Poor Little Rich Kids

In a special treat for Irish fans, U2’s Croke Park stint will open with a minute’s hushed silence followed by an inspirational incantation from Bono: “Blessed are the rich, for they shall enter the kingdom of heaven.”
 
Followed by, we can exclusively reveal, a guest appearance by Sir Bob Geldof with his new raggle-taggle novelty number: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a poor man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Yep. It’s all arsy-versy with the musical wing of global capitalism these days.

Larry Mullen has been dismayed to observe “a new resentment of rich people in this country... We have experienced [a situation] where coming in and out of the country at certain times is made more difficult than it should be – not only for us, but for a lot of wealthy people... The better-off (are) being sort of humiliated.”

There you go. It isn’t the people who have to queue out the doors of the dole offices again to establish their entitlement to a pittance nor those who lie distressed on hospital trolleys because wards have been closed on account of the economy and there’s nobody available to take them to the toilet, these aren’t the folk being humiliated in Ireland but... the better off.

As my favourite Cockney comeallye has it: “It’s the same the whole world over, Ain’t it all a bloody shame, It’s the poor wot gets the gravy, The rich wot gets the blame.”

The little drummer boy may not yet know it, but choice cuts from his Sunday Indo interview a couple of weeks back are being declaimed verbatim at stand-up gigs in the cultural hot-spots where I tend to hang out and, goodness me, how we laugh!

Larry told of seeing billionaire tax-exile property developer Dermot Desmond being treated at Dublin airport with less than the respect Larry thinks he deserves. Dreadful behaviour altogether towards to a man who has “brought huge amounts of money into the country.”

Maybe Larry was angry that peasants arriving on Ryanair hadn’t formed a human carpet on the tarmac for people like himself and Dermot Desmond to walk over.

“I certainly thought that if... if this is what (the rich) experience, how can I tell people, how can I fly the Irish flag and tell people ‘come to Ireland because it’s great’?”

Here’s the bit which prompts the loudest hoots at Tina McLaughlin’s Open Mike Monday nights in Mason’s: “Love them or loathe them, all those rich wives, all those rich guys with all those balls, all those women that you see organising this and organising that, without them we’d be in a very, very different state than we are now.”

Pat Boone (ask your granny) was more rock and roll than this guy.

Does it not occur to them that the reason there might be a new resentment of the rich on this island is that we have just seen the mass of the people ripped off, homes lost, jobs destroyed, wages slashed, to bail out the hoodlums who have run the economy into ruin? I suppose not.

Then there’s Geldof. Kruger Crowe Celebrity Management is currently marketing his services as an “inspirational speaker” on poverty in Africa and other topics at $80,000 a gig. Either his charisma has dimmed slightly or this is a cut-price special offer: the south Dublin ego-warrior last year charged $100,000 for a talk on alleviating poverty to an organisation called Diversity@Work in Melbourne. Would it not have been better if he’d sent them a postcard suggesting the money be spent instead on, say, alleviating poverty?

Not better for Bob Geldof, I suppose.

The fee included payment for a bodyguard, luxury hotel suite and first-class travel.

Can anyone think of a single individual on the planet who has benefited more than Sir Geldof from Live Aid? Seriously. Go on. Try.

Come the revolution into rationality, U2 and Geldof will be recognised as national embarrassments.

Not yet, sadly. Many thousands, it seems, fully intend to congregate glassy-eyed with trusting innocence at Croke Park later this month. And good luck to them. Each to her own, say I.
But what’s this? Who are these folk assembled outside Cool Discs in Foyle Street where the buses for Croke Park leave, shouldering pitchforks and scythes, muttering? Whatever can it mean?

Can gardai be trusted to use their new powers under the Criminal Justice (Amendment) Act wisely?

TDs say yes. But that’s not the only reason to reject the measure.

Dermot Ahern’s new law will allow the opinions of guards and former guards to be presented in court as evidence. So let’s look at how they have handled court evidence in the past.

On Mayday 2002, thousands of citizens watched TV footage of gardai rioting in Dublin city centre and attacking passers-by. But when cases came to court, not a single guard could recall seeing any of this. Same with an internal inquiry. Nobody knew anything.

Now it’s proposed that the mere opinions of the same people should be taken as evidence.
Judge Morris found in the McBrearty case in Donegal that there was “routine indiscipline and worse in other parts of the country” too. No action of any kind was taken.

A widely-ignored ongoing investigation into garda misbehaviour in Cavan and Monaghan has heard that guards who cooperated with the inquiry have been “hounded” by fellow officers. According to sources close to the inquiry, one garda who broke ranks has been subjected to “a campaign of intimidation, harassment and bullying” at the hands of colleagues.

The new measure is a cynical manoeuvre by a clueless, cowardly government. The main driver of violent, organised crime is the vast profit to be made from distributing illegal drugs. When alcohol was illegal in the United States, booze was associated with vice, gangsterism, murder and intimidation, especially intimidation of witnesses. What broke that connection was the first act of the “New Deal” Roosevelt administration in 1933 – even before he got round to dealing with the depression. That is, the end of prohibition.

There is no reason to believe things would work out any differently with regard to illegal drugs today. But this is highly unlikely to happen until we have politicians and a press willing, unlike many gardai, to tell the truth.