… Well, think of the savings to the Exchequer!

ADDENDUM 4.30PM

The Fianna Fail backbench revolt is ludicrous, and sends out all kinds of signals about skewed and warped priorities.

Most deaths on the road are associated with speed, a fair proportion of it arising from young men driving at breakneck speed on country roads at weekends. The RSA, the Garda Síochána and the Departmetn of Transport need to be far more visiblein cracking down on this.

An elderly farmer driving home at 30mph after two pints does not pose, on the face of it, the same threat. But we need to be shown hard and fast statistics to back up this assertion, which is being made by Fianna Fail TDs.

And if there are hard facts, then perhaps some discretion can be shown during an interregnum period.

For drink driving culture is a generational thing. For anybody under 50, there should be no tolerance as they have spent all of their driving lives in a society where they know there has been a declining tolerance towards drink-driving.

It all has to be based on evidence.

And the evidence is that in the 1970s, over 700 people were being illed on Irish roads each year. Sure, the roads were much poorer, the safety design of cars was laughable, and speed was a more immediate threat, given the lack of wide roads with long straight stretches.

But drink was also a major factor. And contributed to deaths. And still contributes to death.

Fianna Fail TDS, to my mind, have chosen the wrong mutiny on the wrong grievance at the wrong time.