Has the time come for Celtic Independence? - Scottish win could spell seismic shift

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond

Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond is currently embroiled in a power struggle with British PM over a referendum for Scottish independence, but if he wins the dominoes won’t just stop at Hadrian’s Wall.

If the Scottish win independence, then it spells a seismic shift in not just how the British Union works, but the European one. Salmond’s Scotland has much more in common with the Nordic countries in terms of social provision and much more Europhile than Cameron’s England, and independence would not only copperfasten these differences but create a new diplomatic entity on the EU stage. Especially so, if Scotland win the custody battle for the oil off their coast.
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If Scotland and England do take divergent paths, that leaves Wales and Northern Ireland essentially in a “back me or sack me” situation, stuck between siding with their Celtic brethren (and to a lesser degree Europe) and the Westminster government who supply the block grant for their respective assemblies. And if they do, then it may be the best chance proponents of a United Ireland will have in decades. 

If the UK becomes more of a loose confederation as would be likely the case under Scottish independence, then Northern Ireland’s closeness to the Republic of Ireland will come under closer scrutiny, in terms of trade, services, culture and a host of other things that will suddenly become relevant if such a debate ever arises. Of course, that means it will energise both sides of the argument. 

Already you can see the Unionist side in particular sharpening their swords. This Tuesday on Spotlight, a Northern Ireland current affairs discussion programme, DUP Health Minister Edwin Poots claimed First Minister Salmond was like a dog agitating to get off the leash and went on to essentially claim that the fundamentals of the Union were strong. But United Ireland advocates are getting more nuanced in their approach, with younger members of Sinn Féin like Pearse Doherty providing a counter-balance to old irredentism by considering a range of ideas about how the arrangement could work, even how to accommodate hardline Unionists in an Irish parliamentary setting. More interesting still, they’re focusing on a referendum of their own for around the 2016 mark. 

As I’ve said before, the case of a United Ireland is something I’m intensely ambivalent about and would be of the opinion that an independent Scotland would more likely precipitate a kind of Celtic alliance, each country becoming more independent of London but still under the kind of loose confederation I mentioned earlier. But, the political sands are changing and changing quickly, and for those who dream of a United Ireland they should make their case extremely well for the debate ahead. Their day may finally be coming if they do.

The Ian Paisley paradox - considering the career of Dr. No

As I write this, Ian Paisley remains in the intensive care unit of the Ulster Hospital, and like everyone else in the media I’ve been reflecting on the career of an incontrovertible political giant of these islands.

But it’s incredibly difficult.

Ireland is no stranger to high-profile politicians with mixed legacies who split opinions; Parnell is revered now but his relationship with Kitty O’Shea split his once monolithic party down the middle. Eamon de Valera was a demi-god or a treacherous wretch depending on who you talked to. Charles Haughey and Bertie Ahern are grand lads in the eyes of their deathly loyal supporters, but it wouldn’t have taken you long to round up a pitchfork-wielding posse to picket their houses either. But Paisley is in a different orbit altogether.

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At the time and place I grew up, the word “Paisley” was synonymous with terror, even loathing. I used to dread hearing his booming voice on the radio on television, fulminating recklessly about something or other. It’s been said Bill Clinton could make you feel like the only person in the room, with Ian Paisley it seemed like he could make you feel like the focus of all his hostility and hate. For someone from Donegal in primary school in the nineties, Paisley felt like a genuine bogey man.

Yet, even then you’d hear stories that bordered on urban myths about him that confounded the obstreperous image. He was lovely in person, apparently. Catholics in his constituency supposedly felt well treated if they ever went to him about local business. According to legend he once met some Cork students playing a game of rugby against Ballymena, and gave them a hearty welcome and money to buy fizzy pop or some such.

In more recent years, that side of him seems to have shown itself publically, with his moderated attitude on power sharing and his surprisingly good relations with Martin McGuinness. Last year I even saw him giving a kind of flash mob sermon outside Belfast City Hall, a pious elderly man far removed from the gulderer famed for shouting “Never!” in that very same location a quarter of a century earlier . In a very short space of time, he’s gone from Ireland’s greatest monster to avuncular bridge builder.

While there’s something fitting about the evangelical preacher’s Damascene conversion on the road to redemption, and it’s better late than never that he turned heel, it’s important that when it comes to legacy, recent good doesn’t altogether overwrite past bad. Had Paisley not forced Terence O’Neill from office over One Man One Vote, or poured kerosene on the Ulster Workers Council Strike over Sunningdale, heaven knows how differently things could have developed.

Northern Ireland is in a situation now, mercifully, where past rivals can put aside hostilities and attempt to work together. But when it comes to considering legacy, it’s crucial that we take the whole picture, rough and smooth. Especially so with Ian Paisley.

RTÉ sport's inspirational Colm Murray and his battle with motor neurone disease

RTE sports anchor Colm Murray

The documentary on Colm Murray, RTE's sports anchor, promised to be must-see viewing, and yet extraordinary difficult. 

A documentary about Colm Murray, the much-loved veteran RTE sports broadcaster and horse racing specialist was always going to be an interesting watch, but the circumstances under which it was made tinged it with real pathos. 

A couple of months ago Colm went on the Late Late Show and announced that he had motor neurone disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease after the Yankees player who died of MND aged 37.

Gehrig is well known for his emotional “Luckiest man in the world” speech in front of a rapturous crowd upon his retirement, and in a sense this documentary was Murray’s equivalent to a heartfelt speech on the diamond. 

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The show tracked the methods in which he was living with and attempting to control the disease, including his participation in a trial for a new drug that could be of significant help, and his trips to a speech therapist.

For me, this proved the hardest to watch. It seemed especially cruel that a broadcaster with a voice the whole nation knows would have that taken away from him, especially as within weeks of announcing his condition he was reporting sports news from behind his desk in a wheelchair. The dramatic way in which his life has changed in such a short few months has shocked and saddened the whole country.

But, in spite of the terrible hand he’s been dealt, Colm wasn’t willing to give in to fatalism. Instead he soldiers on, trying to find a cure, trying to keep himself the best he can and live the best life he can.

For years, Colm Murray was not just a familiar face and voice but a quiet hero of Irish life, dutifully reporting on the sporting moments that have coloured the nation, all without ever putting a step wrong. It is with that same quiet heroism and positive attitude that he battles motor neurone disease. The whole country is willing him on. 

Click here to watch the RTE documentary. 

Newt Gingrich attacking Mitt Romney for speaking French? How gauche!

Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney

I’m under no illusions about the weapons-grade insanity we’re all referring to as the Republican primaries this year, but a recent Newt Gingrich attack ad on Mitt Romney hit a particularly stupid note.

Titled “The French Connection”, Newt puts the hammer to Mitt by tarring him with the Massachusetts liberal brush, but reaches for a curious case in point: He speaks French.

Quoi?! For all Romney’s faults – the fact he is a money-mad robot, for example – picking his ability to speak French is trop bizarre, to say the least. Never the mind the fact Romney learned French as a Mormon missionary, and the clip they showed was a promotional video for the Winter Olympics he was organising in Salt Lake City. I mean, doing things, even speaking a foreign language, to keep Jesus and the investors happy is very Republican indeed.
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Stranger than the line of attack though is the man carrying it out, the man who is to hypocrisy what Jeff Gordon is to NASCAR, Newt Gingrich. Newt did his doctoral thesis on education policy in the Belgian Congo, a field of study which requires, to say the least, un petit peu de Français. And he carried out his studies in New Orleans, where not knowing French would be like going to Conemara without a cúpla focail. “A Massachusetts moderate cannot beat Barack Obama”, claims his attack ad, but neither can an arrogant Georgian blowhole.

Maybe it’s my Irish aversion to pomposity talking, but I’ve always found American exceptionalism to be an extraordinary dumb concept, especially in the way articulated by the American right and stoked and pandered to by their leaders. Not just Gingrich but throughout the campaign Romney, Perry and most of the rest have all smugly articulated their “The way I love America is the only way to love America” views, like hipsters without the massive headphones or obscure band t-shirt, claiming with varying degrees of falsehood that President Obama apologises for America and such. It’d be laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous.

Being proud of your country is not necessarily a bad thing, but thinking your country is blameless, infallible or exists on a higher level just because is plain stupid. Worse yet, blasting your opponents – or even people who articulate basically the same thing differently or more moderately - is the mark not of a citizen of a great country, but of a barbarian. Americans have of course not been the only transgressors on the world stage when it comes to coarse, unthinking nationalism and have a lot to be proud of too, but a country that purports to be the greatest ever should really have more class and grace.

It may be easy to rip on France or Europe in general, but we’re a continent of culture, history, diversity and broad horizons. The French have a saying: “Qui n'entend qu'une cloche n'entend qu'un son.” He who hears only one bell hears only one sound. High-handed would-be leaders like Newt and Mitt would do well to listen to some of the voices of the people who reside beyond their coasts. They’d also be well advised to take heed of a phrase common round the part of the country I came from: Wind yer’ neck in.

The view from over here: the GOP’s true primary colours

Apart from having a long-term interest in US politics I also have the sleeping patterns of a musician, so that means watching coverage of the Republican Primaries isn’t such a taxing thing for me to do. From a sleep point of view that is, in pretty much every other way it’s tough going.

On one hand there’s something almost cathartic about actually having primaries as it beats the merry band of ruffian nominees ranting into hysterical space, but CNN’s bombastic reportage would nearly make you cry with laughter.

The Best News Team In The Known Universe, or whatever they fancy themselves as, seem to take excessive pride in the extent to which they muck about gadgets, tables, virtual reality rooms and zoom-in maps with colours bursting out of them. Stranger than that though, especially for Irish viewers, is the promethean curiosity with which they treat their “ballot cams”, which watch people counting and then announcing what they’re counting. A tad pedestrian for Irish eyes, who are seasoned hurlers on that particular ditch.Stranger yet though were their overkill squad of reporters, one of whom was reduced to asking a selection of voters and associated hangers-on what their name was and who they voted for, with the grim monotony of a faulty Terminator.
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But the reporters got a welcome break when the results were declared – as if anyone was in any doubt – and the cameras focused on their victory/heck I’m claiming this as a victory/laughably defiant speeches.

You could tell an awful lot, in fact all you’d ever need to know, about the candidates judging by the speeches they gave on Tuesday night. Mitt Romney is a cross between Troy McClure and Patrick Bateman’s sleazy dad, who will say literally anything to get elected. Ron Paul is a principled and likeable gent but with a polemic speaking style that makes Castro look like the model of brevity, and an issue profile that would send a man in to anaphylactic shock. John Huntsman is the last sane man in the whole godforsaken saloon, and is a man of considerable class.

Rick Santorum is a kind of turbo-Dana, mixing populism with strident, pro-life views. Unless you're an Iranian scientist, in which case he kinda hopes the US government is secretly killing them. He made a point of continually referencing his coalminer grandfather and told of his emigration from Italy to the US in the twenties, which struck me as nice but a bit odd. For starters, my grandfathers were a farm labourer and a jockey, but I couldn’t pretend to have had a life anything remotely like theirs. And its lucky his grandfather wasn’t Mexican in the present day.

As for Newt, I switched off before he started, for the good of my own health. It's going to be a long year. But, God help me, I still wouldn't miss it.

Margaret Thatcher, Meryl Streep and The Iron Lady's true legacy - VIDEO

Meryl Streep and Margaret Thatcher

While walking round Dublin of a crisp, pre-Christmas morning, you couldn’t help but be taken aback by some of the posters adorning the city buses. As if the sharp Arctic air wouldn’t take the breath out of you easily enough, seeing Meryl Streep made up uncannily like Margaret Thatcher for her latest film would wind a man for sure.

The film in which Streep plays "The Iron Lady" is being released this very week, which is as intriguing as Meryl Streep’s makeover is terrifying.

She’s a fascinating character, a woman who more than anyone in the last few decades molded the political landscape into her own graven image, who prompted die-hard loyalty and incandescent rage in equal measure, and the manner in which she relinquished power is worthy of Shakespeare.

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It was inevitable given Thatcher’s propensity for evoking strong feeling that a film would be made about her career one day, and as she gets increasingly old and frail thoughts on her legacy are coming into sharper focus. Ironically enough though, the increased publicity and focus a film provides may only serve to distort.

The Iron Lady is being publicised as the story of a no-nonsense woman who made it in a man’s world, whereas in reality Thatcher was no vanguard feminist. In fact, save for herself, the only other woman at cabinet in the eleven years she was in power was paleo-conservative Baroness Janet Young.

Discussion about whether she was Britain’s savior or Satan’s own envoy on earth will probably never cease, but Thatcher’s objective legacy boils down to a single statement: she knew her own mind, but little else.

She was a conviction politician without parallel, but she had a disregard for nuance that was terrifying. No matter what the issue, be it Northern Ireland, the Falklands, inner-city discord, economic theory (and accompanying strife) or Europe, she almost made being closed off to ideas that weren’t hers into an art-form. And some of her ideas, for example suggesting “The Cromwell Solution” to Northern Ireland, were insane.

Most damning of all though is that she failed in her driving mission. Thatcher wanted a return to a Great Britain that was essentially Victorian: frugal, modest, respectful, upright, rebelling in private enterprise. Instead, what she helped create, along with Ronald Reagan and monetarist economists, was a world order that codified selfishness, glamorized wanton materialism and, with her abysmal claim that there was no such thing as society, detached a social bedding that has set in motion a range of problems we grapple with today.

Margaret Thatcher was without doubt a towering presence on the world stage and an immensely influential figure for longer than that, but while she may be seen by supporters as a wondrous counterweight for morally bankrupt politicians with malleable ideals, she ran right past steadfast and careered towards wrong-headedness. On matters of political delicacy, be it the Unions of the far left she detested or the “wet” Tory moderates in her own cabinet she dismissed, she destroyed what needed to be finessed. Her binary world view is summed up by some of her most well-known statements when in power: “Out, Out, Out” in reference to the Anglo-Irish Agreement, “Crime Is Crime Is Crime” on the issue of political prisoners, and “No, No, No” on Europe, the position which would be her undoing.

Influential as she was, memorable mantras and a simplistic world view do not a successful political leader make, irrespective of personal drive. It is that simple truth that ought to shape the Thatcher legacy: for a woman with such vision, she was incredibly short-sighted.

Here's the official trailer for the movie: 

My favourite story of 2011 - Ontario nursing home and an Ireland-mad Canadian girl

Tara Muzumdar and Edra Ferguson

2011, by any standards, has been an incredibly busy year. The first two months alone, where the government fell in the most chaotic manner possible before exploding at the ballot box on impact, felt like an aeon all of itself. But in spite of this, and the great state of geopolitical flux that has unfolded before our eyes this year, my favourite story of 2011 doesn’t involve revolution or summits. It involves an Ontario nursing home, and an Ireland-mad Canadian girl.

Edra Ferguson was 103 and living in Belmont House in Toronto when a member of staff who regularly spent time with her, Tara Muzumdar, started looking through some of her books. What she discovered came as some surprise. Edra, unknown to seemingly everyone, was one of the first women in Canada to go to law school, the first female judge in Ontario, the first woman elected to city council in her hometown, and also ran for Mayor. And she did all this in the 1920s and 30s.

Tara, a frequent and fervent visitor to Ireland, was struck by the pioneering achievements of the woman in her charge, and resolved to do something. So she nominated Edra for the Order of Canada and, in the word of Edra’s son, orchestrated a media interest that went first national, then global.

After a life of firsts that had over the years got buried, a couple of days before her 104th birthday, Edra then added another illustrious honor to the list: becoming the oldest ever recipient of the Order.

It’s been a news year with a disproportionate amount of challenge, tragedy and woe. And that’s why this marvelous story about the kindness and initiative of Tara, and the incredible woman she stood up for is my favorite of the year.
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