IRELAND

CONSTITUTION OF IRELAND - ARTICLE 4

The name of the State is Éire, or, in the English language, Ireland.

And so it was with great pleasure that I learned of the outcome of our persistence in joining the Common Market under our proper name IRELAND. We had been called many things in our day and Ireland was only one of them.

I was very conscious of this little victory, particularly in my dealings with the EEC, and it always gave me a lift to see Ireland, tout court, on our country nameplate at meetings.

I eventually got the opportunity to make my own contribution during the negotiations setting up the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in 1990.

We had been specified among the signatories in the draft agreement as Republic of Ireland. I explained that that was the soccer team and the entry was quickly changed. The hard lifting had already been done by those before me.

However, something came up in conversation recently that pulled me up short. The 1948 Republic of Ireland Act seemed to have a different story:

REPUBLIC OF IRELAND ACT 1948 - ARTICLE 2

It is hereby declared that the description of the State shall be the Republic of Ireland.

So was Republic of Ireland kosher all along and did I not have a leg to stand on, other than precedent and a bit of brass neck.

And what is the difference between Ireland being the name of the State and Republic of Ireland being its legally mandated description. The 1948 act says shall and not may.

This was really very confusing so I threw the problem at some of my learned friends. No, not lawyers, just learned.

Felix Larkin, drawing on his nuanced understanding of our nation's modern history and his intimate involvement with the postal service, came up with an explanation which at least exposed the underlying motivation for the "change".

Can I add another layer of confusion? Commemorative stamps issued in 1949 and 1950 carried the legend "Poblacht na hÉireann" and, with one exception, they also carried the legend "Republic of Ireland". Before 1949 it was "Éire", as it has been since 1952 (no commemorative stamp was issued in 1951). I assume this was simply the First Inter-party Government trying to rub Dev's nose in it - in other words, that they had secured the Republic in the 1948 Act, and he hadn't.

That all made perfect sense, up to a point. They couldn't change the name without a constitutional referendum so they tried a bit of sleight of hand with a piece of legislation.

The idea of description was introduced, so our name was still Ireland but you now had to refer to, or call?, us Republic of Ireland.

As Felix said, we were briefly described on our stamps as Republic of Ireland, but we soon returned to Ireland in English, though the stamps only use the Irish language version Éire.

However, we are apparently still operating under confusing and opposing legal/constitutional instructions. I wonder will we have to wait till 2048 for it to be sorted out.

When I say we I'm using it as a sort of royal plural denoting the nation. I won't be around then but some of yous might.

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Just in case I've inadvertently added to your confusion, you might like to recap with this extract from Wikipedia which I subsequently came across.

On stamps, the name of the state has always been written in Irish and rarely also written in English. The overprints were stamped first Rialtas Sealadach na hÉireann ("Provisional Government of Ireland") and later Saorstát Éireann ("Irish Free State"). Subsequent stamps nearly all used the name Éire ("Ireland"), even though this was not the name of the state until the 1937 Constitution took effect. The exceptions were issued in 1949 and 1950, and used POBLAĊT NA hÉIREANN or Poblacht na h-Éireann ("Republic of Ireland"). This phrase is the official description of the state specified in the Republic of Ireland Act, which came into force in April 1949; the state's name was not changed by the Act. Fianna Fáil defeated the outgoing government in the 1951 election and abandoned the use of the description, reverting to the name on stamps and elsewhere. Originally, Éire was written in Gaelic type; from 1952 to 1979, many stamps had the name of the state in Roman type, usually in all caps, and often written EIRE rather than ÉIRE, omitting the síneadh fada accent over the initial 'E'. In 1981 the Department of Posts and Telegraphs recommended the inclusion of the word "Ireland" along with "Éire" on stamps but the Department of the Taoiseach vetoed the idea on the basis it could cause "constitutional and political repercussions" and that "the change could be unwelcome."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postage_stamps_of_Ireland#Name_of_state

EEC

With all the 1916 commemorations going on this year and all the talk of the path to sovereignty, or whatever you want to call it, I was reminded of a line from the protest song EEC:

Déanfaimís dearmad ar Pearse agus Connolly

The song was written by Aodh Ó Domhnaill and sung by Na hUaisle.

In the course of the referendum campaign on Ireland joining the EEC in 1972 it blared from loudspeakers on top of the vans of those campaigning against our joining the Common Market and it opened many a protest meeting around the country.

It is a good song and has worn well through the years. It has a particular resonance in more recent times as the EU has lost its way and the arrogance of its élites becomes more insufferable by the day.

The song opens by pointing out that we really had no choice in the matter as we always follow the Brits. Ag sodar i ndiaidh na nUasal is a familiar version in Irish of this process. And here we are with the Brits supposed now to be pulling out and what are we going to do?

The chorus mentions Sicco Mansholt, who was the Agriculture Commissioner of the day, running the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) which was the only actual policy the EEC had been able to cobble together in its 14 year existence up to then. Needless to say this policy appeared very attractive to Irish farmers as a way of escaping from England's Cheap Food Policy which had been limiting the expansion of Irish agriculture and denying a fair return to its producers for decades. In fact the then Irish Foreign Minister, Paddy Hillery, was campaigning for a YES vote on the basis of The CAP and the Long Runs the latter being the expected opportunities for Irish manufacturing in niche corners of the enormous EEC market.

The song goes on to take a poke at our TDs (parliamentarians) who are portrayed as already addicted to dinners of frogs and spaghetti, and who now speak Irish with a French accent. The farmers will be leaving the land for jobs in industry when full employment kicks in, by which time the Germans will have bought up all the land. Let's forget about Pearse and Connolly and all this national sovereignty lark and sell our souls for the thirty pieces of silver on offer. Sure aren't we all Europeans now.

Well I'll leave you to figure out for yourself how prophetic or otherwise the song is proving. You can hear the original below.

EEC sung by Na hUaisle

#GE16 POSTER PEOPLE

Click any image for a larger version

This will not be a definitive post until after the election. I have opened it with a few contenders and will add to it as things strike me between now and then. Most of the action is likely to be in Dublin Bay North where I live but I'm not excluding anything that strikes me on my perambulations during the campaign.

So let's go. That must have been some chirpy cherry picker that got Enda so far up the pole (so to speak). No doubt he considers it his rightful place, half way to Heaven and canonisation in his own lifetime. But Mayo pride has come before a fall more than once in living memory, so I hope the faithful are assiduous in their novenas between now and the day of judgement.

Many have commented on the perplexing choice facing the voter this time round. I think there are some 19 candidates in my constituency alone.

What faced me on my way out of Supervalu is symptomatic. I am faced with three candidates. A pretty lady whose face has often got as far as the inside of my letterbox in the past, and two unknowns. Social Democrat sounds about right as a set of beliefs, but I'd better check out who they are. And then there's the man I've never seen before either, but who is tempting me.

It's not the Irish language that's in his favour, but that little word that children used to be taught but that has largely fallen into disuse and I've never seen it on a poster unless it was for a long vanished brand of cigarettes. PLEASE !

It's a hard life being an independent but Finian has actually fallen from his perch on this particular evening, or was he pushed? I checked it out and the poster has come through the tags rather than the tags being cut. But that doesn't prove anything. Perhaps the posters were too lightweight for the recent high winds or perhaps they were too rigid to bend with them, or maybe they were sailing too close to them. In any event I'll be keeping my eyes open.

Averil is now running as an independent following her falling out with Fianna Fáil over their non, or lukewarm, support in the same sex marriage campaign. So she can do what she likes as far as posters are concerned. She has opted for single coloured posters but in different colours. This is the pink version. Yes, I know. They keep telling me. I'm colour-blind.

There is also a blue version and something else I can't remember. And the signed given name (used to be Christian, but St. Averil?) is a bit odd. Harder to remember at a distance I would have thought. But who knows what price an autographed poster might fetch when Averil becomes the first female Taoiseach?

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I was down the village today and there was Stephanie Regan dressed up to the nines and doing a canvass. I had heard her interviewed on the radio the other day when she was talking about adrenalin build up. I learned that when you get a real shock, like being in the Bataclan or the AK47 hotel, the adrenalin rush can take up to a week to dissipate. I've only been up before the PAC or in the Dáil bullpen or at the Seanad side-table, but I know what she means.

Anyway I decided to have a word and I was only half way through my first sentence (of many) when I saw she wasn't paying the least bit of attention. Then I noticed that she appeared to be tied up to a lamp post. Good Lord, I thought, are Sinn Féin in government already.

When I looked down I saw that on this rainy day she was wearing a very open and delicate pair of shoes. That was when I realised it wasn't Stephanie Regan at all, just somebody pretending to be her. So I moved on.

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It's interesting to see to what extent the Irish language comes into the campaign. The above is the Fianna Fáil contribution and it is the only poster with Irish that I've seen so far from any of the parties (I have referred to Independent Ó Conaráin above).

It is interesting on a number of counts. Fianna Fáil has long marketed itself as “the republican party” a slogan whose resonance goes back to independence and the civil war. These days, of course, it is simply a way of trying to undermine Sinn Féin but the party has to be careful not to overstep the mark and remind people of its own “slightly constitutional” origins. Nevertheless it has to make a token obeissance to its former pursuit of the twin national aims “Éire saor, Éire gaelach” but with a ballot paper firmly in both hands.

So what have they come up with this time. Éire do chách. I think myself it is a good slogan because it illustrates the degree to which Irish has now become simply a token rather than a national aim. This sterile phrase has none of the resonances of “cherishing all of the children of the nation equally”. In fact, it could be interpreted as open season for speculators and financial predators, drug and robber barons, and the like. It is indiscriminate, but that doesn't matter. It is not meant to mean anything. It is a flag run up a pole and nothing more, and even then not a flag that merits taking down at sunset.

The word “cách” in Irish means everyone, but you have to be careful not to omit the fada (accent) or the buailte (used to be a dot but now a “h” in the cló Romhánach (modern typescript). Otherwise you just end up with a piece of shit.

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I see Jimmy Guerin is running again. Regular readers will remember my run in with Jimmy during the 2011 campaign, and from which he emerged a gentleman. Unlike the other independent who capitalised on Jimmy's misfortune and then just dug in.

But that's not why I have his poster up here. I noticed this morning that Jimmy also has the word PLEASE on his poster and thought he deserved a word of praise.

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Averil tops the poll. And look who's at the bottom. Ouch !.

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Some people will do anything to get elected. Terence Flanagan, formerly with Fine Gael and now with Renua, is standing on his head.

At least it is a lot quieter than his gimmick in 2007 and a lot less objectionable than having his sneering father at my front door.

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On election day, posters are not supposed to be within fifty metres of the polling station. The above were taken that evening. Fifty metres my arse.

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Terence Flanagan slid down to the bottom of the pole in more ways than one. Serves him right. Hope his father comes knocking on my door again soon.

Clearly not everyone in Raheny is a fan of Aodhán. As it happened he lost his seat in the final sort out on the fourteenth count.

And finally, the cúpla focal from the Blueshirts. I noticed the odd (very odd) Fine Gael poster with this slogan. Sometimes it was on top of a picture of Enda and sometimes, as above, on its own. A tricky choice of terms which can also mean turgidity - overinflating the fiscal space?

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Don't forget that all candidates who get over a quarter of a quota will get a refund of €8,700 election expenses (vouched?). So you can help democracy along the way by voting for an independent, and then transferring to a party candidate if you wish.

However, this sort of strategic voting can be dangerous. I did it in voting for Sean Dublin Bay Loftus in the 1981 general election, both to give him a boost and to criticise the major parties. It was not my intention to put him in. But sufficient people did the same and he kept surviving the counts and finally got in.

He then brought down the Government.

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You'll find a similar (but definitive) page on my website relating to the 2011 general election .

Biometric

So the Irish passport is going biometric, whatever that means. When I first heard it I had visions of my upcoming passport renewal involving a personal visit to some wired up room in the Passport Office, where I would be given a lie detector test and the retina of my eyes would be scanned into heavily enrcrypted digital coding.

When the time came, however, it appeared to be just more of the same. Fill in the form, get 4 photos and have two of them endorsed at the local Garda station, make sure to send in the current expiring passport, and of course pay up. Nothing new here, or so it appeared.

Then came the phone call from the Passport Office. "Oh, am I in trouble?" says I, with visions of Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning alternating with all the derogatory names I had called Obama over the last few years.

"Yes, but nothing serious" came the reply, from a very civilised and friendly young lady. "There is glare on your glasses in the photo and we can't do the biometrics."

Fortunately she said I could just send in two more, unendorsed, photos without the glare and all would be well. I thanked her and headed for the nearest chemist.

Their effort was not a success, and the glare from the flash persisted. Normally you could turn your head a little sideways to deflect the flash, but not anymore. Now they had to see the whites of your eyes head on. And, no, I could not take my glasses off.

I eventually ended up in a One Hour processing unit and this guy knew what he was at.

"Take your glasses off, and put them back on, but keep the sides well above the level of your ears." And, indeed, it was that little tilt that squared the circle.

Now the nice lady will look deep into my eyes and see my soul.

And process my application.

As I sent in the extra photos, I wondered if I could get a job training those people in chemists who take passport photos for the new biometric age, using the tip I picked up in the One Hour place.

Might just be a gap in the market there.


Update
The passport arrived in the post, and I went looking to see what was biometric about it.

The first thing that had struck me when I saw pictures, such as the one at the top of this post, of the front cover, was to wonder if that little thing at the bottom was a chip of some sort. I still don't know the answer.

Click for larger image
Some personal details redacted

Otherwise the passport looked just like the previous one.

Then I noticed a certain roughness at the centre of the page illustrated above, and the same roughness in the corresponding position on the underside of the page. There was nothing to be seen though.

Intrigued I held the page up to the light and what did I see?

Me, as illustrated below (pinhole version)

Click for larger image

I sincerely hope that everyone who has renewed their passport since the onset of this biometrics thing finds the same.

I'd hate to think the NSA were sticking pins in my effigy.

Now I come to think of it. I have been feeling a bit off these last few days.

Ah well.

Euro2012 Fever

Supervalu, Killester, Dublin 3, 18 June 2012

WTF

-=o0o=-

Update
I really wondered what the above was all about and who the ad was aimed at. Well, now I know. I have seen a further ad in Connolly Station and got a brief glimplse of the telly ad where these hunks of (batchelor?) farmers are heading out to harvest the grey tinned peas.

Just like it says on the tin. Pecs.

An American Wake

It's amazing, when you start following up your family history, how many world events which you might have learned about in your school history suddenly become personal.

The First World War is a typical one of these. Almost everybody in Ireland who starts out tracing their family history, from rabid Republicans to West Brits, will find some relation somewhere who went to war. Some families will come up with a clatter of them. WWI had an insatiable hunger for cannon fodder.

Another event, whose 100th anniversary is coming up, is the sinking of the Titanic in April 1912. You can see the impact of this event on a sample local community, the Mayo village of Lahardane, on that community's commemorative website.


These were times of large families and high emigration, much of it to America (USA and Canada). Emigrants tended to cluster. That is to say, those from a particular parish would emigrate together as a group. When tragedy occurred it then had a disproportionate effect on certain communities. A good example in the case of the Titanic was the village of Lahardane in the parish of Addergoole, from where a group of 14 went on the Titanic; only 3 survived.

While none of those who left might ever have come back anyway, hence the "American Wake", the emigrant was never completely lost to the local community. There were always letters from America, which would be passed around all those mentioned in them. There were food and clothes parcels, which kept many a family going in times of hardship. And, of course, the remittances: money sent home when the emigrants got established in their new country. In Ireland's case there was even a special line in the national accounts for emigrants' remittances, and it was a significant line even in macro economic terms.


When it came to crossing the Atlantic, my family was more fortunate than some of those in Addergoole. My aunt Jane sailed from Cobh in 1908 on the White Star Line's then flagship the Baltic. At the time, this was the largest ship afloat, just as the Titanic was to be 4 years later.

Unlike the Titanic, the Baltic made it, and was one of the ships which radioed the Titanic an ice warning on the day the latter sank.

Jane was accompanied by a group from Ballyhaunis, her home town, and not a thousand miles from Lahardane. She settled in New York and had family, some of whom did come back to Ireland and visit. She was one of the lucky ones.

Trahison

The French always start a job like this by displaying their credentials. So, in deference to them, here we go.

I don't have a general in the family but my cousin is a French Knight. Michael (above) is a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Palmes académiques.

And I have in my possession a letter, from the Chief Conservator in the National Library of France, thanking me for an article I wrote which he says "illuminated in a very useful manner a period in the history of Franco-Irish relations". If you don't believe me you can click on the image below and keep clicking until it gets big enough to read.


And now to the point of this post.

Minister Varadkar has just opened an exhibition, in the French War Museum at Les Invalides in Paris, which deals with Franco-Irish cooperation on the battlefield over a period of three centuries. If you don't believe me, look at the picture below and read the news item.


Now, this cooperation, often directed against the English, does raise a heap of tricky philosophical questions. I am thinking, for example, of attitudes to Flemings and Bretons who collaborated with the Nazis during WWII in an effort to secure a measure of independence for their own people against an occupying imperial power. However, that is not my purpose here, and it will keep for another day.

My interest is in a French Major La Chaussée who did some magnificent work in Ireland in 1797 (note the date) analysing the strengths and weaknesses of various sections of the Irish coastline and how these weaknesses might be exploited in any French seaborne attack against the British in Ireland.

So far so good, and that is what I thought myself. Until, that is, I found out the Major was not working for the French as an advance party spy. Rather, he was working for the British in order to help them thwart any such invasion.



I doubt if he is included in the current exhibition and I am aware of only one place where his work is on display in this country, and that is in the restored Martello Tower (No.7) in Killiney Bay.

So if, unlike the Minister, you cannot currently afford the trip to Paris, even for the replay, you might like to see the work of a Frenchman who cooperated with the other side on the eve of the glorious Rebellion of 1798.



.

Johnny Xmas

My first thought, when I came across this object blocking my path outside my local supermarket, was that it was a jet engine which had fallen off a passing plane.

Then I wondered if it was one of those drones which appear to be landing where they are not supposed to. A distinct possibility when they are being pilotted from the USA west coast by people who couldn't find the North Pole at Christmas. Let's hope, for Santa's sake, that they don't find it before the 25th at any rate.

Then the context hit me.

Christmas is coming, my local supermarket is hosting the usual Christmas tree sellers, and this is just a packing device - like the funnel on a sausage machine or a rubber johnny.

No mystery here then.

Happy Christmas.

Waking the Dead

Konstantin Raudive did some experiments which involved taking a tape recorder, running the tape and then isolating the device in a Faraday cage. When the tapes where subsequently analysed he noticed "interference" or "background noise" in which he was able to discern the voices of people speaking from beyond the grave (including Winston Churchill). He published Transcripts in a book called "Breakthrough".

In May 1971 the Late Late show featured this item and so great was the response that they came back to it again the same month. I actually bought and read the book following the first show and thought it a load of cobblers. When I heard there was to be another show I rang up for tickets.

I got talking to Pan Collins, who, Gay Byrne apart, was the Late Late show. She told me that the tickets were all gone by then but that they were holding back a pair until they got an assurance from the people to whom they had promised them that they would be prepared to contribute to any debate that arose in the studio. She explained that there was a tendency for audiences at spooky shows to clam up and for the show to go dead. I said I'd be only too happy to participate vigorously in the debate and that I thought the whole thing was a load of cobblers.

Apparently the people to whom the tickets had been promised funked it and they were mine for the taking.

On the night, I was up in the back of the audience (much smaller than today's, I think). I don't know if I remember all the panel but the man of the moment was Dr. Peter Bander PhD, who had written the preface to the recently published English version of the Raudive book. Also present were an Italian priest, probably Fr. Pistone, and Terry Prone.

My recollection is that, having introduced the "professor", Gay went straight to the audience for a spiritual health warning. He spoke to two men in the front row whose niece (I think) had been messing about with a Ouija board and got into severe mental difficulty as a result. This duly raised the studio atmosphere.

After a bit of initial chit chat with the "professor" he turned to the priest and asked him for his views. "Do we not believe in God, in the saints, and in the devil? Do we not believe in the spirits?". Or something along those lines, which Gay interpreted as a strong endorsement of the current phenomena by the Vatican no less.

The discussion was eventually thrown open to the studio audience and I duly raised my hand. I need not have bothered. Despite even loudly clicking my fingers at a later stage Gay studiously ignored me right through the item. Needless to say the thing was going swimmingly in an ever rising cloud of hype. Not a dissenting voice to be heard.

By the end of the show I was steaming through every orifice and dying for a go at the "professor". So when the show finished, I sidled up to Terry Prone, whom I knew ever so slightly, engaged her in conversation and proceeded unchallenged all the way to the Green Room, where I buttonholed the "professor". He had been flaunting his doctorate all during the show to give authority to his answers so I asked him what he was a doctor of. Psychology, apparently. I pointed out that this did not actually qualify him to authenticate supernatural phenomena. I further pointed out that many apparent supernatural phenomena through the ages eventually turned out to have natural explanations. By his logic, the Romans should have venerated a sword and shield hanging on the wall if they just rattled every so often.

At that point, when he was clearly beginning to find me tiresome, one of the blue rinse brigade with an American accent caught him and asked if the spirits understood French. Now, clearly in his element, he dispensed with me and took off across the room with this silly person.

Bander later wrote a book about his evangelistic tour in which he devoted a chapter to his appearance on the Late Late show. I must check out the attic one of these days. I think I might have bought it at the time.

Bander died in 2004 and is now in a better position to authenticate these phenomena. I'm waiting.

Anyway, it's Halloween, so let's not be too fussy.



Update 22/5/2017 If you want to read more, check out Bander's book and this later one on the subject.

Mr. Tayto for President

A notable absentee from the current Presidential election is Mr. Tayto, who has participated in a number of General Election campaigns in the past.

It is rumoured that he will be a write-in candidate and his Election Bus was spotted earlier today on Dublin's Northside just before starting its countrywide tour.

Features to note are the aspirational twin exhausts pointing skywards. The right hand back door given over to sponsorship in deference to our likely future paymasters. The subtle racial reference to Lyons Tea in the trouser legs - Tayto is a thirsty consumption. Retention of the boater in honour of James Joyce. The red jacket lest Mary Davis get all the limelight. The blue tie to avoid any impression of power dressing. And the customary big smile as an alternative to kissing babies.

So don't forget the write-in candidate on the 27th.

Visit Dublin

Dublin Tourism are running a very interesting photo competition for the last year or so. They are operating through Flickr. You enter a photo by posting it to their group on Flickr. You can enter up to 5 photos per month and the increment to the pool is adjudicated every 2 months. The only condition is that the photo is relevant to Dublin.

I have been entering 5 photos a month for some time now and I currently have 79 photos in the pool.

I have noticed sometimes that the pool only picks up say 3 of my 5 submitted photos and have put the omissions down to software defects. Usually, when I resubmit the missed photos they eventually appear in the pool.

Last month, however, I have come up against what I think is a downright refusal. So far, the photos have been if anything flattering to the city, but the one (above) passed over last month is less than flattering, though I think it is a good photo. There is nothing in the conditions to say that the photos have to be flattering nor is there anything limiting the adjudicators in their absolute discretion in awarding prizes.

In an attempt to be sure that something was going on, I resubmitted the above photo this month (having resubmitted it twice last month) and also included some less flattering photos in this month's batch.

So far, the photo above has not been accepted nor has the one below, representing the end of the party from earlier this year.

My own view is that this is a disgrace. It is fine to limit prizes to flattering photos for the Dublin Tourism calendar, but it is an unjustifiable form of censorship and propaganda to refuse to accept unflattering photos into the pool. I would warrant that the batch I have submitted to date are more than flattering to the city and that there is even a fair risk that any tourist whose expectations are based on them would be seriously disappointed at the actual state of much of the place.



As a sign of my good faith, I have so far held myself back from submitting the photo below.

Cool or cool?

Irish Times (online), 27/09/11
How cool is that?

This teaser just shows how language can change, or how old Subs never die.

"Cool" is used here in the older sense of "reluctant" or "not in favour of".

To the young modern reader the headline would mean that Enda had no problem with lifting the salary cap.

The full teaser is below which clarifies the meaning a bit.


And the full piece is here.

Off with their heads.

This cartoon appeared in the
Irish Independent on 7 May 2011.

You saw the concept here first
on 9 April 2009.

Power of Music

Brilliant visualisation of ESB sponsorship of the Feis Ceoil.

Come into my parlour

This is the story of a silly bumblebee who blundered into the web of a smaller spider who trussed him up and ate him for dinner.










See the video