Galway Buzz

After this week, I’m beginning to think I’ll have to buy my Christmas presents using farm animals and unopened Simpsons collectibles.

First, as teed up so inanely by Enda Kenny, came the Budget: so awful they announced it twice. Brendan Howlin and Michael Noonan announced a series of measures that enforced the idea I’ve long held: that austerity would be a marvellous idea if it weren’t for the nuisance of people getting in the way. At the top of a fairly long list of objectionable things was the hike in car tax, even for low emission cars, as it seems that too many people were doing the right thing for it to be profitable anymore. It’s hard to give up yer oul cynicism when the government gives a fundamental principle of fair taxation such a good, hard kick up the arse straight out the gate.

While Michael Noonan must be wondering how after 30 years in ministerial politics he still finds himself doling out fuzzy lollipops (although at least he has no phone-tapping, Mafioso tactics to deal with anymore) there is a certain degree of apt casting for a Fine Gael elder statesman being the nation’s cod liver oil dispenser. Brendan Howlin, however, best get as many sniffs out of his leather cabinet seat as he can, as Labour have made themselves and everyone who voted for them look like idiots. They’ve already asked two of their stone cold maverick backbenchers who play by their own rules, Tommy Broughan and Patrick Nulty, to hand in their committee member badges, and along with Willie Penrose gives a total number of 3 Labour renegades. Sadly, it’s the other 34 who are off their case.

But while dreams of Tallaght Strategy II (or some other method of getting Fianna Fáil off their paper mache high horse) go down the commode along with the disposable income of low to middle income earners, in Brussels this week Europe’s leaders attended another summit to save the Euro, the continental centre-right equivalent of there being anything said for having another Mass. They eventually came up with…something, but David Cameron vetoed it on the grounds that it wasn’t in the UK’s interests. Or at least one square mile of it, around the St Paul’s Cathedral area. While financial transfer taxes wouldn’t be a bad idea at all, rules on fiscal discipline regarding balanced budgets and spending limits are a Keynesian nightmare, and if anyone truly thinks curbs on government spending caused this crisis or can save us from the next one, they’re in for a shiny, skyscraper-sized fall.

Meanwhile back at the ranch Rick Perry has been trying his best to make people forget about the fact he can’t remember anything, with an ad reminding everyone how much he hates people who don’t love Jesus. He claims you know something is wrong when gays can openly serve in the military but kids can’t openly pray or celebrate Christmas in schools. He has a point, being a gay soldier is a lifestyle choice, but young Christians were born that way. In most universes a man whose chances of becoming his party’s nominee were campfire ashes trying to revive his appeal by making a wildly divisive ad would hit the ceiling of madness. But this is the Republican primary, so in this case the ceiling of madness is way higher, made of marble and has a picture of Robocop wrestling a lion etched into it.

Newt Gingrich, an idiot’s idea of a smart person, raised eyebrows this week by saying Palestinians were” invented”, which shows both an ignorance about the fundamentals of geopolitics and a hostility to the innovation of nation creators that is not at all American. Herman “Bootysweat” Cain suspended his campaign in some style, rocking up to the stage in a bus before quoting the Pokémon movie. And Michelle Bachmann, who I’m now convinced is Sasha Baron Cohen’s most ingenious character yet, was stunned to silence by an 8 year old who took exception to her stance on lesbian mothers, what with him having one. Meanwhile, Barack Obama delivered one of the most lauded speeches of his tenure in office in Kansas, brilliantly flicked off charges from the Republicans he was soft on middle-east policy (His answer was essentially “Bin Laden, bitches”) and Hillary Clinton made a ground-breaking speech on gay rights in Geneva. It’s going to be an ugly year for red states.

And just in case you needed any more proof that the American right were going through the five stages of lunacy (they’re currently at the fourth stage, incoherent rampage) a presenter on Fox News show “Follow The Money” (which with a name like that you know will be a hoot) laid into, wait for it, The Muppets. It seems their latest movie features a malevolent oil baron called Tex Richman, so perhaps it was inevitable that the channel bankrolled by a malevolent baron would take offence. What happened next was classic Fox: the presenter gets a talking head on to totally agree with him, followed by a talking head who doesn’t, but in this case he and another presenter he has brought in specifically for the task talk over her in an attempt to brow beat them into submission.

To be honest, the only surprising thing about all this is that Fox haven’t cottoned on to Kermit and his collective’s leftist conspiracy earlier. The Muppets Christmas Carol was a clear allegory for the forces of liberalism brainwashing an upright conservative, while Sesame Street was flagrant socialist propaganda, with its pushy multiculturalism and underlying message of treating everyone nicely.

Most surprising of all though is how the star of the show, Jason Segel, has allowed himself to be involved in such lefty malarky. After all, he appeared in the great right wing film of our times, where he featured as a self-made salesman who lived a luxurious life of self-interest whose favourite band was the famed Objectivists Rush.

I Love You Man, I think it was called.

So much stuff has happened this week, it’ll be hard to consolidate it into one manageable weekly digest.

It started with us still reeling from the tragic deaths of Gary Speed and, although it happened several months hither, the tribute to the death of Kate Fitzgerald. Things got a lot darker in the middle of the week when Broadsheet (which you can read here) unearthed a series of revelations about how her story came (at least partially) to print, each more damning than the last.

Diocesan reports being released this week did nothing to lift the pall either, while on the other end of the spectrum RTE’s grave errors in the Fr Reynolds case will have long term repercussions. Elsewhere Leo Varadkar waded deep into Pee Flynn territory with his talks of holidays and it not being all bad in relation to the budget and, in a big poisonous aggravated appendix to last week’s Scully “moar racism” affair, a woman was arrested for being an ignorant bitch on a tram.

Thankfully though there was more going on this week than the worrying and the depressing, there was plenty of the frivolity and idiocy upon which this article was built. Top of that list this week was Paul McMullan, the man who is to journalism what Lionel Hutz is to law. His testimony to the Leveson Inquiry was reminiscent of a man whose greatest wish in life is to be one of those old barflies with an uncontrollable beard who tells fantastical stories to anyone who’ll tolerate him, gleefully recounting his tales of chasing celebrities, rooting through bins, pretending to be a rent boy and generally revelling in the fact that he’s the Woodword and Bernstein of our evil parallel universe. He also went on to claim hacking was a worthy tool. Hackers are certainly half that.

If the News of The World still existed this week they’d probably be leathering into the public sector strikers, but in their absence there were plenty of people to take up the slack. Controversialist for hire Jeremy Clarkson made the most headlines for saying that, actually, you know what, I won’t bother saying what he said. It’s exactly what he wants. The strikes however, apart from making a point about pension promises being revoked, also rather emphatically underlined a by-product of the financial crisis: rather than people pulling together against a more culpable force for rights they all ought to have, they’re lining up against each other like Sharks and Jets wondering why the guys across from them should get such-and-such while they go without. Divide and conquer it seems never goes out of style.

While workers take it to the streets over the very future of work practices, a serious dose of the petties broke out in Kansas. Over in the Yellow Brick State Governor and flat-earther Sam Brownback was made look a thorough tit by a schoolgirl who jokingly tweeted that the Governor was a tad uninteresting (“he blows a lot” was her exact phrase, even though she never actually met him). Before you could type 140 characters the Governor’s staff saw the tweet and contacted her school, where her principal demand she write an apology. Governor Brownback later apologised for his staff’s overreaction, and when a man who thinks evolution is hooey and homosexuality is against natural law is being the reasonable one, you know you’re in trouble.

And as the old saying goes, when a US Governor catches a crazy-ass cold, a Belfast Mayor sneezes. This week Sinn Féin’s 24 year old mayor Niall O’Donnghaile, in a perfect confluence of stupid action and reason, refused to give a girl of 15 her Duke of Edinburgh prize because she was a member of the Army cadets. Since taking the position (only a couple of days after being elected) a few months ago his gold chain has been a lightning rod, whether he’s taking down royal portraits to make way for the Proclamation, not visiting the Cenotaph on Remembrance Day or not attending a soldiers homecoming from Afghanistan. His behaviour has prompted protests outside City Hall and, worse yet, a speech from Deputy Mayor that was crushing in its mammyisms (she actually said how disappointed she was in him). So now, the youngest ever Mayor of Belfast stands to have the ignominious honour be the only person in living memory who has ever had to resign for snubbing a teenage girl. I tell ya, kids today. No respect.

As many of you know, I’m a stone cold maverick who plays by his own rules.

But, there’s a difference between being a loose canon and shooting your mouth off. Alas, a great section of people expressing opinions on the internet this week don’t seem to know the difference, as pride in their opinion and ability to express it with less than five spelling mistakes per paragraph blinded them from the fact that their opinion was, in actual fact, a phalanx of bristly testacles.

For starters, a worrying amount of people seem to have a real problem with The Blacks. And by that, I don’t mean the social climbing family up the street with the two Mercedes and an absolute bitch of a daughter.  After Naas Mayor Darren Scully made the decision that he wouldn’t be dealing with black Africans on account of them being rude, aggressive, asking for stuff he possibly couldn’t give them and other things white people also do, within hours he was being asked to deal with nobody at all as he was stripped of his chain, his badge and the gun in his ankle holster. That said he still remains a Councillor, and also a member of Fine Gael, who are too busy roaming the countryside putting bayonets in anything that looks like bags of money to notice.

You’d like to think that Scully’s slip of the brain was an isolated incident, but no. A slew of comments praising Scully for dropping dud truth bombs about the coming over here with the taking of the jobs or the taking of the benefits if they don’t have the jobs, and a bunch of other stuff I’m frankly too dismayed and exasperated to repeat.  The fact leaders of the black community in Ireland spoke up about that and other assorted racism only seemed to embolden the trolls. My favourite comments came from those who seemed to take offence at the fact black people met in such a way at all, though I’m not sure what their thoughts are on, for example, the Irish Centre in Hammersmith. And one who said when we were faced with racism we didn’t just whine, which is true. In the case of Tammany Hall, they just beat the shit out of people and imposed political dominance.

It was sad and yet oddly appropriate that a week of bang-your-head-against-the-wall bigotry coincided with the anniversary of JFK’s death, who helped advance the cause of Civil Rights to the point where his successor Lyndon Johnson couldn’t get legislation passed fast enough and Marvin Gaye sang a song about him. I wonder what he’d say about the situation in his ancestral homeland this week. “Where all the sexy ladies at?” perhaps.

And speaking of people who tapped prolifically, News International were back in the spotlight this week, as the Leveson Inquiry unleashed a schedule of stars I’m A Celebrity would kill for. But it was a different kind of annoying parasite and bug that the likes of Hugh Grant, Steve Coogan, JK Rowling and the McCanns and Sienna Miller were gunning for. It’s only a matter of time before the Murdochs depart to the escape pod once and for all.

Thankfully there were one or two rays of goodness in a pretty malevolent week. TD Derek Keating organised a charity single for suicide crisis centre Pieta House, and brought some of his workplace friends with him. Some of the notable collaborators Sending Their Love Down The Oireachtas Well were Ministers Simon Coveney and Joan Burton, Peter Matthews sounding like a cross between Paul Robeson and a sober, picnicking Fr Jack Hackett, Mick Wallace wearing a beautifully co-ordinated purple arm sling with his pink shirt and Michael Ring wearing his headphones like an MC straight outta Compton. Not only did they avoid a Rap Against Rape situation but it’s actually done quite well, to the point where a follow up single could be on the cards. What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love And Understanding, maybe?

This week reminded me of an episode of M*A*S*H*, in which an exasperated, war-weary Hawkeye Pierce sends a letter to then-US President Truman, which reads: “Dear Harry: Who’s responsible?”

I not quite sure who’s responsible for the world at the minute, but I do know they shouldn’t be. This week in Greece and Italy we saw a landslide victory for the Technocratic Party, a political movement sweeping the Mediterranean. Their success is made all the more impressive by the fact they haven’t had a single vote cast for them. The electronic equivalent of reading entrails they call market forces have been increasingly prominent in the political sphere for the past three decades, but now it looks like they’re an official fourth branch of government, along with the executive,  judiciary and Zeppo. And with the powers market forces have, they have no interest in their separation.

If modern elected parliaments putting their power rings together to assemble an austere superhero doesn’t unsettle you, then perhaps the annexation of the Occupy movement will. This week swathes of protests from New York to Seattle have been broken up in bruising, peppery-eyed fashion, the First Amendment presumably having a statute of limitations. That local politicians would break up such protests, the purpose of which most Americans agree with, only brings to light an unfortunate fact of politics: the 99% may elect the leaders they put in office, but the 1% donate the money they use to run for it.

Thankfully there was no such violence in Dublin during the week where students were marching to prevent fees being reintroduced, although if placards could kill Education Minister Ruairi Quinn would be in trouble. Acutely aware of Quinn’s pre-election pledge not to so much as touch third level fees or grants with surgical gloves, the students of today laid the boot in to the Uni revolutionary of times gone by with signs ranging from “Labour Lied” to “Quinn Ya Lyin’ Hoor Ya!”, before camping outside the Department of Education’s offices. Labour must be wondering why they ever paid up for the all you can eat turd buffet they call austerity government. And if they aren’t, then they should.

One man in their ranks (or at least he was) that can’t claim to have broken any such pledge is Willie Penrose, who resigned as a minister this week over barracks closures, specifically the one in his backyard of Mullingar. Not only are the camps being closed with undue haste and with questionable savings, but with the close of Cavan barracks it now means there is a no military presence on the northern border from Carlingford to Beleek, and none from Beleek to Malin, so we’d better hope that semtex doesn’t become fashionable again, or that livestock don’t come down with anything nasty any time soon.

Keeping healthy in the US got easier this week thanks to Congress, who decided to count the tomato puree on pizza as a vegetable rather than fund actual healthy eating initiatives. I never knew eating well could be so easy. All we need to do now is get them to reassign whiskey as a health drink (it means “water of life” like, what could be healthier?) and we are panned out unconscious on easy street. And to add that real flourish that makes them the Man United of craven, feckless  legislatures, this week the freedom-loving Republican Congress also proposed a bill that would propose to tighten up online copyright laws. In other words, censor the internet. You don’t need to be a comic book guy to know this truly is the worst Congress ever.

But if only the pizza and stupidity thing ended there. GOP Presidential candidate and erstwhile dough raiser Herman Cain claimed this week manly men should have an abundance of meat on their pizzas, and questioned the masculinity of fellows who have it piled high with vegetables, calling it a sissy pizza. If he were to become President next year he’d have one pretty obvious battle with Congress from the outset, but those slim chances got narrower and narrower after he was filmed giving an answer on his thoughts on the Libya invasion that made me seriously wonder if his knowledge of the wider world was based on Yakko Warner’s Nations Of The World song from Animaniacs. He may not know much about Libya or the insurgents, but he can’t be beat on United States, Canada, Mexico, Panama, Haiti, Jamaica, Peru.

After last week’s quiet reflection period, it’s time to get back to the arresting news stories of the last seven days. Simply put: LET’S TALK ABOUT SEX!

It’s been harder than usual for me to escape carnal iniquity this week, as it seems everyone is up to it. First came the story that Justin Bieber has been Billie Jeaned by 20-year-old Mariah Yeater. The news rocked his apparently 14 million-strong fanbase (although it probably didn’t rock Mariah, as the whole affair allegedly only lasted 30 seconds) and as such it didn’t take long for Justin’s loving fans and associated media to play the traditional game in this instance, “Guess How Big A Nutter She Is”. As it happened, this was a rather easy game, as a combination of statutory rape laws combined with Myspace photos that ranged from the bonkers-looking to the topless made her case look far from compelling. The internet holds no mercy for people who claim to have been personally infected with Bieber Fever.

In the more serious field of Republican party pratfalls, allegations of sexual misconduct have been intensifying for inexplicable leading light Herman Cain. Although given the fact the claims are coming from settlements made back in the mid nineties, maybe allegations isn’t the right word. Cain’s muddled recollection was bad enough but then this week Sharon Bielek made some startling statements, the main thrust of which was Herman Cain got physically emotional while offering her a job, so long as she gave him one. A job, that is. Ahem. It’s likely that Herman Cain’s campaign won’t recover from all this, but worse still is the fact that a man who took pride in not knowing who the President of Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan was, who thinks it’s only a matter of time before China becomes a nuclear power (that time being fifty years ago) and proposing a tax plan more bananas than Fyffes conducting a hostile takeover of a Daiquiri factory ever got started in the first place.

But of course, spare a thought for the other Austin Powers henchmen they call the Republican field. Mitt Romney continues to alienate people by trying to be as inoffensive as possible, while Rick Perry’s chances are finished due to something that happened at the last debate that I can’t quite recall at the minute. I’ll let you know as soon as I remember.

Mind you, if the Republicans find themselves in really dire straits they can now call on a man who combines all the qualities of the main candidates: Silvio Berlusconi. He has the CEO bona fides of Romney, the capacity for excruciating soundbites of Perry, and the sexual peccadilloes of Cain. He’s available to take up the job whenever too, as he’s just resigned as Prime Minister of Italy. Feeling hamstrung by the constraints of office, he claims one of the reasons he resigned was because he felt more powerful as a private citizen. Then again, as a private citizen he owns a truckload of TV channels and AC Milan, so I can understand why he’d feel like that. Thus, after three terms over 17 years of corruption scandals, cavalier attitude, sex parties, megalomania and pinching the Chancellor of Germany’s ass, his political career ends in profligacy and failure. Or, put another way, bungs and cowabunga bunga bunga power drunka Merkel’s junka money spunka flunka.

As Italy and Greece appoint bank managers to their respective premierships, Enda Kenny would be all too able to tell them that the job  isn’t as sexy as it seems, the trappings of office being more of the bear variety. This week, his government have made a slew of decisions that caused enough noise to drown out the giggles of Fianna Fáil members everywhere. While their decision to discontinue the Vatican made sense on a certain level (why does a Church need diplomats anyway? Should we be sending envoys to World of Warcraft too?) the suggestion that it was a money-saving exercise rings hollow when they’re keeping the building they worked out of. Worse yet were their more drastic attempts at saving money with the restricting of capital spending projects, most notably the deferral of transforming the A5 which would make the route from Dublin to Derry 60% less harrowing. Elsewhere the government have been embarrassed by the fact their nominee for the European Court of Auditors Kevin Cardiff, in his role as Secretary General of the Department of Finance, may have forgot to carry the one somewhere in government calculations of the national debt. 3.6 billion times. But not be outdone in the embarrassment stakes Phil “Enemy of the State” Hogan claimed this week that the Climate Change Bill was not a priority for the government. In the wake of two consecutive winters of arctic conditions and increasingly numerous and voluminous flash flooding nationwide, I don’t know whether he’s more to be ridiculed or pitied.

This week, I have much cause to to tilt my head towards my belly button, and gaze at it.

Half of my week was spent at a residential-cum-midterm evaluation for the Donegal Youth Council, where frank talking, wall climbing and getting marker on my hands were high on the order of business. This coming Tuesday I’ll be filming a talking head piece marking the tenth anniversary of Dáil na nÓg (I think I’ll go for Diarmuid Ferriter-style authority, with a pinch of Pee Flynn mentalism thrown in for good measure). That same day, I’ll turn the demographic-busting age of 26. And this is my 100th What Kind Of Week Has It Been column.

Even though this was a busy week of news, what with the Vatican cutting off funding to Kim Kardashian who narrowly survived a vote of no confidence in the Greek parliament (it’s possible I’ve been a bit distracted) my synapses have zeroed in on further gone reflections. For example, the circus surrounding the recent Presidential campaign got me to thinking about what I was doing during the last one.

I actually remember it quite vividly, because it was the same date as my 12th birthday party. And that night, after my party (three hours of indoor football, followed by cake eating) I went to Eason’s in Derry to buy a book I’d long coveted with my card money (some things, it seems, never change) and took to reading it while watching Mary McAleese’s acceptance speech. It certainly doesn’t feel like 14 years ago.

Now, as I stare into turning 26 and it stares back into me, birthdays aren’t so much a pretext for putting scoops of ice cream in a large glass of coke and pretending to be Ian Walker so much as it becomes an inventory on how your life is going. I’m not sure how I rate.

On one hand, I’ve had the chance to do things 12 year old me would not have imagined possible, and it’s only really when you take a step back do you realise how far you’ve come. On the other hand, most of the world’s top sports stars, actors and popstars I see about the place are now younger than me. A lot of said stars can dive into their pits of money like Scrooge McDuck, boast of winning myriad world championships and step out with jaw-droppingly good looking other famous people. I have not much money and fewer awards to my name.  I’m not stepping out with anyone, jaw-droppingly good looking or otherwise. I don’t even have a cat.

While I’d describe my outlook on life as generally sunny, I feel a lot of pressure. Sometimes I feel anxiety that I won’t get to where I want to be in life, other times I’m out and out terrified about it. A lot of the pressure is internal, as I’ve always had a very clear idea of what I’ve wanted to do in life (something for which I actually feel quite lucky). Some of it is immediately external, in that family and friends and colleagues have always seemed to have very definite ideas as to where I’d end up. My biggest fear is that, for whatever reason, I don’t fulfil that prophecy. But some of that pressure is also cultural.

In ways the problem of pressure to be successful at a young age is not dissimilar to that of body image. Sports and pop stars are given enormous credence in popular culture, arenas of achievement where being over 35 gives you the status of a veteran, or even a retiree. We have popular music talent shows where teary fortysomethings claim “this is their last chance”. We have TV modelling shows where girls in their late twenties, even if they’re Christy Turlington facsimiles, aren’t even considered. With such a message surreptitiously being delivered at every turnabout, small wonder I often see Lewis Hamilton in an ad or at a race and think “Christ, I am wasting my life”.

But when I have such moments of (increasingly frequent) raw panic, I always try and step back. I may not be worth much, but I’d hope I’ve done things of value, particularly for other people. The setbacks, near-misses and frustrations of my own career seem rather small when you consider the throngs of potentially talented people who’ll never even have a chance of getting in the game. I also take comfort in the fact that in the history of everyone who has ever been successful there was a time when they weren’t, and that not everyone’s time comes right away. The actor Jon Hamm worked as a waiter and a designer on a porn set when most of his contemporaries were getting cast in Dawson’s Creek and Party Of Five, but becoming Don Draper is probably worth the long apprenticeship. Dancing judge Len Goodman is a massive transatlantic star but he was hardly in front of a camera until his late fifties. And how many films have you ever seen featuring a 30 year-old Morgan Freeman?

Reflection is an important part of writing a piece like this every week, but too much of it stops you from doing anything new. I am lucky to be able to do this every week, and luckier still that people read it. And as long as you can do something you enjoy, and that others can enjoy too, then everything else is just scale.

We finally have a winner. After a campaign that felt at times like it was run in dog years, Michael D Higgins is our new President/Timelord, with the Inauguration/Regeneration taking place in a fortnight.

He now joins the hall of illustrious Aras occupiers; the Protestant one with the tache who used to be on money, the one who couldn’t be picked out of a police profile, the one who inspired the plot to Weekend At Bernie’s, the one who could’ve been a character in Downton Abbey, the brilliant but effete one who was forced to resign, the one who told Haughey to fuck off, the one with the candle who got shit done like a liberal BA Barracus, and the one who followed her but in a less radical but impressive way all the same.

Given the fact the role is essentially that of national uncle (unless you’re in the Defence Forces, in which case you’re the President’s bitch) the campaign was at times disproportionately rough, and merciless. All the losing candidates were attacked and felled one by one with the samurai sword of media scrutiny, and the yellow and black jumpsuit of fate. David Norris was vanquished by letters to Israel, and his propensity to try and dig his way out of a hole. Mary Davis was done in by her myriad state appointments and the general public’s torpor towards her. Martin McGuinness ran a race against his past he was doomed to lose from day one. Gay Mitchell was cruelly ruled out of becoming President because of his inherent Gay Mitchellness. Dana showed up to the no-holds barred battle royale with a small blue book and a bottle of holy water, and thus was such a no-hoper that the allegations aimed at members of her family were more of a bizarre sideshow than electorally significant. Stranger still was the suggestion that someone slashed the tyres of her car in a malevolent bid to injure her, or worse. I always knew Dana lived in the fifties, but I didn’t realise until then that she lived in a fifties Hitchcock movie. Lucky the campaign didn’t go on for much longer, or she may have been targeted by a crop dusting airplane while out on a rural canvas.

But the biggest fall and thus the loudest dull thud came from Sean Gallagher, who after an inexplicable 18 point bump two weeks out (the poll being released on the same day as his rating fell 10 percent after the audience at the SpunOut debate actually listened to him) lost it all in the last few days. The reason? Hard to say. It could be how woefully he handled Martin McGuinness’ charges of misconduct on The Frontline. It could have been how woefully he handled being questioned by Glenna Lynch on that same show, or by questioning her motives the following morning on radio and getting his ass handed to him again when Glenna heard this, stopped the car and called in. It could have been the general sniff of Fianna Fail chancer and Crilly-esque finances about him. Or it could have been the fact that, good natured and magnanimous man though he was, as a candidate for President he was as ill-suited as a David Byrne suit and as inspiring as a tin of Ronseal , a candidate who, in the words of Presidential template Jed Bartlet, “made unengaged into a Zen-like thing”. I know what should have been the clincher, but alas, I’m not sure it was.

As it went, Higgins cruised to victory after three counts and a million votes, with Gallagher a distant second and McGuinness in third. Mitchell saved some face by coming fourth albeit with a percentage of the vote so low its best expressed in degrees Kelvin, Norris was a disappointing fifth and Dana somehow managed to slip in to sixth. Mary Davis, rather sadly, ended up spending thousands upon thousands of quid for a wooden spoon.

Elsewhere on a crowded electoral card Fianna Fail (who apparently still exist) were in celebratory mood after coming in second in the Dublin West by-election. There were chants of “We’re back, we’re back” from their camp after the first count, but I wouldn’t worry. The fact the Soldiers of Destiny are celebrating losing a seat they held and 22% of the vote is something even the most virulent anti-FFer couldn’t have dreamt of five years ago. Labour’s Patrick Nulty made it a great day for Labour by becoming their second TD in Dublin West, while Fine Gael’s Eithne Loftus compounded their misery by getting votes from her extended family and little else.

In the referenda, Judges Pay passed, but Oireachtas Inquiries was turned away at the door for not producing a warrant. As with most referenda, the campaign was reductive, partisan and generally sigh inducing, although a long way off the high water marks of unborn babies and Eurovillains. One of the more unusual contributions to the debate came from eight former Attorneys General who came out strongly for a no vote. The AG8’s arrival in town seemed to reinforce the notion that the Judiciary were sci-fi characters from a planet of pure logic, with the legislative body a base assembly of yahoos. Whatever the veracity of the latter, some of the esteemed counsel’s previous made you wonder how judicious their own interference was. Patrick Connolly was the CJ’s AG during GUBU. Peter Sutherland has been involved in so many banking concerns I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a vault like Scrooge McDuck. Michael “If I had my way I’d kill anyone who looked at me cock-eyed” McDowell hardly needs introduction. My personal favourite though is Harry Whelehan, judge for a day and the Attorney General who precipitated the X Case debacle, bungled the Brendan Smyth case and became the smoking gun that brought down a government. Talk about the need to separate powers.

But while Michael D’s victory is a triumph for integrity, dignity and decency, in the sporting world beyond candidate baiting such qualities are in short supply. Carlitos Tevez has recently appointed himself President of the Talented But Truculent Bollocks Society, while jockeys have got themselves into a silky lather over new whip rules. You’d think in this modern age of enlightened views and indoor plumbing the notion of using a whip on an animal for anything, not least for negligible racing advantage, would have gone out with pogs or sitcoms about black lads moving next door, but apparently not. Odder yet is the arguments they’re using, or rather not using. Bypassing the usual “But sure whipping a horse is like splashing water on a person’s face!” or “We just plain fear change” statements, Ruby Walsh went a different, aesthetic direction:

“This affair has dampened my enthusiasm for racing. It is now a watered down affair. I was watching the racing from Haydock and it looked like watching a schooling race with everyone pushing away with hands and heels. It didn’t look what it used to look like, as competitive or as thrilling.”

The poor mite. Pushing along with hands and heels?! What fresh tyranny next, only having black and white silks? Getting rid of jockeys altogether? Actually, that might not be the worst idea, they are essentially ballast.

But, in a sporting world of petulance and obstinacy, it’s nice to know there’s one man who acts like a true pro: Mario Balotelli. Super Mario has had a busy week even by his madcap standards, what with putting manners on the red side of Manchester, setting his house alight with fireworks with his mates and then fronting a Halloween safety campaign. Better still, this appears to be the week where Balotelli has officially shifted in the public consciousness into loveable nutter territory. In the words of none other than Noel Gallagher:

“Football needs players like him because most footballers are basically squares. He’s a total rock’n'roller. There’s a bit of Mario in all of us – well, maybe not Gary Neville – but the rest of us most definitely. Have you never wondered what it would be like to set off rockets in your house? Visit a women’s prison just for a nosy? Write off a supercar? Deal only in cash? Befriend the mafia? Mario lives life on the edge, so people like you don’t have to.”

Here’s to living dangerously. And vicariously.

Before The Presidential debate and the cross-country trip to Galway, my first port of call in my whistle stop tour was Brussels, a city I always associate with intense enjoyment/exhaustion.

Brussels is the Jan Brady of European cities; Paris may be prettier and Amsterdam may get more attention due to its racy reputation, but Brussels gets lost in the middle. Which is a shame, because it is as beautiful as it is bonkers. But it’s comfortable as it is and it doesn’t feel the need to shout about itself too loudly, and that’s why I love it so.

Flights to Brussels are very early in the morning, thus requiring me to get up earlier still, meaning I always seem to be playing a game of kiss chase with the nearest comfy looking place to sit down. Thankfully though any time I’m in Brussels I have something to do, so the shot of adrenalin that adds to the mix always makes for an exhilarating time.

The reason I was there this particular time was for the EU’s Open Days event, a loving week-long tribute to European regional policy that gives interested parties a chance to share the stories and successes of how they’ve spent their Euro-booty locally. It was attended by over 5,000 people, a fact regularly mentioned. “It’s the biggest event of this kind the EU put on” I kept hearing, like Fr Ted’s colleague who gets lost in Ireland’s biggest lingerie department.

Small wonder, given the amount of cashmonies regional policy means for the EU’s myriad provinces, districts, arrondisements and, eh, segments.  It’s second only in expenditure terms to the Common Agricultural Policy, with three quid in every tenner going to the regions for structural funding. Since we entered the EEC, Ireland has had a net return of €41 billion, and the €8 billion Albert Reynolds secured in structural funding in 1992 saved his dog food-making bacon and kept him in power for an extra two years. Which is almost worth the fact there were no introductory cigars or smoking jackets for joining.

Given this event coincided with the announcement of the “The Gathering” in 2013, an Irish-American summit (presumably subtitled “We Know All Your Secrets”) that claims to show Ireland isn’t a complete international indigent, it’s telling that as much as we look to Boston for support, we should pay more heed to the help we get (and have got) in Europe, even in light of recent difficulties. Structural funding may not be the silver bullet it once was, due to the fact we’re structurally better off than we were in 1992 and the fact our banks are like bad flu patients, sneezing and coughing money and demanding soup made with more money, but it still has a role. That role, reiterated by EU officials to such a degree it’s almost like they wanted to be take notice of it, was for small and medium enterprises and research and development. SMEs and R&D, the EU can’t resist a good acronym.

Talking to several Irish attendees, both policy heads and elected officials, you get the sense there are pockets of smooth skin amongst our national spotty break out. One Commissionaire told me that there were three regions in Europe that had been awarded prizes for local entrepreneurship of late: Brandenburg-Berlin, Murcia and Kerry. Connie Hanniffy, a senior Fine Gael member on the Committee of the Regions also pointed to Berlin as somewhere we could be taking cues from in terms of jobs in the cultural sector. Hanniffy, whose area of expertise is business, pointed to the European money that was available through enterprise boards for start ups, mentoring and gaining access to markets as doing for small business what previous funds did for infrastructure. Incidentally, when I asked Hanniffy if she was related to a Hanniffy who would have been in college when I was there, she said she wasn’t but was able to tell me the family tree of who I was talking about anyway. Now that’s a conscientious politician. I was also talking to a chef whose mother was from Lifford, but was loving his life in Brussels. He could cook a scallop like nobody’s business.

Elsewhere in the Brussels bubble there were plenty of Euro-ticians evangelising the cause. Apart from European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek (who urged the EU to become closer to its citizens) and Regional Policy Commissioner Johannes Hahn (who once shook hands with a group of us suspecting we were waiting for him but were actually queuing to head up a burgeoning staircase) there was President of the Committee of the Regions Mercedes Bresso, and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barosso, who during his speech made the ear-catchingly federalist statement that “A Euro spent at European level is better than one spent at national level”. Mind you, sessions in the European Parliament can often have the feel of an early morning school assembly about them, so he needed to throw something in there to keep us on our toes. Also, having Presidents of two separate EU functions called “Barosso” and “Brasso” should be the premise of a French screwball comedy.

While in Belgium I also took time for one of my favourite things to do while over there: talking to beautiful Slovaks. One of them, a good friend I haven’t seen in over four years, told me about a youth camp project she worked on in Russia. Ostensibly, this was supposed to be fun cultural exchange sort of deal, but this being Russia, things turned out a little differently. The whole thing was a Summer School To Make Glorious Benefit Vladimir Putin, and at this point the story became a checklist of every stereotype you can think of. It was in the middle of the forest, making early departure dangerous. There were early morning calisthenics that, if not done properly, would result in expulsion. The participants were unusually politically zealous for young people of that age, and the speakers brought to the camp were curiously high-ranking. You’d think a man who rides horses bare-back (or possibly bear-back, lord knows with Putin), performs judo with frightening proficiency, does a mean version of Blueberry Hill and currently has a campaign the thrust of which is “Get Your  Tits Out For Putin”, you’d wonder if a Camp Krusty-esque initiative was slight overkill. Either way, Dmitri Medvedev must be crying tears of vodka at this point.

Closer to home (if you’re Slovak at least) was the news, which I heard from a Bratislava-based news reporter who has a worrying (yet justifiable) number of web forums dedicated to her, that was going on at the time, that the Slovakian government had collapsed as one of the four government parties voted against Eurozone bailout measures. Even though I saw plenty of reasons to be cheerful about what the EU is currently doing on a local business, the messiness of its big picture continues to be a grave concern.

In the past fortnight I’ve done a Robbie Keane and hopped around some of my favourite boyhood cities: Brussels, Dublin and Galway. More on Brussels presently, but first I’m keeping it country.

It’s hard to assert your voice in a crowded and din-filled area, and the Presidential election has caused a lot more din than average. But it provided no impediment to SpunOut, who hosted last week’s Presidential forum. Nor indeed did it impede the hundreds of young people who attended, who proved what I and other veterans of the business have known for a long time to be true: give young people the chance and they’ll take it.

And offer them an hour’s worth of questions to the candidates (all bar The Holy Caucus, Mitchell and Dana, the former begging off at the last minute because he had people to alienate in Cork that day) seeking the highest office in the land and they’ll ask the most perceptive, most ballsy, most pertinent questions of the campaign.

Rachel McNulty of the Donegal Youth Council, for example, asked Mary Davis a question about airbrushing and body image that would be featured in Miriam’s award show montage if she had come up with it. Others asked questions pertaining to rights and opportunity and equality, and generally none of the usual gubbins that has steered the discussion at large thus far. None of the candidates, whose order of speaking was determined by pulling their name out of a jester’s hat complete with jingly jangly bells, seemed too startled by the gauntlet The Youth laid before them, but some went down better than others. Michael D Higgins’ opening statement was met with woops and stomps, whereas Mary Davis’ response to her absolutely not airbrushed posters was loudly derided. David Norris whipped the crowd into frenzy multiple times but watching him speak is like watching Curling: you’re cheering him on and he hits right to the centre in some style, but then he keeps going and you wish to hell he’d stop, for his own sake. Martin McGuinness maintained his habit for saying useful things you weren’t expecting by saying he’d open the Aras to the poor at Christmas, while Sean Gallagher was also present. Entrance and exit polls were taken before and after the candidates spoke. Before, Higgins led Gallagher and Norris by a couple of points. Afterwards, Higgins rocketed up 18 points, while Gallagher dropped 10. Meanwhile, reports were seeping out that Gallagher had inexplicably leapt into first place in a Red C poll. If only the wider world wasn’t so narrow.

The presence of the candidates was but one small element of the day’s magic though. The atmosphere in the room was somewhere between Victorian parliament and South American football stadium. Hands were flying up to ask those perceptive, ballsy questions at sub-atomic speed. Prior to the Presidential ampitheatrics, I got to interview Orla Tinsley and Colm O’Gorman, who had been on my chat wish list for quite some time, and we had a terrific discussion on the great things you can do when you have an idea and act on it. “Children should be seen and not heard” is long gone, and replaced by “You had better bloody listen”. More of this please.

With my world revolving round the Presidential forum and other such affairs of late, word of other news had to be snatched in hotel foyers, brief internet sessions and a diagonal glance at a newsagent’s papers, but one story did surprise. Liam Fox was the unlikely winner of the First Tory To Leave Cabinet Award, a feat he wasn’t even training for. The former Defence Secretary’s copybook was irredeemably blotted because it turned out he was showing his best mate and best man Adam Werrity his classified homework. Not just that, but he took his pal (who had cards made up claiming he was Dr Fox’s advisor – he wasn’t) on several international trips where official affairs of state-type meetings were happening, and even some holidays. If only Liam had just given him a few quid to go to the cinemas of the world he might still be Defence Secretary. While seeing a senior minister getting sacked for being too close to his mate is a rarity by Irish standards, it gave the press the chance to do what they love doing most: making lousy puns based on his surname with glee not seen since The Falklands War prompted the resignation of the veteran Tory Sir Geoffrey Cockfight.

Wales made it a fruitful week for surprise exits, as they managed to lose their Rugby World Cup semi final to a French team as organised and disciplined as Will Farrell and Vince Vaughn at a keg party. Now, Ireland will have to live vicariously through the team that beat the team that beat us as France, whose jersey badge should at this point be a headless rooster, take on the might of the All Blacks. The Kiwis presumably already have their name shaded in on the trophy in pencil.

In the world beyond Auckland a larger David and Goliath battle is taking place. On my way from Dublin’s Temple Bar to Galway’s Eyre Square I saw both the Occupy Dublin and Galway band of merry men (I genuinely didn’t see any women among them) fighting their good fight, but they and their big ticket items in New York, London and across the world are being treated with promethean curiosity from the wider media. “What do they want? The protestors don’t seem to have a clear plan“, they all say, either through wilful ignorance or genuine density. So rather than just analysing the phenomenon of such large and organic groups of disparate people coming from a number of angles to make a range of points about the way our world is run, the mainstream media berate them for their poor elevator pitch. The revolution will not be televised, at least not until they get themselves a good media strategy.

Even though last week my fly was in blue-arsed mode, it’s nice to know that there are certain things you can rely on to be the same when you get back.

The Presidential race, for instance, has been trundling on reliably this week, the highlight of which was the 72nd debate of the race, hosted by Vincent “Why Aren’t You Crying Yet?” Browne. A highlight from a TV viewing standpoint at least, as the pre-eminent thing we learned was that Vincent shoots laser beams from his eyes. So well did his performance go down in fact that viewers of TV3 claimed he should be President. Electing a cranky journo-matador being their favourite choice after scrapping the whole thing altogether, that is. Not that I’d expect anything else from the viewers of “Celebrity Motorboating with Calum Best” and “Inane Morning Banter Programme”.

The most youtubeable (there’s a very good reason that’s not a word, isn’t there?) sections of the night were Vincent Browne bringing out books alleging Martin McGuinness was in the IRA like he was recreating the video for Subterranean Homesick Blues and David Norris having his own “mature recollection” moment as regards those letters, but with Vincent being an equal opportunities eviscerator everyone had their moments. Michael D Higgins came out of the 90 minute death match rather well, while Gay Mitchell was as composed and assured as a student having his schoolbag thrown over his head by bigger boys. The League of Beige Sean Gallagher and Mary Davis possibly did well; I lost concentration when they were speaking, but we can be sure of one thing: if somebody were to hide Dana’s copy of the constitution, we are likely to see a shit attack of epic proportions. Like Samson and his hair or Linus van Pelt from the Charlie Brown comics with his blankee, Dana’s source of power seems to be the little blue book. Unfortunately the power it’s given her is pretty rubbish, a bit like the kid in Captain Planet with the shoulder monkey and the heart ring.

The cold hard numbers released this week provided interesting compliment to the heat of the studio. Michael D is still the man to beat, behind him Gallagher’s clean steady run has taken him into second. Norris’s vote has collapsed, with his share among his natural pool of independent voters now the fourth biggest. Labour votes are essentially propping him up at the moment, which probably won’t last. As for Gay Mitchell, he’s the third choice. Among Fine Gael voters, that is. Oops.

While Ireland gets into a frenzy about the Presidency a lot of the rest of the world, particularly the world of 24 hour news, has been getting into a frenzy about court cases. Michael Jackson’s doctor Conrad Murray will be sitting in the dock for long enough to come, but Amanda Knox has no such worries, having won been acquitted of  the murder of Meredith Kercher. Of course, news media being news media Amanda getting off seemed of secondary concern to, well, Amanda getting off, as her looks and apparently rambunctious sex life got a depressing but far from surprising degree of attention. The award for best dregs exploration goes to Channel 5 broadcaster Matthew Wright, who ran “Foxy Knoxy: Would Ya?” as an item on his half-baked phone-in panel show. Thankfully, it was Channel 5, so not many people saw it.

Much harder to avoid however has been the outpouring of emotion on the death of Steve Jobs, who passed away this week at the absurd age of 55. While he never seemed like the cuddly kind of fellow that would usually warrant such heartrending, the fact so many of those condolences were punctuated with “sent from my iPhone” speaks for itself.

But now for my semi-regular report from around college campuses, in a little feature I like to call this paragraph. First to my Alma Mater of Galway, where the Union was sucked into a whirlpool of controversy by its decision to scrap Rag Week. In exchange for getting rid of the spring break for slow learners that has brought increasing shame on the family in recent years, the Union is getting an extra 60K for the Student Assistance Fund to help students in danger of dropping out for financial reasons, and making sure there are no charges for the Student Health Unit or for sport club members using the gym for training. There are also plans for a one-day concert in lieu of weeklong festivities. The fun-hating, mean-spirited bastards.

The use of student health facilities caused quite the bit of opprobrium across the pond this week too, as an opinion piece by East Carolina student and all-round ignorant asshat Ben Cochran has raised eyebrows and gorge all at once all over the internet. The crux of his piece, crafted with heavy reliance on a thesaurus and an adjective machine, was that girls going to the student health centre to pick up birth control should go elsewhere, leaving the doctor’s surgery to real cases like coughing and sneezing, which by remarkable coincidence were the most recent ailments Cochran suffered from. The obnoxious selfishness that underpins the article and sums up the American healthcare system is one thing, but the terminology he used in the unedited version, which a local journalist got her hands on, really pushed it over the age. Phrases like “cunt problem”, “gaggle of preemie sluts”, “free pass on harlotry”, “sex mongers” and “please take your gaping holes elsewhere for medical services”. But hey, at least he said please, right?

Even in that liberal bastion of UCD a sexual health campaign was met last week with a bit of hostility, albeit in a more “think of the children” way. In one of their campus papers The Observer, a columnist expressed concern at the idea of the Student Union’s “1,000 condoms, 1,000 stories” campaign, even though she spent the whole article figuring out what her point was. The actual point, according to the Welfare Officer in charge of the otherwise very positively received campaign, was that it was encouraging people to safely and anonymously share their stories about how the condom was used, if at all, with a view to people being more open and genuine about a topic where the pressure to talk bombastically is corrosively high. As ever, it’s not that people are talking too much about sex is the problem, it’s that we’re doing it wrong.

Oh, and there was something about a protest in Wall Street this week too?

It could only really be in Ireland, in the week where parts of the country saw the highest September temperatures since God was in short trousers, Google announced a major investment in their Irish facility, citing our cool climate as the key advantage, meaning that they have to spend less money on air-conditioning for their computers. Don’t worry, Larry and Sergei, normal meteorological service will be resumed very soon. However, this does offer a tantalising glimpse of the way forward for Ireland, if we can similarly harness our ‘meh’ weather to soft day our way out of indenture to the all-powerful Troika.

The rising mercury this week may well have contributed to the attempted delinquency of a cow-field in Bangor, Co. Down. Pulchritudinous Bajan Rihanna was forced to film her forthcoming video elsewhere after farmer Alan Graham took exception to her being in deshabille, prompting the (less than) horny-handed son of the soil to politely tell singer and crew to get orf his land. Also, perhaps he was as sick of the red filter often used in her videos as the rest of us. Either way, both sides parted on good terms and Ms. Wenty lit out for Belfast, becoming the most exciting thing to hit the city since Captain Planet united both sides of the community in a baking enterprise.

In the Republic, the most controversial field is of course that which contains all seven putative Presidents. Campaigning began in earnest this week with the first largely drab posters going up. Independent candidate Sean Gallagher attempted to steal a march on the opposition by announcing his commitment to not running a poster campaign, pointing to the environmental damage caused. Whether this is the only reason, and not a lack of funds, we have no reason not to take him at his word. It does take a small bit of the colour out of the rough and tumble of the election, for me, as well as robbing us of the chance to guage whether his legs are as good as Mary Davis’s.

The week’s television appearances by the candidiates were also fairly lacklustre, with the main thing learned from Friday’s ‘Late Late Show’ election special was that Ryan Tubridy is like a dog with a bone when it comes to buzz phrases like “park it”. I half-expected him to ask the candidates what their flooring at home was made of, purely so he could say “parquet”. Gay Mitchell took the opportunity to attack Martin McGuinness, and came off the worst from it. Dana was best for sheer entertainment value, and why wouldn’t she be? She knows the business, and her part in it.

This correspondent happened to walk past David Norris at the weekend, gamely kissing the flesh and pressing babies, or whatever goes on when politicians are out and about amongst the public. He made for a game figure, clearly a (shudder) people person. Yet whenever the subject of his writing letters to everyone bar Santa in regards to a rape case comes up, his employment of bluster and sophistry merely proves that he is a true politician. And Irish people historically tend to reward this. Bewildering it may be, but the man who was sufficiently damaged by earlier revelations to remove himself from the field, is in the running and will no doubt poll very respectably.

Another candidate with a colourful past is the aforementioned Martin McGuinness, the man who presents his CV to the people as ‘Proud IRA member, didn’t kill anyone, left in 1974.…PEACE PROCESS’. While he loves to talk about the peace process (and rightly so), any probing of what he actually did during the war (without which, there would be no need for a peace process) is met with hostility. The question that needs to be asked is whether it is believable that British intelligence could have gotten it so wrong for so long in consistently believing he was a key IRA figure, right throughout the peace process? After all, it has since come to light that Sinn Féin and the IRA were lousy with informers during this period. But can McGuinness ever accept this and fully expatiate his role without damaging the collective amnesia that seems to do much to hold Northern Ireland’s political stability in place?

My predictions for the rest of the campaign; An increasingly shrill Gay Mitchell to produce a saddle which he claims McGuinness used while riding Shergar around. Dana’s campaign to get even more retro-populist, perhaps with the recording of a campaign song by Colm CT Wilkinson. And all candidates to outdo each other in bidding to curry favour with the electorate on Presidential pay and perks, Michael D Higgins winning the day with his pledge to live off weevils and whatever berries he can scavenge in the Phoenix Park. Anything could happen, and it probably will. Twice.

This week, I did something I never thought I would: I unsubscribed from Barack Obama’s email list.

It’s not something I did lightly. For years now I’ve been an audible supporter of the President to the point of near notoriety. I’ve been good-naturedly hassled on national radio for suggesting Clinton was going to lose the Democratic Primaries. I’ve been bet money I couldn’t give a day-long politics class without mentioning his name. On the night he was elected, my phone was buzzing with messages along the lines of “Your man is going to win!” to the point you’d think I was on his staff. But now, three and a half years in, the fabric of my Obama cheerleader outfit has suffered a rip in a very embarrassing place.

On Thursday, the Obama crew sent out an email in reaction to the President’s speech in the UN that may as well have had the subject heading “Israel: Baby you know you my world”. In it Mel Levine, a former California congressman on whose behalf the email was signed, made several references to Obama’s solidarity with Israel, even making reference to the fact that Benjamin Netanyahu praised his speech. When Bibi praising you is something you feel the need to broadcast, you may need to look around and see how far off the mainstream you’ve drifted.

An American President writing their and Israel’s initials inside big hearts on the world’s copybook is itself not a surprising thing, but the final paragraphs of the email were telling: they focused on Governor Rick Perry’s attempts to distort the President’s position. And it was there that the mask slipped.

In spite of the Nobel Peace Prize he won, in spite of the big talk on the importance of democracy and peace and prosperity, in spite of past wishes for a Palestinian state and current praise for the Arab Spring, the President’s main concern is playing politics. Being in favour of a democratic state is trumped by concern for carrying the electoral votes of about 20-odd Democratic states in the next election, and the welfare of Palestinians takes a back seat to showing the supporters of the country that occupies them that he has their back. At a crucial juncture in one of the most serious and enduring conflicts in world history where disingenuity and obstinacy has revolved for too long, the President had a chance to break that cycle and not only does he fluff it, but he sends out an email complaining that the Republicans aren’t throwing him a party about it.

While one of the world’s eyes were looking down by the East Riverside, the other was fixed on Georgia. Troy Davis, who has been on death row under the most spurious of circumstances for two decades, was executed in the early hours of Thursday morning, in spite of a worldwide campaign and numerous attempted interventions, all the way up to the Supreme Court. Although the President could do relatively little to intervene in the case, his complete silence on the issue brought a number of hard truths to mind: In Obama’s America, it is still legal for the federal government and the states to reflectively kill people. There are thousands and thousands of people on death row, costing the taxpayer significantly more than life imprisonment, not that deficit hawkery is exactly a clinching argument. The percentage of black people thereon is depending on the state two or three times higher at least than the percentage of black people living in those states. There are still thousands of innocent people killed by the state. I don’t expect Obama to vanish these things overnight, but on too many issues of vital importance, the President has hedged and compromised and ducked and weaved. In spite of all the expectation nearly three years ago, not much has changed, and I’m running out of hope that it will.

Back home, our own Presidential race has become an official kick bollock scramble. Martin McGuinness (you can decide for yourself which one of those three he is) has brought an air of tetchy misery to proceedings following his entry, like an uncle showing up at a family gathering with two six packs of beer, one of which was consumed in the car ride over. David Norris is back in the glorified Easter egg hunt too, who coming up short in the search for nominating Oireachtas members may now have to get over the line by the councils route, along with Stepford candidate Dana. It will no doubt be irksome to Norris that some of TDs who had originally backed him but withdrew because of his now-infamous letter to the Israeli courts have since defected to sign Morty’s nomination papers. Moral of the story? Sign nothing.

One man who knows never to leave a paper trail is Irish politics’ answer to Ron Atkinson, Michael Lowry, who had his pet casino project blocked by cabinet this week. Reacting in response to the government’s adverse position on gaudy white elephants Lowry expressed disappointment, lamenting the jobs that could have been created had they built it. Addiction counsellors, for example.

Across the way in Birmingham, the British government’s amber gambler Nick Clegg addressed the Liberal Democrats’ annual conference, making what was essentially the second instalment of a five-part speech entitled “We’re Going To Be Fine, Honest”. At this point in their term in government it’s hard to know whether they’ve done the state some service by giving the dark heart of the Tories some beta blockers, or if they’ve just sold their soul by hire purchase, but Nick Clegg was at pains to emphasise that the Lib Dems in government were not doing the easy thing, but the right thing. Given the fact his political future depends on holding on to liberal and social democratic voters, he may have been better advised to say “correct”, rather than choosing to go right.

Having been away for the best part of the last seven days, and with my stand-in coming down with a tragic case of sudden laptop death syndrome, this week’s edition will be a bit of an express version. And by that, I mean quick, as opposed to done by a Princess Diana-obsessed right wing pornographer.

The first thing that grabbed me this week was the state of airport security ten years after the 9/11 attacks, although mercifully grabbing isn’t part of official airport policy, at least not outside of TSA checks. Though still awful, at Heathrow, in a bid to make us feel better about the stultifying security measures to prevent we’re protected by the monsters that hide in 125ml bottles of Lynx, they’ve taken to making rainbow arches at the metal detectors. They should probably take the photos just after you pass through, for that authentic theme park feel.

But if it’s a rollercoaster you want then look no further than the race for the Irish Presidency, which has been enough to make anyone feel dizzy. Martin McGuinness Northern Ireland’s co-chief has inexplicably decided to put his name in the ring, which makes about as much sense as the McG who directs episodes of CSI Miami running. On the (Art Garfunkle lookalike) face of it, Morty isn’t a bad candidate, what with him being a big political name with Republican credentials. Problem being his not-small involvement with the IRA back in the day, and the fact that for a great deal of people “Republican credentials” may as well be a “Thug Life” tattoo, and now the whole campaign is going to be mired in whos, whens, wheres and whys of forty years ago rather than what they can do in the next seven. The worst part though will be genuine concerns of his suitability for office making the inevitable quick dash across the hall to rank hypocrisy. DeValera became President less than forty years after promising to wade through the blood of Irishmen having just prompted a civil war, Sean Lemass spent his whole political career within the forty years since he claimed Fianna Fáil to be a slightly constitutional party, while of course Michael Collins was a well-known curator of a hugs museum who never killed or sanctioned killing of anyone. But, watch those pieces of information fly out the window when fans of those men pile on the histrionics.

Across the pond crowd members at a Republican Presidential debate seem pretty blasé about killing, or at least people dying. When Ron Paul was tackled with the hypothetical of a young ostensibly healthy man with no insurance felt suddenly ill and whether he should be let die, Tea Baggers (or people who don’t get heckling, I can only hope the latter) shouted YEEEAHH!, like Horatio Caine had just put on his glasses in front of them. That’s the beautiful thing about the life-loving, God-fearing US Republicans: pro-life if you’re thirty weeks old, not so much if you’re thirty years old. And had Tea Partyers been around in biblical times, they’d have dedicated themselves to making that socialist un-American hippy Jesus a one-term Messiah.

But, if you’re looking for miracles this week, look no further than Auckland. Although, admittedly, that is pretty far. On Saturday, Ireland beat Australia for the first time at a Rugby World Cup, which puts us on a good footing for a quarter final against a team we can beat quite easily on paper. Which, Ireland being Ireland, will be a harder game to win than a match against one of the tournament’s giants. In other sporting news, the All-Ireland Final was won by Dublin this year for the first time since I was listening to Bobby Brown on a cassette tape. A party of that scale in the capital: makes me glad all my travelling for the week is done.

There’s nothing new under the sun, just the history we haven’t learned yet, claimed Harry Truman.

This week hasn’t so much been a case of history repeating as history undoing itself. Ireland’s two governing parties had their respective “think-ins” this week, a phrase I always thought to be a bit of a contradiction in terms. The Fine Gael in-service was picketed by the justice league of free education FEE in protest at the increasingly likely situation that university fees will be reintroduced, while the Labour conference in Carlow coincided with the news that the National Lottery may be sold off to make the car-boot sale we call a system of governance a couple some more moneys. If Fine Gael and Labour are thinking as hard as they ought to, it’s surely passed their minds that the National Lottery they’re planning to sell off was set up by Fine Gael and Labour in 1986 to actually make money, specifically for worthy community investments. And, it was a Labour education minister, overseen by a Labour finance minister who is now himself education minister, who scrapped tuition fees back in the nineties.

While all this was going on the Vatican, who replied to the Taoiseach’s scathing reaction to the Cloyne Report with all the interest and urgency of a girl you hope will maybe go out with you but never will, finally got back to him. You’d think an association embroiled in a scandal the size and depth of the one the Church is involved in would consider a sackcloth and ashes approach every now and then, but instead they went for their usual parsimonious “you spelled that wrong, therefore I reject your entire thesis” route.  In their retort they claimed Kenny misrepresented the Vatican’s stance on a number of issues and, most honourably, tilted the blame back at the government and indeed the Irish church. If only there was some kind of religious organisation that could let them know excessive pride is a sin.

Pride is not a problem the participants in the Job Bridge initiative will have to deal with, as the latest government initiative primarily gives them a crash course in having a bloody liberty taken. As somebody who’s done his fair share (and a couple of other people’s fair shares too) of work in exchange for the experience and a lovely time, I do value and see the logic. For a couple of weeks, mind.

6-9 month “internships” for eminently qualified people at a rate of your weekly brew plus a whopping top up allowance of £50 quid a week, however, are a different kettle of protestors. Especially when some of the jobs are thinly-veiled methods of getting in help on the cheap (like the Malahide establishment offering budding hopefuls a chance to gain experience in vajazzling, since withdrawn) or internships doing the sort of thing you really should be paying people a high-end wage for (like the TV camera person/editor/producer internship in Kildare, who incidentally also needs to have their own means of transport). A couple of others, like the sculpture and foundary technician internship in Dublin’s northside that requires a “third level education and basic understanding of sculpture practices”, are just plain bizarre. This Job Bridge is the kind of bridge sexy teens fall through on the way to a haunted house in a horror film.

And while we’re on the topic of imaginable horror Bertie Ahern, the Freddie Kruger of our long national nightmares, turns 60 this week. Actually, that’s a bit of an unfair comparison, as Kruger had vision and clarity of purpose at least. Having a shindig in Croke Park on Friday, the tickets of which are made out like they’re for a football match, it’s hard to fathom just how far down the pecking order he’s fallen of late. A mere seven years ago, he was chillin’ in canary pants with the world’s leaders, and now the invitees to his party have to seriously consider whether showing up will be worth the slagging they’ll get if they’re snapped with the birthday boy. How it took this long to happen is beyond me, but hey, karma gets too hungry for dinner at eight.

One contributory factor to the nation’s collective getting a whiff of Epsom salts is Bertie’s contribution to The Rise And Fall of Fianna Fáil, a scattershot documentary on TV3 that didn’t know whether it was a political programme or a slick US whodunit, where he came across as more out of touch than Marie Antoinette off her tits on crack. The presenter Ursula Halligan, an ersatz Barbara Walters, bludgeoned subtle imagery to death early on by interviewing Bertie in a bloody graveyard, before making an unforgiveable gaffe when she described public opinion as “turning 360 degrees”. If public opinion had indeed done that, there’d really be no need for the documentary. Reception for the show wasn’t all that positive, as it angered up the blood of the pro and anti Fianna Fáilers alike, a great many of the former claiming it swims over the good parts of their party’s history and just focuses in on the worst excesses of the recent past. Which would be a good point if Fianna Fáil weren’t forever up to their arse in trouble: the Locke Distillery Scandal, the Crilly-esque funding of the Irish Press and Charles Haughey waving his dick around for over a decade doesn’t even scratch the surface.

But as this week ends and we mull over the history that is being unwritten, or re-written, or over-written, the events of ten years ago makes us remember that sometimes, history just happens. In front of our eyes and on the most mundane of days, it happens.  Even though that day has set a range of events in motion that can and will be analysed at length, it only seems appropriate at this point to reflect on the loss of life and sacrifice made on 9/11, and the subsequent loss of life and sacrifice it has prompted.

Even though kids go back to school and the rest of us feel a shiver up our back remembering what that’s like, we’re not quite out of the silly season yet.

The people of Libya for starters must be getting immensely tired at the ridiculous and decidedly unfunny Marx Brothers film that their life has become. As finishing Colonel Gadaffi off proves to be harder than discovering how many different ways his name can be spelled, Libya The Tattooed Lady has become increasingly and malevolently scarred. The combination of the pro-Gadaffi factions (and his incalculable kin) protecting their diminishing ground like wounded animals and the rebel forces being composed of large number of non-military types who look like they’d flail about with a fire extinguisher better than most sitcom characters has left a tragic vacuum where the organs of state are wasting away. The state of the country’s hospitals alone is a matter of grave concern, and the longer it takes to finally heave Gadaffi the harder it’ll be to form a clean break from the chaos he’s caused.

Back home our own delusional former leader Bertie Ahern still hasn’t done the honourable thing and gone into exile, quite the opposite in fact. It’s bad enough that he’s claimed over a quarter of a million quid in secretarial and mobile expenses since leaving office, and a €150,000 pension, and a fee of forty grand and up on the US public speaking circuit for outlining how great he was as a head of government which makes as much sense as John Travolta getting paid to talk about what it’s like being Nicholas Cage, but then he opens his mouth to throw dust in our already bloodshot eyes.

First he gives an interview to a DCU student doing a project on Taoisigh through the years where he claims that if it wasn’t for the downturn and the tribunals and all that gubbins he’d be a home run for the Presidency. Apart from implying he’d be a formidable candidate for the Park if it wasn’t for the piddling matter of his own gross negligence, he also leathered into de salt a de eart grassroots Fianna Fáilers, claiming that back in the day most of the members of a north inner city cumann was full of southside tea drinkers who were a bunch of useless good for nothings. Small wonder he found nothing when he looked up every tree in north Dublin. Next week, he’ll presumably tell us how his grandmother actually gave her consent to be pushed under the bus, and how she sort of deserved it anyway.

While it’s only a matter of time before Bertie is defenestrated the football transfer window slammed shut this week, with selectively myopic genius and Mancunian drubbing recipient Arsene Wenger the most under pressure. While he went on a bit of a splurge he bought no really big names, unless you count the penta-syllabic Per Mertersacker. Elsewhere, Raul Meireles took the Torres Express from Liverpool south to Chelsea, and football’s answer to Charlie Sheen Joey Barton moves to QPR. With the BBC a couple of hundred yards down the road, he’ll likely be asked in more often to do many more surprisingly lucid on air chats from now on.

And speaking of surprising on air lucidity, Sinead “And Then Sting Fell Down The Stairs” O’Connor came hurtling back into the news this week when she revealed how much she misses screwing with people, but not in the way she usually does. After a couple of months sans boyfriend, she decided to cast the net out on her website with a tract that makes it pretty clear why Prince took such an interest in her back in the day, and boy did she reap in the interest.

Alas, not all of it was welcome, and less of it printable, and she had to throw somebody she thought was perfect back into the sea of plenty more fish when it transpired he had a pregnant girlfriend. It’s like some people haven’t twigged the internet is like a permanent notice board yet. Undeterred, Sinead has broadened her search to lesbians and men called Nigel, and possibly giving Lisdoonvarna a go. And failing that, Ryan Tubridy will do, whether he wants to or not by the sounds of it.

And finally, the mother of all and finallys, a story that involves a great escape, a chase, a ransom, telepathic communication, a love story and a family reuniting happy ending. And it all happened to a cow. Yvonne, a German dairy moo, sensed she was heading for ein kleine abbatoir musik and escaped through an electric fence and into the forest. A near-miss with a police car, a media bounty of €10,000, a team of hunters given a shoot order which was later rescinded, an attempt to seduce her with “The George Clooney of bulls” – who apparently had a deep baritone moo – and a South African psychic communicating with her via their mind grapes later and three whole months later she was caught and brought to an animal sanctuary, who paid the farmer €600 to keep her. They also brought her son Fresi and her sister Waltraud along. The only question now is, who plays her in the inevitable biopic? Bo-vine Derek, maybe? Charolais-ize Theron? Or maybe Yvonne herself could do it, she’s certainly proven she can do her own stunts.