Thierry Henry- Death of Chivalry & the White Knight

I use to look on Thierry Henry as a giant in the world of sport. He seemed to embody all the attributes of the 'gentleman footballer'-debonair, chic, knowledgeable about so many topics, always so calm and elegant in the heat of the fierce battles that took place on the playing fields of Europe and beyond.

He was an icon that you were proud to tell your children to emulate. A consummate professional.

But his behaviour on Wednesday against Ireland smacked of all that is corrupt in the cynical world of professional sport. His deliberate double handling of the ball broke all the rules of the game. But it was compounded by his celebrations after Gallas scored and his lying immediately after the game when he stated that he didn’t know if he had touched the ball.

‘Sportsmanship’ was dealt a death blow by the whitest of all knights. Good has become evil. For Henry has given the green light to children and everyone else that the ‘ends justifies the means’. In a period when people are disgusted with the antics of politicians, priests, bankers, business leaders and top civil servants who preach of honesty, personal sacrifice and decency while milking the system for personal gain, we need true role models more than ever before. But the French captain has dashed our hopes that football is still a beautiful game played by heroes.

By his latest deeds and words, he wants us now to recognise lawbreaking as a virtue.

Of course the stance of FIFA has only reinforced this criminality. Their motto of ‘Fair Play’ was exposed as a facade when they seeded at the last minute the teams in the World Cup play-offs in order to ensure that the large wealthy countries secured an unfair advantage in getting through to the finals in South Africa. They lied too when they said that there was no precedent in re-staging the Ireland-France game. In 2005, they had the Bahrain – Uzbekistan match replayed due to a disputed penalty decision by the referee. However this time the world football governing body wants the money-generating galaxy of French stars to go forward at the expense of the minnows of Ireland.

Henry and FIFA together have shown that power and wealth take precedence in the world of sport just as is so often the case in the world of politics and business. Both have 'blood money' on their greedy hands.

Community-Inspired Campaign To Clean Up Galway City's Forests & Parks Gets Underway!

Our Environmental campaign group ‘Friends of the Forest’ have joined forces with Galway City Council in order to implement a new initiative designed to secure public participation in regular major monthly clean-ups of the city’s public spaces.
While we fundamentally disagree with local authority officials' still existing plans to build a road through this most precious urban forest park that will all destroy its proposed development as an important ecological corridor , nevertheless we see no reason why we should not work with City Hall to increase public use of the forest and to help eliminate the waste crisis that exists in this important natural heritage area.There is a serious and growing litter problem in parks and other green spaces across the country. However, because of the local authority recruitment embargo, ordinary citizens must re-discover 'civic pride' and take up the challenge of helping to keep our valuable green resources clean in order to protect our increasingly threatened wildlife and to encourage greater use of woods and parklands by schools, arts groups and local communities.
Inspired by the international ‘Beach Watch’ project organised in Galway by Atlantaquaria (Ireland's National Aquarium), Friends of the Forest held a series of meetings with City Hall’s Environmental Education Officer Sharon Carroll and the Superintendent of Parks Stephen Walsh on implementing regular high-profile mass clean ups that would each month focus in on different public spaces across the city.The result is that the first of these major clean-ups known as ‘Glan Suas Gaillimh!’ (Irish for 'Clean Up Galway!') operating under the auspices of Galway City Council will start at 2.30pm on Sunday November 15th in the Terryland Forest Park.
Follow-on clean-ups will include Merlin Woods, Barna Woods and our seashores.
It is hoped that residents of all ages from all across the city will take part in this major partnership initiative that could make such a positive contribution to our city’s image and well-being.So well done to Sharon McHugh & Stephen Walsh for bing so supportive and proactive in doing every thing possible to ensure the success of Glan Suas Gaillimh!
Sharon in particular has gone over and beyond the call of duty to involve children in the clean-up as a continuation of her work with schools on the Green Flag initiative This litter drive will represent an important step in re-engaging the people of Galway with City Hall’s environmental policies. We are also now hopeful that Council will re-introduce an annual eco-programme for Terryland Forest Park and elsewhere that will include family tree planting days, community arts events and educational nature tours. Continued tree planting is urgently needed to offset global warming with our forests acting as ‘carbon sinks’. As well as being major biodiversity zones, forests also serve as important passive/active amenity areas.
The Friends of the Forest are also continuing their three year lobbying of the Minister of the Environment to introduce a national refundable levy on all drink containers purchased at off-licences and other retail outlets. As discarded cans and bottles are probably the number one cause of litter in Ireland, a refundable levy would have a beneficial impact on our environment by providing an economic incentive for people to keep Irish parks, roads, and waterways clean.
Such a monetary pay-back scheme existed in Ireland until a few decades ago and is very successful today in other countries.
The monies saved could then be used to encourage greater public use of our wonderful green spaces by funding the provision of park wardens, regular outdoor family events and park facilities such as picnic areas, community gardens and eco-learning centres.

'Communities United Against Cuts' Protest

At last, those working with communities are starting to unite and fight back against proposed government cuts that will devastate neighbourhoods and led to ghettoisation and a social meltdown that will undermine all the good work done over the last decade by organisations such as Galway City Partnership.
Why should the innocents particularly the disadvantaged be forced to suffer and to pay for the sins of the coterie of selfish 'me fein' property speculators, bankers, planners, top civil servants and certain politicians that got us into the recession that Ireland is now facing?
Galway city recently saw a fantastic colourful crowd of over 1,000 community activists of all ages protest against the threatened state cuts to the community sector. It will be the first of many such rallies over the coming months.
See my previous article entitled Economic Meltdown Could lead to Social Meltdown

Horse-Drawn Cart on a Busy City Road!

On Sunday afternoon, I was pleasantly surprised to see a man standing up on an open cart steering its horse through a Kirwan Roundabout populated by speeding cars driven by aggressive drivers.
I just had to take this brave man's (& horse's) photo! So I flagged him down & got talking to him.
A true gentleman, his name is Michael Cunniss & he has worked with horses all his life.
Only a few decades ago, a sight of a horse-drawn cart would have been a common everyday occurrence in Irish towns. Now, our modern roads are just too dangerous not only for horses, but for pedestrians & cyclists. So much for progress!!

Arrogance of the Ceann Comhairle John O'Donoghue defies belief!

(Click on picture for larger version)

It is not surprising that John O'Donoghue and his government defenders can use in his defense that he abided by parliamentary rules thereby breaking no laws in the huge expenses that he accumulated over the last few years that was paid for by the ordinary tax-payers of Ireland.
But hasn't the ruling establishment since time immemorial written the laws to protect their own selfish interests? Morality and ethics sadly does not figure high on their agenda.
Yet even still his behaviour goes way beyond these low political standards.
For what can you say about a servant of the state that reclaimed a miserly stg£1 donation that he made to Unicef while on a visit to Scotland? Or who stayed at a 5 Star hotel and spent 65,000Euro of taxpayers monies with other TDs while attending a Conference in South Africa on Combating Poverty?!
Due solely to public anger at these unethical abuses, he has been forced to announce his resignation, the first time that this has happened to a person in such high political office since the foundation of the state?
A honourable act on his behalf? Not bleeding likely? For he has postponed his resignation until next week knowing that the Green Party at their convention over the weekend may decide to pull the plug on the government leading to the dissolving of Dail Éireann and the announcement of a general election. Clever man that John is, he knows that, as he will be still hold the office of Ceann Comhairle, he will automatically be given a seat in the next parliament hereby avoiding the anger of the people.
Selfish interest comes before civic duty.
What is the morality and sense of patriotic duty in this Green-Fianna Fáil Government. Let all true civic-minded people in both parties stand up and be counted. Demand an immediate end to politicians and top civil servants filling their pockets at our expense and a return of integrity and honesty to Irish politics.

Lisbon Treaty Does Not Deliver the Reform to the EU that is Needed

Irish Agriculture on Its Knees

acknowledging the progress initiated by the European Union in such areas as human rights, the environment and ending the military conflicts between states that once was endemic across much of Europe, nevertheless there are serious discrepancies in other policy areas that are incorrectly promoted by Irish EU proponents as success stories.
Ireland’s traditional agricultural and fishing communities have been devastated by EU membership. In a time when food security is becoming increasingly important due to the sharp rise in world population and the looming global energy crisis, the numbers working on Irish farms and at sea are only a small fraction of pre-1973 levels while more and more of our food is imported from countries who let their own people starve, destroy biodiversity and drain off scant water resources so that they can export agricultural produce to Europe and elsewhere. The Common Agricultural Policy has done nothing to develop sustainable agriculture. With its rich grasslands, Ireland could become an international centre for organic agriculture, something never grasped or understood by successive Irish government.
Likewise, the depletion of our fish resources and the livelihoods of our once proud fishing communities were caused by the free rein given by the European Commission to the foreign fleets allowed inside our waters.
These problems are not unique to Ireland though. Other EU countries have suffered similar fates.
I have only recently returned from southern Portugal where many villages lie almost devoid of young people, where the fish-processing industry of Portimao has been obliterated and where farmers are giving away the fruits of their labour in spite of the unprecedented demand from the burgeoning tourist sector of the Algarve. This is because the local hotels and supermarkets chains import food produce from Africa and elsewhere rather than give a living wage to indigenous producers.Portugal is also where I saw many young teenage Eastern European girl prostitutes along the roadsides, the victims of vicious pimps and human traffickers who have become beneficiaries of the easing of border restrictions within Europe over the last decade.
It is obvious that the European Union needs radical reform. But not what is proposed by the anti-democratic Lisbon Treaty, which as our EU Commissioner Charlie McCreevy, said would be rejected by 95% of European citizens if they were given the right to vote on it.

Click here to see my article written immediately after the Irish electorate last year voted No to the Lisbon Treaty.

Economic Meltdown Could Led to Social Meltdown with the Return of Ghettoisation to Ireland

I recently had the following article printed in the Galway City Tribune newspaper

Community support cuts and the abolition of the Department of Communities, Gaeltacht and Rural Affairs will have devastating negative effects on urban neighbourhoods.

Due to EU directives there have been moves over the last decade by European governments to tackle high levels of social exclusion particularly in urban areas caused by decades of bad planning and developer-driven economics. The aim was to promote sustainability, integration and inclusivity. These policies are now threatened by An Bord Snip Nua which recommends huge cuts in community support programmes that defy all logic to those working with grassroots organisations and will promote rather than end ghettoisation, anti-social behaviour and social alienation.

Now that Ireland is experiencing the cold winds of mass unemployment caused by the economic meltdown, we need more rather than less policies designed to engage with people suffering from social disadvantage.

Providing young people in particular with meaningful state-supported jobs designed to help their neighbourhoods is a more productive alternative than the disillusionment of the dole both for the individual and for society.

It is interesting to note that the only government department recommended in the report for abolition is the Department of Communities, Gaeltacht and Rural Affairs. This stance betrays the moral and economic philosophy of the author and is sadly reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher when she famously said, “There is no such thing as society, there are individual men and women and there are families.”

The establishment of this government department a few years back was a belated recognition by the state that measures to combat endemic poverty and social exclusion for both rural and urban communities needed to be coordinated by a one-stop-shop central agency if we were to counter the negative impact of urban sprawl, the destruction of rural society caused by the collapse in the family farm infrastructure and if Ireland was to avoid the huge urban ghettoes and deep social divisions of other European countries such as Britain and France. The department’s Minister, Éamon Ó Cuív, is one of the few politicians in Dáil Éireann that has a strong ideological and practical understanding of the concept of ‘community’ in Ireland. While the department’s programmes such as RAPID are painfully slow in securing their objectives, nevertheless they are starting to made a difference in terms of regenerating areas by integrating the planning, investment and development available for local communities. Now years of hardwork by activists and officials could all go up in smoke.