#Irish Times

[mudwerks]

(via Sinéad O’Connor, acclaimed Dublin singer, dies aged 56 – The Irish Times)

The acclaimed Dublin performer released 10 studio albums, while her song Nothing Compares 2 U was named the number one world single in 1990 by the Billboard Music Awards.

Ms O’Connor is survived by her three children. Her son, Shane, died last year aged 17.

[the-moon-loves-the-sea]

[thoughtportal]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

irishtimes.com

* * * *

Blackbird in Dun Laoghaire – a poem by Joseph O’Connor

Blackbird in Dun Laoghaire was read by Joseph O’Connor at the funeral of his sister Sinéad O’Connor ::

There’s a blackbird in Dun Laoghaire When I’m walking with my sons Through the laneways Called ‘The Metals’ By the train-tracks.

And he sings among the dandelions And bottle-tops and stones, Serenading purple ivy, Weary tree-trunks.

And I have it in my head That I can recognise his song, Pick him out, I mean distinct From all his flock-mates.

Impossible, I know. Heard one blackbird, heard them all. But there are times He whistles up a recollection.

There’s a blackbird in Dun Laoghaire – And I’m suddenly a kid, Asking where from here to Sandycove My youngest sister hid. I’m fourteen this Easter. My job to mind her. Good Friday on the pier – And I suddenly can’t find her.

The sky like a bruise By the lighthouse wall. We were playing hide-and-seek. Is she lost? Did she fall? There’s a blackbird in Dun Laoghaire And the terror’s like a wave Breaking hard on a hull, And the peoples’ faces grave

As Yeats on a banknote. Stern as the mansions Of Killiney in the distance, As the pier’s granite stanchions, And Howth is a drowned child Slumped in Dublin Bay, And my heart is a drum And the breakers gull-grey.

The baths. It starts raining. The People’s Park. And my tears and the terns, And the dogs’ bitter bark. There’s a blackbird in Dun Laoghaire, And I pray to him, then, For God isn’t here, In a sobbed Amen.

And she waves from the bandstand, Her hair in damp strings, And the blackbird arises With a clatter of wings From the shrubs by the teahouse, Where old ladies dream Of sailors and Kingstown And Teddy’s ice-cream.

And we don’t say a word But cling in the mizzle, And the whistle of the bird Getting lost in the drizzle. Mercy weaves her nest In the wildflowers and the leaves, There are stranger things in heaven Than a blackbird believes.

– Joseph O’Connor, 2010

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Sir, – The letter “Israel and the Palestinian people” (November 30th), signed by various Irish luminaries, repeats the usual canard that Israel is an “apartheid” state.

This is an outrageous falsehood. Israel is in fact the only long-lasting liberal democracy in the entire Middle East. It is the only country in the region with freedom of speech, party, press, and association and judicial transparency. It has equality under the law for all its citizens, a fifth of whom by the way are Israeli Arabs, both Muslim and Christian. It is also the only country in the region with rights and equality for the LGBTQ+ community. In terms of its legal and political systems, its vibrant press and rich civil society, Israel is remarkably similar to Ireland, another democratic republic that began in very difficult circumstances but, like Israel, ultimately thrived.

It is tiresome that the usual figures in Irish society – in politics, academia and activism – signed the above letter. Such people think they are helping in the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, but in fact they are not. By constantly demonising Israel and ignoring the deep flaws on the Palestinian side, such as the Islamic fundamentalism of Hamas, and the squalid corruption of the Palestinian Authority, they make themselves morally and intellectually bankrupt. People who genuinely want to help the Palestinians should encourage democratic, moderate forces within Palestinian society and those who will eventually realise that peace with Israel can only come about through dialogue and mutual compromise, not by demonisation and intransigence.

Israel is continually striving for peace; just a few years ago it was able to establish diplomatic relations with four more Arab countries, after Egypt and Jordan have had relations with Israel for decades. It is Iran and its proxies which are destabilising the region, hence why Israelis and Arabs are increasingly coming together. It is all the more tragic then that some people in Ireland, instead of supporting Israel and the moderate Arab forces in the region, prefer to demonise Israel as much as possible and fail to condemn Iran and the forces of extremism which blight the region. In the process, such people make themselves not only redundant but, even worse, irrelevant. – Yours, etc,

[msclaritea]

How the trans activists fooled Ireland - UnHerd

Ireland is the trans activists’s trump card. Whenever debate flares up about self-identification or the Gender Recognition Act or transgender rights, campaigners can say “There has never been any trouble in Ireland.” And governments believe them.

The Irish “success story” has been trotted out and swallowed down whole. Ireland was an early adopter of “self-ID”: since 2015 the state has allowed individuals to change their “gender” — their legal sex, effectively — just because they want to. There are no background checks and no medical reports.

Let’s be clear, that is an affront to safeguarding. But that has not stopped activists claiming Ireland to be an example of “international best practice”, and framing it as a great model for Westminster and Holyrood. But while politicians may still be lapping up whatever activists tell them, recent polling suggests that the Irish public is not convinced.

It does not take a legal expert to see the dangers. If biological males can access women’s single-sex spaces including hospital wards and prisons simply by making a statutory declaration, it was only a matter of time before there was an outrage. In fact, there have been at least two in one prison.

Barbie Kardashian is a troubled teenager who was “born a male but identifies as female”, and has a history of particularly nasty physical and sexual violence towards women. Having previously torn the eyelids from a female care worker, Kardashian was jailed last year in the women’s wing of Limerick prison following threats of violence against two individuals. According to the court report, Kardashian was “very anxious she be detained in a prison facility for females, as she identifies as a female”.

Already there was a “pre-operative, pre-hormone therapy”, male-to-female transgender prisoner who had been convicted of ten counts of sexual assault and one count of cruelty against a child.

Whatever Irish politicians had been thinking when they waved through the 2015 Gender Recognition Act, there had not been any proper public debate to inform the new legislation. But that is not surprising; the law was changed swiftly and quietly, just the way the activists like it.

“Nobody spoke about the GRA,” says the Irish writer Stella O’Malley. It wasn’t even mentioned in the media: “We were all about the gay marriage referendum and the GRA just didn’t come up. I’ve always been interested in trans issues and I would have noticed if it had.”

This strategy is straight from an activists’ handbook, or to be precise the “Denton’s Document”. This guidance – officially titled, Only adults? Good practices in legal gender recognition for youth – was published two years ago. Backed by an unlikely triumvirate of Dentons (the world’s largest law firm by number of lawyers), Thomson Reuters Foundation and IGLYO – the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organisation – it was an instruction manual for lobbying groups who wanted to extend gender recognition to young people with or without their parents’ permission.

The tactics are detailed in full within the handbook, including the instruction to “avoid excessive press coverage and exposure.” And specific reference was made to Ireland where, “activists have directly lobbied individual politicians and tried to keep press coverage to a minimum.”

O’Malley was right: the events of 2015 had been carefully managed.

“In Ireland, Denmark and Norway, changes to the law on legal gender recognition were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as marriage equality legislation. This provided a veil of protection, particularly in Ireland, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for.”

It’s only now, six years on from the Irish Gender Recognition Act, that the public has been consulted. Not by the government, even now, but by The Countess, an Irish campaign to restore the privacy, dignity and safety of women and children in schools, workplaces, sport, changing rooms, toilets, hospitals, prisons and refuges. Opinion polling carried out for them by Red C – found that respondents were not impressed.

Only 17% agreed with the 2015 law that allows someone to change their birth certificate as soon as they self-identify as the opposite sex. Rather more (34%) thought it should be permitted once a trans person has partially or fully transitioned through hormone treatment and/or genital surgery. But 28% felt that individuals should not be allowed to change the sex on their birth certificates at all.

Even younger people (aged 18-34) favoured no changes to birth certificates, as opposed to the laissez-faire approach that was pushed through parliament. Overall, men were more cautious than women — perhaps because they better understand what men can be like.

Birth certificates are the last line of defence for service providers trying to maintain single-sex provision for women. If these can be changed on demand, then the safeguards become worthless. We can probably safely assume that few men would ever seek a Gender Recognition Certificate but mixed in with those suffering from gender dysphoria — a diagnosable medical condition — would be those who women need to worry about most. There’s little point of locking a door if a potential abuser can cut his own key.

As the polls show, while Irish politicians were captured by the transgender activist lobbying, the Irish public understands the dangers. When asked about transgender people who had not been through gender reassignment surgery, more people than not opposed their inclusion in changing rooms, sports, refuges and prisons. Clearly, the naïve government policy that led to the outrage in Limerick women’s prison is not supported by the electorate.

Laoise Uí Aodha de Brún, founder of The Countess said, “This is the first time the public has been given a say on gender self-identification. When the government passed the Gender Recognition Act in 2015 it did so with little thought of the effect it would have on the wider community, let alone consultation with groups that would be most affected, particularly women.”

This does not mean that The Countess and the Irish public are transphobic. Rather they are pro-science, and supportive of the rights of women to defend their own boundaries. As a transgender person myself, I know transphobia when I see it and this is not it. It is not hateful to make factual claims such as “transwomen are not female and therefore not women”, nor is it transphobic to apply safeguarding procedures appropriate to an individual’s biological sex. That is necessary to protect everyone’s welfare. Accusations of transphobia are thrown around far too easily and they deflect attention from genuine hate.

Unfortunately, though, the Irish self-identification “success story” has been misrepresented and disseminated by activists who are desperate to extend it far and wide. On this side of the Irish sea, the Westminster government has, to their credit, thrown out self-identification, despite the howls of protest from some quarters — but gender recognition is a devolved matter. North of the border, Nicola Sturgeon’s SNP government seems determined to make the same mistakes as the Irish one, despite the furore surrounding the debate. Scotland has already cited alignment with “international best practice” as a rationale for introducing self-identification, using Ireland as an example.

All these leaders have been hoodwinked by a narrow group of self-interested activists who have seized the agenda and are loath to let go. I’m a teacher and my pupils are taught to think critically. Some of our politicians need to learn a similar lesson. Instead of following blindly, then need to start asking themselves some hard questions. I suggest they kick off with “Who told us that self-ID was international best practice and why did we believe them?” Because this polling suggests that their electorates would like some answers.

[cantquitu]

"The Harries don’t give much of a sh*te, to be quite honest. And why should they?" 😄

[anothermanoutoftime]

Today in The Irish Times, by cartoonist Martyn Turner.

(Copyright of the artist is acknowledged)

[nualahollowayart]

Nuala Holloway delves into the history of Ireland's Leaving Certificate, the final Secondary School/ High School exams which helps determine a place for students in Third Level education and explores its relevance in today's world.

[dianastevanblog]

Kindness of Strangers on Goodreads

When I read about a recent book scandal, I was reminded of the line, “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” Blanche Debois says it in the Tennessee Williams play, Streetcar Named Desire. It’s a curious line because Blanche is not great at assessing strangers, and the only kindness she’s received was that in exchange for sex. Still, that line came to mind, when I thought of how…

[nando161mando]

This is in the Irish Times opinion section, full of irony and empty of self-awareness.

Apparently only professional journalists may comment on things they know nothing about.

Which is why they resent social media so much, of course.

[landoverwater]

Nobody journos like an Irish journo journos. A brilliantly written piece.

[thoughtportal]

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A view of the Lineker furore from across the Irish Sea

"Gary Lineker - a view from Ireland" by Malachy Clerkin

Fri Mar 10 2023.

"Gary Lineker must sit back and wonder sometimes how it got to this. How did he, the world’s most manifestly vanilla footballer, the apogee of mild-mannered English decorum when he played, how did that guy become a figure of UK-wide national outrage? It’s like hearing Cliff Richard turned out to be a crypto bro or that Su Pollard’s third act was as head of Combat 18. It doesn’t compute.

This is Gary Winston Lineker we’re talking about. Yes, after Churchill. A sportsman so bland, so studiously inoffensive that he went through his entire career without once getting booked. Who actually began his post-football life as a pundit but was so unopinionated that the BBC had to find another role for him. Too nice for the Match of the Day couch – has faint praise ever been so damning?

Yet if you cocked an ear to our friends across the water this week, you’d come away convinced that the very fate of modern Britain is predicated on Gary Lineker’s Twitter account. Depending on where you’re standing, Lineker is either a Martin Luther King for the 21st century or a pinko disgrace and a danger to the state. This is quite the turn of events.

His tweets this week comparing the pointedly cruel language of Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman on refugees “to that used in Germany in the 1930s” has plonked him right into the nexus of the culture wars over there. For the foreseeable future – and most likely long after it – he will be a lightning rod for the peculiar brand of conservative English mania that has taken hold of post-Brexit Britain.

It’s wild when you think about it. A man so devoted to the quiet life in his playing days that he preferred snooker to golf as a post-training pastime on the basis that it was less tiring – true story! – has somehow been reinvented as a scourge of government, a voice for the voiceless, a truth-teller in a world of right-wing spivs and charlatans. All because he uses his platform and his 8.7 million Twitter followers to occasionally talk with humanity and decency about the world around him.

When you step back from it, the most interesting aspect of the week wasn’t that he had a go at a sitting Tory minister. It wasn’t that he compared her words to those of Nazis in the 1930s. And it definitely wasn’t the risible notion that his Twitter account was somehow a threat to the BBC’s sacred impartiality.

No, far more interesting was the fact that it worked. The BBC got spooked and didn’t stand by their man. They tried to browbeat Lineker into an apology and when he refused, they pulled him off air. One of the great institutions of British life ultimately quailed at the feet of the Tory government and the right-wing press. In doing so, they provided a lovely distraction from the troubles of the former and dished up a tasty weekend morsel to feed the beast for the latter.

So much of this stuff is noise, peddled for profit, nakedly disingenuous rabble-rousing. Bad enough that the BBC had already led their two most-watched news bulletins on Wednesday evening with Lineker’s Tweets around Braverman’s refugee policy rather than the refugee policy itself. Imagine the delight in Tory HQ when they saw that. Another day down, another news cycle survived. What’s next off the bullshit conveyor belt?

Well, it turns out nothing is. Roll on a couple more days and by Friday afternoon, the BBC had decided to pull Lineker off-air altogether. Oh, how green must the valley have been in the Home Office when the news came through. Nobody is spending the weekend talking about brown people dying in boats in the English Channel. Everything is centred now on the Twitter account of an English sporting hero. They’ve had a right result here.

The BBC had a busy day, as it happens. Even the sainted David Attenborough fell foul of them. It was reported earlier in the day that the final episode of his upcoming series on wildlife in the British Isles won’t be shown on the mainstream BBC for fear of upsetting right-wing politicians and press. It will instead be held back and only be shown on the iPlayer.

Imagine telling someone in 1990 that the BBC would one day side with government and anti-immigration, anti-environment vested interests over Gary Lineker and David Attenborough? They’d wonder what sort of dark dystopian Britain the future had in store. That’s the power of the people Lineker has annoyed this week.Here’s the really depressing thing. If Gary Lineker can’t survive a week of the culture wars, who can? Lineker is a genuine sporting giant, one of England’s all-time 24-carat greats. And in his second life, he has been an established feature of the sporting landscape in the UK for over a quarter of a century. Nothing that’s said about him in the Daily Mail or the Telegraph or even on the BBC will change any of that.

Put it this way. By pulling him from Match of the Day, the BBC have probably put him out on the open market. Who loses? Not Lineker. He’ll have no shortage of suitors only delighted to pay him the £1.3m a year he gets from the BBC. And when it comes to his Twitter account, do you imagine the suits in Sky or BT or wherever give a tuppenny damn what he says? Or will they just see the 8.7m followers he brings with him and hope he doesn’t ask for an extra million quid because of them?

Gary Lineker will be fine. But if he can’t stand up against a politician like Braverman, someone who describes seeing a plane leave Heathrow for Rwanda filled with asylum seekers as “my dream, my obsession”, who will?

If the might of the BBC isn’t deployed to support somebody as famous and beloved as Lineker, what are the chances they’ll back a lowly reporter trying to hold the Tories to account? And if someone like Lineker gets chewed up by the culture wars machine, what does that say to the next generation of sportspeople when it comes to standing up for the downtrodden and the vulnerable?

Nothing good, that’s for sure."

[h/t Ian Sanders]

[hibernia-1]

Tweeted by John Creedon. I laughed.

[msclaritea]

It's totally not thirsty for Leonardo Di Caprio, angling to be included in the awards circuit, every year. I find it fascinating how the Academy has made it blatantly clear how much they want to laud Oppenheimer, since its crackpot lead character wanted a one world government, like themselves, and in the same year, Scorcese puts DiCaprio in a role that wasn't a good fit for him, in Killers and Oliver Stone completely fucked over Phoenix in The Napoleon film. Did these groups actually get together and plan out how to make sure DiCaprio didn't overshadow the McGuinness tool, Cillian Murphy? Because again, none of this makes sense, unless it was planned.