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It’s a little secret, just the Robinsons’ affair . . .
10 January 2010 Edited by Pat Leahy
First, there will be no jokes about Iris Robinson.
That’s not the sort of newspaper we are here, thank you very much.
* Now to the Big Freeze, and we turn for advice on negotiating the conditions, not to John Gormley, nor to Gerard Fleming, n or to Grizzly Adams, but to the great writer, pugilist, and would-be politician, Norman Mailer.
Mailer ran for Mayor of New York City in 1969, alas without success. During the campaign, he was addressing a meeting in the Borough of Queens, at which - his running mate and ally, celebrated journalist about-town Jimmy Breslin later recalled - he was speaking about ‘‘very lofty things, including the need for white pupils to be in school with black pupils and vice versa, in order for both their minds to benefit’’.
Someone stood up in the audience and said: ‘‘Mr Mailah, last year, in Queens, we had a lot of snow and it didn’t get removed by the sanitation. What would you do if there was a big snow storm in Queens this year?"
Mailer looked at him, and replied: ‘‘Sir, I ’d piss on it."
Now, if we all worked together. . .
* Climate change is almost certainly man-made, and may turn out to be very bad indeed.
So bad are some respectable projections, in fact, that it would be imprudent for the world not to take steps to reduce carbon emissions.
It is not, however, responsible for all the ills of the world - as many people in RTE appear to think. It is not even responsible for all the ills of the weather, nor for gentlemen slipping on their arses in the street. The cause of that would be gentlemen not being careful enough when they are out perambulating in the snow. But we digress.
One RTE report last week declared climate change to be the chief cause of the pre Christmas floods. No evidence for this at all, actually. Last year, a news report refereed to the 2004 Asian tsunami as a consequence of climate change (rather than, um, an underwater earthquake).What next?
Climate change causes Iris Robinson to get frisky?
Oops, sorry.
* Trade unions have been promising immediate and terrible war on the public - er, the government - ever since the pay cuts were announced pre Christmas. Now it seems they are trying to stiffen the military discipline in the ranks before any confrontation.
The magazine of the Civil and Public Services Union carries reports of several members who were expelled from union membership for life because they passed the picket last February, during the one day strike called to protest at the pension levy. Another member was suspended from membership for two years because she did not attend for picket duty. The union also recommends to its members that it should note the names of non-members who pass the picket.
Hmmm. Sounds a little lenient to us. Whatever happened to the firing squad at dawn?
The union - which represents mostly lower-paid civil servants - continues energetically to make the case that its members are being hit hardest by the pay cuts and the pension levy. Speaking to the magazine, o ne young member details how the pay cuts have affected his life: ‘‘I’m finding I have to be more vigilant with my money. Not as many boozy nights as before."
Well, we must all make sacrifices.
* Congratulations to the great nation of Kazakhstan, which has assumed the chairmanship of the Organisation for Security and Co-Operation in Europe (OSCE). The OSCE, among other things, promotes human rights and monitors their protection throughout the region. It also pledges to promote the principles of democracy by building, strengthening and protecting democratic institutions, and much other guff in that sphere.
No better man for the protection of democracy than Kazakh president Nursultan Nazarbayev. He is a great supporter of democracy himself, having won over 90 per cent of the vote in the last presidential election. Coincidentally, election observers from, er, the OSCE declared that the elections were seriously flawed. In view of this great success, the parliament later approved a constitutional amendment which declared President Nazarbayev immune from the existing legal bar on a president serving any more than two terms.
There have been prosecutions for ‘‘defaming the president ‘‘, and opposition newspapers and websites have been closed down. Needless to say, his family have extensive business interests in the resource rich country, and the country is regarded by watchdog groups as thoroughly corrupt.
Ireland is a member of the OSCE, and sometimes TDs and senators must undergo the gruelling duty of attendance at international conferences to fulfil our obligations.
Obviously, such delegations must consist of the most able and high-powered members of the Oireachtas. Certainly, if the Kazakhs are not up to the job, then our lads will be among the first to say so.
And who better for this task than the leader of the Oireachtas delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, Senator Ivor Callely?
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