02.22.08
Natwest 3 sentenced
The process moves on another step. Weird, even though they have been sentenced, its good news as it bring them a step closer to getting home.
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Parenting stuff
A quick note: 6 months ago J, then 3 now 4, was going to bed at 7.50 and after a story and settling down would be asleep at 8.15.
The other guy, then 2 now 3, was running around til 830 and maybe asleep at 9. We were reluctant to move bedtime back as they are both early wakers. But, I got sick of the whole racket and moved bedtime back a full hour. I cut out T’s daytime nap too (gradually).
Now J is sound asleep by 7.15 and T by 7.30, 745 latest. The both wake at the same time in the morning anyway and we added an hour to our evening. T took a little while to cope without his daytime nap but crashes out earlier and is fine now. J is in much better form with his extra hour.
Thoroughly recommend the strategy for tired Ma’s and Da’s out there. Especially useful as I’m now sitting here waiting on the babysitter (Betty 
) and we get to leave a quiet house instead of running out the door to the soundtrack of protesting children.
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The Brother and the ladies
The brother is taking over the prestigious position of President of the IAVI in April. He is a very hard working, honourable, honest chap and not bad looking to boot. But what on earth prompted the following extraordinary comment in the Irish Times property section yesterday?
A small comment piece complained that current IAVI President Robert Ganly has done little about the case of Colm McEvoy, a Kildare based auctioneer who had rather shady dealings with a elderly lady landowner and was required by the High Court to pay her compensation. The good Senator Ross has the details.
The IT said:
” The issue clearly won’t go away, even if president Robert Ganly is reluctant to deal with it before his term ends in April.
In that case, the buck will be firmly passed to Edward Carey, who happens to trade along the Meath/Kildare border, but has an impeccable reputation with lady landowners“.
I can only assume the writer has been taken with the brother’s charms and meant the comment as a cheerful flirtation. Still, my sister-in-law has asked Ed to move out pending clarification 
We did get some calls yesterday wondering if he had become a notorious philanderer. I assured them I have the fullest confidence in his fidelity.
He told me that the IAVI has been unable to act over McEvoy since bizarrely, though his case has involved court proceedings, no one has actually complained directly to the IAVI. According to their rules, someone has to complain before their disciplinary proceedings can commence. Which they could have told the Irish Times had they asked. They are consulting lawyers to see if there’s a way around this rule. Of course, the McEvoy case was well known in these parts prior to Ross’s article but people still seem happy to do business with him. No legislating for that.
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02.21.08
Non-political post
Right, since politics is dragging us all down, here’s an MH update.
I’ve been struggling a bit recently – under lots of pressure from different places. I miss my yoga and meditation classes dreadfully but just can’t make it into town for them and am pretty bad at being disciplined enough to practice alone. The great swimming experiment of last year has failed – swimming for half an hour and spending another half hour washing and drying my mop of hair got to me. I feel great after the swim but the hair issue ruins it.
But finally a simple, non-medical, enjoyable, hassle-free therapy has revealed itself. The recent weather is perfect for gardening. I’ve been out with the trowel digging up the soil and mixing peat and compost through it, breaking it all up and getting it ready for planting. No matter how stressed or tired I am, within 10 minutes of digging, picking stones, watching out for weeds, I am rejuvenated and optimistic. And I haven’t even planted anything yet! If a doctor prescribed gardening, you’d probably hit him, but I can thoroughly recommend it.
The other thing is that it seems to be an activity that my husband and I enjoy doing together! This is a breakthrough. We hate each other’s taste in TV and movies (he despises my medical dramas, I can’t abide Champions League nights). I like fast walks on the road, he prefers ambles through the fields. He likes to read the paper and chat at the same time; I want to curl up with a book and not break concentration for an hour. But! here we are, the two of us digging away, happily chatting and planning.
Shallots are our first project. They should be down already but this weekend will have to do. Then lettuce, spinach, scallions (which became spring onions exactly when?) AND we even bought some asparagus. A two year wait but we’ll see. In the meantime the fruit trees are all in; gooseberries, red currants, blackcurrants, rhubarb, apples. Next item on the agenda: protection. Those rabbits will have to be fenced out. Stay tuned for rabbit stew updates…
02.19.08
Q&A
I got the call on Friday. Link here to the show.
My mother accompanied me and I was most grateful. On the way there we ended up heading northbound on M50, a victim of the roadworks which ironically we were admiring instead of focusing on keeping in the correct lane. Then coming home the most dreadful fog! As we approached the M4 toll plaza, it was surreal. The road markings disappeared and we were in a sea of fog. Fortunately I know the way into the plaza and crawled along keeping to the left, to find a Sligo car driving horizontally across the plaza, completely lost. He waited till I went past him and then followed me into the plaza slowly and then followed me out. But even then I ended up perilously close to the crash barriers on the right hand side. Mad stuff.
Anyway, the show was good fun. It was a pleasure to meet the wonderful Kathy Sheridan. I’m a big fan as is my mother. Kathy grew up in a political household (her father was a TD) and feels the spawn of politicians should have counselling. Des Peelo’s tan was impressive and while we disagreed on Bertie I told him later he was right about executives in Howth not using the DART even though its on their doorstep. There is a prejudice against public transport in some quarters. I thought Barry Andrews did well and didn’t suck the life out of the show the way some of his senior cabinet colleagues so often do. And Leo Varadkar is tall, which is always a surprise. People you know only from the telly are usually small. Like me
02.17.08
No dog licence for gay couples
A friend was filling out the application form at her local gym when she noticed that generous discounts were being offered to “couples”. She’s a thrifty type, and resolutely single, and bristled at the better deal available to her smug married friends.
A few days later she was back at the gym with one of her single girlfriends, whose name was entered on the form under the section marked “partner”. The girls defiantly handed over the joint application with a cheque, almost hoping that their implied status as lesbian lovers might be challenged.
Instead the application was received with such grace that they briefly regretted their fraud. That thought was shortlived as they focused on the unfairness of the financial benefits bestowed upon couples. Why should they have to pay more because they are single? Is singledom so deviant that penalties have to be imposed to persuade them out of spinsterhood?
They spread the word and now anarchy reigns. The place is over-run with discounted couples and the management must be wondering why theirs is the gym du jour for lipstick lesbians. The benefit for “normal” couples has disappeared, since any two people can claim the cheaper membership once they organise a joint direct debit. The deal is a joke, and the gym might as well abolish it.
We are not all individuals, whatever the crowd in Monty Python’s Life of Brian may say (in unison). We start out as members of families, which we eventually leave to form new families. Throughout all societies, this process has two aspects. First, people have an irrepressible desire to stand up in front of their friends and family and formally declare their commitment to each other. No-one really has to get married these days, yet it is as popular as ever.
Marriage rates are almost similar to those of the 1950s. The only reason many people need a divorce is so they can remarry – the supposed triumph of hope over experience.
The second feature of marriage is that by extraordinary consensus across all societies, people want their union formally recognised by civil authorities. Marriage confers significant protection on the parties, be it automatic ownership of the family home, inheritance rights and custody of children. Most countries recognise that a formally recognised family unit is a stabilising force in society.
In free and liberal societies – call them permissive if you wish people still like getting married. One third of births today are outside marriage and I’ve been at several weddings where the couple’s children were in attendance. The order of events might be reversed, but the institution is still attractive even when not strictly necessary.
Despite the solidity of that institution, conservatives fret that marriage is under attack. From whom, and where, I can never quite gather. Those who feel that marriage needs defending lost the war on divorce but have found a new battle-ground – same-sex marriage.
There is general agreement that same-sex couples face considerable injustice. Though a homosexual couple can live together for 40 years, they face unfair financial hardship when one partner dies, since they are legally strangers without inheritance rights. That’s just one scenario which has convinced most compassionate people that something has to be done to make life easier for same-sex couples. The tax system aside, same-sex couples want to marry for the same reasons as straight ones – to have their deeply committed relationship formally recognised.
Irish law acknowledges equality for homosexuals as individuals. We’ve set up an Equality Authority to enforce equal rights and an Equality Tribunal to which homosexuals can complain if they suffer discrimination. While the state wants homosexuals to be equal as individuals, for some reason it is hostile to equality once those individuals become a couple. It’s simply not a tenable position and changes are afoot.
But what changes, exactly? There are really only two reasons to deny gay people marriage. The first is the “ick factor” – the inability of those who consider themselves “normal” to get their heads around two men or two women walking down an aisle. Ick.
The second is the fear of annoying highly articulate and organised conservatives. Brian Lenihan, the justice minister, has predicted that a referendum on gay marriage would be divisive. Because we don’t actually need a referendum, his warning seemed a subtle threat to homosexuals not to stir up the right wingers.
To save us a row, and because we feel a bit icky about which is the bride and which the groom, gay couples are being offered a “civil partnership”. It wouldn’t be a marriage as such, more a mechanism by which cohabiting, same-sex couples could register their relationship and then avail of tax benefits. Senator David Norris, who so bravely fought for the decriminalisation of homosexuality, has called the proposal nothing more than a dog licence for gays.
The government obviously feels that the dog licence route will be less trouble than allowing same-sex couples a proper marriage. Perhaps they hope it will keep the gays quiet without upsetting the conservatives too much.
The logic of this position escapes me. If civil partnership is made available to same-sex couples, it’s an inevitability that other kinds of couples will have to be allowed register their partnerships too. That means that straight couples could become civil partners, even though they also have the option of getting married.
In the UK a case has emerged in which a cohabiting brother and sister wish to become civil partners in order to alleviate the burden of inheritance tax. My spinster friend and her gym partner could also chose to become civil partners, if the management suddenly get stroppy. The benefits conferred upon properly married couples would, like the gym discount, become meaningless as all forms of partnership would be recognised.
So conservatives shouldn’t agree to a half-baked civil partnership concession. Those who wish to defend the institution of marriage should instead argue that gay couples be entitled to nothing less than full marriage equality. Spain, which has a Catholic heritage as strong as ours, recently introduced gay marriage for these reasons. Marriage should be all or nothing. Since something must be done for same-sex couples then it has to be all – a proper marriage – not the dog licence.
Norris is joining a new campaign, MarriagEquality, which launches tomorrow. I’m looking forward to watching opponents explain why homosexuals are entitled to equality before the law in everything except marriage. Watch them try not to say “Ick”.
02.15.08
Fundraising
Not sure how well-heeled my readers are. A friend of mine Siobhan Darcy is organising a ball to raise money for a hospital for women with vaginal fistula in Niger. By coincidence I separately know Fran Whelan, one of the architects for the new hospital. Anyway, if anyone feels like dressing up and supporting the ball, the details are here. I’m getting my guna out…..
McNally on Denis
hee hee. Frank has a nice take today.
“It was good of John Delaney to cover for me the way he did, but now that Denis has been outed, it’s only a matter of time before somebody leaks the full story to the red-tops. So you might as well find out here. Yes, I am the mystery benefactor who put up the other half of Giovanni Trapattoni’s salary.
Before I explain the motivation behind my offer, let me assure the public that – as in Mr O’Brien’s case – there were no strings whatsoever attached.
The choice of manager was entirely a matter for the three-man selection panel. Nor does my investment entitle me to any influence over team selection, beyond a verbal understanding that if Robbie Keane ever revives his annoying bow-and-arrow goal celebration, he will be dropped for the next two games.
Like Denis’s, my offer was born from simple altruism. Life has been good to both of us. My South American mining interests continue to be very lucrative, thank God.
And when I took that 5 per cent share in a start-up company called Google some years ago, I could hardly have foreseen how it would flourish…..
Until Wednesday, I thought mine was the only contribution to the new manager’s salary. It was, frankly, a little disappointing to learn that Denis had had the same idea. When I floated the proposal to the FAI last July – er, I mean the day after Steve Staunton’s resignation in November – they seemed genuinely surprised.”
He goes on to tie in nicely to Bertie and the dig-outs. Worth reading.
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02.14.08
The Dubliner
Long and interesting piece by Max McGuinness in the Dubliner. Not least because it features ME!!
St. Denis
We should send him Valentine Cards. What a guy. Why let money stand in the way of Ireland getting the best? Truly hath no man greater love for his country than to pay for a first class soccer manager.*
*we’ll leave the tax bit out of it for now.
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