It's not easy being green when you're a shower of muppets


Kermit the Frog once sang: "It's not easy being green." After the Finance Bill last week, I know how he feels.
The constant bad news had left me – like many of us – budget-numb, but on Thursday I wanted to see if two pieces of green legislation had made it through; the parking levy and tax exemption for bicycles. They did.
The €200 levy applies to employee parking spaces across our major cities. The bike scheme offers generous tax breaks to employers and employees on up to €1,000 spent on a bike and accoutrements. The measures are the Greens' stick-and-carrot to get us out of our cars. This is for our own good, apparently.
We'll be healthier (unless we fall under a bus).
We'll be less stressed as we freewheel to our dwindling workplaces.
The rain won't be as bad as we might think: Met Éireann statistics show that the average Dubliner who cycles for 15 minutes into work, five days a week, will get wet on only four days out of 100.
Bicycle shops will thrive: during August, the world's largest bike-maker, Giant Manufacturing, sold a record 460,000 units as a result of rising oil prices.
We'll be happier and more fulfilled. So why is this Great Plan making me saddle sore?
Let's start with public transport.
On Pat Kenny's radio show last week, Green TD Ciarán Cuffe said we have a good system in place and should use it, or the bikes. Agreed, it's better than it used to be, but it's far from perfect.
There are still regular delays on the Dart and poor link-ups. For example, if you're travelling from Swords to Baggot Street you have to take a bus into Talbot Street and a long walk, or another bus, across town. Ask most citizens and they will gripe about some route or another.
The latest figures show that the proportion of people using public transport over cars has remained static for the past four years despite major investment. Some Dublin drivers still doggedly prefer enduring gridlock to using our buses, trains and trams.
When deputy Cuffe was praising CIÉ to Pat Kenny he didn't mention that it will be increasing fares by 10% as the €200 parking levy is being introduced. How much of an incentive to motorists is that? Pay higher fares, the levy or get a bike. Some choice.
Conor Faughnan of AA Ireland said last week the levy was a "cosmetic exercise" which won't alleviate traffic problems, but will just create hardship. With increased fares, of course it will.
His answer – the logical one – is more Park and Ride sites. Last July CIÉ introduced Pay and Display instead, with clamping, at 37 stations on the greater Dublin rail network.
The bike scheme IS purely cosmetic, although maybe no-one's told the Greens yet.
Fianna Fáil knows it will appeal to some people living near the city, but the majority from further afield will pay the steeper fares or still drive and pay the levy. It knows the €400,000 the scheme will cost is peanuts compared to what it can shear off drivers through road tax etc.
It's not a huge amount. Co-incidentally, it's not even as much as we paid the country's prisoners (€467,000) in damages for accidents/attacks in our jails over the past five years.
However, it could be used more effectively on almost anything else other than bicycles. It could have been put towards vaccinating 12-year-old girls against cervical cancer, for example.
Here's a question for the Greens: what kind of country pays its criminals €467,000, doesn't vaccinate its children and spends €400,000 on bicycles?
Every cent counts in the current crisis and yet we're wasting money on this claptrap. If we're going to throw away resources on free bikes, why don't we exempt shoes for committed pedestrians as well? It's ridiculous.
And who is going to police the scheme? What's to stop me getting a tax exempt bike and selling it on at a profit? Will there be roving garda units set up to check ownership of bikes?
This scheme – however well-intentioned – highlights just how inexperienced and naïve the Greens are. The country doesn't want good intentions. It wants strong, intelligent leadership.
Remember Mr Gormley: "It's not easy being Green."
Especially if people think you're a shower of muppets.


November 23, 2008

Cardinal Brady should remember the credo 'live and let live'

November 16, 2008

Two men, two wildly opposing views. On the right stands Cardinal Sean Brady, crozier ready to smite anyone who would legitimise gay unions. To his far left is Peter Tatchell, controversial English gay rights campaigner.
Cardinal Brady has indicated that the bishops may mount a constitutional challenge to the government's Civil Union Bill, which will give gay couples a form of marital status. Unsurprisingly, gay groups are outraged.
His Eminence is not the only cardinal to be targeted by gay activists in recent weeks. Last Tuesday, mass was said to commemorate the death in 1890 of Cardinal John Newman, amid Tatchell's claims that the saint-in-waiting was gay.
Tatchell says the founder of Ireland's first Catholic University had a gay union with a priest, Fr Ambrose St John. He bases this claim largely on the cardinal's last wish to be buried beside his friend.
Last month, the church disinterred Newman to move him to a larger place of veneration in Birmingham as part of the beatification process. Tatchell claims the disinterment was to cover up the gay relationship. He has no hard evidence for this.
That Tatchell would "out" a dead cardinal is no surprise. In 1994 his group, OutRage, publicly invited 10 Church of England bishops to "tell the truth" about their sexuality. It also threatened to out 20 gay MPs for their "hypocrisy." One MP died of a sudden heart attack, believed by some to be a result of the campaign.
Outing the dead and invading the privacy of the living has earned Tatchell many detractors.
One can't imagine him being invited around to tea at Cardinal Brady's palace. And yet the two men have more in common than they realise: they are both extremists. As a result, they are damaging their respective causes.
As Primate, the cardinal must be allowed to voice his concerns for society. That's his right. However, he must not challenge the bill for two reasons: it would be fundamentally unjust and will further damage his church.
Earlier this year, a national poll by Lansdowne Market Research showed that 58% of us believe gay couples should be allowed marry in a Registry Office. I don't know how many of that 58% are practising Catholics, but I'll bet there's more than a few. How will they feel about their religion if Cardinal Brady presses ahead with a legal challenge? That the church teaches compassion but won't be swayed by the compassion of its own flock?
The extreme view is that the bill will undermine marriage's special status in the Constitution. Here's a question: if marriage is so important to the church then why won't it allow priests marry? This was possible up until the 11th century. The name 'Taggart' is actually derived from Mac an tSagairt – 'son of the priest'.
Last Monday, the Bishop of Nottingham, Malcolm McMahon – who is tipped to be England's next Catholic leader – said there are no doctrinal reasons for stopping married men becoming priests.
A survey by Newstalk radio earlier this year found that 63% of Irish priests thought the celibacy rule should change. The Vatican does not. Perhaps it believes it would be unable to bear the cost of supporting priests in the same type of union Cardinal Brady is championing.
This bill will not undermine marriage. It will, if anything, endorse the concept of a caring union – gay or straight – as integral to the welfare of society.
The state is simply caring for its citizens by drawing up this bill. Brady should care for the church by not legally challenging it.
When the church undermines the credo of 'live and let live' through extremism, it undermines itself. It alienates those who want to live by that credo.
Although Peter Tatchell is campaigning for civil rights, his extremism has alienated many of the same people.
The cardinal has no right to discriminate against gays, and Tatchell has no right to interfere with the manner in which the church goes about making saints.
Tatchell should live and let rest in peace.
The cardinal should live and let live together.


November 16, 2008

Retail guilt' and why I won't be doing my civic duty today

The lights are on and there's no one home – because everyone's in town shopping for Christmas.
This was the dream scenario for the genius who decided Christmas should come to Dublin two weeks earlier than last year.
This evening, Dublin's lord mayor Eibhlin Byrne will light up the 'Beacon of Hope' tree on O'Connell Street to lure us into the city's 4,000 shops.
It is our civic duty, apparently, to buy our way out of the recession.
This twisting of the space-time continuum is nothing new. The retail festival of Hallowe'en now starts in September and 'de facto' Christmas the day after it.
Pressure, pressure, pressure. Buy, buy, buy.
The next progression will be to bring forward St Stephen's Day so the sales can start early.
This call to civic duty is a prime example of how we are controlled by Retail Guilt. This is the opposite of Retail Therapy, as there is very little enjoyment to be derived from it – unless you're selling something.
Not enough time to spend with your children? Throw money at them instead. Buy our latest designer clothes and computer games.
Are you a bad friend? 'Real' friends spend a fortune texting everybody in their phonebook on New Year's Eve. Don't leave anyone out now. (Premium rates apply.)
Guilt, guilt, guilt.
Bad man if you think Hallmark days – Granny's Day, Valentine's Day, Pet Rabbit Day – are a cynical ploy to extract guilt money.
Utter swine if you don't buy a letter from Santa. On Tuesday, I saw a newspaper ad for a phoneline offering to write one to your child for €7. Memo to parents: if you can't be bothered to do it yourself, then the gesture is meaningless.
And finally this: 'unpatriotic' Dubliner if you don't shop in town.
There are many good reasons for not doing this 'civic duty'. Firstly, local businesses need our money as much as city ones. Then there's the traffic, the queues, the €4.10 you spend in a taxi before it goes anywhere. Most importantly, there are the prices.
According to Mercer consultants, Dublin is the eighth most expensive city in Europe. This is probably why last Christmas 290,000 of us travelled to the US instead of Dublin and spent, on average, €1,900. There are considerable savings to be made there on everything from iPods to jeans. Last month, Dublin's retailers revealed how much these trips are hurting when ISME, almost petulantly, accused customs officers of turning a blind eye to them.
It's not just the United States that's challenging Dublin's shops. In June, the National Consumer Agency found a basket of 42 branded goods was 28% cheaper in Tesco in the North. A Dunnes basket was 31% cheaper.
The merchants' response to competition is to bring Christmas forward. It's laughable.
Why is it our civic duty to bail them out, despite having been fleeced by them during the rip-off years?
Dublin's retailers are faced with hardships. Grafton Street is the fourth most expensive place in Europe to rent, according to a report by Jones Lang LaSalle. As a result, it has become like a British High Street as only the big name chains such as Next, River Island, Oasis, Boots, Marks and Sparks etc, can afford to pay the rent.
However, business is business, and if Dublin's shops want mine, then the deal is this: lower your prices. Give me an incentive other than waving fairy lights at me.
Not that all of them want to give me those either. In 2006, the Dublin City Business Association claimed up to 30% of retailers were unwilling to pay for the lights. That was back when they saw no need to love-bomb us. Now we're no longer being taken for granted.
They have reeled out the mayor to emphasise that the real meaning of Christmas is consumerism.
What is even more annoying about this guilt trip is the fact that the lights she is turning on today aren't even made in Ireland. They're from France. Why couldn't they source lights here?
The lights are on but there's no one home, all right.

dkenny@tribune.ie

November 2, 2008

Freedom of speech must be cherished, not used for nasty gags

There's an episode in Father Ted that concerns racism – or, at least, attitudes to it.
Ted has been accused of being racist after putting a lampshade on his head, squinting and saying, "I am Chinese if you ple-ease", just as a Chinese family appears at his window.
Panicking, he says, "Dougal, I wouldn't have done a Chinaman impression if I'd known there was going to be a Chinaman there to see me do a Chinaman impression."
Later, he appears to give them a Nazi salute when, in fact, he is only waving at them. They storm off.
The episode brilliantly highlighted our belief that we're not racist if the foreigner doesn't see us being racist. At the same time it parodied knee-jerk reactions to perceived racism. Far more importantly – as it was a comedy – it was hilariously funny.
Minister for integration Conor Lenihan is also hilariously funny, although he doesn't normally mean to be.
Last week he invoked the Father Ted Defence that "I was only waving" when he appeared to give Leo Varadkar a Nazi salute in the Dáil. "Hi Leo/Heil Leo" do sound alike, after all.
Lenihan called Varadkar a fascist over his proposal this summer that we pay unemployed foreigners to go home voluntarily. Stress on 'voluntarily'.
Herr Lenihan later dropped the Father Ted Defence and goosestepped over to what we'll call the Tommy Tiernan Defence: "I was only joking."
Varadkar laughed it off but is still perceived as a racist for his proposal.
Kevin Myers, like Varadkar, has also been accused of being racist when trying to start a debate about immigration. On the Late Late in September 2007 he argued that anyone who tries to discuss the issue is branded a racist. He was right. There still hasn't been a meaningful debate and he was branded a racist.
Myers doesn't do himself any favours. Recently the Press Council found he caused "grave offence" with an incendiary article about giving aid to Africa. In it he asked why he should do anything to "encourage further catastrophic demographic growth" in Ethiopia. Importantly, the council added the article hadn't been intended to incite racial hatred.
I don't in any way condone Myers' antagonistic, spittle-speckled descriptions of Africans as Kalashnikov-toting and "priapic" and absolutely don't believe they should be let starve. However, while his language was hugely offensive, at the core of the article there appeared to be sincere concern for that unfortunate continent. He wanted to start a debate about it.
This begs the question: is how he delivered his opinion more important than why he delivered it?
Another Late Late Show guest who, like Myers, loudly exercises his right to free speech was also accused of being racist last week.
After snorting at Travellers and disabled people, Tommy Tiernan set about immigrants. He did this by mewling in a 'funny' voice and asking the time. This 'observation' was followed with an impression of a Chinese person working in a takeaway. Again it wasn't clear what his point was. There was no insight, no context.
Was it that non nationals sound ridiculous?
Unlike Myers, Varadkar and even Father Ted's creators, Tiernan used his right to free speech to mock immigrants. This was justified with the idiotic defence that if we all laugh at each other we'll all be grand, lads.
While Myers and Varadkar are trying to break into the debating chamber, Tiernan entered the living rooms of thousands of non-nationals and sneered at them. Just to flog a DVD. He needs to learn that when free speech is used against the vulnerable it becomes the enemy of freedom. The freedom to work in a takeaway, for instance, without being laughed at.
Some comedians use their job to observe society's absurdities, others throw custard pies. Tiernan did neither. He broke the first rule of comedy: he just wasn't funny. And the more 'outrageous' he tries to be, the more boring he is becoming as a comedian.
Perhaps next year the Late Late will have Conor Lenihan on instead.
At least he's good for a laugh.

dkenny@tribune.ie

November 2, 2008