07.29.05
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 12:58 pm by
I keep turning off radio stations and still can’t avoid the complete tripe about this IRA statement. Hands of history are yet again upon us. This statement by the Taoiseach sums it up: “Tonight will be the first night since 1969 we won’t go to our beds feeling that same threat right over our heads. “
Oh hello? What were those so-called permanent ceasefires all about? I thought anyone who didn’t believe the ceasefires were permanent was some kind of moron or bigoted unionist?
And did John Hume or Seamus Mallon’s names get mentioned at all? No. Gerry Adams’s campaign for presidency just started.
What I still cannot understand is how Bertie is making SF look good. If SF win seats in the next general it will be from FF. I always supposed that Bertie just wanted the peace process out of the way so he could take on SF properly but they are making saints out McGuinness and Adams. How do people fall for this crap? Gawd.
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07.28.05
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 5:44 pm by
The IRA have a made yet another historic statement. I’ve been flicking around the radio stations trying to find one NOT talking about it. I can’t be alone in being bored to tears by IRA statements. I’ve really finished with the whole Northern thing. When they started turning on the Chinese and running them out of their homes (they being the Loyalists on this occasion), I thought, they are just hopeless. As long as they are not bombing each other let’s leave them to it.
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07.24.05
Posted in Feminism at 10:08 pm by
This week’s column on Tom McEnaney’s great story about the Aer Lingus 12-point plan to make their staff miserable.
Is crushing your staff an idea that has wings?
Marie stood in front on the mirror and for the first time saw what we saw. Scraggy hair, the T-shirt emphasising her saggy bosom, the ridiculous skirt, the hideous Doc Martens. She hung her head in shame. Trinny and Susannah, the presenters of What Not to Wear, supervised. Marie, where is your self-esteem? Susannah demanded. Who has taken it away? Probably her employer, if it’s anything like Aer Lingus. Last week, the only surprising aspect of the airline’s 12-point memo detailing its use of environmental push factors to get rid of employees is that somebody was stupid enough to write down exactly how horribly they could treat staff.
Of course, psychology can also be used in a positive way, even if the purpose of increasing productivity is still the goal. A charismatic manager can create a vision behind which the company can unite. When I worked for Esat Telecom 10 years ago, Denis O’Brien established an environment in which every employee devoted themselves to breaking the monopolistic force that was then Telecom Eireann.
Most of us were persuaded that we had missions rather than jobs and voluntarily worked long hours for low pay. The company of young and ambitious graduates was encouraged to eat, drink and breathe Esat. We ate in the office, got drunk at frequent and lavish parties and in between the occasional tantrums, O’Brien took a paternalistic interest in his workforce.
If you stuck it out long enough you got to cash in, handsomely. If you burnt out and left a gibbering mess of nerves, as I did, you bit your lip when you watched former colleagues become millionaires. You couldn’t begrudge them the money; they had earned every last penny. If a trade union had come within a mile of Esat, they never would have made it.
And this of course has been the problem for workers in the private sector. We have all seen the devastation wreaked by unions who have turned self-esteem into destructive levels of selfishness. In the public sector the unions can crush the slightest attempt by management to improve productivity or introduce accountability. Millions are wasted in this country annually because public sector workers know that their employers can’t fire them and move the operation to China.
It is no wonder that €120m is squandered by the Department of Health on a payroll system that doesn’t work. As a manager in another government department told me last week, “if someone has a pain in their toe, I can’t ask them to work for six months”. Of course, it could also be argued that co-operation is low because those same workers know that they will get no reward or recognition for any extra effort they do make.
Since the industrial revolution, employers from Henry Ford to Michael O’Leary have been united in a single quest: how to extract the maximum level of work at the cheapest cost from their employees. Along every step of this crusade they have met resistance from the workers whose goal is diametrically opposite: to perform the least amount of work for the maximum amount of money.
So the workers form unions and persuade governments to pass tight labour laws. These are sidestepped by employers, who realise that psychology is a more effective weapon than a P45.
A wronged worker will only sue if they feel worthy of better treatment. By crushing their self-esteem, they’ll go home grateful that they have a job. You can persuade them they are not entitled to a pay rise, nobody else will employ them and if they don’t improve their productivity they’ll lose the job they have been lucky enough to secure. Only somebody with pride will tell their boss to stuff it when petty and demeaning strategies are implemented. Anybody with self-respect will simply leave and the management are left with a compliant workforce.
When Ryanair told staff last April that they would no longer be permitted to charge their mobile phones at work, a spokeswoman said nobody batted an eyelid. The decision to ban the charging of phones was more related to work ethic than cost-cutting though obviously there is a small saving.
Since charging a phone requires nothing more than plugging in a device, it can’t possibly damage productivity. One consequence of such a move is to produce a cowed workforce who’ll consider going to the toilet a waste of company time. Aer Lingus management was clearly taking notes.
Back on What Not to Wear, Trinny and Susannah bought Marie some very flattering new clothes, cut her hair and accessorised. The transformed woman wept when she saw the new her in the mirror. So did Trinny. So did Susannah. So did I.
Unfortunately, it will take more than a pretty dress, or in Aer Lingus’s case, a pretty uniform, to transform the abysmally low self-esteem of that company’s crew.
PS A tear did come to my eye while watching What not to Wear. That happened once before with a woman who wore terrible 80’s clothes all the time. When they asked her why, she said it was because she was happy in the 80’s. Since then her marriage had fallen apart and she’d been divorced for 3 or 4 years but still wore her wedding ring. At the end Susannah persuaded her to take off the rings. We all cried again. I don’t care what anyone says, I think its the best programme…
Also it was really sickening not getting to cash in on Esat but what can you do? How some of those people stuck it out is beyond me. It was constant high pressure and a love/abuse cycle from O’Brien. Obviously it depended how closely you worked to him. I reported directly to him so every uncrossed ‘t’ came under his notice. But so did several others….nerves of steel….Still I did get huge experience and a f***ing legal bill…..Still haven’t paid it. Suppose I have to wait for the Tribunal to finish and pray that they’ll take pity on me. Not much hope of that I’d say. And they’re taking ages anyway…oh well…
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07.22.05
Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 8:32 pm by
Domestic Goddess
Am feeling like a high achiever today. In addition to my usual duties I cleaned out the fridge, washed a 6 week old stain out of the carpet, cleaned the tiles in my fireplace and then made Italian Baked Cod for the extended family and served it with gorgeous new potatoes all preceded by Prosecco on the patio. This makes up big time for watching Will & Grace during the afternoon!
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07.20.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 6:17 pm by
A belated note to record Andrew Black’s success in the World Series of Poker last weekend – he came fifth and won $1.75m. Not bad – for about 15 years devotion to the game. When I entered Trinity College as a naive fresh little, well fresher, Andrew was either in his final year or was still loitering. The first time I saw him he was attempting to throw a pint over Shane Ross, then and now TCD Senator and currently Business Editor of the Sunday Independent. Andrew had delivered a ferocious speech in the Hist with Ross sitting in the chair in which Andrew claimed Ross had pushed through some legislation connected with house improvement grants and was the first person to claim one of the grants. Having failed to aim the pint exactly at Ross (it hit the Auditor, Anthony Whelan, instead) it took four people to carry him from the debating chamber. That was Andrew!
****I did have an anecdote in this spot which I am removing as it opens myself up to sneering from certain quarters: Andrew stories will have to be reserved for the pub***
Anyway, I probably never would have seen him again except that several years later he had a most intense relationship with a friend. It didn’t work out except that she did introduce him to Buddhism and meditation which he took to in quite a single minded way. He was still a gambler, still charming, unpredictable – irresistable really. And now he’s got a stack of money! Hopefully he will buy a house. I doubt it tho’. The world needs more like him.
UPDATE HAHA (as in short first ha and long second ha not the simpsons equi-length haha). I am using my power to hide all comments! Any one with anything else to say (inc. the ex-Hist R&L person) will have to mail me directly!
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07.11.05
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 9:42 pm by
Everyone’s been complaining about our grey weather for months. Yesterday the sun finally came out and in 27C sunshine we all immediately wilted and complained about the too sunny weather. Anyway, here is this week’s ST column and I’m in a funny predicament. I filled in for Alan Ruddock and his column is usually 1400 words which I duly provided. However with the bombing coverage they had to squash it up a bit and I lost 400 words. Nevertheless I have decided that you privileged readers of this wondrous blog should get the unedited version! So. 1400 words on why I think Labour and Fine Gael should go into coalition….
ps here’s link to the ST version for those who can access it.
begins…
The root of voter disillusionment with politicians is often attributed to the frequent exposure of financial and planning scandals involving our public representatives and big business. However, one of the greatest acts of political betrayal in recent times had nothing to do with money. From 1989 to 1992 Dick Spring’s ferocious attacks upon the Fianna Fail-Progressive Democrat government inspired a pre-Celtic Tiger electorate, weary of Fianna Fail cronyism.
Spring’s enthusiastic condemnation of all things Fianna Fail famously included accusing Haughey of being a “cancer in Irish politics”. His stirring speeches motivated the people and in the 1992 election, Labour justly reaped the rewards. They won 33 seats, a massive 18-seat gain. Fine Gael lost ten seats and Fianna Fail, nine. The people clearly wanted a change and expected Spring to deliver it. What the people discovered was that, contrary to the rhetoric, while Labour hated Fianna Fail, they hated Fine Gael even more. In particular, there was no love lost between John Bruton and Spring, and their post-elections discussions were disastrous.
In 1992, as the cliche warns, it didn’t matter who you voted for; the government still got in. Facilitated by Labour, we were faced with another five years of Fianna Fail in power. Despite the mid-term musical chairs that saw Fine Gael unexpectedly in government in 1994, the people did not forget what Labour did to them and the status quo was resumed in 1997. Labour lost ten seats, nine of them going back to their original source; Fine Gael. Of course, Fianna Fail remained in government, this time with the Progressive Democrats and supported by some of the Independents. Fianna Fail had developed a talent for losing elections but winning power.
The damage done by that 1992 u-turn was still affecting voter behaviour ten years later. During the 2002 general election campaign, Ruairi Quinn, one of the advocates of the coalition with Fianna Fail, refused to rule out another deal with them. Quinn’s analysis had not changed in the preceding decade. From an economic policy perspective, Labour and Fianna Fail were closer and theoretically it should be easier to formulate a shared programme for government that mollified Labour’s left wing base. What this amounted to was a naive belief on Quinn’s part that Fianna Fail’s willingness to award big pay rises to the public sector corresponded to socialism. Judging by Bertie Ahern’s claim to be a socialist, it appears that he shares this conviction.
Those who seek to define Irish politics along economic lines would still argue that Fianna Fail and Labour are natural coalition partners. But Irish politics is not divided along economic lines but on whether one is for or against Fianna Fail. This is not a crude device with which to argue that we are still beholden to civil war politics, it’s just not a simple matter of right versus left.
Labour supporters felt they had always suffered a backlash from their periods in office with Fine Gael due to their frequent policy clashes, principally over public spending. However, these disputes were not a consequence of firmly held ideological beliefs, but of the dire economic circumstances which coincided with the Fine Gael-Labour coalitions. The first oil shock and rampant inflation came during the 1973-77 period followed by the recession of the 1980?s, made worse by the hangover of Fianna Fail’s earlier spending spree. Fine Gael’s attempts to reign in public spending were driven, not by a right-wing zeal to deprive the State’s dependents, but by sheer necessity.
The result of Quinn’s ambivalence in 2002 was that Labour’s support plateaued at twenty seats and Quinn resigned.
Meanwhile, those floating Fine Gael voters, despairing of the inevitability of yet another Fianna Fail victory, swallowed Michael McDowell’s spin. If Fianna Fail was going to get in, it was absolutely necessary that someone keep an eye on them. Socially liberal and economically right wing voters in affluent constituencies like Dublin South-East and Dun Laoighre panicked. The Progressive Democrats doubled their seats to eight and the result is that Fianna Fail has been in government for sixteen of the last eighteen years.
As one Fianna Fail TD followed the next in allegations of bribery, planning corruption, tax evasion and sheer incompetence, it will take a separate examination to find a rationale for their continued support. In the meantime, anyone who wants to see them out of government must welcome the strengthening of the Fine Gael-Labour pact through the joint statement of the leaders this week.
To date, the agreement to co-operate has certainly been a matter of style over substance. There have been no joint policy statements and Kenny?s earlier suggestion to co-ordinate candidate selection in certain constituencies was quickly brushed aside. Nevertheless, Rabbitte and Kenny are doing the right thing. With another two years before the next election they have to start the campaign now to win the confidence of a mistrustful electorate.
Fortunately, Rabbitte has managed to consolidate his leadership within the Labour party and despite a robust debate at the Labour conference in May, they voted by a significant majority to give him authority to negotiate with Fine Gael. With this mandate, he won’t have to tolerate carping from certain quarters about the strategy.
Despite the obvious lessons of the past, there were some people, most notably Brendan Howlin, who still baulked at a pre-election deal with Fine Gael. However, Rabbitte had won the 2002 contest for the Labour leadership on a platform that explicitly ruled out coalition with Fianna Fail. In fact, in the 2002 general election he made his displeasure with Quinn’s strategy clear when he announced he would refuse to take ministerial office if Labour did go into coalition with Fianna Fail. His consistent position on this issue is vital if the people are going to place their faith in an alternative government.
Because building a viable alternative is what this pact is all about. Fine Gael’s failure to get into government means that many see them as increasingly irrelevant on the political landscape.
While Fine Gael has come under pressure to define themselves, Fianna Fail appear to represent a safe pair of hands with the economy and shame about the mavericks. However, the Celtic Tiger was thirty years in the making, not three, and it is slowly dawning on everyone that a chimpanzee in government in the late nineties could have sat and watched the taxes roll in. The challenge for a government in such times was not how to create economic success, but how not to blow it. And blow it, they did. The money has been squandered on pet projects and unforgivable mismanagement.
Enda Kenny may still struggle to answer questions as to whether his party is right or left, for enterprise or for the poor, tax and spend, or just tax. To a certain extent, this identity crisis is all nonsense. Fianna Fail has never defined themselves in those terms. Their happy partnership with the reactionary PD’s could just as easily evolve into an even happier one with the Marxist Sinn Fein and no one would care.
The real and consistence difference between Fine Gael and Fianna Fail is a sense of caution. Fine Gael is like the housewife tightly managing the housekeeping budget and ferreting spare cash away for old age. Fianna Fail is the spendthrift, always willing to buy the love of the electorate by flinging money at them.
Those who disagree will point to the excellent and crucial stewardship of the Exchequer by Ray MacSharry between 1987 and 1989. They will neglect to point out that this was a minority government maintained in power by Alan Dukes’s Tallaght Strategy which agreed to vote with Fianna Fail as long as they implemented responsible economic policy.
In the end, politics is like the stock exchange. The value of a share is based on confidence rather than the bottom line. If people think that Fine Gael could win power, they just might vote for them and the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling. No one wants to vote for a loser and prior to their success in the local and European elections, Fine Gael had the smell of death about them.
The structure of our electoral system exacerbates this effect. The Dail is simply too large and the multi-seat constituency system makes it too prone to clientelism. If people are going to vote for the guy who will do a personal favour for them, then it makes sense to vote for the party with power. Since Fianna Fail were in power this was reason enough to keep them there. However with our rapid suburbanisation, there are people without a TD/client and they might be persuaded to back a different horse if the odds are good. If Rabbitte and Kenny maintain a breezy air of confidence, it might catch on. Talk the talk boys, and you could walk the walk.
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07.06.05
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 4:47 pm by
Just picking up from the comment thread. I am going to reprint in full an article from today’s IT for the benefit of those who didn’t see the series. It is rather long but as the IT is subscription some of you might otherwise miss it.
Dice loaded in favour of Haughey
Did Charles Haughey succeed in remotely controlling the television series on his life, asks Muiris Mac Conghail
Four-part series on RTEtelevision: The Outsider – Monday June 13th, 9.30pm – 10.30pm; Arise and Follow – Monday June 20th; The Survivor – Monday June 27th and Disclosure – Monday July 4th, 2005. Produced by Mint Productions for RTE
Narrator: Miriam Kelly. Executive producers: Steve Carson and Miriam O’Callaghan. Produced and directed by Niamh Sammon.
Well over half a million people watched The Outsider, the first of the four-part biographical study of Charles Haughey, putting it at the top of that week’s viewing figures.
There was a predictable slight drop in the viewing figures over the following two parts, but the series maintained a constant top in ratings. Last Monday’s final episode, Disclosure, had a rating of 41.7 per cent of the viewing public – 562,000 viewers – which made it the most watched of the four-part series, and was one of the highest ratings ever achieved by a documentary on RTE
The greatest percentage of viewers has been those in the age bracket of 55-plus years of age, where almost 50 per cent of the audience will have recalled the details of events through which they lived and endured during the reign of Charles Haughey.
Of the four parts in the series I found the final episode to be the most satisfactory.
It gave almost a complete example of the awfulness which so characterised Mr Haughey’s regime of the ruthless pursuit of power – the ditching of his friend Brian Lenihan during the presidential election campaign which brought Mary Robinson to office.
With a combination of contemporary and specific actuality footage, it showed the impact of the Lenihan “ditching” on the Lenihan family and on Mary O’Rourke in particular, and it focused effectively on the ruthless and deadly nature of Haughey’s desire to rule at any cost.
But the desire to rule was but one of two desires which led Charles Haughey: the other was a desire for money and wealth.
In the case of Brian Lenihan and indeed that of the late Jim Gibbons who was saved from a mob on the night of the McCreevy heave by a friend with a sword in the third episode, we are talking about people and what befell them as a result of the baleful tyranny.
In the case of the money we are talking here about corruption and the mindset which guides it, and this mindset is most difficult to portray on film other than to nod and wink at it or to attempt to portray that nodding and winking.
PJ Mara, the adviser of Charles Haughey, nodded and winked his way and washed his hands throughout the programme. In a remarkable statement over a profiled shot of Mr Haughey in a doorway, Mr Mara said: “They wanted to believe that Haughey was some kind of malign figure locked away in his mansion plotting badness: I didn’t believe it then and I don’t believe it now.”
Padraig Flynn was scary.
The first programme in the series – The Outsider – successfully developed the idea that Charles Haughey was of a poor background, and in his voyage through life was so beset with that background of poverty that he determined never to be poor again.
This, according to the series, set the course for his future life and explains what he did to overcome poverty by defrauding the Exchequer.
It is an explanation which might have sustained all those from the west of Ireland born to poverty, if, instead of working and dying in the embrace of McAlpines and in the dark tunnels of England, Scotland and Wales, they had they chosen to rob banks in Ballyhaunis, Bohola and Barr na Trᮦlt;br />
Editorially, there are two problems which beset the Haughey series. The first is that the subject of the biographical study did not participate in the series; the second is the manner of the interviews with those who did participate.
The absence of Mr Haughey has to be explained and the result of that absence evaluated.
Mr Haughey’s availability to the Moriarty tribunal has been curtailed by health reasons, and Mr Haughey has been reported as being unwell. Were Mr Haughey to have given an interview for the series then, I imagine that Judge Kevin Haugh’s difficulties in proceeding with the case of the DPP v Mr Haughey on charges of two obstructions to the proceedings in the McCracken tribunal might have been overcome. On appeal to the High Court, which upheld Judge Haugh’s ruling, Ms Justice Carroll said that there was a “fade” factor which might allow the DPP to proceed and it would be up to Mr Haughey’s lawyers to prove that the climate envisaged by Judge Haugh was still prejudicial.
Mr Haughey and his advisers obviously took the question of his appearance in the series and its likely impact on legal proceedings into account.
Strategically, what had Mr Haughey to gain by appearing on the Haughey series? Nothing to gain and everything to lose. Certainly, with some members of his own family appearing – Eimear Mulhern, Sean Haughey TD, Conor Haughey, and Father Eoghan Haughey – the dice was loaded heavily in his favour; and with additional support from a number of his close friends and colleagues, the result was that the balance of the programme was effectively turned in favour of Mr Haughey, insofar as Mr Haughey could determine.
There is also another factor which generally pertains in broadcasting journalism and that is that where one of the principal protagonists declines to appear, then an almost compensatory over-balancing is effected to offset the possible imbalance. The absentee is effectively manipulating the show in his favour by remote control.
Because of this editorial dilemma, perhaps, the construction of the programme as a whole was weighted as a historical narrative entirely in favour of Fianna Fail, and excluded, other than the Progressive Democrats and Tony Gregory, any other political party. This effectively distorted the whole narration of the political history of the 1966-1992 period and condensed it into a history of heaves against Haughey.
The second editorial problem relates to the interviewees and their questioning. Those who were assembled for interviews seem all to have been interviewed in drawing rooms or lookalike offices of Dublin hotels or the Masonic Hall in Molesworth Street. The lighting had the effect of giving each of those interviewed a sweaty tan and if my mind wandered, which it often does in such interviews, to their surroundings to garner something of the backdrop by way of further information, this was effectively shielded from the viewer. I noticed very early on that during interviews no questions were to be heard, and as the series went on I concluded that we were in fact not aware of what questions were being asked or answered. In serial answers like those given, we have no impression what – if any – response the anonymous interviewer(s) might have made to statements from persons like Padraig Flynn or PJ Mara. Surely something might have been said to some of what Padraig Flynn said, if only in response to his eyebrows!
It is evident that the interviewer(s) were not wearing microphones and that their questions were not recorded for broadcast. All of this raises questions of editorial direction, and my contention is that the series as a whole had little if any editorial direction.
The commentary script was similarly constructed, in the sense in which it referred back to nothing which had been uttered by any of the contributors by way of back reference of surprise, dissent or disgust.
Certainly Mr Flynn and Mr Mara, Dermot Desmond and Ben Dunne all warranted some editorial positioning from the authors of the series. The music, which was not credited, played a significant role at times to set the mood. The solo female voice and the solo piano added a dimension to the editorial content, which was otherwise authorless. The programme series did not have a point of view, any point of view. Everything was without comment, the good and the bad and the ugly. Leave it all up to the viewers to make up their minds with the guidance of PJ Mara.
The basic flaw in this series was the decision to proceed without Mr Haughey. Should they have proceeded at all without him? With its backward look over the shoulder at the Man in Kinsealy, the series was unable to establish an editorial independence.
Muiris Mac Conghail was editor of RTɧs 7 Days programme 1967-1971, and controller of programmes RTɠtelevision 1977-1980 and 1983-1986. He was assistant secretary, Department of the Taoiseach and head of government information services 1973-1975. He lectured in the School of Media, Dublin Institute of Technology, 1993 -2004.
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07.05.05
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 10:06 pm by
The series has now finished; I have to catch up on a few episodes. I wasn’t fanatical about watching them all because a lot of the same old people said the same old things. Principally, he was a great legislator and the end was all so tragic. Others point out that even though he took the money he didn’t actually do anything in return so somehow that’s ok. If rich people wanted to support him financially, so what? Didn’t he do great things while in power so it was worth it.
What this analysis fails to acknowledge is that the rich people wouldn’t have supported him unless he was in power. Therefore he had to get power and retain it so that his lifestyle would be supported. This meant that he was prepared to do anything regardless of the cost to his country or his colleagues. That ‘anything’ did not mean getting the Dunne’s tax bill reduced, instead it meant campaigning against the Anglo-Irish agreement. It meant almost bankrupting the country in the early 1980’s and then screwing poor people to save us from the IMF in the 87-89 period. His political actions were never based on whether they were right or wrong in themselves but on how they might get him into power.
He gets credit for laying the foundations of the Peace Process by letting Mansergh start talks in the early 90’s. In fact he warned Mansergh that if his talks were discovered he would disown him completely and say he had acted without government authority. He took no personal or political risk in the matter himself. He called the 1989 election when a bill proposed by the opposition was passed which would have given a measley 400k to the Haemophiliacs who had been infected with Aids as a result of appalling mismanagement by the state run blood bank. Up until the point he took office, we could say that regardless of which party was in power, the cabinet posts were always held by men of relatively humble means and there was no association between power and money. Haughey ended that.
As far those who were close to him and now claim to be astonished by all the revelations, I say bullshit. I was 10 when he became Taoiseach and I remember the absolute horror by the opposition, the meeja and a lot of his own party. He was a bully, a phone tapper and he saw the state’s money as his own. How is Bertie Ahern in power when he co-signed the cheques that paid for dinner with Ms Keane? It is astounding. He is a liar and a cheat and a fraud. His legacy is a political system where standards are so low no one is ever expected to resign. Unless there are in Fine Gael. It will be 20 years before the country recovers from his malign influence.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 3:53 pm by
btw, I have been reading Portrait. Very slowly it must be said. Anyway, it is exactly as I described the ‘genre’ in my article. Stephen wandering around absorbed in himself and his self-conscious superiority to everyone else. I did enjoy the lecture by the priest on the retreat. Liveliest bit so far. And the dirty little git has been visiting prostitutes!
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Posted in Uncategorized at 3:48 pm by
Hi, here’s this week’s ST which existing readers can tell has been adapted from previous experience. One note tho’; the powers that be must have tried to replace an ‘it’ with a noun but picked the wrong one. I am a little person and could never pick up a television never mind throw one anywhere. On the other hand I have destroyed at least 2 remote controls in a temper. (quite some time ago; contrary to the headline I am learning self-control with regard to some issues).
I?m useless at any kind of control except remote
I finally caved in and rang Sky. Or rather, I had my sister ring Sky (which, in the interests of openness I should point out is 35% owned by News International, owner of The Sunday Times) so we could avail of the introduce-a-friend offer that gives a €30 Dunnes Stores voucher to the subscriber and friend. I had felt virtuous and by no means deprived in four-channel land. On the one hand, I could adopt a morally superior tone when conversation inevitably turned towards the latest reality television programme. On the other, with EastEnders shown on RTE1, Bear in the Big Blue House on RTE2 and Champions League on TV3, all significant constituents in the household were catered for. The existence of the unwatched but potentially educational TG4 added to my Pharisee-like declarations of disdain for satellite dishes.
The only serious downside was the news. TV3’s has aspirations without the budget, while RTE’s would be watchable if Anne Doyle would tone down the makeup and Charlie Bird toned down his voice. The other minor inconvenience related to the wire hanger that acted as an aerial. It had to be adjusted to each channel resulting in tuning disasters if a toddler knocked it over or a large truck rumbled by.
While creating some frustration, this also contributed to domestic harmony by rendering the remote control useless. Other than the housework row and the driving row, the only disruption to marital bliss in our urban cable days had been the flicking row. Our move to the country had saved me from the onset of epilepsy caused by the rapid fire channel-hopping that my husband sees as a core part of the television experience. This had resulted in the television being flung from our third-storey apartment window on one or two instances. But the hardy little device was now safe from his propensity to overwork it and from my hysteria. I had little to complain about.
But the babysitters did. They complained vociferously. As the breastfeeding winds down and the socialising winds up, I depend upon the kindness of others to get out. Babysitters require food, heat and multiple channels. They usually require money, but as mine are family members they come free. However, this only increases the pressure to create a pleasant environment and wire hangers are not pleasant. So the call was made and the man came out to do the allegedly free installation – free if you didn’t mind miles of cable stapled to your skirting boards. After numerous phone calls, a repeat visit incorporating the attic and writing a cheque, I was handed another remote and several hundred channels.
I sat down to surf feeling more than a little wary. My thumb pressed the “page down” button searching validation for my derision. I found plenty as I noted the shopping channels, children’s channels peppered with advertising and the propagandist Fox News, until I found myself in adult television territory.
As over made-up girls in scarlet underwear caressed their ridiculously large boobs, I was invited to press the red button for the best value in Adult TV. Revelling in indignation, I whipped out the parental control instructions and grappled with pin numbers that would make the purchase of such filth a little more tricky for the over curious tempted by the trailers. Just to be on safe side, I pulled the connection out of the phone line. Cutting off the ability to buy, I was satisfied that at least my fear now had a name: porn.
However, by removing the capacity to act on temptation, it dawned on me why I had revelled in our previous deprivation. With so few channels it was often the case that there was nothing on, thus making it easy to turn off and engage in more productive pursuits.
I felt queasy in the presence of easy access to Seinfeld because what I was faced with was not inherently evil television, but my own weakness. My prior superiority in shunning Big Brother was easily attained when I didn’t have the option. Now, the Sky box performed the role of Satan taking Jesus to the mountain-top and offering him the world. Our Lord said “No” ? would I be so strong? I tried to turn it to my advantage. Proving myself a geek beyond all expectation, I inputted the frequencies for the BBC radio channels on the Astra satellite and tuned in Radio 4. Now there were plays and cultural reviews at my disposal. I even checked out Al-Jazeera but was disappointed to discover that it’s all in Arabic.
For the first few days, I did rather well. Then, reclining on the couch one evening trying to focus on an improving book, the remote stared up at me, begging for attention. Surely one episode of Seinfeld could do no harm? Like the alcoholic falling off the wagon, I was soon treating myself to repeats of Frasier, Mash and Will & Grace, hating the sinner but loving the sin.
Humbled, I reached another turning point in the evolution of my character. I acknowledged my weakness and considered self-absolution and reform. What was the point? If I was going to be a repeat offender I might as well enjoy it. Pass the remote.
end article
(ps I’ve got the babies in the act now. We watched Will & Grace together this afternoon. They seemed amused)
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