A Different Ball Game: The GAA up North

I've written an article on the social and political issues facing the GAA in Northern Ireland for the GAA website "An Fear Rua". It comes in two parts:

A Different Ball Game: Part I

A Different Ball Game: Part II

Ryanair boss O’Leary gets called nasty names by writer in Northern Irish political journal

"Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone
It’s with O’Leary in the grave”
The above quotation from WB Yeats’ poem September 1913 appears to prove the expression what goes around comes around. Although the poem was written
almost a century ago it could quite easily apply to the present day, but the contemporary O’Leary is not in the grave (although many disgruintled former Ryanair passengers may wish he was) and in fact represents the antithesis of Yeats' misty eyed idealised notion of saints and scholars dancing around a circle of standing stones - ie Ireland’s (if not Europe’s) least popular businessman Michael O’Leary, head honcho at Europe’s least popular airline Ryanair.
Anyway, to get to the point, the latest issue of Fortnight, Northern Ireland’s monthly (not fortnightly, despite the title – a potential goldmine for a raft of Irish jokes) political and cultural journal recently arrived on my door mat courtesy of the Arm’s Belfast correspondent. In it there are articles by our occasional contributor, the very same (or should that be “very sane”?) Phil Larkin on the SDLP and our one-off contributor Andrew Charles on Fianna Fáil moving north (remember folks – you saw them here first!), but what caught my eye was a piece on Ryanair’s top man. John O’Farrell (apparently not the same guy who wrote Things Can Only Get Better: Eighteen Miserable Years in the Life of a Labour Supporter) makes it clear from the start that he’s not terribly fond of Michael O’Leary or the socio-economic sub-culture that he comes from. Drawing on material from Alan Ruddock’s book Michael O’Leary: a Life in Full Flight, (which he is similarly unimpressed by) O’Farrell launches into a structured character assassination of “The Man We Love to Hate with the airline We Still Keep Using” and his ilk

One particular paragraph stands out:
“The uncomfortable feeling that returned to me continually was not the horrible thought that the odd time that I bought 20 Rothmans from Kestral Corner might have sent this horrible vacuous man to his present stratospheric heights, but the noise he makes. It sent me back to The Bailey in the early ‘80s, to that braying racket of wannabe rich kids high-fiveing each other over sloppy pints of ‘Heino’, and reminded me that for all my liberal tolerance there is still a group of people on this Earth that reduce me to an almost genocidal rage. I still think they’re c***s. I know that their identical descendants are still festering the same waterholes and adoring the waggery and brass neck of their hero Michael O’Leary.
There. I said it. I wholeheartedly recommend this book if you want a terrifying vision of the future, of an economy dominated by men with not a shred of decency, an ounce of humanity or a spit of morality.”

I'm no fan of O'Leary either, but the reputation of a man who thrives on being despised can only be strengthened by such a diatribe. Romantic Ireland dead and gone indeed.

A High Ahern-er - Bertie’s even bigger bulging brown envelope

Would you buy a used car off any of these men?





As I’ve remarked before, coverage of Irish (Republic of at least) politics is virtually non-existent in the UK press unless some major scandal or other momentous event has occurred. Yesterday’s Guardian in its pull-out tabloid section has a short article by the distinguished journalist Henry McDonald on “An Taoiseach” Bertie Ahern and his recent pay rise.
Apparently Bertie’s salary increase of 14.6% to £217,000 has made him the “highest paid leader of the world’s richest nations”. As if he hadn’t already accumulated enough in backhanders…allegedly that is.

Crap joke alert: As speculation continues on the possibility of a merger between Fianna Fáil and the SDLP, one important question remains. If FF do merge with the SDLP and set up their northern HQ in Derry will they call themselves Fianna Foyle?
Yes, you’ve guessed it – cue deathly, eerie silence punctuated by the swooshing of tumbleweeds in the wind and the distant clanging of a funeral bell…the day job is still intact.

The Trans-Iberian Express stops yet again in London/Quote of the day
“English football has been struggling to fill the wiry southern European pin-up shaped-hole where football meets the celebrity mainstream, since the departure of Jose Mourinho.
Where Mourinho turned up resembling a recently retired menswear model turned Mafioso power-broker, Ramos looks more like a really tough chip-shop owner. Or, on a bad day, Pat Butcher after an experiment with Grecian 2000.”

Barney Ronay in The Guardian on Tottenham’s new manager Juande Ramos.

Shock Horror – National Anthems played at international rugby match!

Isaac shows who's the Boss

The match certainly lived up to its expectations and the atmosphere at Croke Park was electric – you could even tell this from the TV! I’ve been to All-Ireland finals at Croker, but this was something else, despite the rain pissing down throughout the game. The better team won by a mile and they certainly had the overwhelming psychological advantage. It's a fantastic stadium and about time it got the international exposure it deserves.

Then of course, there was the small matter of the playing of a certain national anthem. A rather silly and pointless debate which was milked and hyped up for all its worth by the media on both sides of the Irish Sea. It’s standard practice to play the anthems of both teams at international sporting fixtures, so to suggest anything else is simply irrelevant.

It looks like the ghosts of Croke Park’s past have finally been laid to rest.

Dublin burning: the aftermath

Substantial comment and analysis of this story has featured heavily within the Irish blogosphere and beyond over the weekend, with most observers (some of them eyewitnesses with their own pictures to prove it) condemning the disgraceful acts which took place. I won’t repeat what’s already been said, but will merely add my tuppence worth of comment. It’s a sad day for civil liberties and freedom of speech when a peaceful march, regardless of its political motives is prevented from proceeding through the streets of the capital city of a civilised western democracy.

With scenes in Dublin on Saturday more reminiscent of Belfast or Derry, what amazes me is why the Gardai didn’t mount a much stronger security and intelligence operation given the likelihood of trouble. They obviously knew that RSF were planning a counter demonstration, so surely they should also have known that the troublemakers within were intent on stopping the Love Ulster/FAIR march. Instead the Gardai were made to look like the Keystone cops. It will be interesting to see what (if any) level of consultation took place with the PSNI beforehand.

I was also surprised by the lack of coverage in the British media. Both the main Saturday teatime news bulletins on BBC and ITV ignored the Dublin riots completely, choosing instead to focus on the ongoing investigations into the Kent cash depot robbery, the threat of bird flu in France and a pro-animal testing demonstration in Oxford. Not even a single column inch appeared in Monday’s editions of the Times, Guardian or Independent, save for William Fotheringham’s brief mention of the riots in the opening paragraph of his comment on Ireland’s deserved win over Wales in the Six Nations at Lansdowne Road in the Guardian sports section.