By
noeleenm on February 28th, 2006
The ‘Love Ulster’ group from Northern Ireland asked for, and was granted, permission to march down O’Connell Street last Saturday to commemorate Protestants who had been murdered during the Troubles. They wanted to carry the Union Jack, along with lists of their dead, and march with their bands down the Republic’s ‘Main Street’.
Now Ulster Unionists, complete with bands, marching past the G.P.O., where Padraic Pearse read the Proclamation of Independence in 1916, seemed to more people than Gint to be more than a little provocative. If they wanted to remember their dead, some people asked, why not remember the dead on both sides, and why not remember them in a less militaristic fashion.
The Irish Government took the view that they were entitled to freedom of expression – and a lot of people agreed with them, as did so many people agree that it was perfectly in order for Danish newspapers to publish cartoons that most Muslims found grossly offensive. Sinn Fein warned its members to stay away from the street entirely on that day, and not to rise to what they saw as a ‘bait’. Provisional Sinn Fein, however, a much, much smaller organisation, publicly recruited people to a counter-protest to stop the ‘Orangemen’ marching down O’Connell Street. They did it so publicly that they published it in their newspaper – ‘Saoirse’ (Freedom) – sold openly on the streets and in public houses.
Rumours of pending trouble circulated everywhere, but it seems as if the Government didn’t hear them, because when Provisional Sinn Fein started their protest last Saturday and were quickly corralled by the Gardaà (police), apparently that’s all the trouble that was expected. Instead, hundreds, if not thousands, of young people from the poorest areas of the inner city stormed out to stop the march. They didn’t belong to any political organisation, many of them wore Celtic scarves over their faces, and they used rubble conveniently left in the middle of the street from ongoing road works to pelt the Gardaà (by now joined by riot police), who tried to contain them.
Shop windows were broken, looting took place, car drivers were terrorised in side streets… The ‘Love Ulster’ people were shepherded back onto their coaches, when it became apparent that they were never going to get into O’Connell Street, and driven to Leinster House, home of the Irish Parliament, where they held a quick protest rally, before going safely home across the Border. Meanwhile, protesters who followed the buses turned the south side of the Liffey into a battleground, too, especially Nassau Street and the offices of the Political Democrats, to which minority party our Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, belongs.
Hours later, the city was quiet again, and the cost was counted as a well organised clean-up operation swung into operation.
Blame for starting the counter-protest was allotted to official Sinn Fein, as well as the provisionals, by the established parties who fear the rise of Sinn Fein in the coming General Election, and by the very many people who simply do not accept that Sinn Fein has changed. Other people – including myself – wondered if the lack of preparedness for an event that so many people expected to erupt into big, bad trouble was not deliberate, so that Sinn Fein republicanism would once more look as if it was returning to its military roots.
Almost everybody, though, including again myself, felt that most of the hooliganism that happened on Saturday had nothing whatsoever to do with patriotism: it was the sort of mindless violence that you unfortunately see so often at football matches, perpetrated by people who have no interest in football. The only real winners in it were Ian Paisley’s followers, for whom ‘Irish Republicans’ south of the border had lived up to their most vitriolic descriptions.
Ireland – the Ireland of song and dance and story – was shamed by Saturday’s violence. Dublin – the city that played proud host to ‘Riverdance’ – was brought to its knees.
But yesterday I read an article on indymedia Ireland, backing up a photostory of the riots, that analysed Saturday’s events in a way that I had only seen touched on very briefly elsewhere. While I didn’t agree totally with its analysis of the situation, it certainly looked at what happened on the streets of Dublin in a much more balanced, and seemingly informed, way than anything else I have read so far.
It described the Dublin of James Connolly and Big Jim Larkin and James Plunkett, rather than the Ireland of Padraic Pearse and Eamon deValera and Michael Collins. But Labour today, no more than Fianna Fail nor Fine Gael, seem to understand that Ireland. They’re out of touch with the poor. They’re out of touch with a widening divide. And until they attempt to understand and to heal that divide, instead of scoring cheap political points to keep an emerging opposition down, then the people who hang on to the underbelly of the Celtic Tiger may continue to see patriotism defined in a totally different way than Minister McDowell and his supporters.
And Dublin, and Ireland, will be the poorer for it.
Posted in Ireland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 28th, 2006
Last Thursday night I showed the video ‘Riverdance’ to Elke, Michele, Gint, and Elke’s friend, Anna, from the Phillipines. Organising a video of anything in our house is a major production, as I don’t – and won’t – have a television in our living areas, so both video machine and video were borrowed. There were mutterings from the lads, who love televison, about an ‘historic occasion’…
It had all started because Michele, who loves Salsa dancing as well as television, tried to teach me the steps one night in the kitchen, to much laughter. I then started to teach him the basic step in céilà dancing (Irish group dancing) for reels and jigs. We each seemed to develop at least one extra foot in the process (the one we both kept falling over), but enjoyed ourselves immensely nonetheless.
Since then we’ve been promising ourselves to go ‘as a family’ some night to a céilÃ, but meanwhile I asked had any of them seen ‘Riverdance’…?
They hadn’t. They’d heard of the phenomenon, but hadn’t actually seen it.
Now, for anyone who doesn’t know what ‘Riverdance’ is we have to go back to the Eurovision Song Contest held in Dublin’s Point Depot in Ireland in 1994. A seven minute Irish dance ‘routine’ was put together for the intermission, and it brought a sophisticated Irish audience, generally blasé about our own dance, roaring to their feet in approval. Irish people all over the world, watching the show on television, reacted in much the same way.
Why? Well, for many, many Irish people being Irish still matters. We’re an island race, and we’ve never really lost our identity. Music and dancing, as in most cultures, connects into that pride like an intravenous feed into the bloodstream.
But, while music, whether solo or group, was celebrated by adults, individual dancing – as distinct from the group dancing of céilÃs – had become the province of small children in Ireland, particularly little girls. They danced in lovely embroidered costumes, they kept their arms rigidly alongside poker-straight little bodies, and they wore their hair in cute ringlets. Little boys had to be dragged to it, even without the ringlets.
When ‘Riverdance’ exploded onto the Point stage, pounding out a hard hornpipe rhythm, with arms raised, and adult bodies swaying and exulting in movement, Irish dancing had returned to its roots. It was sexy. It was exciting. The Celtic Tiger threw back its head, and roared…
The following year, ‘Riverdance’ became a full-length show that sold out in Dublin, and by the following year it was selling out in Radio City Music Hall, New York. Twelve years on ‘Riverdance’ has played all over the world, celebrating its 5,000th performance in Edinburgh and San Francisco in 2002, with two companies at present touring Europe and North America, and a third company performing in Ireland each summer.
So I put the video into the machine on Thursday night, sat back, and tapped my feet.
My young foreign friends loved the show. People always do, because it’s fast, heady, exciting, rhythmic, and it’s as Irish as you can get…
Then, last Saturday, Dublin hosted another ‘show’…
Gint and myself were alone in the house and he looked in amazement as I hurled myself across the kitchen to turn up the radio as the news began to break.
 ”What’s going on?”, he queried, constantly, as I tried to explain the background to the riots in O’Connell Street. When I explained that it was a counter-protest against a march by the Unionists down O’Connell Street, he gaped at me.
“They walk down O’Connell Street! The Unionists from the North!”
 Gint is a political animal. And there was no doubt whose side he was on in the affair.
 ”It is like the Russians decide to march through Riga. It is provo… provo…”
“Provocation”, I supplied, “but it’s not that simple…”
Posted in House Family, Ireland | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 24th, 2006
Just as in the physical world, you seem to meet the worst of people – and the best of people – in the ‘virtual reality’ of the internet.
I am constantly surprised by the generosity of many IT people. They share ideas, graphics, technology, programs, and go to a great deal of trouble to try to explain ‘how it’s done’ in plain English to the fascinated but stupid apprentice web-magician.
As in the ‘real world’, this level of generosity often seems to bear a direct relationship to the level of skill of the master. People who know very little often seem to want to share even less. People who know a great deal share that knowledge in a totally non-patronising, and often very enthusiastic, way.
I’ve found it with Peter McCourt of InterActive Training, I’ve found it with the IT guy who looks after our computers here and who last year spent much of a weekend transforming a video file into a usable mpg for a community site I look after, and I found it again when I went looking for a Theme to use for this blog.
The Dragonfly Theme by Isnaini.com was one of very many ‘free themes’ I looked at then, and it was the one that I immediately knew I wanted as the background to the stories of Ireland that I would write. The colours were perfect (they’re the colours used since its foundation by Aer Lingus, Ireland’s national airline), the design was simple and elegant, but the photo, though a study of exquisite beauty, did not show an image that brought Ireland immediately to mind…
Dragonflies exist here, of course, but to me this photograph represents much more Isnaini’s part of the world – Indonesia – with the delicate beauty of the dragonfly hovering over a lush deep background. I needed something more homely, more symbolic of the way people of all nationalities gather together in a sheltered place to talk and exchange stories, and in Ireland that’s usually the kitchen.
So I took an old globe that is well out of date, but on which I first learned about far flung places from a beloved older brother, and placed it on the dining room table looking out into our kitchen, which is where most of our house family’s conversations take place. And I lit it and I shot it, and then I cannibalised Isnaini’s beautiful page – and then I thought about copyright.
I wrote to Isnaini and explained my story and posted the ‘rearranged’ page for him to see, and humbly asked permission to use his lovely design in this way. I would, of course, use any form of acknowledgement he wished.
Within 24 hours I had an e-mail back, giving me permission, telling me that if I “wished†it would be nice to have a link back to his site, but that he liked what I’d done with his design, and was glad to hear that I had like his… Liked it – wow!
I’ll never take photographs like Isnaini. I’ll never understand search engines like Peter. But I hope someday I get the chance to pass on some of the things I’ve learned about web sites from people like them. And I hope I do it with their generosity – and grace.
Posted in IT friends | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 24th, 2006
Odd things can happen on the internet, as I learned to my cost last weekend.
I opened my e-mail to find my in-box flooding with returned ‘spam’. Now it’s bad enough to get spam, despite my best attempts to filter it out, but to send it…? I’m absent-minded, but I didn’t think I’d reached that point.
I knew I hadn’t when I opened one of the rejected e-mails and found the message ‘I’ had sent out was trying to sell Viagra. (I don’t know whether I was more offended by the content that went out under my name, or the spelling.)
The mail shot had gone out cloaked behind an e-mail address constructed from a domain name that I had registered. I had never used the domain name, never put up a site, never created an e-mail address with it, and cancelled it a few months later.
I had bought the domain name during a ‘Red Nose Charity Day’ special offer from NamesCo, and it was on a month-by-month, no obligation, basis: I didn’t dream it would turn into a Red Face event for me.
Someone had used a ‘sales@’ version of this domain name to send out huge amounts of spam. Failed deliveries alone numbered two to three hundred.
I went into ‘WhoIs’ and discovered that I’m the registered owner of the name till sometime in 2007, even though I paid it month by month only, and that ended around April 2005. My name and address were there to identify me clearly to any person who wasn’t happy to get this kind of spam, and the rejected e-mails came back to the e-mail address I had given to the hosting company who sold me the package, not to the person who had sent the e-mails.
They had gotten around the little problem of needing anyone who actually took up their offer to contact them by providing a link in the e-mail to a site selling Viagra. So they got the orders, and I got the rejected e-mails. Neat.
NamesCo have now taken my e-mail address off their record for that name, and they have also promised to replace my name and address with a c/o their name and address. So I shouldn’t have any further bother…
…But, despite their assurances that anyone can send out e-mails cloaked in someone else’s name (which I already knew), I still don’t understand how the rejected e-mails came back to the e-mail address I had given NamesCo – which bears no resemblance at all to the ‘sales@’ e-mail address under which the spam was despatched.
Can anyone else explain this to me?
…And is there anyway in which I can trace the person who used a name registered to me to send out such spam, and try to ensure that they’ll be unwilling to repeat the experiment?
…And, yes, I am talking about revenge…
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By
noeleenm on February 23rd, 2006
There’s something very strange going on at Raidió na Life, I thought yesterday as I listened over a ‘sruth beo’ (live stream) link from their website …
Despite our ‘muinteoir’ (teacher’s) recommendation, this was actually the first time that I gotten around to doing so. Elke had beaten me to it in fact. I had told her about the station and mentioned that my nephew said it was at 106.4FM. She told me yesterday morning she had found it the night before, and, when I asked how she knew it was Irish she was listening to, she said she could recognise the sound. I was impressed.
Yesterday, when I linked in, I found myself listening to songs in English – or at least American. Fair enough, I suppose. Maybe they throw in a few of those, too. At the end of the song, a young woman and man started discussing something (the song? the programme?) in relaxed tones. I recognised the sound, too. It was French.
I peered in disbelief at my computer, rubbed my ears a few times, and listened again. They were still talking in French. What they were saying I couldn’t tell you, but I could recognise enough phrases to be sure that it was French they were chatting in.
Maybe it’s some sort of a little interval piece, I thought, and waited through the next song (in English/American) only to hear the pair back chatting away in French again. If I’d been listening on radio, I’d have though the station was simply drifting, but a live stream…?
This went on for about half an hour before I had to switch off, and I didn’t have time to check a radio till today. First, though, I went onto their site again, and headed straight for their ‘sruth beo’. Would I get Irish like Elke, French like yesterday, or maybe the German my niece suggested when I regaled her with the story…? I got nothing. Absolutely zilch, except a message to tell me that Windows Media Player could not play the file because the server was not responding.
I tried the radio next, but could find nothing around 106.4FM in Irish or French or German. So I sent off an e-mail in a rag-bag mixture of Irish and English, telling them my story and asking what’s happening in there.
Within a couple of hours I had my answer – in full, beautiful Irish, which even gave me the Irish word for ‘alas’ (faraor)… Now, why do I feel that might be useful?
“Faraorâ€, explained Maebh Nà Fhallúin, Raidió na Life is only on air from 16.30 to 8.00, Monday to Friday, and from 12.00-8.00 Saturday and Sunday.
With regard to the French programme (you didn’t believe me, did you?), a couple of foreign language programmes are broadcast also because Raidió na Life is a community station and they want to facilitate other international languages in use within the city.
Now, I like that…
Their music so far I cannot take to, though. Maybe I’m listening at the wrong hours for this, also, but up to now – despite the fact that I love many, many songs in English/American – the kind of music I’ve heard has me reaching for the on/off switch without having learned very many new words at all, except maybe ‘faraor’ and a revision of the word ‘ochone’. Why on earth use our own language to speak, and then ignore all of the beautiful haunting and happy music and lyrics we have in our music? …Even a little…?
But it’s early days yet, so I’ll tune in again. Meanwhile, as Maebh wished me: “Deas cloisteáil uait†(Happy listening!)
Posted in Gaelic | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 22nd, 2006
Last week was midterm break here so Elke, myself, and my niece and nephew all had a holiday from our respective Japanese and Irish night classes, although Michele – who attends a dedicated language school – still had classes four mornings a week.
When Monday (Japanese) and Tuesday (Irish) arrived, the differences in our attitudes to having more time to do homework soon emerged.
Michele sits down and studies almost every day, whether or not he has English classes. He is one of the most disciplined people I have ever met, and goes on to work his way quietly and methodically through the classes as well.
Elke didn’t open her notes until Monday morning (it was her day off) and crammed frantically on and off during the day until she headed off for school, practising excuses in Japanese on the way.
I had dived straight into the Tuiseal Guineadeach after the last class, tried to use word association to learn new words like ‘ciréib’ (riot), dipped into the five declensions, looked in horror at something called Vicious Verbs (I think), and found with fascination that a form of the verb ‘to be’ is called the Cupola. Out of all of these things, the only one that had anything to do with what our teacher would require was the new vocabulary. I didn’t start my homework until 11pm. on Monday night.
By 1am. on Tuesday morning, I had managed to answer the four questions (two with dual parts), but knew my answers were straight lifts from the text. My sentences were in strait jackets.
Edel had no homework done either until Tuesday, and said she then had trouble with some of the questions. But she had continued to speak simple Irish as often as possible with Hannah during the week. I knew that would get her through the class.
Maurice, despite putting his back out during the week, had a notebook with completed homework under his arm when we met outside the school. “I don’t know if it’s right thoughâ€, he said, modestly.
He reminded me – except for having done his homework – of Elke the night before who arrived happily back from class saying: “Oh, some words just came back to me…â€
Elke had enjoyed the class, apart from getting away with literary murder, because they learned some basic grammar, which she loves, and even more so because it was all about the Japanese way of life, as described by her teacher.
The teacher went to Japan as a young Irish woman with her Japanese husband, and they lived there for fifteen years before returning to Ireland. She describes a country where, despite the cost of living being high, you can earn an extremely good salary; a country where the people are excessively polite; a country where women employees in shops are still often expected to behave as painted moving dolls… She described young women operating elevators and bowing again and again and again and again, as the doors opened and shut.
“She’s a very good teacherâ€, Elke said of her, “because she brings the language to life.â€
I could easily believe it, as I listened to Elke wondering if she should put off her trip to Japan so that she could afford to go for longer, with a better command of the language, next year, say, instead.
As we stood outside the Irish school on Tuesday night, waiting for the porter to arrive with keys to unlock the building, I was reminded of this discussion as I looked across at our teacher chatting with a group of students. I had warmed to her at the only class we’d had so far for her care to not embarrass any of us. She’d explained, asked without pinpointing anyone to answer, praised the results, answered questions at any level, and – for me one of the greatest reliefs of all – announced that she found it difficult, too, to understand some native speakers, especially on the telephone.
“People who have spoken Irish from birth often gobble their words, without realising it – the way we do when we speak English. Try to speak to people with ‘Dublin’ Irish, and listen into Radió na Life because the Irish will be easier for you than on Raidio na Gaeltachta.â€
I looked at her in some wonder. When I went to school we were taught Munster or Leinster Irish, depending on our teacher, and the ‘blas’ (accent) was all important. It was only as an adult, when I met people at Irish music sessions and céilÃs (Irish dances), who spoke Gaelic with the same accent with which they speak English that I began to realise it might be easier to understand. But I still thought it must be some sort of inferior Irish for us poor misfits who hadn’t learned our own language from birth.
Here was this woman giving us permission, encouraging us, to think that the language spoken in our accent might be just as valid…
“She’s a good teacher, tooâ€, I thought.
That was confirmed when, the porter mysteriously failing to arrive to open the school, she announced that we would have to postpone the class this week. Maurice looked thoughtfully at Edel and myself.
“We could always go to the pub and practiseâ€, he said.
And, in the interests of relaxing his bad back, that’s just what we did…
Posted in Gaelic, House Family, Japanese, McManus Family | No Comments »
By
noeleenm on February 22nd, 2006
Some people suffer from really terrible illnesses. Some people are blessed with good health. And I am one of them, thank God.
…Except when it comes to the common cold.
It arrives, develops, and is full possession of my bones, brains, and any other bits left over within hours. One minute I am in perfectly good health, the next I get a sore throat and start to shiver a little. Ten minutes later it’s in full throttle.
The beast manifests itself in Niagara-like emissions from both eyes and nose – nothing from the ears, which are plugged solid, perhaps in case my brains fall out in one of the sneezing fits that is the nasal equivalent of a fireworks display at the Pyromaniacs’ Annual Ball. My bones ache, my teeth and gums hurt, the gunge that stops sound penetrating to my ear drums and keeps me trying to lip-read through streaming eyes doesn’t keep the pain out the same way, muscles that haven’t been exercised in years cry out in agony without my ever moving them, my skin burns, and gremlins earn a fortune in over-time pay sandpapering the roof of my mouth.
As soon as I can get myself home from office, street, wherever the beast has found me, I take to my bed, and lie there in a sodden, shivering mass while my body fights the common cold.
…And then it really comes into its own…
Perhaps because I usually enjoy such good health, thank God a thousand times, for such long periods of time, when I get a cold my immune system goes into over-drive. It’s like an army of young, enthusiastic, newly trained soldiers who are simply longing to try out their weapons and skills against a common enemy. And they over-do it.
I simply do not believe that a cold merits such an intensive all out campaign. Why can’t I keep the cold for a week, say, and fight it more gently? It’s like being having particularly stupid ‘heavies’ to protect you, who forget to move you behind them before they start fighting your aggressors – you get assaulted from both sides.
…And sometimes an attack will come from a third front as well…
I went down with one of my occasional colds last Friday and took to my bed and my room, partly to protect the rest of the house family from what felt like a walking plague and partly because I could no longer stand. I emerged, briefly, as little as possible over Saturday, but by Sunday afternoon my body ached from the bed almost as much as from the cold, and I badly needed human company. My sister, who professed herself immune to germs and is probably reading this from her sick bed, came to visit, and we sat by the fire and talked for a few hours.
When she left, my soul was comforted, but my back was still aching and I was still exhausted. So I lay down on a rug in front of the fire, put my legs up on the armchair in the classical position advised by doctors for people who suffer from back ache, and, covered with a heavy rug, settled down to die.
Don’t ever try to die in a house where there are two nice young men. They won’t let you go peacefully.
Elke was on the late shift in her job, but I thought I had explained clearly to Michele and Gint what I was going to do and why.
I had just begun to feel my body sinking into the floor, as yoga classes encourage, when I heard floorboards creaking and Gint’s face appeared above me.
“What you doing?â€
I explained as clearly – and as briefly – as I could that I was resting my back because it gets sore if I lie too long in bed.
“Why?â€
Again, I tried to explain aloud why my back sometimes goes into spasms, since I hurt it years ago in a minor walking accident.
Gint thought for a while.
“You know this get much worse as you get older…â€
I interrupted his accelerating enthusiasm for explaining the process of aging on the body by informing him that he should rejoin Michele in the kitchen, quickly, if he had any interest in the good health of either one of us. Grinning, he announced that he had a cure. And lifting his arm in an imitation rifle, he shot me.
Lying on your back with your lungs full of phlegm is not a good position for laughter.
My choking, instead of alarming Gint, however, encouraged him further.
“I will tell you an Estonian†(the Latvian equivalent of a Kerry) “jokeâ€, he announced. I shivered even further.
The joke was preceded by an explanation about a Finnish Formula One racing driver, named Tony, and Gint’s impression of how the Finnish language sounds. He then went on to recount how an Estonian on a hunting trip was accidentally shot. His colleagues rang the hospital and were asked if he was still breathing. There was silence for a moment, then the sound of a shot, before the Estonian caller returned to the phone with a simple ‘no’.
Where was the Formula One driver? What had it got to do with Finland? I just stopped myself in the nick of time from asking…
I was lying on my side, curled up on the rug, about an hour later, when I heard footsteps again – two pairs – crossing the room.
“Noeleen, are you alright?â€
“Yes, thank you. I’m just resting.†(I always lie in front of the fire in the foetal position without lifting my head to look at people addressing me – it’s normal, normal, I tell you.)
“We are going out for a while then.â€
“Good†(heartfelt).
Two minutes later the front door reopened and Michele’s hesitant voice announced that he had come back for a scarf and he was sorry for disturbing me.
“Don’t worryâ€, I said, without lifting my head.
Sounds of departing footsteps, interior doors opening and closing, and then a hand appeared in front of my face, and a gentle voice said: “Take this, Noeleen. It will give you power.†It was a slice of cheese.
Love comes in the strangest forms.
Posted in House Family | 1 Comment »
By
noeleenm on February 17th, 2006
What makes a good news story?
Is it something that a lot of people are interested in – like the wedding of Princess Diana in 1981? That event featured the marriage of the heir to the throne of England, so it could reasonably be said to be news, as was her tragic death in 1997.
But when Big Brother was first broadcast in the summer of 2000 on the UK’s Channel 4 television station, every news page of the following day’s issue of the Irish Times (traditionally Ireland’s heavy weight newspaper), carried some sort of report on it, whether straightforward report, analysis, or opinion. Granted the total number of votes in the final week of that show, between Ireland and the UK supposedly, was a whopping 7.5m, so it was definitely something a lot of people found interesting, but news…?
That summer the Irish Times also carried front page stories such as their Northern Editor, Deaglán de Bréadún’s brilliantly acerbic analysis on the fight for the leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party; the leader of the minority Progressive Democrat Party, Mary Harney’s statement that the former leader of the majority Fianna Fail Party, Charles Haughey, should go to prison for with holding information from the McCracken Tribunal; her refusal to condemn the present Fianna Fail leadership, with whom the PDs are still in power, for their failure to disclose crucial information to the Moriarity Tribunal on donations to their party; and her controversial endorsement of the nomination of Mr. Hugh O’Flaherty, former Supreme Court judge, to a top EU post, by Fianna Fail Finance Minister, Charlie McCreevy, despite Mr. O’Flaherty’s much discussed intervention in the Philip Sheedy case.
Yet, a story on every news page is a lot of print space that people who are concerned about injustice, famine, child abuse, war, and/or environmental issues would ‘give their eye teeth’ to be allowed to fill – particularly in a newspaper like the Irish Times.
So what makes those issues a news story?
Is it only when the results produce horror stories and heart-breaking pictures? …Especially when the stories and the pictures can be identified with the names and ages of the people whose lives have been destroyed. But until tragedy happens to them, they’re not news.
Our ‘don’t build on the flood plain’ campaign group thought that the devastating stories and pictures that emerged from the flooding in Central Europe and in New Orleans would make our politicians look at the consequences of allowing developers build on lowlands that have been proved vulnerable to flooding, and of neglecting flood protection maintenance. Instead, the difference in the scale of New Orleans towards our community of some 700 homes, particularly, has been used to ridicule this argument. The causes of the flood in New Orleans – President Bush’s reversal of the policy to ban further development on the levies and the erosion of the silt banks, due to lack of maintenance, that acted as natural barriers against the sea – mirror our council’s decision to zone for high density building on the flood plain, against all international advice, while allowing the river bank to silt up, lessening its capacity to carry a river in flood from the Wicklow hill to the sea.
So how big does the potential for lives to be lost, and homes to be destroyed, before plans to build on a flood plain becomes news? One…? Ten…? A hundred…? Seven hundred homes and a couple of thousand lives…?
That’s why we’re grateful to our local radio station, East CoastFM, and to one of our local newspapers – the North Wicklow Times – for the coverage they’ve given the issue. The other local newspaper – the Bray People, which is part of the powerful Independent Newspapers Group – gave it a lot of attention in the beginning, but have gone strangely silent now…
For instance…
 On the 14th January, the Leader of the Green Party in Ireland, Trevor Sargent, and two TDs (Members of Parliament) from Sinn Fein and the Green Party respectively, came out to walk the flood plain, and lend their support to our campaign. The four local councillors who have consistently supported our fight to keep the flood plain free of development are from these two parties. We have made it very clear that, although we are a traditional stronghold of the Labour Party, we will support the parties that support us when the next General Election comes around.
The election is forecast for later this year or early next year, and, as both the Fianna Fail Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, and the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, Liz McManus, live in Bray, this should have been a big local story. It merited a full page in the North Wicklow Times. The Bray People published a small black and white photo of the event.
It’s even more difficult to get the national media to take up the story, even quality environmental radio programmes, like ‘Mooney Goes Wild on One’. The reason they gave for not getting involved in the protecting flood plains against development is that they “don’t get involved in planning issuesâ€. Somehow planning has become a sacred cow in Ireland, over-riding the fact that we are destroying one of nature’s greatest natural protections against flooding in an age of huge climatic change.
Then you have the pressures of the potential loss of advertising revenue if you upset lucrative developers: it’s sometimes a toss up in newspapers, radio stations and television nowadays as to whether the editorial or the advertising people run the show. Sometimes it’s not even a toss-up…
Perhaps in that sense the internet is the best, because it’s the least advertising driven, media for trying to look at money-driven issues before they have time to turn into the kind of heartbreaking story that newspapers, radio and television really love…
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By
noeleenm on February 16th, 2006
This week I got very little time to write posts for Ireland-Stories because I was caught up in our community group’s preparations for a consultation with a planning barrister about our campaign to prevent developers from building on the flood plain downriver from our homes, and for a debate on local radio with a representative from the developers about that issue. It’s the first time we’ve managed to persuade them to come on air to debate it, although we’ve been asking for this since around July of last year.
A year ago I wouldn’t have dreamed of phoning a radio station to go on air about any issue. But when this development was first proposed, I heard representatives of the developers, and local councillors, on East Coast FM, our local radio station, describing in glowing terms how wonderful this development was going to be for our town.
No mention at all was made of the fact that 350 people from our community had signed a petition in less than a week asking that the flood plain be preserved by maintaining its traditional zoning – Open Space – instead of moving it to the other end of the zoning spectrum – High Density. We had followed this by visiting councillors, arguing with them, begging them, yet not one contradicted the developer’s spokesperson when he said: “There has been no opposition at all to this development. It has been welcomed with open arms.â€
I reached for the telephone.
I’ve been reaching for the telephone a lot since then, as I’m the only one of the core group of SWAP (we want them to swap the high density building planned for the flood plain with a park and playing pitch planned for the high ground away from the river, thus the name) who can usually juggle work commitments enough to do interviews.
Initially, we engaged the eight councillors who voted to rezone this land in debate, to explain their rationale. They maintained that it was the only way they could get funding for urgently needed flood protection works, despite the fact that Ireland’s Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, who is on public record as requesting monies for these works – before he became Minister for the Environment – lives just above our homes, and the flood plain. The developers have promised to pay for these flood protection works, these councillors say, provided they are allowed to build on the flood plain!!!!
And, no, unfortunately, I am not joking. I have met this cat, too, many times…
Then we tried to engage the developers in debate. They were busy, unavailable, nobody was free to go on air… We kept going on air and challenging them. Three weeks ago, they agreed to send a representative on one of the Dublin radio stations – NewsTalk106FM – to debate the issue with another member of our core group, Adrian McKenna. Then they told East Coast FM that, if they were allowed to go on alone first “as SWAP had received a lot of air timeâ€, they’d agree to go head to head with us at a later date and debate the issue.
That’s what happened yesterday. Who won the debate, I don’t know, because the lunacy of having to argue against building flood protection works that will not only have to compensate for the problems already there, but will have to compensate also for the problems created in exchange for this protection, seems to me like pointing out that the Emperor is going around naked, never mind in old clothes.
One thing is certain, though. It’s good to have finally drawn the developers out to try to defend what they are doing. It’s good to have both sides of the argument presented, together, so that people can judge for themselves the validity and the morality of the scheme the majority of our councillors are empowering by their rezoning of a flood plain.
Because it’s difficult to get most reporters interested at this stage
The irony is, though, that when we are flooded again, reporters and cameras will get in the way of the rescuers, and politicians will pose against a background of their flooded constituency, pointing the finger anywhere but at themselves…
The Minister for the Environment will be horrified, and the Labour Party politicians will berate him publicly. One of the things they won’t mention in their ‘sound bites’, though, is our meeting with the two Labour councillors who represent our area in February, two months after their controversial collusion in rezoning the flood plain. We fought, begged and pleaded with them to change that before the Draft Development Plan was voted through in April. They promised to “look very seriously†at this, but we couldn’t get any kind of a decision from them until we learned at the Council meeting itself that this decision was not up for amendment.
That was in April. Last Monday, the planning barrister asked us why we hadn’t fought the rezoning within the prescribed period of three months as it’s now too late to challenge it in Court. It needed to be done by mid-March…
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By
noeleenm on February 15th, 2006
“We love this country, but we hate this Stateâ€.
Gint had been out at a Latvian concert (a fairly rare event still in Ireland) and had been hearing the political news of home from his fellow countrymen. He was passionate and upset as he stood in the middle of the kitchen and tried to explain to us why people who had formed part of the great human chain from Estonia through Latvia to Lithuania at the culmination of perestroika on 23rd August, 1991, are now leaving Latvia in their thousands.
Families were crying in the airport at Riga, he told us, as they prepared to emigrate from the nation which they had dreamed of forming again for so long. “It is the third emigrationâ€, he said.
Bit by bit, with broken English that was strangely articulate because of the strength of emotion behind it, he talked about the history of his country, perestroika and the hope of freedom that it brought with it – and then bleak reality. Latvia, is seems, is experiencing what so many newly free countries go through when they try to rebuild an economy in a nation that has been plundered of resources, and a just political and social structure on the ruins of an overthrown regime.
The harsh truth is that in many ways it is easier to fight for freedom than to use it wisely when it is finally achieved, and that the idealism and skills necessary to lead a nation into battle against a common enemy are not the same as those needed to construct a state.
Listening to the story of his country, I was aware of how much Ireland’s island status had helped it down the centuries to define and protect its own sense of nationhood. For countries physically surrounded by more powerful neighbours, cultural and historical boundaries are much harder to defend, as Jan, from the Czech Republic, had already told us.
Latvia’s first emigration, Gint said, was after the 1st World War, when the Germans burned and plundered their way across western Latvia, as part of their attack on the Russian Empire. Half a million people, he said, moved east, and “how many of them died during the migration?â€
In 1915, Latvian merchants had written to the Russian Tsar offering to raise money and men for the Russian Army to fight the hated Germans. They formed 8Â brigades under the command of their own Latvian officers. So disciplined and so honourable were they that, when Lenin came into power following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, he chose them to be his bodyguards. They thought that their loyalty to him during the war would gain them independence afterwards…
In 1918, when the Brest/Litovsk Treaty was signed by Lenin to take Russia out of the war with Germany, the agreement was that the land presently held by each side would remain theirs. Lenin had no problem, it seems, with leaving Latvia in German hands.
The men who had fought to protect Russia against Germany stood no chance under unopposed German rule. The first emigration began…
The second emigration took place after the 2nd World War, when the pincer powers of Germany and Russia again collided, with Latvia in the middle. In August, 1939, Hitler and Stalin made the Nazi-Soviet Pact. The Soviet Union was allowed to reoccupy much of the land they had lost by the Treaty of Brest/Litovsk, including Latvia, in return for their support for Germany, if Hitler’s planned invasion of Poland resulted in war being declared by Britain and France, as they had threatened. In October, just one month after Germany invaded Poland in September, and war was indeed declared, Stalin sent the Soviet Army into Latvia ‘to protect’ it.
The following year, the Latvian authorities were forced to legalise communism, and to hold a general election, which the Communist Party ‘won’. All property was handed over to the communists, and the year that followed became known as the ‘Year of Terror’.
On the 14th June, 1941, “20,000-25,000 Latvians, including children and old people, and anybody who had money†were transported to Siberia, the first of three deportations of Latvians under Soviet power. When, eight days later, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, Latvia took up arms alongside its old enemy to fight the people they had come to hate and fear even more than the Germans.
“The Germans were seen almost like liberatorsâ€, Gint said.
But when the Germans were beaten in the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943, it was the beginning of the end of their power in the Soviet Union. Latvia found itself once more on the side of the loser.
“People realised they could not stay here when Russia won. At least 200,000 refugees went to Germany, and others went to England, Sweden, Australia, and Holland, but biggest part went to America.â€
It was the 2nd Emigration from Latvia, and it was to be almost forty years more before Latvia, and other small European states, began to rally again to the call of freedom.
“Perestroika began in 1985, and 1990 was our first elections. In that period we created parties for Latvian independence as she was. It was ‘Atmoda’, like waking from a long sleep. So long we sleep and then we wake up.â€
On the 23rd August, 1991, Gorbachev was deposed in a Putsch on the same day that the human chain had been formed from the Estonian capital of Tallin through Latvia to the Lithuanian capital of Vilnus.
“We renovated independence, because of the collapse of the Soviet Union.â€
When, on 1st May, 2004, Latvia became a full member of the EU, Latvians celebrated. It seemed their long fight for freedom was over. But then the 3rd emigration, and perhaps the saddest of all, began.
According to Gint, Latvians are now emigrating from a beloved country in which they believe their economy is controlled by a ‘golden circle’, so that the benefits of the EU are not filtering down to the ordinary people at home. So they go away, as they have always done, but this time from the very understandable need to improve their lot economically.
The phrase used by a man, who waited with his family in tears to board the plane that would take them away from Latvia, perhaps for ever, had really struck a chord with Gint.
“We love this country, but we hate this Stateâ€, he repeated. “We are a small nation – 2.5m people before the first emigration. Now there are 45,000 Latvians in Ireland, and more all over the world. Soon Latvia will be no more.â€
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