God be with those Halcyon days...

....when all Irish people had to worry about was a spot of potato blight and a few million dying of starvation. How lucky we were. The coffin ships to America were as nothing compared to the horror of the Gatwick Express. As a keen investigative journalist I have uncovered the awful truth that it takes a full 30 minutes to travel into the centre of London at a staggering cost of £15.


No wonder that a survey by the Irish Examiner showed that 90% of the Irish public were outraged at the Aer Lingus decision, with 87% demanding a change of heart from Aer Lingus and public anger at the way the airline has “betrayed” Shannon means that 59% say they are now less likely to fly with it as a result of the row.

Pic shows potato infected with blight, from Royal Horticultural Society

Tragedy at Shannon

I'd like to add my own heartfelt sympathies to the businessmen of Shannon. It is astonishing cruelty on the part of Aer Lingus to force these well-fed, well-paid souls to make, when they next visit London, a terrible choice between getting an express train from Gatwick or rising an hour earlier and getting a Heathrow flight from Cork. I feel so proud that people of Ireland are prepared to take a stand against this dreadful injustice.
As for Michael O'Leary - such a brave sensitive soul - perhaps he could find a few coppers in his pocket to offset the exhorbitant cost of those Gatwick Express tickets.

Pic above shows new Ryanair ad, nominated for Good Taste Award 2007

The dog may die....

Uniting with Unionists

One of the most interesting discussions I had recently was with a unionist pal. Actually Fionna's no more a unionist than I'm a nationalist. If we can park the political correctness for a moment, she's from solid Ulster Prod stock while I'm a proud soap-dodger from Dublin. But we both like to think we're above petty tribalism.
Anyway she is convinced that there will be a united Ireland within 15 years while I, despite my feckless Fenian background, don't believe it will ever happen. It was quite a heated debate.
I've noticed a lot of unionists are really obsessed with this united Ireland thing. Refering to the furore over Aer Lingus's decision to shift its Heathrow route from Shannon to Belfast, DUPer Jeffrey Donaldson said that while some people shout about a United Ireland, they don't like it when it hits them in the pocket. Nice quote, but who the fuck shouts about a united Ireland these days? Sinn Fein, of course, but they've been given a bloody nose from the Irish electorate. Maybe I mix in the wrong circles but NO ONE I know in Dublin has mentioned the great 'national question' for yonks.
For the sake of all these unionists harbouring either hope or fear that we'll all be one some day, I hereby present a few random reasons why I think it will never happen:
1. The British tax payer forks out £6 billion a year to keep Northern Ireland afloat. I really don't see the Irish tax payer being quite that generous.
2. There are two different currencies, completely different health care systems (no doctor's fees and prescriptions cost a flat £6 something) and education systems.
3. I was a Vodaphone customer and an ntl customer in the south for years. When I went to sign up to those companies up here, my credit rating in the south didn't count at all. To transfer money, even through Bank of Ireland, from Dublin to Belfast takes about two weeks and there's a charge. The systems - even within the same company - are entirely different.
4. The whingers of Galway and Cork never shut up about how Ireland is entirely Dublin-centric. I admit they have a point. I said to my brother recently, "the second there's a united Ireland, the lads of Cork will launch a separatist movement". "They can have it," he said, I think quite wittily. The point here is that Ulster would be crazy to ditch a regional parliament in favour of Dail Eireann. Even aside from the protecting the interests of our beloved unionist pals, Stormont allows local politicians to deal with the very specific challenges facing the region.
5. Take it from a northern point of view: A Dublin government isn't going to waive water charges - in fact they'll probably double the charge and introduce them immediately - because there is no way they'll be able to persuade the southern electorate to fork out however many billion is required to update the water system here. They won't be half so benign in relation to public sector job cuts, or rationalising health trusts, education and library boards and councils.

A Family Day

I covered Belfast's 12th July parade or Orangefest as it's now called. It rained, of course. I

managed about an hour of vox-popping various spectators, including a Rangers fan who'd travelled all the way from Aberdeen. He was slumped against a wall on his own clutching a beer bottle. I asked him what the attraction was. "It's a family day," he said.

Whose truth is it anyway?

There was something of a carnival atmosphere about Sinn Fein's 'March for Truth' yesterday. They came from north, south, east and west of the city, following Republican pipe bands that looked suspiciously like their loyalist counterparts.
"I haven't seem so many fucking Maggie Thatchers in years," said a wizened old woman standing on a bench in front of city hall. She was refering to the plethora of of tableaux laid on the for the protestors - a pin striped suit wearing Thatcher pulling the string of various loyalist gunmen being the most popular. The crowd booed on cue as one of their own dressed as a British soilder, gun hoisted and grinning with embarasment, passed by in a mocked-up army jeep. They cheered the little girls carrying a long banner with images of the dead hunger strikers.
Gerry Adams arrived with the group from the west, red-faced from the walk to town on what, this summer, was a rare sunny afternoon.
One of the floats parked up near the speaker's rostrum and a young boy inside helped collect the guns that had been used in the parade. A respectable-looking grandmother asked if she could pose for a picture with an AK47. The man explained it was real. "Deactivated," he added quickly. A crowd of young boys rushed over, eager to play with the gun but it had disappeared.

Art in the City

Saturday was the first day in I can't remember how long when I
had nothing specific to do. I went down town with Francis to see an exhibition of press photography from Northern Ireland over the past 40 years. I was in a bad mood - the grey sky, the drizzling rain, the relentless dreariness of Summer 07.
"There's no fecking culture in this city. That fecking union complaining because 1% of a hospital budget is being spent on art. There are no decent galleries. A wet saturday afternoon and in the two years I've been living here this is the only exhibition I've actually wanted to see. How fucking depressing is this place."
We bumped into some artist type at the gallery who whined at Francis about the lack of a local arts programme on the BBC. Then he immediately disagreed with me when I said there weren't enough public art galleries. I shouldn't compare Belfast to Edinburgh because Edinburgh was much bigger. (It's not.)
Back in the car, Francis told me about one of this guy's materpieces. "It was this cross-community project up on the peace line where the lesbians live..." he began.
I can't remember the rest cos I just cracked up laughing.

Picture above: 'Uncontrolled Explosion' by Thomas McMullan from 'Out of the Darkness' at Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast