Barking Mad

The stuff of memories?

So it’s the start of National Tree Week everybody! Great, right? Well please forgive this particular leaf lover for not getting too over excited.  Sure I’m all for celebrating our wooded wonders and I give a big virtual pat on the back to those lovely folk over at the Tree Council of Ireland, they do good work. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to kick off their well intentioned week with a rant. 

You see I’m finding it very hard at the minute to muster up any national pride in the way our country cares for trees, especially since it’s recently been revealed that we’re planning on selling them all off! Well, maybe not all of them exactly, just our remaining forests.  Over a million acres to be precise. Kind of ironic when you consider the theme for this year’s week is ‘Celebrating Forests for People’.

Regular readers to this blog will have heard me lamenting our embattled trees before. Irish trees were arguably the biggest losers of the Celtic Tiger era and its head long rush towards development and ‘progress’, and I had hoped the recession might have provided them with some respite from the builders’ bulldozers. Unfortunately that appears to have been a rather naive notion.

Yup, Ireland’s forests are now up for sale along with everything else in the country, reduced to nothing more than a commodity to be monopolised by private investors.

In fairness, the plan isn’t necessarily to chop all the forests down. Well it is actually, but not in the way you might think. Apparently interest has been expressed in the prized lots by a Swiss finance company called Helvetia Wealth, who own the International Forestry Fund. Interestingly, the IFF is now chaired by former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern (those of you after a cynical chuckle should read the laudations for him on their website).  

 

Speaking of their website, after reading it one could be forgiven for being a tad optimistic about the future of our forests; lots of talk of sustainability and ethical and environmental consideration, pictures of bluebell carpeted woods, details of how entire local economies can flourish around the forests themselves… It all sounds quite reasonable, doesn’t it?

You’ll have to pardon my scepticism, but I find it hard to be convinced that a multinational corporation driven solely by profit garnered from timbering has the best interests of our country’s natural heritage at heart.  My suspicion was further heightened by the ‘terms and conditions’ you have to agree to before even logging into their site, basically a disclaimer which warns that not everything on the website should be taken as set-in-stone fact. I think that one was aimed at the investors, but it still takes the shine out the silver lining I highlighted above.

You know it’s issues like this that have me itching all the more to get my journalism boots back on. So far the Irish media have paid little attention to the plight of our forests, but I suppose why would they if it wasn’t sent out pre-explained in a press release? Investigative reporting was already on its last legs but I think the recession has finally killed it off. Newsrooms are just so short staffed theses days that editors can’t afford to give their reporters the time needed to look into these things properly. Ah, but I digress…

 

Back to the trees! So I realise a lot of you fellow inhabitants of this soon-to-be-not-so-emerald isle will already be up to speed on all this thanks to the petition doing the rounds on Facebook. Those of you from further a field that are interested can find out more here at The Woodland League, where you’ll find a copy of the petition to our president. Feel free to sign it! The more countries that say no to this carry on, the harder it’ll be for leaders to get away with it elsewhere. And doubt for a second that similar shenanigans aren’t afoot in your own respective backyards!

The British public have already shown that it’s possible to get governments to change their minds on these matters, now it’s Irelands turn to take back the trees. We’re only a little country, and from what I can see our leaders rarely listen to anything we say, so we could do with all help we can get. I thought maybe I might be able to rally some international support from all you lovely blogger folk? Especially you American ones, our government has always done everything you Yanks have told it to ;) So sign up, pass it on, and help us save our forests! The Irish nation thanks you in advance.

A Rant of Epic Proportions

 

I’m in the mood for revolution tonight. And I’m not talking about an ‘oh, lets make some placards and hold a rally’ type thing. I mean a full blown ‘bring down the government, overhaul the entire system’ job. Peacefully, of course. In fact, in my new regime all those who even acknowledge so-called political violence as a means to an end will be rounded up for a little dose of re-education. Such braindeads are one of the reasons I’m in such a riled up mood this evening, but I’ll get back to that in a minute.

Anyway, it all started off this morning when I opened my local paper to discover a story on the removal of a local “eyesore”. Said “eyesore” can be seen in the photo above which I took during a lovely sea mist last spring. It looks even more beautiful during a high tide or bathed in evening sunshine and I had hoped to get more shots of it throughout the seasons, but now I’ll never get the chance. *sigh*

“It’s only a boat, not worth getting that worked up over,” I hear you cry, but no, it wasn’t only a boat!  It was local landmark, beached on some rocks just by the bridge that takes you into our wee town. For myself and so many others it was one of those little signs that let you know you were home after a long trip away. It had been there for as long as anyone I know can remember. And two days ago it was bought for five euro, demolished and carted off to be sold on for a healthy profit as scrap metal. So far the only people I’ve heard calling it an eyesore were those who took it away.

The story of this little boat, folks, represents all that is and has been wrong with my country for a long time now. For decades I’ve watched the majority of what made Ireland beautiful bring ripped apart in the name of “progress and prosperity”. Ancient trees disappearing in the night to make way for office car parks, charming cobblestone bridges being knocked down for roads that go nowhere, pre-Celtic monuments that have stood for millennia now being let fall to wrack and ruin. And don’t even get me started on the property boom, which has obliterated countryside and urban centres alike with some of the most tasteless buildings on the planet. Seriously, even the Soviets would have thought modern Irish architecture bland.

It’s not as though we don’t have planning and conservation laws, it’s just that if you have the right bank  balance or know the right people you don’t have to worry about them. In fact, from what I can see developers were, if anything, encouraged to flaunt them. Even funded! And they wonder why the country is going down the tubes. Forget global recession, this place is a mess all of our own making. We can moan about the bankers all day long, and rightly so too, but there’s so much more wrong here than just financial corruption. There is a deep rooted cultural and political apathy that is so pandemic I can’t see anyway of recovering from it. We don’t deserve to be prosperous if this is what we do with our wealth.

But then maybe I’m just extra mad today because right after reading the news about my beloved boat I got a text that instantly threw all my Halloween plans out the window. You see that little scary video I posted a few days ago was supposed to be a prelude to a month of terror and madness that I was going to bring to you courtesy of The Loom of Doom, a haunted house event I was supposed to be taking part in. (I was going to be one of the evil nurses!) Sadly, it has had to be called off, brought down in a tangle of red tape and over-priced bureaucracy. Instead of supporting such a positive and potentially lucrative event our local government system has instead made it economically unviable.

Well they’ve certainly shot themselves in the foot with this one. I was helping out with the show’s press work and I can tell you now, the media attention and public support for this project was phenomenal. It was being held in an old Fruit of the Loom factory that at one point not so long ago employed a vast proportion of the town’s population. When it shut a few years back the local economy was devastated, and the building has been lying empty since. The new owners had kindly donated it’s uses free of charge so that it could be put to some positive use, and the sense of community spirit didn’t end there. The entire thing was being financed by the organisers themselves though all profit was going to local charities, and everyone else involved (hundreds of people) were giving their services voluntarily. To top it off, tens of thousands of visitors were expected to descend upon the town in search of a good scare.

It was due to open on Friday and I’d been down looking at the sets and stuff a few times already. Oh my god, the quality of craftsmanship and artistry was nothing short of outstanding. It was going to be so super amazingly fantastic! I was going to wait till it opened to start snapping and sharing it with you, but now I’m not going to get the chance to do that now either. The only ones I have are the two I took to make the poster for the Facebook page I was helping maintain. Forget about how heartbreaking it is for those who put in so much effort, and about the bitter disappointment of those looking forward to attending, what about me and my blog?! I’m going to have to go find new stuff to post for these parties! *steam coming out ears while hammering at keyboard*

Right, I do realise that this has become my all time longest post and I do apologise for that, but I did mention in my opening paragraph that there was one other thing ragging me so I’ll just touch on it briefly. I’m not sure how clued up you all are on the whole Northern Ireland situation, but at the minute there are a bunch of absolute muppets going around trying to restart the whole thing.  I mean it, these people are not only bigoted, hate-filled, braindead shitheads (my polite term for them) but they’re actually even more dangerous than those who came before on account of their unfathomable stupidity.

What they hell are they fighting for anyway? Who exactly are they fighting? They’d probably spin you some bullshit about national self-determination or some such. Actually, they wouldn’t-  that’s much too complicated a term for them to understand. So what is it they want exactly? To ‘blow up Brits’? Yup, that’s more like their kind of language. Why exactly, I have no idea. Also, if that’s the case, then why did they blow up almost thirty men women and children in Omagh ten years ago? Three of those children were from my home town, which is in the Republic of Ireland, and two of them were Spanish. The rest were just locals going about their business, Catholics and Protestants alike, friends and neighbours.

I’ll tell you why they did it, because they’re idiots who grew up spoon fed nationalistic propaganda from a generation who are so bitter about the past they can’t let it go. Calling them misguided fools is much too soft, though, because last night they almost caused a repeat of the Omagh tragedy when they planted a car bomb just down the road from here in Derry. Right outside a bloody hotel of all places! There were American and Japanese tourists inside and everything. But that wasn’t their intended target, we’ll probably never know where was. Just like that Saturday afternoon in Omagh, this bomb had been abandoned in the wrong place. It’s thought those responsible were spooked by a police presence further down the road. So what did they do? They ran away and left it outside some busy shops and a building full of foreign nationals. Yes boys, you are true patriots.

Thankfully, the car was reported as suspicious and the surrounding area evacuated. It’s a miracle nobody was seriously injured. It’s still really very worrying. I don’t get spooked by terror warnings on the news and I don’t buy into media fear mongering, but when you realise there are idiots like this operating close by it is a little scary. Stupidity is a very dangerous thing, and when it’s backed up with explosives it’s lethal.  These people might be a tiny minority but even the littlest things in the universe can be deadly.

Anyway, sorry this post has been so, so long. When I said it was going to be ‘epic’ I didn’t really mean it literally! I think I just needed to vent a little. I’ll be back tomorrow with some lighter stuff but for now I need to go recover.

Our hearts are broken, yet there is still hope.

Pictures from the PA via The Irish Times

My fiance laughs at me every time I talk about football, but he doesn't know about this blog so I might get away with this...

So 82% of French people want the match replayed, Sarkozy has apologised to Brian Cowen, and now even Henry himself has called for a rematch (even if he did wait until after he was sure it wouldn’t happen).

Here at home they’re protesting the French embassy and there’s petitions for a replay flying all over the place.

It won’t happen, will it?

For years I’ve bemoaned the apathy that abounds in this country, where the general population have put up with- worse, they’ve endorsed- a regime that would make the most corrupt African dictator blush. Sure, everybody's disgruntled now things have gone belly up, but we've had a totally inept government since long before I was able to vote with hardly a peep out of anyone about it.

Now, it seems, the Irish have grown themselves a back bone and all over a silly game of football. No, not a silly game, a brilliant game, played out by heroes who for an hour and a half gave a nation hope.

We were robbed, and we should be going to South Africa. All based on that one little match, granted, but the fact that we had a lethargic qualifying campaign (the French did too) in no way diminishes the verity that that game was OURS.

What people don’t realise, though, is that they were never going to let us win. ‘They’ being that pervasive entity known as FIFA. I’m not saying that they fixed the match or told Henry to cheat, That Incident aside, the officials were only a little bit biased across the two legs.

But there’s simply too much money involved for FIFA to allow a little team like Ireland to triumph over the former world champions. We’re not brand-able enough. That’s why the governing body decided to seed the play-offs half way through the group stages. They changed the rules after the game had started!

Now that they’ve got what they wanted they hide behind their rule book, ignoring their own mantra of ‘fair play’.

Will we stand for it? It would appear not! And the French, it seems, have too much honour to accept their tainted victory so they may even back us up.

Tomorrow they march from Lansdowne, who knows what might happen. It’s a small hope, very small, but hope nonetheless.