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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
6 July 2016
Enda story
Villager thought about not filing and just pack-
ing his suitcase for his meagre holiday, in a
hotel with a carvery in a frugal Midlands town.
The reason: an Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll (7
July) showing Fianna Fáil are well amid us again.
Up nine no-longer-disgraced percentage points
to 44%, leaving Fine Gael down two percentage
points on 24%. His only consolation was that
the Dependents were down eight percentage
points to 22% and Enda Kenny’s days each has
a number on it.
Enda the range
After Brexit, Chilcot and all that, Brian Eno, one-
time synthesiser player with Roxy Music and
producer of Bowie and U2, says we’ve got to
stop electing charismatic politicians. It could be
a good start. Mind you, the uncharismatic ones
aren’t great. Better but not great.
Gated community
Leinster House was the RDS from 1815 until
1922. That’s why the proceedings it frames
often feel like an agricultural show. It was
designed for the Dukes of Leinster by Richard
Cassels in 1748, on the unfashionable south
side. This rustic gate was demolished by the
RDS because the arriviste southside couldn’t
take reminding of its recent agricultural past.
Moustache
Well what was all that, last month, with Hitler
moustaches all over the cover of this once
respectable organ (the declining tone is
extended into the back page of the current edi-
tion, if Villager can fawningly say so)? The plea
for ‘humorous’ demonstrations against the
Donald was entirely and ignominiously pre-
emptive since this particular ‘Fascist’ never
deigned to alight in this country to survey his
sportive landholdings. Anyway the net result is
that the magazine has got stuck with 500 China-
manufactured ‘Chaplin’ globs of
adhesively-backed hair. They cost 120 euro - or
the Renminbi equivalent. Though allegedly
unused (we haven’t seen much of the editor this
last month), they don’t smell great. 60 euro the
lot. 50 if you’re left-wing.
A potential friend in
Washington?
Good to see a Sinn Féin speaker at the mous-
tache-free Trump-protest press conference
recently, even if it led to nothing. Though Sinn
Féin denies ever receiving money from, as
opposed presumably to giving money to,
Donald Trump, Gerry Adams has never once crit-
icised Donald Trump though you would think
their political agendas antithetical. Surely
Adams is not hoping the Donald might throw a
few irredentist crumbs Ireland’s way if he gets
his tiny hands on that big tiller?
Bogwash
When it comes to corporate greenwashing,
Bord Na Móna is in a league of its own. Its risible
‘Naturally Driven’ media repackaging is only
rivalled for sheer brass neck by BP’s ‘Beyond
Petroleum’ faux rebrand several years back.
Yet, despite having spent heavily on radio, TV,
outdoor and online advertising telling us about
tits new-found sustainable ethos, when Villager
contacted Ireland’s purest semi-state recently
with the simplest of requests – for either a copy
or a transcript of the radio advert – Bord Na
Móna’s press office developed a sudden case
of shyness.
In the end, its press officer (a Fianna Fáil
member of Dublin City Council) Daithí de Roiste
confirmed the inevitable news that: “it is Com-
pany policy not (sic) release such material”. The
material is of course simply the advert it’s been
blitzing over all media channels for months.
Amend meant no harm,
but harmed nonetheless
There is good reason why Mick Wallace’s bill on
fatal abnormalities fell, and why the Attorney
General had advised it was unconstitutional.
The Eighth Amendment inserted a new sub-sec-
tion after section 3 of Article 40 in Ireland’s
constitution in 1983 (when Karma Chameleon
News Miscellany
Villager
NEWS
Rustic Gate
No reasonable offer refused
Roxy Music
July 2016 7
was top of the charts).
Opponents of abortion, most of whom were
already struggling with Boy George, demanded
the amendment, from a yielding state, partly
because of fears that the Irish Supreme Court
might infer an unenumerated right to abortion
from the constitution. The court had already
ruled, in the 1973 case of McGee v The Attorney
General, that reference in Article 41 to the
"imprescriptible rights, antecedent and supe-
rior to all positive law" of the family conferred
upon spouses a broad right to privacy in marital
affairs.
There was fear across the land that the god-
less Roe v Wade from the same year which
inferred a right to abortion from the right to pri-
vacy, in the US, might spread devil’s wings
across the Atlantic. An assemblage of second-
raters foisted the resulting Article 40.3.3°
through a referendum. It reads to this day:
The State acknowledges the right to life of
the unborn and, with due regard to the equal
right to life of the mother, guarantees in its
laws to respect, and, as far as practicable, by
its laws to defend and vindicate that right.
The problem is that since the unborn is
dependent on the mother it should not have an
equal right to life.
If the very act of creating something gives it
a right to something that could even threaten
your life, who would risk creating it in the first
place?
Moreover, if an unborn with fatal foetal
abnormalities has equal rights to life as its
mother we’re in dangerous territory.
But in 1983 they thought it did, or they
thought they though they did. And if an act was
passed in 2016 that cut across the equal right
to life of the unborn, tragically, medical practi-
tioners would be catastrophically and
iniquitously torn as to what to do.
Jostle for prefect
fagged by racists
Villager’s favourite Brexit fulmination was from
Lucy Prebble, a playwright, in the Guardian:
“I blame you, Cameron, a middle-manager of
a prime minister whose ham-fisted leadership
was based on one implicit stipulation not to
fuck everything up.
I blame you, Farage, for channelling whatever
dyspeptic psychological issue you suffer from
into the macguffin of immi-
gration. Oh, I blame you,
Johnson – whose salivat-
ing opportunism seems
to have surprised even
you – for lending your baf-
fling legitimacy to UKIP’s
carnival. I blame you,
Corbyn, for quietly hiding your
dimness under principle like a cat
burying its own shit.
And I blame you, Leave voters, for “going
with a gut feeling” of empty rhetoric and down-
right lies because of a sad sense of lack of
agency that we’ve all felt. I blame those voters
who see facts as devalued because of how easy
they are to access. I blame you”.
Gibr Altar of Britain’s
xenophobia
John Devitt of Transparency International Ire-
land suggests Cameron could have saved his
skin if he’d given a veto to all the ‘home’ nations
over Brexit?
Villager feels it would have been fair only if
extended to Gibraltar too.
Educatioff
Brexit shows the danger of running an educa-
tion system in England that left generations
without a grounding in history, or economics.
You can’t vote Leave if you have a grasp of
either.
Blair
What Britain needs now is an experienced and
passionate education-focused centrist with
no-Anti-EU hang-ups, cosmopolitan tendencies
and a line in excruciating
sincerity.
Johnsoff
Why didn’t Borwas just say that
Gove was the divisive one and tell
him to shove it? #MiGo must have
had something on the unruly one.
Big Romaner
Villager recently read Boris
Johnson’s erudite book on
Rome. It seems he wishes the
EU commanded the passion
that ancient Rome got from its
colonies. If it did he’d support its
ever closer union. But it can’t and
won’t.
Doris
Incidentally if you cross Trump’s hair, body and
politics with Owen Wilson’s you get Boris
Johnson’s.
Gravity and the Lead balloon
“I want to speak to the
markets” says Andrea
Leadsom former market-
person, with, it has been
claimed, the air of some
-
one who imagines you can
negotiate with gravity.
L ost in Translation
Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which deals with
member state extrication from the EU, mis-
translates the French which says departure
must be in accordance with the country's con-
stitutional 'rules' (regles). The English-language
version says departure ‘may’ (ie presumably
‘must’) be in accordance with the country’s con-
stitutional 'requirements' It's significant
because it is clearly not a 'constitutional
requirement' that the UK exit the EU. The refer-
endum has no constitutional significance as the
eedjits have made parliament sovereign. Vil-
lager’s bet is that there will be an election
before the Article 50 process is complete.
Clearly some of the candidates will stand on a
Remain platform. It is probable, in view of the
tangible devastation Brexit will be seen to be
causing, those candidates will constitute a
majority in a new parliament. And that parlia-
ment will have the sovereign right to call a new
referendum. Which will duly advise Remain,
confirming the parliament’s mandate to abort
the Article 50 process.
Mick Wallace
Lucy Prebble
Gibraltar
Ancient Rome
8 July 2016
NEWS
Makes Ireland look good
In the wake of the Brexit vote, there has also
been a surge in interest from British citizens
considering moving to Ireland or simply apply-
ing for an Irish passport in order to maintain the
perks of EU citizenship.
International relocation experts MoveHub
reported a big trend in site searches about
moving to Ireland right after the Brexit results,
including a 133% increase in requests to move
to Dublin, a 250% increase in requests to move
to Belfast, and a 900% increase in EU visa
requests specifically for Ireland.
Back in March, Inishturk Island off the coast
of Mayo, which has been beleaguered with a
dwindling population, came up with the idea of
promoting their island community as a refuge
for those wary of a Trump victory. It’s been
besieged.
"We've been swamped with hundreds and
hundreds of messages ever since the story was
published in IrishCentral”, said Joe Whelan, a
ferryman.
Moreover Irish estate agents are registering
a deluge of wealthy Americans snapping up
property in Ireland lest they are disappointed
with the 2016 election results.
Hamlet reduced to
croak and ellipsis...
Another pro-EU social democrat, Tony Blair, is
dead politically and ethically after Chilcot. He’s
good to have around though just to raise the
moral sap. Villager has pointed out how he now
looks older than his former Deputy, John
Prescott who is ten years older than him.
Far from ideally, the man - Kadhim Sharif al-
Jabouri - who hacked down the Saddam statue
in Firdos Square, downtown Baghdad, 13 years
ago, regrets it. “Now, when I go by that statue,
I feel pain and shame”, Jabouri told the BBC. ‘I’d
like to put it back up, to rebuild it – but I’m afraid
I’d be killed”. Worse he told Channel 4 news
that, if he met Blair, he’d “tell him he is a crimi-
nal and spit in his face”.
Good body, legs and
butt: not enough
Sky TV’s has for a while been
interviewing a surprising
number of people who think
Tony Blair should face a court
over the War. That may be
because of what Bliar did to poor
Mrs Murdoch that was.
Blur
Bliar’s press conference after Chilcot was his
best performance since his ‘People’s Princess’
spectacular. He’d done a lot of work on his voice
so he sounded old and, especially, sorry. But
he wasn’t. At least not for anything he’d done
as opposed to things that had you know hap-
pened: "For all of this I express more … sorrow…
regret … apology". The croak and the ellipsis
are crucial.
“I won’t say I took the wrong decision”, he
rasped sorrowfully if not sorrily. But, Villager is
sure, you can’t take the right decision on the
wrong information. Or at least the odds are so
stacked against the possibility that no sane
person would believe it had happened.
Shocking and Awful
Why has US had no inquiry into its own much
more expensive blunder in Iraq? A major report
on the costs done by Brown University in 2013
estimated the Costs of War to the US at $2.2
trillion, including substantial costs for veterans
care through 2053. Department of Defense
direct spending was put at $757.8 billion. In
2003 Cheney said it would cost $80bn. Accord-
ing to the UK's Ministry of Defence, the total
cost of UK military operations in Iraq from 2003
to 2009 was $11bn. More than 190,000 people
were killed in the 10 years after the war in Iraq
began.
If only Bertie had had an Iraq to
burn
Villager remembers when Bush and Blair were
just the sort of people whose gait you’d copy so
hard you’d forget you were even doing it, and
soon you’d be following their policies.
As much as Miriam
How much does David Hall
like being on the telly?
Miriamwatch
This is the only column in the
land where you can read criti-
cism of Miriam O’Callaghan. For the
moment the issue is that she should just
stop talking about herself. Her political role
needs her to zip it about her family life, her
social preferences etc. The Sindo leads with the
story “I have no political friends”. Does she
never dine with her brother Jim and his mates,
then? “It’s human nature that you want to sit
down with these people and for them to like
you, but they won’t like you if you ask the tough
questions. And they will never trust me, really…
Most people want to live a kind life. I don’t think
I’ve ever met anyone who sets our deliberately
to be mean to anyone”. She’s never met every-
one who works for Village, then. The schlock
goes on: She “misses [her husband, Steve] ter-
ribly when he’s not around. But I don’t like to
say that too much because I don’t want him to
feel bad”. So why tell one of Ireland’s tackiest
best-selling magazines then?
Jimbo: almost never in the
Sindo
Meanwhile Jim seems to be bringing a forensic
element to his usually legally debaucherous
party. None of your usual messing on stuff like
Cerberus Inquiries and fatal abnormalities.
Gall not done
What the hell is happening in the Department
of the Environment with Gerard Convie’s allega-
tions of planning malpractice in Donegal?
Auto-gestionary Rocard
Michel Rocard, who has died, hated Socialists.
Former French Socialist prime minister (under
President Francois Mitterand: “The deep con-
tempt that I feel for his absence of ethics is
compatible with the complete admiration I have
for his tactical prowess”), he was a social dem-
ocrat, Enarch and son of a nuclear physicist. In
the last months of his life, Rocard was a lucid
critic of what he called “the most archaic social-
ist party in Europe”.
A prominent figure during the 1968 Student
Protests, he supported the auto-gestionary
project. Villager reached for Wikipedia, to no
avail. He was also, beguilingly, the first person
over 80 to reach both of the earth's geographic
poles.
Wendy Deng
and friend
Bush, Blair and Bertie
Kadhim Sharif
July 2016 9
Manuel Valls, the current prime minister,
joined Rocard’s team at the age of 20, and said
he felt “orphaned” by his passing. “I remain a
Rocardian”. President Francois Hollande said
Rocard represented “a Socialism reconciling
utopia and modernity". Jean-Marie Le Pen of the
Salaud Suranné party struck the only discord-
ant note, criticising Rocard’s commitment to
Algerian independence in the 1950s: “Michel
Rocard bragged about having carried suitcases
full of money that helped the FLN buy weapons
to kill French people”. Villager’s on the fence on
that one.
“If the British left the EU, I would say
‘hurrah’”, Rocard said in 2015, accusing the UK
of having “blocked any deepening of integra-
tion”. Needless to say he did not want France to
follow it.
25% old-school tie
New Education Minister Richard Bruton intends
to sustain the 'baptism barrier', which prevents
unbaptised children from attending their local
state school, if it is Catholic.
The new minority government intends to
build another 300 multidenominational schools
over the next 15 years but community national
schools, run by local education boards (for-
merly VECs), are the new preference when
Catholic schools divest patronage. With the
church evidently refusing to countenance any
dilution in its monopoly control of the State's
primary schools, Bruton has capitulated.
Meanwhile, at least until the Church’s insidi-
ous parliamentary operatives get to their godly
work, schools will now be prohibited from allo-
cating more than 25 per cent of places for
children of past pupils under new legislation to
be published shortly. Labour had wanted 10
percent in the previous government but this is
a government that will never do ten of anything
bad when 25 will do.
Web of morons
Village has started to treat its website seriously
so it’s time to attack other organs. Starting with
the Irish Times. No one reads Village’s site but
at least it’s not a refuge for morons,
@irishtimes. What’s the point in getting up in
the morning if your newspaper attracts most
reads for the following stories:
Kinnegad again this year
Michael Taft of Unite the Union reckons real
incomes haven’t recovered from the crash.
Hence Villager’s holiday miseries.
In 2014 – the last year we have CSO data –
incomes were well below their peak: gross
incomes were 11 percent below 2008 levels
while disposable incomes
were 15 percent below.
Based on ESRI projec-
tions, gross incomes will
not recover pre-crash
levels until 2017 while dis-
posable incomes will not
recover until 2018 – a full
decade of incomes reces-
sion, he predicts.
What you wear or what you do?
Eton-educated Jonathan Irwin of the Jack and
Jill Foundation, the only charity Villager can
think of that can do business with Ryanair’s air-
borne Lottery, recently attacked Mick Wallace
TD on Liveline, for looking like a bozo or “derro”.
He should watch his back.
He recently admitted that he used funds –
envelopes and literature with J&J logo - from
Jack and Jill in his recent unsuccessful Seanad
Campaign. The charity, of which he is CEO, is
vulnerable to a complaint to the Charity Regu-
lator that it was “promoting a political party or
candidate”. Indeed it seems to have misled the
public: its website says "In terms of administra-
tion and postage costs regarding the Seanad
campaign, Jonathan Irwin is covering that per-
sonally". Irwin contradicted this when
questioned by the Irish Sun newspaper,
recently.
Faint praise
Obama revels in saying there has 'Never' been
a candidate better qualified to be President
than Hillary. Not that she will be the best
President.
Tears for Tiers
So Simon Harris wants a single-tier health ser-
vice. Last month a majority of the Dáil also
voted for it. Harris thinks we need a cross-party
consensus. Won’t work. Some parties stand for
nothing if they do not stand for feeding vested
interests. The biggest problem with the health
service is vested interests: doctors, consult-
ants, insurance companies, private hospitals
and the pharmaceutical industry.
They don’t want a single-tier system because
they want to charge for their services and they
need a second tier from which to do it. And then
there are local interests. And after that is the
fact that many commentators are drawn from
these ranks.
Jonathan Irwin
News for morons
OR
Incomes not recovering
