[ Tony Gregory in 1986 with Moore St. Traders - from RTE Obituary Gallery ]
Tony Gregory’s death comes straight out of the blue for me - as, from down here in France, I wasn’t even aware he was ill. World by Storm over at Cedar Lounge has posted far more eloquently than I ever will on Tony and his leaving us : ‘Tony Gregory’ by WBS especially so as he had travelled some part of the road with the man (starting out on the East Wall Road).
There is a sad irony that just as economic circumstance forces us to all of a sudden remember that times like the early eighties ever happened at all - Tony Gregory passing away will bring us to reflect on the Gregory Deal. If ever there was a Mephistolean bargain struck - this was the one. Even as a 12 year old, I was a bit miffed that out of 166 TDs elected - just one could hold so much sway. In retrospect, I had to concede that no constituency ever did (or ever will) need it more. I suppose it was somewhat akin to a lottery win or that once in a lifetime treble bet that comes up. Except that the no. 1 gangster didn’t hold onto power long enough to make all the pay out - and the selfsame constituency returned the no. 2 gangster every election since.
Not wishing to be lacking in charity or anything - but a few seconds reflecting on the career of the same Mr. Ahern is sufficient for me to measure the immense value of what Tony Gregory brought to us. Compare and contrast, I think they spoonfed us in the Leaving…
I don’t wish him on God’s right hand side (as they say as Gaeilge) - but on the left hand of Larkin and Connolly - he’d probably be more comfortable there.
[Dieudonné on a French advertising pillar in a characteristically tasteful advert for a previous one-man-show]
In bringing in the new year (that thus far doesn’t look like being much of an improvement on the fetid worm-ridden stool we just left in the toilet bowl of time) I get to use for the first time a tag created by either Conor or Donagh. It took until now for me to find someone fully deserving of this particular term - but Mr. Dieudonné M’bala M’bala, you most certainly appear to me to be a fully paid-up ‘fuckwit’.
For those of you, I assume the majority, not up to speed with the world of French ‘comedy’ - Dieudonné * (literally ‘Godgiven’) is a ‘humourist’ whose career stretches back about 15 years. Like most of his generation of (half-decent) French comics, he first came to prominence on the Canal+ pay channel - performing sketches during their primetime slot with, among others, the very irritating (but not quite ‘fuckwit’) Elie Semoun. This is not necessarily a bad place to start out from (take Antoine De Caunes, for one). However, around about the time of the 9-11 attacks, the French media began to have slight worries about the wiring in Dieudonné’s head. By now, I myself am convinced that it was done by the same dodgy spark that wired my Peugeot 306. He (Dieudonné, je veux dire) has rarely been out of the news since due to a never-ending series of ‘dérapages’ (literally ’slips’) in his media pronouncements and in his shows. Much of his little act appears to me to be the age-old (and tiresome) Parisian urge to be more ‘provocateur’ than the next man but there is a most unhealthy undercurrent to it all smacking of the festering anti-semitism that never seems to go away in certain quarters in France. Continue Reading »
Whatever perverse and random force decides on these things, Christmas Eve saw the varied talents of Pinter and Eartha Kitt beamed up together to join the queue somewhere behind the Cruiser. I won’t hazard a guess as to what they’re queuing up for.
Not ever having been too comfortable with the peculiar sort of milieu that is ‘the Theatre’ - and the somewhat annoying people required to keep it ticking over, I suppose I only admired Pinter from a bit of a remove.
I could see he owed a considerable debt to Beckett. Had also remarked he served part of his theatrical apprenticeship touring smalltown Ireland in the early 50s wherein must lie an interesting film scenario. In connection with cinema, he wrote the screenplays / dialogue to a few 60s/70s films I quite liked but the titles of which can’t care to recall now.
Before his Nobel prize, it was observed pointedly in some quarters that Dublin honoured his 75th (I think it was) birthday with a Festival where London kept its hands firmly in its pockets. Some slight restitution for Dublin’s past indifference to its own literary giants while they were still living. His name also happens to be a strange reflexive verb in colloquial French - strange in that they have taken an English noun and turned it into a verb - meaning ‘to get sloshed’ - ’se pinter’ usually seen alongside ‘la gueule’. No direct link to Pinter but I’m sure he’d have a slight sideways smile at this linguistic migration.
In turn, he gets a sideways tribute - not an extract from one of his plays, from a film he scripted or even from a documentary - but a band he lent a name to. Nick Cave, contrary to appearances, is not the son of a brimstone preacherman but of an English teacher. This perhaps explains why he took the name of his second group from Pinter’s most famous play. Here they are playing at a gig that was apparently recorded to be re-broadcast in Channel 4’s first week of existence in 1982 (more of that anon) :
The track in question is ‘Hamlet Pow Pow Pow’ - refers to another great London-based playman, Mr. Pinter, though one that’s gone a little longer.
For once on You Tube, this vid has a comment by someone with something of interest to say, a certain Duncan : Continue Reading »
Sod yer Urbi et Orbi, yer Queen’s Speech and whatever passes for all-uniting festive morale-boosting propaganda broadcasts in Ireland (probably Frank (Head) Pig assuring us we can safely tuck into that rump of dioxin-infested ham) Over here at the Dublin Opinion bedsit, during the brief Christmas respite when we manage to crawl out from under the pile of pine needles shed by that fucking cheapo Christmas tree, it’s a pack of scallies from the Wirral we hear in our twisted Festive imagination, so here goes :
Greatest Christmas song since ‘Fairytale’, I reckon. A gift pack of half a dozen stale mince pies to whoever can pinpoint the moment Joey Barton appears in the afore-mentioned vid and what offence he’s evidently guilty of…
A pity HMHB will never be seen on a stage over in our beloved dioxin-free land - due to leadsinger Nigel being the Denis Bergkamp of Indie. Actually, he’s even worse than Bergkamp, as he even has a phobia about taking ferries.. Barring drastic progress in the technology of teleportation, you’re all going to have to drag your sorry arses over to Blighty to see them on a stage between now and we die.
Happy Christmas to all - with the obligatory dose of cliché and cynicism, right enough…
There was much talk recently about the reaction in the international business community to the shenanigan’s of FitzPatrick and his 87 million euro hidden loans, about which the Irish Financial Regulator knew everything while negotiating the Irish government’s bank guarantee scheme. The Lex column in the Financial Times, for example, called it ‘cosy capitalism’. While that is perhaps a rather mild way of describing the situation, it is nonetheless apt.
While discussing the recapitalization of Anglo Irish Bank, AIB and Bank of Ireland the Lex column continued with its realistic analysis, saying that the level of capitalization provided by the government still leaves the levels of capital adequacy in the Irish banks well below those UK and other European banks who have already been part nationalized.
Brian Lenihan and Brian Cowen are arguing that recapitalisation is needed to get the banks lending to small and medium sized business and ‘first time buyers’. This is simply not credible (completely ignoring for a moment the idea that relying on the property market to rebuild the economy is complete madness), and the claim that Anglo Irish Bank is still important for the Irish economy is being mocked by Morgan Kelly who says it would be better to burn the money than give it Anglo Irish Bank.
More importantly, says the Lex column, there is only one way that Irish banks could ever meet the government’s target of an extra 30% to first time buyers or 10% to small and medium sized business: nationalization.
The government is stipulating that the recapitalised banks must provide an extra 30 per cent capacity for lending to first-time buyers next year and at least an additional 10 per cent for lending to small and medium-sized enterprises. This will be hard to enforce in the absence of a full nationalisation of the banking system. Ireland’s big banks are on the same glide path to state ownership and control as their part-nationalised UK peers. Capital ratios at that point hardly matter.
Instead of the part nationalization of Irish banks, which is what has already happened with Anglo, what should happen is that the government should use the National Pension Reserve Fund to set up a state bank which would lend to the coveted small and medium sized businesses and help people renegotiate their mortgages. After all, those mortgages were originally for properties which were overvalued in the first place as a result of the unethical practices of Irish banking. Some form of package to help people renegotiate their mortgage is going to be needed to avoid large scale repossessions which would flatten any banks capitalization levels anyway. Then the private banks, who will get at least something from the state bank for the mortgages they have on their books, would have to fend for themselves without further state aid. They have always claimed to be adequately capitalized, they have always advocated that the market is all, so what’s the problem?
But back in the real world, perhaps the most stunning piece of information coming out about Anglo Irish Bank today appeared in the last paragraph of the article on the front page of the Irish Times (in the print version) this morning:
It has emerged that the Government increased the size of its planned investment in Anglo by half in the final hours of talks. Mr. Lenihan was offering €1 billion up to lunchtime on Sunday but raised the offer to €1.5 billion in the face of tough negotiation by the bank.
At the time of writing the share price for Anglo is about 21c. One wonders what sort of leverage Anglo managers had over the Minister. Did a few of them hold him down while one of the senior negotiators twisted his nipples with a dessert fork, or did they threaten to flambé his barnet with some 40 year old brandy and the hot end of a lit cigar?
I suspect though the conversation over dinner on Sunday evening went something like this:
Lenihan: Okay so, to wrap this up so we can hit the bar in earnest, Anglo Irish Bank will get 1 Billion euro of the Government’s non-taxpayer based slush fund, which comes from god knows where, and you guys have to do, I dunno, some sort of internal enquiry thing at the end of which someone, somewhere get their knuckles wrapped, metaphorically speaking.
Anglo Irish Bastard: woooaahhhhhh-wait a secondo there, Brian. 1 Billion? I was talking to this fellow in the jacks moments ago, who comes from your office, I think, and he assured me it would be 1.5. You can’t get nuttin for 1 billion these days, Brian.
Lenihan: No, absolutely not. 1 Billion is as high as I go. Your banks recent behaviour has been (pauses while he searches for an adequate word) disappointing.
Anglo Irish Bastard: But, for fuck’s sake Brian, IT’S CHRISTMAAAAAS!
Lenihan: (swirling his brandy glass and musing).hhhhhmmmm
Anglo Irish Bastard: (sings: jingle bells)
Lenihan: (smiles) Well, seeing as you put it that way, okay.
Happy Xmas to everyone who happens by here to read and comment from time to time. It’s much appreciated.
Warning for Donagh - this post may or may not mention football … Avert your eyes now !
A post resulting from more deadtime spent on YouTube - I’ve a lot of that recently due to the wonderful French employment market for blokes with funny accents.
Anyhow, had heard a cover on the radio of great 80/90s French stroke World stroke Punk band Mano Negra sung in an Australian accent. I thought initially it was Robert Forster but no DJ came on to enlighten me. Off then to YouTube where I was sure I’d come up with the answer. As ever, looking for A, I started off finding R, W and possibly Z. R being for Henry Rollins - who has his own talkshow now (makes consummate sense - the man could talk to the Olympic qualifying standard *). Among the guests performing and interviewed, one Manu Chao - ex frontman of Mano Negra, so let’s start from there :
Around this time of year, if you’re like me, you’re waiting eagerly for a wee bearded man dressed in red trimmed with white, hailing from the grim North - who weaves his special wee bit of magic - George Best, no less..
I have to thank my Derry namesake over here in the arse-end of France, Brian, for this one. Brian, in turn, got it from some heads at the Guardian who appear to be paid to find rubbish for us to look at on YouTube (now there’s a job I’ve got time and the intellectual baggage for!!!). Not that the below film clip is rubbish. It is a 10 minute extract from a feature length film by German avant garde filmmaker Hellmuth Costard entitled ‘Fußball wie noch nie’ - something along the lines of ‘Football as you’ve never seen it before’ :
According from the lads from The Guardian :
In 1970 the German avant garde director Hellmuth Costard made a film focusing entirely on George Best’s performance for Manchester United against Coventry. Here’s an extract which begins with a lingering look at Best’s face and culminates with him scoring. Think this is weird? Colthard’s previous film is an hour-long portrait of a hausfrau, played by a man, as she goes about her/his business in the kitchen.
After rather distractedly following a link from Stephen Kinsella’s blog I came across the compellingly titled The Irish Economy. The inaugural entry posted on the 7th of December reads:
Hello
This is a new initiative that has the goal of facilitating discussion of the Irish economy. Stay tuned for postings from a highly-qualified pool of contributing economists.
Thank you for visiting,
Philip Lane.
And indeed the list of contributors is impressive, providing entries from those economists who have recently become household names (at least in the households that read the Irish Times, listen to RTE Radio 1 and watch Prime Time).
Some people reading this may be familiar with Alan Ahearne for example, or Patrick Honohan. But other luminaries include Kevin O’Rourke who, like Honohan, appears with relative frequency on Vox EU, a similar initiative that brings together international economic opinion to provide succinct and (relatively) easy to understand articles on current issues in economics.
Today’s post from Philip Lane is interesting, especially as one reads about the sketchy details around the recapitalization plan and the decreasing value of Anglo Irish Bank stock.
The ECB has released its latest Financial Stability Review. From a domestic perspective, the report highlights that Ireland has seen the sharpest decline in commercial property values, from the fastest-growing market in early 2007 to the greatest contraction in 2008, with the gap growing over the course of the last few months. Similarly, the Irish residential property market is the worst performing in the euro area.
Donagh’s Reaction: Never heard of it until a couple of minutes ago, when I found out it came second in the Critics list on the Guardian. What a fucking bunch of twats those Guardian music critics are. Not for making Bon Iver second, but just because it gives me a smidgen of gratification to say that. Iver’s record sounds nice. Not ace enough though.
(6) Lisa Hannigan “Sea Sew” (Self-release)
Donagh’s Reaction: Never heard of it.
(7) Fleet Foxes “Fleet Foxes” (Bella Union)
Donagh’s Reaction: Ace
(8) RSAG “Organic Sampler” (Psychonavigation)
Donagh’s Reaction: Ace. Saw him play support to the Fall – one man drumming machine.
(9) The Gaslight Anthem “The ‘59 Sound” (Side One Dummy)
Donagh’s Reaction: Never heard of it.
(10) Hercules & Love Affair “Hercules & Love Affair” (DFA)
Donagh’s Reaction: Never heard of it.
There is 20 in Jim’s list, but I decided to stop there before I embarrass myself further revealing to the world by almost total ignorance of what is cool in contemporary pop music right now.
Incidentially, TV on the Radio’s Dear Science made number 1 in the Guardian’s music critics list: twats!
Again, the insult is not connected to my opinion of the album, which, as I said, I think is ace.
Did I ever tell you about the time I went to see TV on the Radio live recently in the Tripod? No…no I don’t think I did.
Here’s my favourite track from Dear Science: Golden Age
Enjoy.
As part of the effort to get a debate going around Michael Taft’s proposals in his article Towards a New Economic Narrative, which we published in Irish Left Review recently, I contacted a number of people to see if they’d like to respond. The reaction has been quite encouraging and a number of them have said that they’d write a response.
Earlier on in the week we published an excellent piece by Dr. Terrence McDonough of the Dept of Economics at NUI, Galway, in which he puts the current financial crisis in the context of recent economic history, and then moves on to deal with Michael’s proposals in turn.
And today we have an article by Dan Boyle, Senator and Party Chair of the Green Party, which gives the Green’s point of view on the proposals.
From a Green perspective there is little I would disagree with on Michael Taft’s analysis. Differences where they exist are more to do with emphasis than philosophical direction. Budget 2009, contrary to much of the reportage of its contents subsequently, has quite clearly hitched itself to a borrowing wagon than it has to the curbing of public expenditure or additional taxation measures. Close on 13 billion euro is being sought in borrowing in 2009 and this could rise to 15 billion given the further deterioration in taxation receipts in 2008.
As part of the effort to get a debate going around Michael Taft’s proposals in his article