OUTSIDE POLITICS - TRAVELLERS

The graph looked like one of those elegant long-necked bottles they sell fancy hooch in. It was broad at the base and then quickly became very thin before tapering off slowly at the top.

A couple of minutes later another graph appeared. It was roughly similar but roughly in the roughest sense of the word. If that second graph was a bottle, it was a bottle of stout, a small squat one at that.

The two graphs represented two different human realities in Ireland. They were part of a presentation by the Central Statistics Office on its analysis of demographic trends from the 2006 Census.

Both of these graphs reflected life expectancy. The first graph depicted the 'settled' population. It showed - unsurprisingly - that people are living longer, hence the elegant long neck.

The second graph was truly shocking. It reflected the same set of statistics as they related to travellers. The proportion of travellers under the age of 20 is enormous but the fall-off after that is shocking, truly shocking. The percentage of travellers who can hope to live behind the ages of 60 is tiny, beyond 70 infinitesimally small, and beyond 80, almost non-existent. Thus, the small squat stout bottle.

The grim and obvious truth is that there's a section of Irish society who, on average, can expect to live up to two decades less than their settled counterparts. That's more than shocking. It's a scandal.

Now, in fairness, the CSO statisticians entered a couple of caveats. The questions relating to travellers in the latest census were new ones that gave rise to variances and certain unreliabilities of comparison. For example, the birth rates, says the CSO, suggests that the actual population of travellers is perhaps a couple of thousand higher than the actual figures. The corollary is that the lower life expectancy figures may also be slightly skewed.

But only slightly. When you see these graphs - the elegant long-necked bottle and the fat squat stout bottle - the only word that can form on your lips is scandal.

This week, the junior minister with responsibility for equality Frank Fahey announced the identity of those who would be on the National Traveller Monitoring and Advisory Committee.

This is not to beat Fahey who has proven to be more pro-active than most other ministers in this regard (with the exception of Chris Flood). But if you look at the ancient beginnings of this committee and its eventual destination way off in the future, it tells a tale of the inertia and inaction that characterises non-priority stuff for government.

Bear with me for a couple of seconds because while the following prose mightn't whizz off the page, it is important. Way back in 1995 - that's 12 years ago - a task force on the travelling community reported its findings. A committee called the traveller monitoring committee was set up to monitor implementation of its recommendations and ten years later produced its second and final progress report.

So what was produced in that decade between 1995 and 2005? What great benefit was derived by society and by its travelling community? This is the equality department's own language describing the situation as it was in 2005: "There was a general view that it needed to be revitalised and made into a more dynamic and forward looking national forum."

In other words, not much happened that made a difference to the lot and lives and status of travellers. And so now we have a new initiative. And it's worthy. And it's headed up by a well-respected former civil servant, Kevin Bonnar. And part of its mandate will be to oversee strategies that increase the participation of travellers in wider society, including finding employment opportunities.

But then, it's part of the Towards 2016 partnership agreement. And when I see the date 2016, I automatically think of long-fingering and another report being produced that year telling us all that we haven't done enough and saying we should all do more to improve the lot of travellers.
Examiner columnist and Barnardos chief executive Fergus Finlay put it well this week, when talking about another group on the margins of priorities, children.

"I've been involved in writing political manifestos before and I know that at the last minute someone says, 'We need to throw something in there about children'. So it ends up on page 40 of the manifesto."

Because the grim reality is that tangible and real improvements for marginalised people in Irish society can only happen if there is real political will. And for travellers, for those with mental illness, for families who have children with autism, or intellectual or other disabilities, or for the poor and dispossessed, children and adults, there is no real political will.

Political parties pay a lot of lip service to it. But they know that people are more likely to vote with their pockets rather than their conscience.

This is my column from today's Irish Examiner

INSIDE POLITICS - The Hurricane of Hype

WHO is the star of this week’s column? Take a wild guess. If you happened to die and are now pushing up daisies, you might not have noticed him this week.


Of if you happen to be an anchorite monk living on a remote island sometime in the 6th century, there’s a slim chance that he may not have crossed your path.

For everybody else, there was no escape. From the moment he choked on his Corn Flakes last Sunday morning, Michael McDowell has reacted to Labour’s tax coup by invading our every waking moment, policing our thoughts, and trying to wash, like rain, the trashy Labour promises off the pavement.




On Monday, he introduced the techniques of Sumo wrestling to Irish political discourse. In a matter of mere seconds, his ferocious and fierce onslaught removed Pat Rabbitte from the ring. The winning technique? Haiku. “I want to say this about the speech that Pat Rabbitte made the other night. That speech proves that he is now admitting that he has been talking rubbish for 20 years. He has attacked every aspect of our tax policies. He’s voted against them in every Finance Bill.

“He has denied our argument that tax rates matter. And here he is now saying, after 20 years of empty, unsuccessful, hypocritical rhetoric, that he accepts he is wrong. What a sadmoment for him.”

This outburst came during a so-called doorstep interview, where the politician takes questions (usually on the street) from reporters. There were no questions here. McDowell walked up the reporters, delivered his broadside, said “I’m finished” and walked away again. A few reporters sniggered. But for McDowell there was nothing funny about this.

For this was a Labour leader having the cheek to encroach on his territory. Though what came across washumorous, what bubbled inside was toil and trouble. This column has said it before: McDowell is a one-man walking Atlantic weather system. This week, it was storm force 10 stuff coming in furiously with no respite.

The really scary bit is that all this is just the lead-up to the Progressive Democrats national conference this weekend. You might have noticed the sly reference above to Travis Bickle, the anti-hero of Martin Scorsese’s classic film, Taxi Driver. On Tuesday, McDowell did his own bit of scary “you looking at me” stuff when he announced a package of anti-crime measures. The Tánaiste has a tendency to announce his measures in the manner that Twink introduced John Bruton at a Fine Gael Árd Fheis a long time. You initially think, great stuff, and then you think, this is over-the-top, and then you think, oh, God, this is going to finish up badly.

His crime package sounded very impressive on first hearing. Suspects could be detained for seven days. There were tighter measures for bail; further curtailments of the right to silence, as well as provisions to introduce the long-awaited DNA database.

But then we found out it was all based on an interim (and rushed)report of the expert group charged with re-balancing the law.

Not only that, but the package of measures didn’t include legislation — only an intention to legislate.

So what was that all about then? Optics? In reality, by the time that package becomes law, the general election will be but a dim memory.

McDowell wanted to give the impression he was being tough on crime (as usual the “crisis” has been hyped up by politicians and the media). Now he has come up with illusory measures to remedy an illusory crisis.

For one thing hit me between the eyes in the recent Frank Luntz focus group exercise for RTÉ. Crime was identified as a huge issue. Yet, not one of the group had been a victim of crime in the past five years, save for one guy who got his chainsaw nicked. And why were they all scared to walk the streets, leave the key in the door etc? They said it was because the media told them so. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.

Of course, the Tánaiste didn’t leave it there. He was just warming himself up. On Wednesday, he took on the Mahon Tribunal, claiming its legal bill could top €1 billion. By Thursday, that row deepened into a full-blown crisis. Characteristically, he robustly stood by his word that night, setting up the second grave stand-off with the judiciary in as many months. And that was the same day, he promised he would big it up at the PDs’ conference in Wexford, with his own proposals on tax cuts and stamp duty.

Batten down the hatches folks. A hurricane of hype and histrionics is fast approaching from the South East.

(This is my column from today's Irish Examiner)

INSIDE POLITICS - The other big thing besides Croker that happened on Dublin's Northside this weekend

Yes, goalposts (real and figurative) were being shifted all over the place on Dublin's Northside this weekend.

Labour's pre-election conference marked the moment when Pat Rabbitte officially got sick of being asked questions about Fianna Fail and possible courtships.

How he did it in three easy steps.

1. Testy attitude when being interviewed by John Bowman. We're 22 minutes into the interview and you haven't asked me questions about policy yet!

2. Brutally blunt passage in his own keynote speech intended to draw a line under the issue. This is it:

In recent weeks I have been asked not about policy or programmes or reforms, but whether, on electoral strategy, I have left the door even slightly ajar. The answer is no.

3. Time to use the ace up the sleeve. This time it was a spectacular one that was the better of every other hand. The promise to cut the standard tax rate from 20% to 18% was brilliant. It stole the PDs clothes for tax-cutting but came at it the other way round, ie aimed at everybody, not just the middle classes.
There's small print. It's not a copper fastened guarantee (there's a get-out clause!). It will be very costly, maybe prohibitively so. FG might not buy it so bye bye new policy.

But still as a coup and as a way of moving the debate on from Rabbitte and Fianna Fail, it was masterful.

We're into conference season now. Cue eight weeks of the parties trying to out-bid each other with so-called "eye-catching initiatives" and all-singing, all-dancing, policies.

OUTSIDE POLITICS - Dunphy and decentskinmanship

There are a couple of things about modern Ireland that I just don't get. One of them is the Eamon Dunphy phenomenon. What has he done to deserve his reputation as the Doberman of the airwaves? Draw a couple of angry squiggles on a replay screen a decade or two ago? Describe Dick Spring as something nasty in the Sindo years and years ago? Lose the head on his Today FM radio show once or twice?

I listened to Dunphy interviewing Michael O'Leary this morning with a growing sense of incredulity (follow this link for the show). Okay, his new Saturday morning show is our version of Desert Island Discs or a remodelling of a similar programme Carrie Crowley (remember her?) did some years back. It's not intended to be a grilling or interrogation a la Richard Crowley, Cathal Mac Coille, or John Humphreys...

At the very least, it should be inquiring, probing and occasionally uncomfortable. However, in spite of his completely undeserved reputation as a contrarian, Dunphy's modus operandi is this: he cosies himself up to his interviewee to an embarrassing degree and presents himself as their best buddy; a kindred spirit; a fellow intellectual and traveller; who has slaved away every hour of his life to help that person achieve the better Ireland that both have been striving for.

The most telling example of that was when he interviewed Martin McGuinness on his ill-fated TV show a few years ago. He started asking a tough question of McGuinness but visibly lost confidence half way through and ended up reversing ferret and making a mildly congratulatory statement to which an embarrassed McGuinness (no stranger to barbed questions) could only agree. It was cringey.

It was the same with Michael O'Leary this morning. The interview was soft, marshmallow soft. The goo that passed for questions included a slap on the back for O'Leary for thinking outside the box (when he put in an order for Boeings immediately after 9-11). O'Leary's answer had a dose of the Jo Moore's about it (she was the British Labour party official who sent around a memo on 9-11 telling people to put out bad news stories). But there was no follow-up or supplementals. What O'Leary said was left hanging there unquestioned and unchallenged...

Other incisive questions included one about the findings of a recent survey that said a majority of people would like O'Leary to run the health service; as well as the following statement. "You love your country. You palpably love your country."

What has made successful Dunply programmes in the past have been the quality of guest and, whatever you think of O'Leary, he always delivers bang for his buck. Fine, we know Dunphy is an O'Leary fan. But you thought that O'Leary might have been bracing himself for a bit of turbulence this morning. Instead he got one of the smoothest flights of his life. Unjustifiably so.

It seems to me that for all his reputation (and the huge fees he commands) Dunphy has mellowed into a bland interviewer with little interesting or stimulating to say or to ask. He also bottles out of asking people hard questions. He has become the thing he railed against years ago, the fan with the typewriter (or microphone), one of the country's busiest purveyors of decentskinmanship (the wonderful phrase he himself coined when he was still very good).

INSIDE POLTICS - TRULY FRANK?

American pollster Frank Luntz did his second focus-group style exercise for RTE's Week in Politics last night. (follow the link to the show here)

Sure, RTE have thrown a lot of money at it. They brought in their top current affairs lighting cameraman Cecrid Culleton to shoot it in a cool, grainy style, with a constantly moving camera.

But there was way too much going on. Frank Luntz's own introductions and commentaries competed with those of Sean O'Rourke. Luntz tried to work through too many topics (from election-clinching issues to Fine Gael's poster to Brian Cowen's status as putative heir to Bertie Ahern). It gave too little time to give us a chance to really look at Luntz's techniques, or to evaluate them. In addition, the added layer of the three home-grown pundits gave us the unique television phenomenon of having what was already analysed analysed.

Let's fill in a little of the back story here. Political parties have been using focus groups for years as means of ascertaining and identifying the wants, the desires, the gaps, the problems, all the crosses that the long suffering public bear.

So political parties use them as a kind of weather vane. Well, some do, and others learn to rely on them more than their own human and political instincts.

If you read the separate books of two Observer journalists on Tony Blair's New Labour - Andrew Rawnsley's sympathetic 'Servant of the People' and Nick Cohen's scathing 'Pretty Straight Guys' you will get a fair idea how influential focus groups can be. Labour under Blair not only listened to them. Their policies were fashioned, led and tailored by what focus groups were telling them. Focus groups thus inspired policies. Conversely policies were culled because focus groups didn't like them. There's something perverse about a political party being led by the nose on policies. Giving the people want they want, as the legendary American TV news producer Frank Reuben said, is a dope peddler's argument.

And having watched last night's programme, you realised that it wasn't from the wind that Enda Kenny and Michael McDowell got their recent inspirations to big it up on immigration.

There were a couple of aspects to the whole shebang that I found unconvincing. The first is the assumption that political discourse in Ireland doesn't exist unless it's on televison. Terry Prone's otherwise excellent column in this morning's Irish Examiner reinforces this assumption that the election will be won or lost on TV. Of course, television is vital. But there is radio. There are newspapers (people will read and even be influenced by what Terry Prone writes, believe it or not!). And there is the internet, blogs, youtube, bebo etc. Granted, the internet is not the real deal yet as far as Irish electoral poltics are concerned. But it's already a party of the currency in the US - both Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama launched their respective campaigns not on TV and not in the press but on their own web-sites. And it will be catching them bang-to-rights in 2012.

People cricially engage as well as emotionally engage. I do do take Terry Prone's point that TV and radio happen in real time, that there's no space for explaining fancy words or abstract concepts.

And that brings me to the second point. The momentary experience. The group was asked to respond to one - or two at the most - sequence(s) featuring polticians. It was a critique of one television performance, expanded into an unsatisfactory show of hands (based on that clip alone) on the worth and wherewithal of that politician.

I'm sorry, but you don't need a dialometer to telly you that Brian Cowen will bore the backside of you when he starts with Department of Finance Bullshit Bingo (and delivers it with all the enthusiasm of a kid who's been given ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys in confession). And you know that Brendan Howlin is never going to stoke up the masses using pretentious words like interdict.

But the problem, as far as this exercise is concerned, is that both have stood and delivered on many other occasions, with punch and pungency. It's like writing off Dublin's All Ireland chances on the basis of their defeat by Tyrone in Croke Park at the weekend. And why for that matter use a short Dan Boyle sound-byte on the environmental aspects of the Budget delivered on the plinth of Leinster House? Why hone in on Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin on health, rather than focusing on the essense of the Sinn Féin message, its stance on the national question? Granted, you have to select what clips you have. Indeed, you have to cut your cloth to suit your measure. But people will ultimately assess parties and personalities in a more complex fashion.

The third niggling feeling I have about focus groups (in general)is this. A disparate group of people are brought together in an artificial setting. Unlike a jury, they never have the time to settle down and get over that initial hump of discomfort and reserve. And often (and as far as I know you could see it here too) the debate is dominated by a couple of individuals. Others, either through reserve or politeness, will tend to row in and agree there and then. But at home later, while standing over the kitchen sink or staring into the fire, they may come to a radically different opinion on an issue or personality. I also think that also explains some of the inbuilt flaws of opinion polls.

Having said all that, it was still an absorbing exercise (as was the first). What Luntz has done is revealed the mysteries of the art to the public, using his own dial technology to make the preferences and prejudices of the groups measurable (and interesting).

Like a self-catalysing enzyme, Luntz himself becomes a player in the process. And with RTE throwing such resources and energy into the programme, it may itself have a measurable influence with the political parties and with voters.

But hold your horses! What Luntz is doing is interesting, eye-opening, important... but ultimately only indicative of trends, of perception, of issues.

As for the latter, there were a couple of bombshells. The first was that not one person in the groupll was a victim of crime (and most said they knew no friend or relatives who were victims). Yet, crime was identified as a huge issue. Why was this? Well, if you look back to the 2002 or 1997 or 1992 or 1989 or 1987 elections, what will you find? The self-same fears and concerns over crime, exactly the same ramping-up of near hysteria by the media (sadly, mostly newspapers) and by politicians. Of course, crime rates are rising and Ireland is a more violent society than it was in the halcyon days of the 1950s. But the perception of fear and or crisis has been cyncially manipulated and exaggerated by politicians and the media.

I must say I was very surprised at the sentiments expressed by some of the group on immigrants. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that people are instinctively conservative about new arrivals, have an innate suspicion of the unfamiliar. But it's not the job of politicians to pander to those fears or prey on them. And while Enda Kenny protests that he was being brave in his recent 'Celtic and Christian' comments, this suggests that he was being populist.

There was a very definite undercurrent from people that they are tired of the government, that they will begrudge giving FF and the PDs another five years in power. But there was an equal perception that the oppostion isn't up to all that much.

It was also surprising to see how little credit was given to the Government for the strong performance of the economy over the past ten years. I believe that when it comes to make-your-mind up time, people will think primarily about jobs, about future security, about which alternative will best guarantee the continuation of the good times. It's the economy stupid. It always is the economy stupid.

And just as an afterword on the changing nature of politics and of political campaigns, here is a video from the amazing slate.com showing how influential YouTube has become in shaping political opinion.

INSIDE POLTICS - RABBITTES OUT OF HATS

INSIDE POLITICS - Rabbittes and Hats

 

Michael McDowell's ubiquity on the airwaves has been challenged of late by Pat Rabbitte. If the Cameroonian Tories want people to hug hoodies, well then the Labour Party here want them to cuddle Rabbittes.

 

His Labour handlers have convinced him to ditch the Dail cocoon - where he can use fancy words like obsequies and gravamen to his heart's content - to venture into the dangerous uncharted waters of light entertainment and the peril of having to field silly questions.

 

Has it worked? Erm, the jury is still out. The problem with Pat is this - Rabbitte by name; hedgehog by instinct.

Bertie can blather away consummately about nothing in particular.

Enda can go through his gamut of impersonations from A to B.

Michael can do his weekly residency slot on Pat Kenny.

Trevor can just about escape drowning on Podge and Rodge.

But the problem with Rabbitte is this: He can't do small talk. Oratorially gifted yes, but you see him on Tubridy Tonight and doing the Mad Hatter thing in HotPress and you think of a guy a stratosphere outside his comfort zone.

 

He comported himself well (that's a real Pat Rabbitte phrase) on Ray Darcy, Today FM's thinking person's Tubridy. Still it all falls short on the loaves and five fishes department i.e. converting the masses to whatever your one true faith.
But parliament, debating, the cliched smoke-filled rooms are no longer where it's at. You have to be out there selling the message. You have to be seen selling the message. And increasingly the message is wrapped into the image. And image and leader have become increasingly indistinguishable.

 

We're seeing all the leaders gradually desert Leinster House now and hitting the roads and meeting the people. Kenny's first public rally is on Thursday in Cork. We're all bracing ourselves for the Bertie blitzkrieg. Rabbitte will be out meeting the electorate for half the week and Trevor will go so far and as fast as buses and trains will allow him.

 

There's a perception that Rabbitte has lost ground since becoming leader. And that's something Labour are trying to address with its 'meet the people' campaign. Frank Luntz's latest 'focus group' type exercise on RTE's Week in Politics on Sunday night will tell us a bit more about how that is going for him, and for others.

Respect not adoration is what Rabbitte needs. Electorally, he can't be sold as the guy next door. No magician would have the skill to pull that Rabbitte out of a hat.

The best moments of the week. Funnily enough the Bert didn't make it, besides his starring role in the propaganda film on the National Development plan.

I loved the quote Raymond McCord senior gave the Sunday Tribune's Suzanne Breen about his meeting with Mr Smoothie himself, Northern Secretary Peter Hain. Raymond McCord senior is build like a big concret block by the way - he used to be a bouncer.

What Raymond McCord snr said about Peter Hain: “He fell asleep at one meeting. That showed an utter lack of respect for my son. I should have chinned him. He’d be worth doing three months in jail for.

Talk about a quote with plenty of punch.

Highlight Number two came courtesy of Blogorrah.com, the new site with which the prince of the zeitgeist, John Ryan, is involved.

When I was labouring away at Magill, we used to do a questionnaire every month with a well-known personality.

By far and away the best answer of the year was the one given by the playwright and director Gerry Stembridge.
Q: What do you think of post-modernism?
A: I view it with an air or ironic detachment.

That kind of sums up this site, which is sometimes a bit silly, but so often hits the spots other sites fail to reach.


And this week they have discovered that Jerry Buttimer, the Fine Gael candidate in Cork South Central has a his own bebo site.

Jerry obviously hopes to recurit the yoof vote in his efforts to get ahead of running mates Simon Coveney and Deirdre Clune in what will be an, ahem, competitive (i.e. savage) election south of the Lee.

Strangely, along with Cold Play and Snow Patrol, Jerry lists the Wolfe Tones as one of his favourites. Come again? The Wolfe Tones? Going against the grain a week bit there, isn't he.

The other best quote of the week wasn't a new one. But Eamon McCann's description of the SDLP and Sinn Fein squabbling over policing in Derry was delicously apt.
"It was like watching two bald men fight over a comb," he said.

John Deasy. A conundrum. A scrambled egg. A maze. A jumble. An enigma.
Earlier this month we saw him being stubborn bad when he challenged Enda Kenny and rained (there's a less polite verb that could go here) all over Fine Gael's New Year campaign.
And before all that, we saw him being stubborn very very bad when he lit up the famour fag in the Dáil bar, costing him his front bench position, and rendering as a still-birth his glorious future ministerial career.
But yesterday we saw him being stubborn very very good indeed. He followed up Carl O'Brien's scoop in the Irish Times (and we're still very sore about that today) with a superlative performance on Morning Ireland this morning.
Perhaps it's his schooling in the tough brutish and partisan world of Capitol Hill poltics. But Deasy railroaded his way through all the guff this morning and cut for the chase. With a complete rejection of the HSE's wan excuse that it doesn't comment on individual cases, he asked the direct, pertinent questions that needed to be asked.
Why was this young girl not put in care? Why did did this vulnerable girl die? Did the HSE did all it could have done to prevent this awful tragedy?
It was commendable. Like an extreme athlete, the Waterford politician doesn't seem to engage publicly unless he's putting his neck on the block.

What more is needed to prove endemic, systematic and engrained collusion between loyalist paramilitaries and the security forces in the North?

Yesterday, Northern police ombudsman Nuala O’Loan published a report of her inquiry into the police investigation of Raymond McCord junior in November 1997. Ostensibly, it was that.

But what was uncovered was a larger, bleaker, truth that brought us to a place that is venal, visceral and truly truly awful. She found that police had colluded with loyalist terrorists who were responsible for at least 10 murders. This was in a tiny area of North Belfast over a limited period of years. When you extrapolate it to the entire island over a period of three decades, the implications are appalling, frightening. For once, when Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin speaks of ‘state terrorism’, you think that he’s not going too far.

The evidence at this stage is incontrovertible. This is only the latest in a series of reports from different quarters all pointing to the same overwhelming conclusion that collusion was rampant. Most notable have been the reports by Canadian judge Peter Cory into six murders North and South including that of Belfast solicitor Pat Finucane; and Judge Henry Barron’s investigation into the Dublin-Monaghan bombings and other appalling loyalist attack in the south.

And the ombudsman’s report into the McCord murder has everything. What are you looking for? Corruption? Perjury? Perverting the course of justice? Protecting a man involved in ten murders? Deliberately creating false documents? Conducting sham interviews? “Babysitting” favoured informants through difficult interrogations? Withholding evidence from police colleagues? Proving the DPP and Courts with misleading and inaccurate document? Allowing murder, racketeering, drug-dealing and sectarian attacks to continue unpunished. And for what? To protect “the most important intelligence asset in this UVF grouping”.

Unforgivably, this report is likely to meet the fate of Cory and of Barron – becoming part of a vast dust-gathering exercise carried out by the British government. Notwithsanding his promises yesterday that prosecutions will follow.
Northern secretary Peter Hain’s response to it would have been laughable if it wasn’t all so serious.

He started off by saying that “the police ombudsman has today shone a light on a dark and murky period in the history of Northern Ireland.”

Fair enough. But when it came to the crunch, there was the usual knee-buckling, the defence of the Realm stuff, the blank stonewalling of any notion of public accountability.

“I have heard calls for the setting up of a public inquiry to look into these terrible events,” he said.

“There is nothing at all to suggest that such an inquiry will uncover any new or additional evidence…”

Early on in its investigation, Ms O’Loan realised that the investigation into Raymond McCord’s murder would be intricate, wide-ranging, complex and time-consuming. On that basis, she made an official request for more resources from the Northern Secretary which was refused, though some £250,000 was made available at a later date. Did that suggest a culture of change? Or did the long delays in PSNI responses to specific questions from the ombudsman’s office (some replies took up to two and a half years).

There are some deeply unsettling questions that still need to be answered. Why, for example, did so many senior police officers refuse to cooperate – including two Assistant Commissioners and seven Detective Chief Superintendents? Why did Special Branch informants got away with multiple murders? Why will nobody ever be prosecuted for any of the litany of crimes exposed by the O’Loan inquiry, or for the cover-ups, or for the perjuries and cover-up.

Special Branch described Informant One, now known to be Mark Haddock, as its most important intelligence asset in the UVF in North Belfast. But other police officers, both uniformed and Criminal Investigations Department (CID), described Haddock as a “well-known terrorist and criminal” involved in racketeering, drug dealing and feuding.

The unmistakable tenor of the report is that the “worth” and “value” of Haddock as an informant could never conceivably outweigh the horrendous litany of crimes in which he was involved.

Like the enquiry into Garda corruption in Donegal, this major wide-ranging inquiry had a relatively humble beginning.

In May 2002, Raymond McCord senior was walking through the centre of Belfast when he decided to visit the police ombudsman’s office. McCord, a burly ex-bouncer from a loyalist area, was extraordinarily driven – he said that police had begun to portray him as a crank.

But his 22-year-old son, also Raymond McCord, was beaten to death in a disused quarry in 1997 on the orders of a UVF man and police informant, known as Informant 1. His son was no saint. Raymond junior was a UVF member who was facing charges for possession of a large batch of cannabis, probably controlled by Informant 1.
McCord senior alleged that police had been aware this was going to happen, had done nothing to prevent his son’s murder, and subsequently protected his killers from justice.

The findings of the investigation that stemmed from have wormed their way to the core of policing in Northern Ireland. There can be no pat excuses about a few “rogue” policemen, about a couple of “bad apples”. It was clear that this was institutional, engrained, and went a very long way up the hierarchy.

Some of the details benefit from retelling. In terms of evasiveness and dissembling, O’Loan finds that some serving police officers gave evidence that was “evasive, contradictory and on occasion farcical”.

That, she said, was either a significant failure to understand the law or contempt for law. On occasion, police officers said things that were proven to be “completely untrue”.

Or the shocking details of the killings. One of the ten people murdered by Informant 1’s gang was Sharon McKenna, a Catholic woman visiting a Protestant friend. Informant 1 (Haddock) admitted he had being involved.
When Informant 1 was hauled in for questioning, his two Special Branch handlers sat in and “babysat” him during the interrogation to ensure that he did not admit to murder.

Around that time, Special Branch actually increased his payment from £100 to £160 a week, despite the fact that he had fresh blood on his hands. In all, Informant 1 was paid nearly £80,000 by the police, despite the overwhelming evidence of very serious criminality.

Another epiphany of the extent of collusion was evident when two Catholic construction workers, Eamon Fox and Gary Convie, were murdered in North Belfast. They were eating their lunch in a car at Tiger’s Bay in North Belfast when a lone gunman opened fire on the car. Witnesses said that the gunman wore a “goatee” beard.
When Informant 1 was arrested, he was sporting a goatee beard. But he requested a razor blade and was supplied with one. The custody photography showed a clean-shaven man without a goatee. No identity parade was ever held.

It’s unbelievable stuff. Sure, the world of intelligence, of touts, of informants is shadowy, murky and full of moral contradictions. The second-in-command of the IRA’s punishment squad was left in place for many years, despite carrying out the most heinous crimes. A multiple killer like Informant 1 was allowed kill and commit serious crimes at will because he was judged to be a strong “intelligence asset”. Justice and truth become just relative values in the perverse mind-set that underlay all this.

The publication of this report in the week that Sinn Fein decides on policing will be problematic for its leadership, despite Martin McGuinness’s claim yesterday that it “bolsters our argument”.

It’s ironic that one of the strongest exposes of police collusion with loyalist terrorist has been uncovered by a man from an unashamedly loyalist background. Now he is advising Sinn Fein not to jump hastily into policing arrangements.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern describes it ll as “despicable past behaviour”. He will discuss the matter further with the British Government, he says. But he did just that with the Barron report and the report into the deaths of Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson. He did that with all of Cory. And nothing came of those either. What more can be discussed? There should be no more skirting around. Bertie Ahern should be loudly demanding a proper public inquiry.

Bertie Ahern has been at his fearless best during his trip to Saudi Arabia.

The country has been visiting in the past two days is one of the most repressive, backward and corrupt in the world. It is also – unfortunately – one of the richest.

Here follows a small expression of its repression: Eighty four people were executed in Saudi Arabia last year, many of them beheaded in public. Public floggings are also commonplace. In August 2005, a court in Mekka confirmed the sentence of 8,000lashes for a woman who was convicted of abducting a child.

The majority of those who feel the brunt of Saudi’s idiosyncratic and cruel justice system are foreign workers who enjoy absolutely no meaningful rights there. More than 50% of executions are immigrants, though they comprise less than a third of the population.

Dissidents, journalists, even very modest reformers have been arbitrarily jailed, sometimes for tortuously long periods, for criticising the absolute monarchy or the all-powerful and fundamentalist Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam.

As for the sanctity of childhood, forget about it. Some 126 children under the age of 18 were on death row in January last year. A young boy, Admad D, was sentenced to death in July 2005 for killing another child when he was 13.

Though Saudi Arabia is a signatory of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (which forbids the death penalty for under 18s), Ahmad D was tried by the Court as an adult “based on its assessment of the coarseness of hi9s voice and the appearance of pubic hair.”

In another case a Saudi Court ordered the gouging out of the eye of an Indian Migrant worker, after he became involved with a fracas with a Saudi man at a garage. The punishment was the Sharia law equivalent of the Biblical ‘an eye for an eye’.

As for women? Zero rights. Banned from running from election. NO right to leave their homes without a male relative or written permission from their guardian. No right to education or to open a bank account without male permission.

No better politician to give it to them straight than Bertie Ahern. This is how he confronted the thorny issues of human rights and freedom of expression.

“More broadly, I am convinced that the principle of mutual respect must underpin all aspects of relations between our two regions, Europe and the Middle East, which are inextricably linked by geography, by history and by millennia of cultural and religious interchange.

“Ireland is a modern and pluralist State. We believe that fundamental human rights are inalienable. At the same time, we accept that it is most effectively through dialogue and co-operation that all States can over time meet the standards to which they have committed themselves as members of the United Nations.”

What? Come again? Yes, you have guessed it. A mixture of waffle and moral cowardice. The same kind of fudge he used when leading a similar trade mission to China two years ago. Then he said in a roundabout way that it would be dangerous for a Government of a country of one billion people to uphold human rights overnight because that might lead to a loss of control. The same scaredy-cat stuff that characterised Fianna Fail ministers, including Ahern and Brian Cowen, prostrating themselves to America’s every whim during the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

No this trip is all about trade. The only thing that money shares with morality is that they both start with the letter ‘m’. One indistinct subclause of four speeches has been devoted to Saudi Arabia’s appalling human rights records and its inexcusable repression and cattle-prodding of human beings. And then phrased in such an opaque way that he would have been just as brave uttering it in Fagans of Drumcondara as he was in Riyadh. One thing for sure: he was never going to offend his hosts.

These trips all boil down mammon and lucre. Okay the places are dodgy and dicky, but hey, everybody else is dealing with them so pass me that long spoon.

There are acres and acres of words in which the Taoiseach extols the strong cultural and commercial ties between Ireland and Saudi Arabia as if they were the world’s best buddies.

“In the Gulf region, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia remains Ireland's strongest market and here with us tonight are representatives of Irish companies who are determined to make that market even stronger.

The robust performance of Saudi Arabia's economy in recent years - which

looks set to continue well into the future - has brought fresh opportunities for collaboration between our two countries. These opportunities have not only been for enterprises but also for education providers, as shown by the large numbers from our education sector that have travelled here this week.”

OK. All European countries sup with the devil and we all depend on the Saudis oil. But the absence of any criticism of substance demonstrates a galling lack of backbone and sends out a message that condones rather than condemns the terrible things that happen there.

Jim Loughran, the Communications Manager of Amnesty International in Ireland describes Saudi Arabia’s regime as one of the most repressive in the Middle East.

Referring to the only references to human rights and to freedom of expression in Mr Ahern’s speech, he criticizes it and says it could have been stated in more robust terms.

The tenor of the visit seems to be economic development to the exclusion of everything else, he argues.

“Human rights are at the heart of Irish foreign policy,” he said. “These issues are firmly on our agenda.

“The Taoiseach should not be focusing solely on access to valuable economic markets while being silent in relation to (Saudi Arabia’s) terrible human rights record,” he said.

from the Irish Examiner

So we finally got the attack poster featuring Michael McDowell yesterday. But it was one issued by the PDs and not by Fine Gael. The FGers lost confidence and went for a wan poster showing an idyllic scene with the same message. I spotted the new FG poster driving in this morning. Because the concept is a 'poster within a poster', the size of the slogans and writing is smaller, and very hard to read. It really lacks impact.

Meanwhile, the PDs one is simple, direct, does what it says on the tin. Judge for yourselves.

And what is it with the Irish Independent and Pat Rabbitte? This morning the Indo suggested that Labour deputy leader Liz McManus's oppostion to her party joining a FF-led coalition was kind of conditional and that she too was beginning to waver. The newspaper had based its assertion on her reference in a radio interview to unforeseen circumstances that can give rise to extraordinary responses.
But in a quote that the Indo itself used yesterday, she made it clear what she meant by those.
"I spoke at one point on radio about the possibility of extraordinary circumstances arising which might change the situation. But I was literally talking about something like a national state of emergency or something like a third world war. That might alter my views but it is about the only thing that would do so.
"My position has been clear and consistent. There is no change from what I said in the Irish Independent last week."
Well, now we know. Labour will have no difficulty going into coaliton with FF in the event of a nuclear fall-out.

My colleague over in the Times, Miriam Donohoe had good pick-up on Jim Higgins interview by Sean O'Rourke on RTE yesterday.

But for 87 votes in 2002 he might now be leader of Fine Gael and Enda Kenny would be an MEP in Europe. In fact, Higgins was some 400 votes north of Kenny going into the 8th count but Kenny got a bounty (for geographical reasons) of 600 votes from FF's Frank Chambers, narrowly squeezing Higgins out.

Small mercies. Yes, Higgins was brave on the Donegal garda scandal. But some of his offerings since then have been of the worst reactionary 'hang them. flog them' kind. He sullied all travellers with his comments during the Padraig Nally case.

Now, he's at it again saying that child welfare should be withdrawn from the parents of errant and out-of-control teenagers and kids. When he was challenged by Sean O'Rourke that children would go hungry, Higgins made a spurious argument that in Limerick when child benefit is paid it's known as karaoke week. The evidence? One caller to a local radio station.

So no evidence for his humbug. Only the populist top-of-the-head stuff on no more karaokes to be replaced by children having to sing for their supper.

Makes Enda always seem like a wet and soppy liberal!

Mairead McGuinness must have recorded the longest parachute flight in world history before she alighted in Louth on Wednesday. Since becoming the MEP for the East constituency in 2004, there has been one project that she has pursued relentlessly - the further elevation of Mairéad McGuinness.

For months now, there has been an artificial 'will she, won't she?' debate in the media that has kept them all guessing.

First off, fair play to Brian Dowling for breaking the story as his first scoop after moving from the Indo to RTE.

But judging by some of the coverage, you'd swear we had just witnessed the arrival of the Queen of Sheeba.

The extraordinary thing about Mairead McGuinness is that despite the panoply of people she employs - and her ultra smooth PR - there is not one idea of hers that I can recall. Ok, being in Europe is a little isolating and Leinster House hacks are guilty of neglect when it comes to MEPs. But Simon Coveney and Avril Doyle and Kathy Sinnott and even Sean O Neachtain have crept onto our radar from time to time, championing causes (sometimes obscure ones, but causes all the same).

But what of Mairead's crusades? Well, Mairead is on the rural and agricultural committee. I had a look at her website today as well as her winter newsletter. Loads of small items of McGuinness pledging herself to worthy causes, being seen with worthy and famous people. Lots of pix too. But was there anything that stood out or that was in any way memorable or original?Zilcho.

She's got a great image (see Sam Smyth's loving profile of her in the Indo for proof). She's an old pro at communications (last big gig in TV was the weighty Celebrity Farm, if memory serves me correctly). I've seen her in action at first hand and if perception is reality, she may prove to be our very own Segolene Royal. And with that there is monstrous ambition.

Michael McDowell wasn't entirely joking when he said she would come home to challenge for the leadership of the party after Fine Gael lost the election. Okay, she's still relatively new. But we should be careful about too much hype. There is still a lot of the relatively empty vessel about Mairead McGuinness.

I'm also sure that she will coast home in Louth.

Enda Kenny learned how secure being a Fine Gael leader was this week.
But Bertie Ahern is already shaping out, longetivty wise, to be like one of those leaders of post-Soviet countries in Central Asia.
He was at his 'The Bert' best when being interviewed by Gerry Barry on RTÉ Radio's This Week .
Barry asked him when he was going to retire and The Bert came out with his usual spiel that he will be 60 just before the 2012 election is called, and God willing, he will continue until then... and no longer.
But did not Tony Blair who also wanted to see out a third term but was muscled out of office by Gordon Brown two years earlier.
Quite reasonably, Barry - who is still scalpel-sharp in questioning - put it to him that he couldn't expect to see out three terms and then hand it over to his successor just before a General Election. Sure, what could a new leader do with only a couple of months to go to an election.
Naturally, Ahern must know that he can't stay until the end but he probably very keen to avoid the mistake Blair made. By stating categorically that he would stand down, the questions kept coming at Blair like suitcases on a carousel.
There was no escape.
If Ahern wins a third term, the journalists will first report on his coronation and then quickly turn to his abdication, whenver that will be. It will dog him. Maybe not as much as it did Blair who had also Gordon Brown breathing down his neck.
And what of the possible FF successors. Well Brian Cowen looks like he's happy to wait until he's sixty before taking over the reins. Micheál Martin's chances have ebbed. Dermot Ahern is making more shapes than anybody else but will he get support, from his colleagues or have that populist appeal that is the sine qua non of FF leader? Ahern may falter on the electabilility test. The same doubts surround the stretchability of Mary Hanafin's appeal.
With that kind of inertia in the ranks below him, no wonder Ahern is so secure in his position. But if none of the indolent kids show any interest in taking over the family business, whatever about 2007, FF will get wallopped in 2012. Too far away? Not at all. Sinn Fein - the long term strategists par excellence - are already looking at 2017.
PS. Despite all his experience, The Bert still uses scripts for the more tricky questions in one-on-one interviews. Seasoned Bert watchers could hear the script talking it in the first answer he gave to Gerry Barry in that RTE interview until Barry interjected and did some real probing.

Damian Enlgish, the fast-talking TD for Meath East, told RTE
www.rte.ie/news/morningireland.html
this morning that he's skiing in Andorra. Any snow? asked Cathal Mac Coille. No, said Damian. Just the artificial stuff.
Unexepectedly, and unpleasantly, Damian found wading around knee-deep in some other nasty stuff today. But this was entirely of his own making and Damo, who should have known better, walked right into it.

Sure English is the youngest TD in the Dail. But anyone who knows him will also know that there are no flies on him, that he will be more than able to see off any rivals in his own Meath patch. He would have dispatched Mairead McGuinness, had she interloped in his territory. He will dispatch Graham Geraghty too, and far more subtly that that Aussie Rules bully. But he will dispatch him all the same.

Now Damian can give out about being misquoted in the Indo this morning. But the fact is that he restated exactly what John Deasy said earlier this week: Enda Kenny's leadership would be challenged if Fine Gael did not get into government.
This all stemmed from an interview that Kenny did with the Examiner.
I asked him about his leadership should FG narrowly lose. He gave an answer that was really a demurral. Deasy was asked about the interview on local radio in Waterford and basicaly cited party policy.

But of course there are undertones. Citing party policy is all very well but it also infers conditionality of support. What both Deasy and English raised was the prospect of a FG loss. Does a public airing of the leadership issue before a General Election, undermine confidence and lead to an erosion of public support? Possibly, probably, say FG strategists.

What Deasy and English have said, the will argue, is naive at best, bordering on disloayal at worst.

It didn't help the party one little bit that the person who went on Morning Ireland to defend the party was Shane McEntee, its TD for Meath East. Cathal Mac Coille rightly cut him short the second time he came out with the ludicrous cliche that he was a Meath men and Meath men always think about winning.

We in the Irish Examiner published a story yesterday about the new Fine Gael billboard campaign that employs the módh díreach with a direct attack on Michael McDowell. It's not the first time that FG have used negative type campaigns since 2002 and most of it seems to be directed at the PDs - obviously, they will be fishing for votes out of the same pool.

Just over a year ago, they used a great image of Bertie Ahern and Mary Harney. The scene looked like a restarant or a bar. Both of them were looking away from each other, like a married couple who were drifting apart. I think the slogan referred to the spark being gone.

They also had a couple of cartoonish type posters zeroing in on Harney, McDowell and Tom Parlon... the Parlon one portrayed Mr Delivery as a cowboy in the Marlboro man/TJ Dallas mode.

The previous ones were humourous. But the McDowell poster is more cutting, more direct. The story has sparked off a huge debate about the benefits or otherwise of negative campaigns and attack advertising in politics.

It has long been a standard feature of the stumps in the US and has also been used to mixed effect in Britain - the one that comes to mind is the Tony Blair 'Demon Eyes' posters used by the Tories in the 1997 election campaign (it didn't get them very far). Negativity can work despite what focus groups say, but only in the following contexts.

1. Best for leader to stay above the fray
2. Must be counterbalanced by positive messages and vision
3. There must be some basis to justify the fears that are being raised.

Will it be a dirty campaign? They are all dirty in their own ways. The Queensbury Rules of politics are only really observed in that moratorium period in the last 24 hours. In a way I hope it is. Because boy, have we hit the doldrums in the past year.

This was taken in the Gorges du Verdon in France in October. I was over rock climbing with a crowd from Kerry and taking what was the last long break for the election. (To be honest, I was looking for an excuse to post a pic!)

Political journalism in Ireland is very desk-bound... Leinster House contains the North Pole and the South Pole of what we write about (though it will change in the next few months). There's a famous polish climber who came up with a delicious quote about his sense of religion. It's better to be in the mountains thinking of God, than to be in church thinking of the mountains. Ditto for politics.

Of course, our TDs and Senators are on the usual six week Christmas break. They are coming back a week early. Big deal! They will be back for six weeks before they are off for St Patrick's Week. Then it's a week (or maybe two) back before Easter. And at that stage, the election will be called.

Every term, the Government chief whip published a list of priority legislation. And every term, they are lucky to get through half of what's promised.
Every time a new Government is elected, there's always brave talk about Dail and Seanad reform. Papers are published. Committees are formed. Grandiose promises are made. And invariably it all comes to nothing. The thing that captures the public imagination is the unconsciably long holidays they take. But the Seanad really needs to be reformed. The Second House is just about democratic, and deeply by proxy at that. The only proper election that takes place is for the university seats. And they are deeply unrepresentative - three for the NUI and three for TCD. And with eleven nominees by the Taoiseach, the Government will always have an inbuilt majority. Yes, the Seanad does have a legislative role, but in reality it is powerless to stall or amend legislation in the manner of the House of Lords in Britain.

It is a talking shop though, to be fair, the quality of debate is often vastly superior to the dirges we get in the Dail.

Bertie Ahern's new year resolution told us a lot of what a great welcome he makes for himself. His resolution: I'll work even harder, if that's possible.
Perhaps he could have added something like: I'll try to be even more modest, if that's possible.

BERTIE AHERN’S moment of true political genius during this term of Government was realising he had to give Charlie McCreevy the flick.


Ivan Yates found the phrase for it when he reminded us on RTE's The Week in Politics last Sunday week that eaten bread is soon forgotten. And that was McCreevy’s problem. What he had been so right for in 1997, he was so wrong for seven years later.

Was he killed off by the Frankenstein he himself created to ethically cleanse civil servants from the capital? Was he killed off by the lousy by-election, local election and European election results in 2004?



Or was he killed off by a leader whose control of him was as complete as Mick McCarthy’s over Roy Keane? In all likelihood, it was combination of all of the above. With Bertie nothing is ever as neat as a Colonel Plum-type operation with a candlestick in the sonservatory.

To be sure, here was a leader who innately knew — without being exactly able to say why — that his unpredictable star player was on the wane and had to go. And that he needed an honest grafter to fill the gap.

Timing was everything. And cometh the hour, cometh the Beast. An early departure for McCreevy allowed his favoured successor Brian Cowen sufficient time to make his mark. On Wednesday, Cowen presented his third Budget speech as if it was part of a continuum, as if he had been there forever… Charlie who?

And his budget speech was some feat. The text was that of a leader-in-waiting. The delivery was that of an altar server who’s just received communion, all downcast eyes and humble piety.

Cowen is such a masterful spinner that he often appears completely unspun. He hit all the right buttons on Wednesday in reaching out to all the key constituencies that Fianna Fáil will need to bring them home next year — and getting there firstest with the mostest was never so easy, what with all the sleáms of money he had sloshing around him.

His greatest trick of all was presenting the biggest giveaway election budget of all time as if it wasn’t an election budget at all.

He didn’t go on and on about all the great things the Government has done since 1997. He didn’t strut, he didn’t showboat, he didn’t patronise people about how well we are doing.

The balancing act was a subtle one. Dropping the top tax rate by 1% is a measure that helps the better off. The semantics for that became “rewarding work”.

But just in case anyone got the notion that it’s Government for the rich by the rich, there was the clever little increase in the health levy for those earning over €100,000.

“This extra money will help fund services such as long-term care initiatives for the elderly. We need to act now to secure such funds and I believe it is only right that those best able to afford it make an increased contribution.”

That sounds great until you realise that they’ll actually be making a decreased contribution, having benefited from tax cuts.

The most resonant phrases though was one that encapsulated the Fianna Fáil approach since Inchydoney and ones that you’d never imagine forming on the lips of McCreevy. They related to the social welfare changes.

“One of the measures of a true republic is the strength of its support for those on low incomes…the Government does not see economic growth as an end in itself.”

It would have been fatuous for any of the opposition parties to quibble with the generous increase in pension and social welfare payments. And, in fairness, none did.

But the main asks from Cowen required action on two conflicting fronts. He had to appeal to the all the voters who demanded what’s in it for me? And he had to appeal to all the voters who demanded what’s in it for the poor, the unemployed and the elderly? The paradox was that in most cases it was the same voters who were asking both questions. With one stroke, he had to satisfy their greed and also salve their consciences.

And the problem with that is that it took up the bulk of spending: some €2.6 billion of an estimated €3.7bn. For everything else, it was a case of cutting the cloth to suit the measure.

The much-trumpeted greening of Fianna Fáil turned out to be tentative and half-assed. The €270 million spend on carbon credits was a roundabout admission of failure on our Kyoto commitment.

Maybe we were missing the point. It was a green budget alright. Plenty of greenbacks.

And in Cowen, Bertie Ahern had the perfect minister for bringing Fianna Fáil to its green and republican roots.

12.29am Saturday, December 2



First of all, thanks for the comments (shorter paras and spaces between noted). Maybe it was my naivete but before I posted my first (test) blog I spent a while looking through blogger.com to try to get a sense of who was writing, what they were writing.

It was like looking at the sky on a clear night - an overwhelming infinity of stars. And I thought that tip-toing into a blog would be like shouting into that kind of void.

There are a couple of political sites and politically inclined web sites in Ireland - most of them are good and constantly good. Lots of blogs too. But few by journalists. I suppose the best known is that of the BBC's political editor Nick Robinson.

Because I write for a living, the thought of sitting down at in-between moments to serve up even more words to screen, gives you a slight sense of foreboding. There are a couple of fairly obvious traits that many blogs share. The first is that they tend to be very first-person oriented. Secondly, for a journalist, you tend to mull over our copy (for accuracy and for style) even when you are turning it around. This format is way more informal. I for one feel a reluctance to embrace the notion that my stuff will be published as soon as it is written.

There was an absorbing interview with Jacob Weisberg, the editor of Slate in the Guardian media section last Monday. It's at http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,,1957600,00.html
The argument he made was compelling. It is one we have heard before, but, coming from him, it glowed with authority. In essence, he was saying newspapers are on the way out. They will not be able to live with the instant and organic nature of internet journalism. Print articles are immutable and final, whereas on the web they are part of a conversation.

Here is a snatch of Weisberg's fascinaing take on the phenomenon.
He says: "Anyone who really wants to participate in that conversation has to have a presence on the web now - not necessarily a blog, but they have to have a website or write for an online publication. Within half an hour of posting a piece on Slate, I get a direct, often hostile and personal, response from readers.

"That's part of what I think has been so frustrating for the columnists on the New York Times, like Thomas Friedman, Frank Rich and Maureen Dowd, who are online but are behind a 'pay-wall' - you have to be a subscriber to the paper or subscribe separately to the website before you can get them. That effectively cuts them out of the political conversation."

Surely that is every journalist's nightmare, a pedants' charter? He disagrees. "It's great. I think part of the reason anyone goes into journalism is to get a response to what they write. The fact that it's frequently very negative is the least important part of it. You get habituated to the instantaneity."

Fianna Fail held its annual Cairde Fail dinner dance in the tundra territory of City West tonight (Friday Dec 1). It's one of those things that as a political correspondent you feel you have to go to but you're always amazed at the turnout. It was Hill 16 with tables. I have written before in the Irish Examiner about Fianna Fail being a cult but this dinner is not quite like the Ard Fheis, because many of the tables are taken up by corporates paying their political dues (what was the tag line from the ad for Trócaire - Give a little, it will help a lot).

Bertie gave a speech which I missed. It had actually had funny moments, which for Bertie is almost miraculous. BERTIE SHOCKER - TAOISEACH CRACKS A JOKE THAT'S FUNNY.

Or why this lazy journalist was late. HACK MISSES FIRST COURSE OF SUMPTUOUS FIANNA FAIL FEAST BECAUSE HE'S TIED DOWN WRITING AN ARTICLE ON BERTIE'S SPEECH.

He had a cut at the media, and the 42 journalists on the political gallery (I didn't know there were so many of us there). I believe he came out with the notion that we come in to work, get a couple of knocking quotes, take a couple of pot-shots at the political target du jour and we're all done and dusted after a couple of hours, ready to hold forth at at Doheny and Nesbitts or some other drinking establishment.

We may be accused of a lot of things - beng manipulative, sly, janus-faced, cynical, cruel etc. But unfortunately we have yet to master the skill of automatic and instantaneous reports jst yet. We may not put in so many hours as Bertie (120 per week, or is it 130, according to himself). But we work long long days, which isn't helped by the knack of the political class to releasing the juicier stuff at a convenient time like 7.30pm at night.

Anyway, some guy stood up to announce the raffle. We want a silent collection, he implored to the faithful. This of course is a fundraiser. And how much does the party make from it? God knows! The ethics and standards legislation that came in in the mid 1990s seemed foolproof. But the drafters were fiendshly clever.

They set limits for personal and corporate/company loans that seemed comparatively low, some E600 for a personal one, and E1,270 for a corporate. If your donation exceeded the limit, it had to be declared. Ok, so it stopped the big E100,000 donations from big business. But nstead of getting a couple of big wads of greenbacks, the parties got loads of little ones, all below the limit.

When you look at the official declaratons, you are always struck at how few donations there are. But then you are missing the hundreds of smaller ones that flew under the radar of declaration. In the States, everything has to be declared from the $500,000 corporate donaton to the ten bucks given by a widow. But here, we still have no idea how much parties raise, especially FF whose glut of publicity over the next six months suggests it has been funded by hundreds of similar silent collectons.

5pm - Government releases White Paper on its projections for the performance of the Exchequer for this year. The figures are stunning. A €2 billion surplus. Everything has been above projection, especially stamp duty and capital gains tax. Doesn't it make Brian Cowen look great. There he was at the Budget last year, predicting a deficit of €2.9 million. And hasn't the genius produced figures that are an amazing €5 billion better than that.

Wait a minute. A €5 billion difference. How could they have got their projections so badly wrong? Why didn't they do their sums better? Hasn't someone told them the economy has been doing really well and we're all drinking lattes these days? Why didn't they consult Fergus Gibson, who would have told them that Venus descending over Mars is bling time?

Well, there was a method to their bad maths (I know, it's not a very good pun). If you look back over the four year's of this Government's term, you can always rely on the Department of Finance for making the Minister look good. That's done by predicting a sizeable deficit each year. And then, lo and behold, the Minister announced at the end of the year that he's marshalled the economy so well, and being so faithful to his true love, Prudence, that we're not in deficit after all, but, gosh, we are swimming in it. Last year, they said we'd have a deficit of €2.8 billion and - yes - we cancelled it out and then some. And in 2004, and in 2003, and in 2002 also.

To me, there is a degree of politicisation here that's unhealthy. If you set your targets really modestly and conservatively, you are going to surpass them easily. The political effect of that is that the Miniser looks good; really good; master-of-the-universe good. And we're all fooled by it. Wait for the headlines in Saturday's papers which will read along these lines: Brian's war chest, Brian's budget bonanza, cut in top rate of interest rates on Wednesday.

Thursday
a.m. I took the day off because I was giving a short speech on the Freedom of Information Act in a city centre hotel as part of a seminar. Emily O'Reilly, the Informaton Commissioner, spoke earlier. Had a right go at the Fianna Fail members of the backbench Finance Committee who seemed to back proposals to drop some of the many non-disclosure clauses in legislation (that makes a body or information exempt from the FOI Act) but then did a mealy-mouthed U-turn when the party bosses imposed the whip.
Raced through my own script because they were seriously behind time. I thought I had a couple of half-decent lines. Because I was talking at the speed of a racing commentator galloping along with the horses on the final furlong, I think that comic timing was a bit of an issue and my witty bits bellyflopped.

6pm. Launch of the Green Party's Book 'A Journey to Change'. It marks the 25th anniversary of the party. It was held in the Central Hotel where the first ever meeting took place. I wrote the preface and John Bowman, who launched it, praised my piece. Too much actually. Of course, I was dying to get a name check for him. But when he mentioned my piece for about the sixth time, even I was getting embarrassed. I read the piece again a little later to rediscover my outrageous talent. It's a piece I'm proud of, I must admit, but it's not world beating. And much of it leans heavily for its detail from Dan Boyle's fine account of the party.

The party's six TDs are all dapper enough in their own way, though only Trevor Sargent and Dan Boyle, stick rigidly to the Dail uniform of suit and tie. The launch reminded you of what a roots party the Greens still is. Lots of tweed, and fleeces, and tousled hair. It would be unimaginable to have young kids at a do by another party. But a scatter of very young children played happily on the floor while the speeches were being made. The adults were as oblivious of them as they were of the adults. It made for a nice change. Reminded you of how family unfriendly so much of social life (ie restaurants and pubs) is in Ireland.