Seven Sins of England? Is that All?

Way back when I was a pretentious teen in the late eighties there was a show on bbc2 called “three minute culture”.

It’s thesis was that our attention spans had shrunk to 3 minutes as that was how often we changed the channel on the TV. And that was back when the majority of people only had 4 channels, imagine how short they are now?

‘Scuse me, I’ve got to go play second life for a while.

Sorry, where was I?

Oh yeah, I was saying that I never really took the thesis of that programme all that seriously. Everyone watches TV, but if medical students only had a 3 minute attention span it’s hard to see how they could remember those 15 million words of text they’re supposed to learn (according to a movie I once saw).

The makers of this programme including the smug Canadian presenter Michael Ignatieff might have looked at the research more positively and seen channel-hopping as a sign of intellectual curiousity rather than laziness. It could be argued that globalisation has made our lives into one big channel-surf where we don’t know where we’ll end up next. Who’d have thought Gay Byrne would end up as road safety commissioner? There’s a Black Swan for you.

Hang on, I’ve got to check my hotornot score.

7.9. Not Bad.

Anyway, as I was saying, channel hopping may not be a bad thing. I was doing it last night, and came across some fascinating juxtapositions. I started watching a show called The 7 sins of England which posited a theory that the drunkenness and rascism that blights England right now is nothing new. This wasn’t any news to an Irishman like myself, we were being bludgeoned to death by English thugs centuries before they went on cheap flights to Bratislava. Even though the show which juxtaposed (I like that word) quotes from the past about working-class English loutishness with erm, scenes of contemporary English loutishness was well done enough, it seemed to miss a fundamental point, which is that the violence of the English working-class was utilised for hundreds of years to build a massive empire, only to be turned in upon the country itself over the last 60 years.

It might come as news to those colonel blimp types who’ve been complaining that those hostages in Iran were soft that the English working classes are still ‘ard. They’re well fuckin’ ‘ard. And some of them aren’t shy about showing it. One yob said the difference between English people and the rest of humanity is that they speak their minds more freely. Qué?

While the ads were on (one of those 7 sins is consumerism, ironically enough) I turned over, first to RTE1 where Paul Durkan was talking about his own drink problem, which oddly enough led to him writing poetry rather than smashin’ peoples fuckin’ ‘eads in. Then I surfed over to BBC2 where another legacy of Britain’s imperial past was being discussed.

It’s always amazed me that the Brits seem to think the problems in Northern Ireland are the fault of “The Irish” as if they had nothing to do with it. One home secretary described the principality as a bloody awful country, and he was right, but it was a bloody awful country they created by forcing so many Scottish mountain thugs to live there. They served their British masters well by building the ships they needed to conquer the world, but as soon as the empire was under threat they were ready to give the 6 counties back in return for an abandonment of our neutrality. We’ve since sold that to George Bush, but that’s by the by.

It didn’t stop the unionists from tattooing union jacks to their heads or shouting abuse at the pope (Nice man? Are u serious, TB?) for most of the time since, even after a Guardian poll showed most people in Britain didn’t want the north in their country any more.

Right now, though, it seems the unionists have finally realised which way the wind is blowing and that the anachronism known as the UK is finally going the way of the Habsburg and Ottoman empires. It’s really unrealistic to imagine a rump state of northern Ireland clinging on to the UK with a tiny loyalist minority while Scotalnd tries to break it’s umbilicus with England.

Nevertheless, it’s going to be causing England a few problems for a while, looking for half a billion quid to get it back on it’s feet, much to the consternation of Paxman.

Me, I just shrug my shoulders and wonder why they got involved in Ulster in the first place, as with Iraq today.

Tennyson once said that he wished Ireland could move into the Atlantic. Well, Al, much as I like the Lotus Eaters I think we’re a bit unfortunate to live next to the most rapacious thugs on Earth as well. That their anger is now turned in upon themselves is a matter of huge relief to me.

Mr. Hobson goes to the Polls

In my last post I criticised the Irish media for being too supine in it’s response to the very plausible accusation that our benevolent leader may be the son of a cop-killer.

It would have made interesting reading for the Taoiseach if he was on to pay attention to anything my family had to say.

Apparently Red Ahern was at a function to honour the composer of the Fields of Athenry a few years ago, ironically as it’s sung by supporters of his least favourite soccer team, the one appearing in the Champions League Final for the 7^th time, though that’s by the by. Anyway, my great-uncle, who taught the composer at school, was also there, and it turns out he comes from the same area of the country as Dirty Bertie.

My Uncle did some extensive genealogical research into the then finance ministers ancestry yet found himself cruelly snubbed by Ahern, who decided the person on the other side of him would be more help on his way up the greasy pole.

Unlike many of the things Bertie has done this was neither illegal nor greatly damaging in the greater scheme of things. My uncle is hardly the only older person to be shafted by this administration. Yet the incident does demonstrate in microcosm the colossal arrogance of Bertie and his coterie. He may like to present himself in heavily photo-shopped posters as someone in touch with ordinary people and in soft-focus interviews as someone who likes nothing more than to go out with his mates from Drumcondra.

But politicians have a different concept of friendship to the rest of us. All of us are really there for our friends when we need them, but very few of us would choose our friends as coldly and as ruthlessly on the basis of what they can do for us as the likes of Bertie. Call me a cynic if you like, but it seems like a bit too much of a coincidence that all of Berties friends from a rough area of Dublin all seem to be able to lay their hands on a big wad of cash whenever he needs it, which seems to be alarmingly often.

It’s true that the figures involved are fairly small compared to what Haughey received though that hardly makes it okay, I never heard Idi Amin defend himself by saying that he only killed a twentieth as many people as Hitler. It’s also true that someone with Ahern’s street smarts could have made a lot more money drug-dealing (for example). But then power has an attraction all of it’s own, Ken Livingstone said that he was only paid £6,000 a year for running the GLC but he didn’t care as he was the most powerful man in London.

But Livingstone was certainly someone who believed in something at some stage, whereas it’s hard to make that statement with any certainty about Ahern. It’s true that in many democracies the dominant party attracts the most ambitious people regardless of ideology, but here the two main parties have traditionally been so non-ideological that the only reason for joining either of them could be personal ambition. The lack of any major ideological difference between the blueshirts and the soldiers of destiny has suited Ahern down to the ground until now, in a vapid beauty contest against the likes of John Bruton or Baldy Noonan there was only going to be one winner. But it seems people have finally woken up to what a phoney he is and how our money has been wasted, how many promises have been broken. To take one example, we were told that by this election we’d be spending .7% of our GDP on foreign aid, though it still languishes at .42%. This may seem minor, in fact it almost certainly does seem minor to Bertie, as Fianna Fail aren’t putting up any candidates in Tanzania, but it’s a big issue for people who depend on us to provide them with food and medicine.

In a recent interview with Hot Press, Enda Kenny recycled this promise. I think we should take him at his word… What other choice do we have? Much of the rest of the interview was disappointing. He’s against liberalising drug laws as it could lead to drug tourism. Would that be such a disaster? It might give someone in the tourist offices in places like Portlaoise something to do. But seriously, it’s a misjudgement on his part as many younger voters know how out of synch we are with the rest of Europe and his traditional supporters aren’t going to defect to the crowd who killed their parents during the civil war.

And what of Micheal McDowell, the man who promised us he’d keep a leash on Bertie but has been like a little lamb (except fatter and balder) on the issue of Bertie’s corruption (I don’t see any point in using the word “alleged” anymore) while he’s been tearing into Trevor Sergeant for having the temerity to disagree with McDowell on some of the major issues. Then the PDs issued a statement saying that a vote for them is a vote on Fatty Harney’s record as minister for obesity. Do they actually want to lose?

The answer, surprisingly, could be yes, as the PDs and the ideological soul mates in FF might want the Rainbow to get in narrowly, have to deal with the coming house price crash and be condemned to opposition for another generation.

So will I be voting for Fianna Fail to make their plan backfire?

Um….NO.