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Separated at birth
Dan O’Brien looks a lot like Stephen Donnelly.
He’s a little like Brains from Thunderbirds, but
he looks like Stephen Donnelly. Anyway he’s off
to the Indo group and the Institute of European
Affairs, leaving the sinking Irish Times. He’s not
unlike many in Irish politics/journalism: right-
wing behind a veneer of ideological flexibility.
You’d think his period working for the Economist
would have left him unabashedly rightwing but
No. So in his big two-part televised equality-off
with Vincent Browne some months ago he pro-
fessed to believe in equality when everything he
writes suggests he believes in equality of oppor-
tunity/ freedom and the markets, to the detriment
of equality of outcome, substantive equality. He
also, in pointing out that Michael D Higgins is
outstepping the mark, mentioned he’d voted for
him, albeit as the best of a bad lot. The President
was furious, on both counts. Anyway it will be
difficult to tell the real Thunderbird at the Sindo
Christmas party so, girls, you’ve been warned.
Doom
The doyen of financial agencies, the central banks’
central bank, Dan and Stephen’s sort of clever-
er-than-your-average-central-banker guys, is
the Switzerland-sited Bank of International
Settlements or (BIS). It has been scathing about
US economic policy for more than a decade. For
example, BIS has long criticised the Fed and other
central banks for inflating bubbles. It says a hunt
for yield is luring investors en masse into high-
risk instruments, “a phenomenon reminiscent
of exuberance prior to the global financial crisis”.
This is happening just as the US Federal Reserve
prepares to reduce its stimulus and starts to
drain dollar liquidity from global markets. “This
looks like to me like all over again, but even
worse”, says William White, the BIS’s former chief
economist, famous for flagging the wild behav-
iour in the debt markets before the global storm
hit in – unhelpfully. Meanwhile Dr Pippa
Malmgren, who was an economic adviser to
George W Bush and sounds so nice, considers
Ireland faces years of “no growth” because
the European Central Bank is unable to bolster
inflation to help ease our debt difficulties. She
said Ireland could deal with its debts through
austerity without inflating them away: “But you
have to accept years of no growth. It’s what
European policymakers expect Ireland to do…
Germany doesn’t want inflation. Everybody else
needs it.”
Doomier
Continuing the almost Gurdgievesque downer,
Dermot Smith of the Fiscal Advisory Council
(FAC) says “We have suffered the fastest deterio-
ration over the euro area in terms of net debt over
the last five years. The Irish government’s finan-
cial liabilities have increased by a factor of four”.
Ireland has a new worth of minus € billion,
according to the council, due to gaping deficits
and the costs of bailing out the banks. That’s just
government debt. If you add in private and cor-
porate debt makes it much worse. We outhock
everybody. Nice.
No one should have to feel that
Harry Browne has taken the Irish Times to the
Press Ombudsman for Ed O’Loughlin’s review of
Browne’s book on Bono. Bono meanwhile remains
gratifyingly silent…just on this one issue.
Angry outsider’s insider
Farewell Emily O’Reilly, you were a very good
Ombudsman though you were a bit strange about
the brothel ads in In Dublin and you once weirdly
binned a print run of Magill of which you were
editor because you didn’t like an article that was
written by Michael Smith, Village’s current editor.
Villager understands that people have applied
to replace O’Reilly. For some reason Emily Logan,
the Children’s Ombudsman, is the frontrunner.
Ombud, by the way, comes from the old Norse
word for a Commissioner.
Smug insiders
Before she left for her European elevation, she
spoke at the launch of Cat, or should it be Pat,
‘who got the cream’ Leahy’s latest instalment
of the politicians-are-decent-skins-and-isn’t-
it-all-a bit-of-fun series, this time dealing with
the current government (many think he lost the
run of himself a bit in his purring, if occasion-
ally querulous outing on ‘Fianna Fáil: the Price
of Power – Inside Ireland’s Crisis Coalition’. She
poked mildly subversive fun at the book’s author
and his confidential sources.
O’Reilly noted the book’s account of Joan
Burton’s reaction to Éamon Gilmore’s notorious
election comment that “it’s Frankfurt’s
way or Labour’s way”. While Gilmore’s audience
lapped the comment up “Joan Burton was less
impressed”.
She was standing beside Gilmore on the podium
and, says Cat, immediately thought: “Holy God,
that’s stupid. How the hell did that get into the
script?”, Leahy’s account continues: “She tried
Villager
— October – November 2013
VILLAGER
to look impassive when she heard Gilmore brush
away concerns about the attitude of ECB president
Jean-Claude Trichet, describing him as a mere
‘civil servant’. Jesus Christ! You don’t do insults in
diplomacy! She almost shouted”. How, wondered
our ex-Ombudsman, did Leahy know all this given
that he is not Burton, unless she leaked it. And all
that fine crowd of political insiders, of all parties
and all insider creeds, gaped tipsily in mirthful
epiphany. Given the detailed insights into her
thoughts which this passage reveals, many will
believe that Joan Bruton was the source of this
material.
Still not dunne
Ben Dunne can’t get enough of himself on the
radio, advertising his cut-price gyms. This
illustrates the adage that in Ireland there is no dis-
grace. Dunne’s defence
against Moriarty tribu-
nal findings that he was
corrupt was that he was
psychiatrically damaged.
In , Ben ‘told Joe’ “I
think it’s a bloody dis-
grace that a man like Mr
Moriarty, who knows that
I suffer from my own per-
sonal tortures, would choose to pick on someone
like me”. Fine, but if we can’t rely on what you say,
stay off the air waves.
Not that time anyway
Vincent Browne has always reserved a particu-
lar spleen for men of a certain age, his own. He
once famously contemplated running a magazine
headline “Sir Bastard” about a well-known media
mogul. More specifically, he holds it against Tony
Ryan that, when Vincent was running the Tribune
for Ryan he’d sometimes withhold the cash to
meet payroll. Anyway Browne’s review of the new
biography of Ryan is energisingly uncharitable
of author and subject. Browne notes divertingly
that commissioned biographer, Richard Aldous,
writes of an interview Browne did with an INLA
leader Dominic McGlinchey that it, ended in a
brawl. Browne says “it never happened. There
was no brawl, no row, not even a hint of criticism”.
But it was not the only interview Vincent did…
Now, what can we market next?
Culture Night, Arthur’s day, the Dublin Global
Economic Forum. Too much of a good thing.
Morons wandering drunk and aimless around
Temple Bar. And that is just Culture Night. And
the DGEF. It’s the local taste in overdoing things.
Anyway, surely culture is so broad it makes no
sense to celebrate it with its own (one) night?
Teflon Gaels
So the organisers of Cork’s main contribution to
The Gathering have apologised for saying Michael
Collins was a langer in its ‘Cork Rebel Passport’.
Is there anyone more sacrosanct, less susceptible
to criticism or ribbing? Villager can only think of
TK Whitaker, and Miriam O’Callaghan.
Exquisite compromise
Labour is down to % in the polls. What would
the figure be if it ever did what it said it would do?
In Villager’s experience not only every Labour TD
but every Labour member lives only for the exqui-
site pleasure of the moment when ideology and
principle have to be sacrificed in the interests of
reality and the public interest.
Out of tune
Villager sweats away, almost alone, in a sunless
hovel next to the Ormond Hotel, scene of the
Sirens Chapter in Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’. Now Henry J
Lyons, architects, want to demolish what’s left
for their clients, Tune hotel (“providing a five-
star service at budget prices”) owned by QPR
owner, Indonesian Tony Fernandez. They want
to build a -bedroom, six-storey replacement
with the inevitable quays-deprecating horizontal
penthouse. There’s not much of the original build-
ing left, though there may be some embedded in
the carcass of the facade. Bernard McNamara
started demolishing the building, for which he
paid €. million some years ago but he ran
into trouble with the er neighbours, and left the
shell. His banks got less than €. million for
it from Tunes. The City Council in an extraordi-
narily diligent piece of work, prompted by the
scrupulous Conservation Officer, have come back
with an additional information request, asking
the developer to justify the demolition.
All rhetoric
Ireland is currently bound to the EU target of
reducing carbon emissions by % on
levels by . The Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) has estimated that in the non
Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) sectors, Ireland
will exceed its EU Effort Sharing Directive (ESD)
target by and may have a cumulative excess
emissions of -Mt by . Irish Government
Departments and State bodies are indifferent to
climate impact and mitigation; for example:
l
The Department of Agriculture adopted a
“Food Harvest ” to increase milk yield by
% and beef output value by % without
considering climate emissions or fodder pro-
duction capacity.
l
The National Roads Authority is using the lim-
ited national investment capacity to build more
motorways and currently proposing to add a
lane to the M, to filter more traffic into Dublin
from Co Kildare when there are ample public
transport alternatives on this corridor.
l
An Bord Pleanála has sent out the worst pos-
sible signal in disregarding national “Smarter
Travel” policy in granting recent permission
for major expansion of car based retail outlets
at Liffey Valley and Kildare Village.
l
Policies to encourage the increased use of
biofuel imports are causing environmental
damage in other countries.
l
Ireland imports coal, oil and gas to the value
of approximately € billion annually. There is
no programme in place of the scale required
to insulate homes and reduce energy use to
reduce this dependence.
l
Bord na Móna is seeking to continue using the
most carbon-polluting fuel, namely peat, for
power generation for decades more.
l
The continuing extraction of peat for domestic
fuel and horticulture is unregulated and untaxed,
with continuing loss of a carbon sink.
To miserably paraphrase our dead national
poet: in Ireland, in particular environmentally,
action seems rarely to rhyme with rhetoric.
Sexy politicians
Tories have come top of a political list of love
cheats in a new survey married dating site,
IllicitEncounters.com. The Conservatives recently
hosted their annual conference in promiscuous
Manchester. The survey of IllicitEncounters.com
, members, presumably only ten of whom
responded, found that % of Conservative
supporters would have an Illicit tryst if the oppor-
tunity arose.
Lib Dem supporters came second with %,
and UKIP came in third with %. The most
faithful of spouses were Labour party support-
ers, with just % considering playing away.
The survey also revealed the politicians that
members would most like to have a fling with.
London Mayor Boris Johnson came top of the
polls with the female vote at %, and while Nick
Clegg may be behind in the political polls but he
still proved popular with the ladies getting over
% of the vote, with Cameron and Britain-loving
Miliband flagging on % and %. The last three
are exemplars of the thoroughly-English sex-
less and educated look, described elsewhere ad
“pointlessly handsome”. Meanwhile, Caroline Flint
proved the biggest hit for the male voters gaining
%, and perhaps surprisingly she was closely
followed by Nadine Dorries with % casting
votes for her. Irish Conferences are more about
drink than sex but, if pushed, Villager would defi-
nitely give one to Varadkar.
Ben Dunne
