CORI Justice challenges Government in social partnership talks on privatisation of services.
Government's proposed reduction in tax revenue suggests that resources will not be available to provide core services.
CORI Justice has challenged Government to reveal whether or not it plans to privatise large swathes of public services. Speaking after social partnership talks between the Government and the Community and Voluntary Pillar of Social Partners today Dr Seán Healy, S.M.A., Director of CORI Justice, stated that "A close examination of the Budget documentation shows that Government plans to balance its books while reducing tax revenue far below the EU average. If Government follows through on this then the only way that circle can be squared is by privatising large parts of the services currently provided in areas such as education or health. CORI Justice believes that such a move would have huge negative implications for fairness and for the vulnerable in Irish society."
Fr Healy went on to state that "Before the current crisis the Government's annual Budget raised about 27% of GDP in tax. Government's latest projections on tax revenue show it intends to raise 22.3% of GDP through the Budget in 2011. A fairer tax system is required which sees the tax-base broadened and tax-breaks removed. This would see total tax revenue remaining below the EU average level but rising to a level required to fund key services. However, the level of reduction envisaged in the Budget projections for the coming years is such that large parts of services currently provided by the Exchequer could not be funded and, consequently, would! have to be privatised. Is this what Government is planning?"
CORI Justice called on Government to clarify its vision for where it sees Ireland in five years time and whether or not privatisation of substantial parts of the social services funded by the Exchequer form part of that vision. If privatisation of major services is not planned then CORI Justice calls on Government to state how it will secure the revenue needed to fund these services in the years ahead.
"Government has constantly stated that it will protect the vulnerable while addressing the series of crises Ireland is currently facing. However, its own Budget documentation calls this commitment into serious question" according to Fr Healy.
Fr Seán Healy, Director of CORI Justice went on to state that, “As we approach the 10th anniversary of Minister Mary Harney's contrasting of Boston and Berlin, and the social models they epitomised, we find ourselves in a situation where the US is moving away from the Boston model while Ireland is moving towards it.”
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Cycling in Ireland
It's difficult to understand how the minds of politicians work.
The report below about cycling has elements of madness about it.
Right now Irish Rail is trying hard to remove all bicycles from its trains.
I have been cycling in Ireland for 54 years. I wonder how long the author/authors of this policy document have been on two wheels.
May I invite Mr Dempsey to come on a 10 km cycle trip anywhere in Ireland with me and I'll explain the real rules of the road to him.
Cyclists must look much safer and greener when viewed from behind the windows of a plush State car.
HARRY McGEE, Political Staff
A NEW Government policy on cycling proposes to make Ireland one of the most cycle-friendly countries in the world by 2020.
The National Cycle Policy Framework was launched yesterday by the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey who said he wanted to increase the number of people who cycle each day from 35,000 to 160,000 in a little over a decade – an increase of over 400 per cent.
The new policy contains 109 separate actions to make the transformation. Included are ambitious plans to retrofit all urban roads with cycle lanes and promises to introduce widespread traffic calming and bike-friendly road designs.
It also provides for the integration of public transport and cycling, allowing bikes to be carried on buses and trains; the provision of shared bicycles in major towns, like the French Vélib scheme; safe bike-parking facilities; and the retrofit of major road junctions which can currently pose dangers for cyclists.
Mr Dempsey acknowledged there had been a marked decrease in the numbers cycling to school and work in the past 20 years but said that this new policy would fully address it. He said he had sought the advice of the best cycle planners in Europe when drawing up the policy.
“I am determined that we will have a world-class cycling infrastructure in place in this country by 2020 so that biking becomes a safe and enjoyable option for commuters and school-kids alike,” said Mr Dempsey.
He accepted that the total plan has yet to be costed, though he said a total of €14 million would be provided during 2009 for various schemes, some of which are engineering and others promotional.
However, there is no specific commitments in relation to funding the actions.
“Over the lifetime of the scheme what we intend to do within the road-work programme is to provide specific funds for engineering to make existing roads much safer particularly in . . . urban areas,” he said.
The cycling campaign group, cyclist.ie, gave a broad endorsement to the new policy.
Dr Darren McAdam-O’Connell of the group said that recognition of cycling by policy makers was long overdue. “We strongly welcome a document that contains many of the measures that cyclists have been demanding for a long time, such as stronger measures against urban speeding, on-road cycle training in schools, improved driver training curriculum, dismantling of dangerous multi-lane one-way systems and permitting of bike carriages on trains and buses.”
However, Dr Mike McKillen, also of cyclist.ie, said it would never become a reality without a “fundamental change in attitudes in official circles”.
Fine Gael’s transport spokesman Fergus O’Dowd said that Mr Dempsey launched his cycling wish-list just as the roads programme was coming to an end. He claimed the policy would “gather dust” in the Department of Transport.
Likewise, Labour’s spokesman Tommy Broughan described the policy as being full of vague aspirations, without full commitments to implement them. “The policy is also vague on how and when funding will be provided and merely states that we will provide appropriate levels of, and timely, funding towards implementing the plan,” said Mr Broughan.
Main measures
- 160,000 people cycling to work each day by 2020 – up from 35,000
now;
- Safe cycling routes to all schools in the State;
- A speed limit of 30km/h near schools;
- New secure bike parks in bus and train stations and other public
spaces;
- Adapting trains and buses to carry bicycles;
- Shared-bicycle schemes in all cities
with populations over 100,000;
- Better training for cyclists and drivers in relation to cyclists;
- Traffic-calming in urban areas;
- Redesign of major road junctions to make them cycle-friendly;
- Retrofitting of roads, quality bus corridors and bus-lanes to accommodate proper cycling lanes;
- Two-way cycling lanes on streets that are one-way for traffic;
- A proposed scheme where workers who use bikes instead of cars will be entitled to receive travel/mileage expenses.
The report below about cycling has elements of madness about it.
Right now Irish Rail is trying hard to remove all bicycles from its trains.
I have been cycling in Ireland for 54 years. I wonder how long the author/authors of this policy document have been on two wheels.
May I invite Mr Dempsey to come on a 10 km cycle trip anywhere in Ireland with me and I'll explain the real rules of the road to him.
Cyclists must look much safer and greener when viewed from behind the windows of a plush State car.
HARRY McGEE, Political Staff
A NEW Government policy on cycling proposes to make Ireland one of the most cycle-friendly countries in the world by 2020.
The National Cycle Policy Framework was launched yesterday by the Minister for Transport Noel Dempsey who said he wanted to increase the number of people who cycle each day from 35,000 to 160,000 in a little over a decade – an increase of over 400 per cent.
The new policy contains 109 separate actions to make the transformation. Included are ambitious plans to retrofit all urban roads with cycle lanes and promises to introduce widespread traffic calming and bike-friendly road designs.
It also provides for the integration of public transport and cycling, allowing bikes to be carried on buses and trains; the provision of shared bicycles in major towns, like the French Vélib scheme; safe bike-parking facilities; and the retrofit of major road junctions which can currently pose dangers for cyclists.
Mr Dempsey acknowledged there had been a marked decrease in the numbers cycling to school and work in the past 20 years but said that this new policy would fully address it. He said he had sought the advice of the best cycle planners in Europe when drawing up the policy.
“I am determined that we will have a world-class cycling infrastructure in place in this country by 2020 so that biking becomes a safe and enjoyable option for commuters and school-kids alike,” said Mr Dempsey.
He accepted that the total plan has yet to be costed, though he said a total of €14 million would be provided during 2009 for various schemes, some of which are engineering and others promotional.
However, there is no specific commitments in relation to funding the actions.
“Over the lifetime of the scheme what we intend to do within the road-work programme is to provide specific funds for engineering to make existing roads much safer particularly in . . . urban areas,” he said.
The cycling campaign group, cyclist.ie, gave a broad endorsement to the new policy.
Dr Darren McAdam-O’Connell of the group said that recognition of cycling by policy makers was long overdue. “We strongly welcome a document that contains many of the measures that cyclists have been demanding for a long time, such as stronger measures against urban speeding, on-road cycle training in schools, improved driver training curriculum, dismantling of dangerous multi-lane one-way systems and permitting of bike carriages on trains and buses.”
However, Dr Mike McKillen, also of cyclist.ie, said it would never become a reality without a “fundamental change in attitudes in official circles”.
Fine Gael’s transport spokesman Fergus O’Dowd said that Mr Dempsey launched his cycling wish-list just as the roads programme was coming to an end. He claimed the policy would “gather dust” in the Department of Transport.
Likewise, Labour’s spokesman Tommy Broughan described the policy as being full of vague aspirations, without full commitments to implement them. “The policy is also vague on how and when funding will be provided and merely states that we will provide appropriate levels of, and timely, funding towards implementing the plan,” said Mr Broughan.
Main measures
- 160,000 people cycling to work each day by 2020 – up from 35,000
now;
- Safe cycling routes to all schools in the State;
- A speed limit of 30km/h near schools;
- New secure bike parks in bus and train stations and other public
spaces;
- Adapting trains and buses to carry bicycles;
- Shared-bicycle schemes in all cities
with populations over 100,000;
- Better training for cyclists and drivers in relation to cyclists;
- Traffic-calming in urban areas;
- Redesign of major road junctions to make them cycle-friendly;
- Retrofitting of roads, quality bus corridors and bus-lanes to accommodate proper cycling lanes;
- Two-way cycling lanes on streets that are one-way for traffic;
- A proposed scheme where workers who use bikes instead of cars will be entitled to receive travel/mileage expenses.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The Guardian done it
How the mighty have fallen.
The lead story on page 29 of yesterday's Guardian runs 'America sunk these pirates, but the Age of Might is over'.
There is obviously a campaign afoot to interchange the imperfect tense of certain verbs with the participle form of the perfect tense.
It all seems to point in the direction that the Irish are ahead of the posse. After all many of us say 'I done' and 'I have went'.
Is this the relativism that Pope Benedict opposes?
The lead story on page 29 of yesterday's Guardian runs 'America sunk these pirates, but the Age of Might is over'.
There is obviously a campaign afoot to interchange the imperfect tense of certain verbs with the participle form of the perfect tense.
It all seems to point in the direction that the Irish are ahead of the posse. After all many of us say 'I done' and 'I have went'.
Is this the relativism that Pope Benedict opposes?
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Dublin Bus
On Thursday Dublin Bus ran a large size advertisement in the daily press informing passengers of new timetable schedules. The new services were to come into operation on Easter Sunday.
It is now Easter Tuesday, the new timetable is not in operation and the company is back in the Labour Court with its employees.
Reading the ad it is clear that the PR department is not that well up on spelling/grammar as they mix up the possessive adjective with the abbreviation of 'it is'! Hopefully the company is run more efficiently than its - a word they cannot spell - ad writers.
What does it say for Dublin Bus and its management team that it can tell the public on Thursday of new operating times, then cancel it and without too much notice to the public.
Who pays for such crass inefficiency and poor grammar?
It is now Easter Tuesday, the new timetable is not in operation and the company is back in the Labour Court with its employees.
Reading the ad it is clear that the PR department is not that well up on spelling/grammar as they mix up the possessive adjective with the abbreviation of 'it is'! Hopefully the company is run more efficiently than its - a word they cannot spell - ad writers.
What does it say for Dublin Bus and its management team that it can tell the public on Thursday of new operating times, then cancel it and without too much notice to the public.
Who pays for such crass inefficiency and poor grammar?
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Not all have been 'shocked'
Two distinct items in today's newspaper which deserve comment, one concerning paedophilia and the other homosexuality.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in a homily delivered in the Pro-Cathedral on this Holy Thursday said that the imminent report of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation into clerical sex abuse 'will shock us all'.
He said, "It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is. The report will make each of us and the entire church in Dublin a humbler church."
Not everyone is going to be shocked. There are and were people who recognised the horror for what it was. They were dismissed and told they did not know 'the full story'.
As for the church becoming 'a humbler church' is questionable.
In a report in today's Irish Times Tony Blair calls for 'rethinking on the 'entrenched' attitudes on homosexuality within the Catholic Church. He challenges Pope Benedict XVI's 'entrenched' attitudes on homosexuality and suggests it is time he and other church leaders started 'rethinking' the issue.
Mr Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving Downing Street in 2007.
He told gay magazine Attitude, "I think what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic church, particularly a well-attended one, on any Sunday evening here (in Britain) and did a poll of the congregation, you'd be surprised at how liberal-minded people were."
But Mr Blair, like so many 'high profile' people seems not to understand what has and is going on within the hierarchical Catholic church.
It is generally held that being 'liberal' means one 'accepts' homosexuality. It might be accurate to say that being 'liberal' means a person is open and honest about orientation.
The issue is far more complicated and anything but transparent within the Catholic hierarchy.
Many priests who are homosexual and closet about their orientation are also extremely 'orthodox' and 'right-wing' And that is at the core or heart of the serious problem within the church. Gay closet priests who speak words in public agreeing with the 'official' Vatican stand create a serious and worrying problem for the church. And the church is aware of this but never dares speak about it.
There is a serious problem here about honesty, openness and transparency. And when it comes to being open honest and transparent with homosexuality within priesthood, the church does not seem 'to do it'.
Good Friday is an appropriate day to ask forgiveness for all forms of deception and fear.
Archbishop Diarmuid Martin in a homily delivered in the Pro-Cathedral on this Holy Thursday said that the imminent report of the Dublin Archdiocese Commission of Investigation into clerical sex abuse 'will shock us all'.
He said, "It is likely that thousands of children or young people across Ireland were abused by priests in the period under investigation and the horror of that abuse was not recognised for what it is. The report will make each of us and the entire church in Dublin a humbler church."
Not everyone is going to be shocked. There are and were people who recognised the horror for what it was. They were dismissed and told they did not know 'the full story'.
As for the church becoming 'a humbler church' is questionable.
In a report in today's Irish Times Tony Blair calls for 'rethinking on the 'entrenched' attitudes on homosexuality within the Catholic Church. He challenges Pope Benedict XVI's 'entrenched' attitudes on homosexuality and suggests it is time he and other church leaders started 'rethinking' the issue.
Mr Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving Downing Street in 2007.
He told gay magazine Attitude, "I think what is interesting is that if you went into any Catholic church, particularly a well-attended one, on any Sunday evening here (in Britain) and did a poll of the congregation, you'd be surprised at how liberal-minded people were."
But Mr Blair, like so many 'high profile' people seems not to understand what has and is going on within the hierarchical Catholic church.
It is generally held that being 'liberal' means one 'accepts' homosexuality. It might be accurate to say that being 'liberal' means a person is open and honest about orientation.
The issue is far more complicated and anything but transparent within the Catholic hierarchy.
Many priests who are homosexual and closet about their orientation are also extremely 'orthodox' and 'right-wing' And that is at the core or heart of the serious problem within the church. Gay closet priests who speak words in public agreeing with the 'official' Vatican stand create a serious and worrying problem for the church. And the church is aware of this but never dares speak about it.
There is a serious problem here about honesty, openness and transparency. And when it comes to being open honest and transparent with homosexuality within priesthood, the church does not seem 'to do it'.
Good Friday is an appropriate day to ask forgiveness for all forms of deception and fear.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
A broken promise
On Sunday morning in Prague in front of the statue of the Czech hero Tomas Masaryk, President Barak Obama gave a sensational speech where he outlined US policy on the future of nuclear weapons in the 21st century.
Close to the end of his speech, referring to the Korean test rocket the previous day, he said, "Rules must be binding. Words must mean something."
The Irish Government made a commitment to the developing world and has now broken its promise. Do words mean nothing for the Irish Government?
Close to the end of his speech, referring to the Korean test rocket the previous day, he said, "Rules must be binding. Words must mean something."
The Irish Government made a commitment to the developing world and has now broken its promise. Do words mean nothing for the Irish Government?
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
No resurrection without a cross
This article appears in today's Irish Times.
Why there can be no resurrection without a cross
PÁDRAIC CONWAY
RITE AND REASON: HOLY WEEK is a time for essentials, for getting back to basics. For many, it is a sacred time; a time to gather with fellow believers to contemplate the distinct and defining elements of a shared Christian identity and community.
Even for many of those who have long since discarded any visible trappings of their church affiliation, it is a special time; a time to spend with family and friends, to live what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called “the dearest freshness deep down things”.
Having said this, some readers might wonder why we now turn our thoughts to a theologian, the 25th anniversary of whose death occurred on March 30th last.
To read, however, even a small selection of the writing of Hopkins’s fellow Jesuit Karl Rahner on the Easter mysteries of life, death and resurrection is to be reminded of just how appropriate it is that we should remember him at this time.
Just six weeks before he died, Rahner delivered his last public lecture, entitled Experiences of a Catholic Theologian, at a conference in Freiburg held in honour of his 80th birthday. In the last section of this lecture, What Is To Come, Rahner offered a personal reflection on death and eternal life.
He is critical, in kindly terms, of talk of eternal life which makes it seem more like a continuation of what we are used to in this life. Such talk is “clothed too much with realities with which we are familiar”. It does not do justice to what he calls the “radical incomprehensibility” of it all.
We cannot, he insists, downgrade the direct vision of God in eternal life “to one pleasant activity alongside others”. If we have the courage to accept, in a spirit of faith and hope, “the immense terror that is death”, we can experience it as filled with “God’s all-absorbing and all-giving love”.
It is, as always for Rahner, a case of “both-and”; there is no escaping the terror for any of us. There is no resurrection without a cross.
In an earlier essay called Experiencing Easter , written in the mid-1960s, Rahner speaks of the need for each of us to reflect on our own Way of the Cross: “Today the Way of the Cross means calamity, cancer, divorce, war, being thrown on the scrapheap” – but it is still the same Way of the Cross “which leads by way of tribulation and much pain to final death”.
The Easter experience is more than the sum of its parts. For Rahner, it is an encounter with the person of Jesus, with his love and fidelity as manifest finally and decisively in his total acceptance of the darkness of his death, even to the point of feeling abandoned by God.
Rahner describes Jesus as “an effective prototype for us all”: our life has a final and definitive meaning. It is capable of redemption, and this meaning has actually been realised in the first Easter experience of Jesus.
Rahner acknowledges the difficulty for many in believing explicitly and publicly in the resurrection of Jesus. He believes those who persist along their own Via Dolorosa , living in good conscience “as if” everything had meaning, are expressing their own resurrection faith.
The Way of the Cross has a 15th station, where all such take leave of the march of time and are gathered into God’s love, whether they have made a prior explicit act of faith or not.
Dr Pádraic Conway is a vice-president of UCD and director of the UCD International Centre for Newman Studies
Why there can be no resurrection without a cross
PÁDRAIC CONWAY
RITE AND REASON: HOLY WEEK is a time for essentials, for getting back to basics. For many, it is a sacred time; a time to gather with fellow believers to contemplate the distinct and defining elements of a shared Christian identity and community.
Even for many of those who have long since discarded any visible trappings of their church affiliation, it is a special time; a time to spend with family and friends, to live what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called “the dearest freshness deep down things”.
Having said this, some readers might wonder why we now turn our thoughts to a theologian, the 25th anniversary of whose death occurred on March 30th last.
To read, however, even a small selection of the writing of Hopkins’s fellow Jesuit Karl Rahner on the Easter mysteries of life, death and resurrection is to be reminded of just how appropriate it is that we should remember him at this time.
Just six weeks before he died, Rahner delivered his last public lecture, entitled Experiences of a Catholic Theologian, at a conference in Freiburg held in honour of his 80th birthday. In the last section of this lecture, What Is To Come, Rahner offered a personal reflection on death and eternal life.
He is critical, in kindly terms, of talk of eternal life which makes it seem more like a continuation of what we are used to in this life. Such talk is “clothed too much with realities with which we are familiar”. It does not do justice to what he calls the “radical incomprehensibility” of it all.
We cannot, he insists, downgrade the direct vision of God in eternal life “to one pleasant activity alongside others”. If we have the courage to accept, in a spirit of faith and hope, “the immense terror that is death”, we can experience it as filled with “God’s all-absorbing and all-giving love”.
It is, as always for Rahner, a case of “both-and”; there is no escaping the terror for any of us. There is no resurrection without a cross.
In an earlier essay called Experiencing Easter , written in the mid-1960s, Rahner speaks of the need for each of us to reflect on our own Way of the Cross: “Today the Way of the Cross means calamity, cancer, divorce, war, being thrown on the scrapheap” – but it is still the same Way of the Cross “which leads by way of tribulation and much pain to final death”.
The Easter experience is more than the sum of its parts. For Rahner, it is an encounter with the person of Jesus, with his love and fidelity as manifest finally and decisively in his total acceptance of the darkness of his death, even to the point of feeling abandoned by God.
Rahner describes Jesus as “an effective prototype for us all”: our life has a final and definitive meaning. It is capable of redemption, and this meaning has actually been realised in the first Easter experience of Jesus.
Rahner acknowledges the difficulty for many in believing explicitly and publicly in the resurrection of Jesus. He believes those who persist along their own Via Dolorosa , living in good conscience “as if” everything had meaning, are expressing their own resurrection faith.
The Way of the Cross has a 15th station, where all such take leave of the march of time and are gathered into God’s love, whether they have made a prior explicit act of faith or not.
Dr Pádraic Conway is a vice-president of UCD and director of the UCD International Centre for Newman Studies
Monday, April 6, 2009
Obama in Prague
The icing on the cake!
President Obama gave a sensational speech in Prague on Sunday morning. Yes, words are never actions but the speech has to be recorded as a remarkable piece of oratory.
During his European trip he said, "I am alays jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, why can't we have high-speed rail [in the United States].
Of course it is not possible to compare a presidential speech in Prague with a TV sermon. But the previous evening on ETWN a priest used his sermon to spend time talking all sorts of gibberish.
It was a wonderful piece of nonsense. Instead of preaching on the Gospel he was giving out about modern liturgical practices. Indeed, he was even breaking his own 'rules'.
President Obama gave a sensational speech in Prague on Sunday morning. Yes, words are never actions but the speech has to be recorded as a remarkable piece of oratory.
During his European trip he said, "I am alays jealous about European trains. And I said to myself, why can't we have high-speed rail [in the United States].
Of course it is not possible to compare a presidential speech in Prague with a TV sermon. But the previous evening on ETWN a priest used his sermon to spend time talking all sorts of gibberish.
It was a wonderful piece of nonsense. Instead of preaching on the Gospel he was giving out about modern liturgical practices. Indeed, he was even breaking his own 'rules'.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Views in the media
On my desk is the April issue of Hotpress. Alongside it is the April edition of Alive.
In his editorial Niall Stokes writes about the pope and his recent comments on condoms on his flight to Africa. He says Pope Benedict is wrong about condoms.
The editor of Alive writes that divorce is simply a legal fiction that does not end a marriage. He says that re-marrying is, in fact, adultery.
The media is a broad church.
In his editorial Niall Stokes writes about the pope and his recent comments on condoms on his flight to Africa. He says Pope Benedict is wrong about condoms.
The editor of Alive writes that divorce is simply a legal fiction that does not end a marriage. He says that re-marrying is, in fact, adultery.
The media is a broad church.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Eschatology on April Fool's Day
A Dominican student writes on the Dominican Oxford blog on April 1 that the Dominican habit is an eschatological sign.Is the Dominican habit not more a sign for those wearing it of not having to be worried about the current economic recession and turmoil?
No doubt there is an element of 'cheekiness' in making this point. But really to refer to the habit as an eschatological sign is taking it all a little too far.
I for one, have seen some right 'signs' prancing about in long white robes.
And getting up at 07.43 is regarded a 'great challenge'!
As to the Fr Ted reference - it certainly is a matter of life imitating art.
If the high sounding theology is as daft as this then it sure has to be gobbledegook.
Of course it is an April Fool's joke! Well done.
April Fool's Day
Nice one.
Today's Irish Times has a clever April Fool's gag on its front page.
Could anyone imagine Dr AJF O'Reilly or Dr Smurfit wearing the device?
Was RTE 1 caught by the trick? It did cover the item in its 'What it says in the newspapers' this morning?
Today's Irish Times has a clever April Fool's gag on its front page.
Could anyone imagine Dr AJF O'Reilly or Dr Smurfit wearing the device?
Was RTE 1 caught by the trick? It did cover the item in its 'What it says in the newspapers' this morning?
The curtains are gone
The curtains have disappeared.
When Irish Rail introduced its new InterCity fleet on the Dublin Cork service, the Spanish built trains came with curtains on every window.
It seemed at the time to this blogger a terrible waste of money. Irish Rail PR personnel adamantly disagreed and pointed out the importance and value in the curtains.
The curtains are now gone and not a word from Irish Rail.
How much did it cost to fit out eight trains with curtains on every window?
When Irish Rail introduced its new InterCity fleet on the Dublin Cork service, the Spanish built trains came with curtains on every window.
It seemed at the time to this blogger a terrible waste of money. Irish Rail PR personnel adamantly disagreed and pointed out the importance and value in the curtains.
The curtains are now gone and not a word from Irish Rail.
How much did it cost to fit out eight trains with curtains on every window?
An expensive bed time
We are living in unprecedented times. The economic situation is so bleak and unpredictable that what was said yesterday becomes irrelevant today. It’s as bad as that.`
There is little security in the world of labour and while there might be some divisions and differences between public and private sector, there are very few PAYE workers who are not greatly worried about the weeks, months and years ahead.
Employees have lost the security of their pensions and naturally scared about what lies ahead for them.
It was good to hear both the US Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, and Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke talk in the last few days about a ‘glimmer of hope’ on the horizon.
And we in Ireland seem to be at the bottom of the economic barrel. I find it difficult to listen to any sort of economic experts these days. It’s not that long ago since the present taoiseach reprimanded people for talking us into a recession. It’s far from a recession we are in right now.
Of course it is easy to scapegoat people. It’s easy to have hindsight. And maybe we are at present focusing all our anger on the bankers. Maybe the bankers were simply expressing the wishes and moods of the people. Those we pay to lead seem to have led us on a merry dance and certainly up the garden path. We’re the mutts.
Did you ever notice that if people ask cheeky or awkward questions they are considered ‘troublesome’, ‘people with chips on their shoulders’ or simply ‘angry’?
Anyone whoever stands up to authority gets a rough ride and authority always tries to win the day. Organisations and corporate entities are always stronger and have far more economic clout than the individual.
People who get to the top of corporations, organisations and institutions feel it incumbent on them to support and defend their outfit. In ways it is a comfortable massaging of egos. The organisation/institution makes its top people feel important and in turn the managers want to please their organisation.
I spent one night in hospital in January. It was a semi-private room. That meant two beds in the room. The food was mediocre and certainly not the healthiest. My time in the room was from approximately 15.00 on a Monday until 10.00 on Tuesday.
How much did the overnight accommodation cost? It cost €1,249.33. At least that is what it said on the charge and description details I received from mu health insurer. I happen to be fortunate enough to have a private health insurance, so I did not have to pay the bill.
There were other medical fees on top of that, which seemed high to my unskilled medical knowledge. But the price for the bed seemed so daft that I telephoned my health insurer. I was told it was part of the overall ‘package’. It was then a matter of telephoning the hospital.
The hospital tells me that €1,249.33 is a ‘package’ price agreed between them and the insurance company. They are unable to give me a breakdown of the sum paid and tell me to contact my medical insurance company. They do tell me that that price includes theatre time, equipment, etc.
I did find out that a one night’s accommodation in semi-private room in the hospital costs €305. And that includes breakfast! I still want to know what cost €944.33. That sum does not include doctors’ fees as they are separately detailed.
When I tried to ascertain from my medical insurer a breakdown of the ‘package’ I was told that was an ‘agreed package’ with the hospital.
That does not seem terribly transparent.
Another instance of how the individual person has little or no chance when it comes to the organisation or institution.
The way of the world.
There is little security in the world of labour and while there might be some divisions and differences between public and private sector, there are very few PAYE workers who are not greatly worried about the weeks, months and years ahead.
Employees have lost the security of their pensions and naturally scared about what lies ahead for them.
It was good to hear both the US Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, and Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke talk in the last few days about a ‘glimmer of hope’ on the horizon.
And we in Ireland seem to be at the bottom of the economic barrel. I find it difficult to listen to any sort of economic experts these days. It’s not that long ago since the present taoiseach reprimanded people for talking us into a recession. It’s far from a recession we are in right now.
Of course it is easy to scapegoat people. It’s easy to have hindsight. And maybe we are at present focusing all our anger on the bankers. Maybe the bankers were simply expressing the wishes and moods of the people. Those we pay to lead seem to have led us on a merry dance and certainly up the garden path. We’re the mutts.
Did you ever notice that if people ask cheeky or awkward questions they are considered ‘troublesome’, ‘people with chips on their shoulders’ or simply ‘angry’?
Anyone whoever stands up to authority gets a rough ride and authority always tries to win the day. Organisations and corporate entities are always stronger and have far more economic clout than the individual.
People who get to the top of corporations, organisations and institutions feel it incumbent on them to support and defend their outfit. In ways it is a comfortable massaging of egos. The organisation/institution makes its top people feel important and in turn the managers want to please their organisation.
I spent one night in hospital in January. It was a semi-private room. That meant two beds in the room. The food was mediocre and certainly not the healthiest. My time in the room was from approximately 15.00 on a Monday until 10.00 on Tuesday.
How much did the overnight accommodation cost? It cost €1,249.33. At least that is what it said on the charge and description details I received from mu health insurer. I happen to be fortunate enough to have a private health insurance, so I did not have to pay the bill.
There were other medical fees on top of that, which seemed high to my unskilled medical knowledge. But the price for the bed seemed so daft that I telephoned my health insurer. I was told it was part of the overall ‘package’. It was then a matter of telephoning the hospital.
The hospital tells me that €1,249.33 is a ‘package’ price agreed between them and the insurance company. They are unable to give me a breakdown of the sum paid and tell me to contact my medical insurance company. They do tell me that that price includes theatre time, equipment, etc.
I did find out that a one night’s accommodation in semi-private room in the hospital costs €305. And that includes breakfast! I still want to know what cost €944.33. That sum does not include doctors’ fees as they are separately detailed.
When I tried to ascertain from my medical insurer a breakdown of the ‘package’ I was told that was an ‘agreed package’ with the hospital.
That does not seem terribly transparent.
Another instance of how the individual person has little or no chance when it comes to the organisation or institution.
The way of the world.
Death of the past participle
Anne Marie Houriihane wrote in Monday's Irish Times,
‘He has showed us up – quivering, self-conscious girlies that we are. Casby got us all, with one satiric touch.’
Noel Whelan in Saturday's Irish Times wrote, ‘ … it should not have went out…..’
RTE’s Paul Reynolds is constantly using the wrong form of the past participle.
Is the past participle dying a death?
‘He has showed us up – quivering, self-conscious girlies that we are. Casby got us all, with one satiric touch.’
Noel Whelan in Saturday's Irish Times wrote, ‘ … it should not have went out…..’
RTE’s Paul Reynolds is constantly using the wrong form of the past participle.
Is the past participle dying a death?
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Whether or not upper case letter
When does a noun have an upper case first letter? Is there a rule on the issue? There was a time when school children learned that all proper nouns began with an upper case letter and that was the end of the story. On this issue German is clear - all nouns begin with an upper case letter.
In English it's clear, 'Dublin', 'Mary', 'Ryanair' begin with an upper case letter. And of course the first letter at the beginning of a sentence and the pronoun 'I' are always upper case.
So why do people spell 'century' or 'anniversary' with an upper case? If people spell 'plumber' with a lower case then why spell 'doctor' with an upper case?
It seems in English some sort of ideological influence plays a role in what we do. If 'teacher' is lower case, surely then 'priest', 'pope' and 'cardinal' should also be lower case. Should 'Gospel' be upper case? It would seem so as it is a proper noun. So what should 'church' be? There is a school that says 'church' referring to the physical building is lower case but the institution is upper case. But again that has an ideological bias.
What does it say about the mind-set that spells 'church', 'pope' and 'council' with upper case and 'gospel' with lower case? Or those who spell 'laity' lower case and 'priesthood' upper case?
When is 'state' upper-cased and lower-cased?
See the large Green Party ad around Dublin these days with 'thousands' incorrectly spelt?
Language can be great fun.
In English it's clear, 'Dublin', 'Mary', 'Ryanair' begin with an upper case letter. And of course the first letter at the beginning of a sentence and the pronoun 'I' are always upper case.
So why do people spell 'century' or 'anniversary' with an upper case? If people spell 'plumber' with a lower case then why spell 'doctor' with an upper case?
It seems in English some sort of ideological influence plays a role in what we do. If 'teacher' is lower case, surely then 'priest', 'pope' and 'cardinal' should also be lower case. Should 'Gospel' be upper case? It would seem so as it is a proper noun. So what should 'church' be? There is a school that says 'church' referring to the physical building is lower case but the institution is upper case. But again that has an ideological bias.
What does it say about the mind-set that spells 'church', 'pope' and 'council' with upper case and 'gospel' with lower case? Or those who spell 'laity' lower case and 'priesthood' upper case?
When is 'state' upper-cased and lower-cased?
See the large Green Party ad around Dublin these days with 'thousands' incorrectly spelt?
Language can be great fun.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The Krupp dynasty
German television ZDF are currently showing a programme on the Krupp family.
The final part of the trilogy is on Wednesday evening.
It is a truly fascinating story of a family empire that almost lasted 400 years.
Alfred Krupp was tried at Nuremberg and sentenced to prison. His only son, Arndt, had no interest in the business and died at a young age.
Today the company is part of the Krupp Thyssen group and the family is no longer involved in the company.
The family home in Essen, Villa Hugel, is now under public ownership
Barriers at Heuston Station
The letter below appeared in Thursday, March 19 issue of The Guardian newspaper.
Irish Rail is at present in the process of installng these barriers at Heuston Station.
German Rail is clearly Europe's leading railway company and these barriers are at no mainline station on the German network. The now defunct DR, the railway comapny of the former GDR, had similar barriers at Berlin. The railway company was clapped out as were its barriers!
Why is it that Irish Rail so often takes as its template so many practices and systems from the UK railway infrastructure?
How will the barriers handle passes, yearly, monthly free, etc?
And the government's weapon of choice is the 'automatic' ticket barrier, backed by a mythology about the extent and nature of uncollected revenue, and a misplaced belief in their effectiveness at addressing it. As a consultant with a long experience of this subject I know the '5% of revenue' reported has no basis in reliable statistical fact, while this equipment, designed for the underground, is not adequately supported by the ticketing technology. Outside the London commuter area it struggles to function properly; try the gates in Leeds or Manchester and any ticket will do. As for the alleged public support, ask the people of Sheffield or York, where there are vigorous campaigns opposing their installation, or anyone stressed by unfamiliarity with the system or encumbered by luggage.
Richard Malins,
London.
Irish Rail is at present in the process of installng these barriers at Heuston Station.
German Rail is clearly Europe's leading railway company and these barriers are at no mainline station on the German network. The now defunct DR, the railway comapny of the former GDR, had similar barriers at Berlin. The railway company was clapped out as were its barriers!
Why is it that Irish Rail so often takes as its template so many practices and systems from the UK railway infrastructure?
How will the barriers handle passes, yearly, monthly free, etc?
Ticket barrier myth
So a subsidised crackdown on fare evasion is to be the sole salvation offered to train companies stretched to meet franchise commitments (Report, 16 March).And the government's weapon of choice is the 'automatic' ticket barrier, backed by a mythology about the extent and nature of uncollected revenue, and a misplaced belief in their effectiveness at addressing it. As a consultant with a long experience of this subject I know the '5% of revenue' reported has no basis in reliable statistical fact, while this equipment, designed for the underground, is not adequately supported by the ticketing technology. Outside the London commuter area it struggles to function properly; try the gates in Leeds or Manchester and any ticket will do. As for the alleged public support, ask the people of Sheffield or York, where there are vigorous campaigns opposing their installation, or anyone stressed by unfamiliarity with the system or encumbered by luggage.
Richard Malins,
London.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
'How did we become what we became'
Christa Wolf was 80 on March 18.
She grew up in the 1930s in Landsberg a.d. Warthe, today the Polish town of Gorzów Wielkoplski.
Wolf was an 'accepted' author in the GDR and on the collapse of the East German state argured for the retention of a state with a separate identity to the Federal Republic.
In the early 1980s she was a symbol, a flag-bearer for an alternative 'life-style' to that offered by the SED.
She shows similarities with 'Dreyman' in the film 'The Lives of Others'.
The text below is downloaded from today's ARD web page.
Schreiben, Politik und Familie"
"Schreiben, Politik und Familie" seien die "Ordnungslinien" ihres Lebens, heißt es im Vorwort zu einer "Biographie in Texten und Bildern" (2004). In ihrem Leben spiegelten sich "die Auseinandersetzungen und historischen Kalamitäten der geteilten Welt nach der Jahrhundertkatastrophe des Faschismus". Christa Wolf wird darin auch wegen ihrer "moralischen Autorität als bedeutendste deutschsprachige Prosa-Autorin der Gegenwart" gelobt. Doch mit Moral und Autorität sammelte sie ihre eigenen Erfahrungen, was die Sache etwas komplizierter macht.
"Ich habe erfahren, dass es nicht immer möglich ist, zugleich 'moralisch' und menschlich zu handeln; als ich das merkte, war mir klar, dass ich in einer Klemme saß, aus der ich nicht unangefochten herauskommen würde. Und dass ich doch nichts anderes tun konnte." So schreibt Christa Wolf nach der Biermann-Ausbürgerung 1976 an Günter Grass. Sie kann nichts anderes tun, als zu versuchen, sich schreibend aus der Klemme zu befreien. Persönliche Erschütterungen oder aufkommendes Misstrauen gegen die eigene Erinnerung waren und bleiben für sie der Anlass für Erzählungen und Romane wie "Christa T." (1968), "Kindheitsmuster" (1976), "Kassandra" (1983) oder "Leibhaftig" (2002).
Die Anfänge
Ihre Diplomarbeit - "Probleme des Realismus im Werk Hans Falladas." -, die sie auf einer geliehenen Schreibmaschine für Hans Mayer in Leipzig tippt, scheint wie ein Vorgriff auf kommende Auseinandersetzungen um die "richtige Weltsicht". Doch zunächst scheint alles bestens zu verlaufen. Christa Wolf arbeitet beim Schriftstellerverband, dann als Cheflektorin beim Verlag "Neues Leben" in Berlin, schließlich beim Mitteldeutschen Verlag in Halle. 1961 findet ihre "Moskauer Novelle" große Beachtung.
"Der geteilte Himmel"
Mit ihrer Geschichte einer Liebe, die im Sommer 1961 an der Teilung Deutschlands scheitert, hat sie 1963 ihren Durchbruch: Für "Der geteilte Himmel" bekommt sie den Heinrich-Mann-Preis der Akademie der Künste – ein Jahr später schon wird der Roman verfilmt. Auch im Westen wird man jetzt auf die junge Frau aufmerksam, die sich trotz Mauerbaus zu den Idealen des Sozialismus bekennt und den "Bitterfelder Weg" befürwortet, der Autoren in die Betriebe schickt und Kumpel zur Feder greifen lässt, um Kunst und Leben, Hand- und Kopfarbeit zu versöhnen.
Das 11. Plenum 1965: "Unsere DDR ist ein sauberer Staat"
Scheinbar stärker als der Mauerbau wird das 11. SED-Plenum 1965, das eine restriktive Kulturpolitik einleitet, zum einschneidenden Erlebnis. Als Kandidatin des ZK der SED nimmt Christa Wolf daran teil. "Unsere DDR ist ein sauberer Staat", postuliert der 1. Sekretär des ZK der SED, Erich Honecker, in seiner Rede. Ein Exempel soll statuiert werden gegen "modernistische, "anarchistische" oder "nihilistische" Strömungen in Kunst, Literatur oder Film; gegen die "Verabsolutierung der Widersprüche" und die Anwendung des Begriffs "Entfremdung" auf die DDR-Verhältnisse wird zu Felde gezogen. Infolge werden zwölf Filme - darunter "Spur der Steine" - also ein ganzer DEFA-Jahrgang, verboten. Theaterstücke, Radio- und Fernsehsendungen werden abgesetzt, Bücher kommen nicht in Druck. Als Übeltäter werden namentlich Autoren wie Heiner Müller, Stefan Heym, Peter Hacks, Volker Braun oder Werner Bräunig genannt.
Als einzige widerspricht in diesem geschlossenen Funktionärszirkel Christa Wolf. Sie verteidigt Werner Bräunig. Der Autor, der 1959 noch den Aufruf zur 1. Bitterfelder Konferenz verfasste, nun aber mit seinem Wismut-Roman "Rummelplatz" wegen angeblicher Beleidigung der Werktätigen und der sowjetischen Partner auf so harsche Ablehnung stößt, dass er die Arbeit an dem Roman später abbricht. Christa Wolf mahnt auf dem Plenum, dass das "freie Verhältnis zum Stoff" nicht wieder verloren gehen dürfe, gleichzeitig bekennt sie sich zur DDR, nur dort wolle sie leben und schreiben. Doch ihre Rede, die überzeugen und wachrütteln soll, wird als Provokation aufgefasst. Gleichwohl wird sie durch ihr Auftreten zur Identifikationsfigur der Intellektuellen.
16. 11. 1976 - Zäsur in der DDR-Geschichte
"Nachdenken über Christa T." - Ein Fall für die Zensur
Mit "Nachdenken über Christa T." (1968) beginnt ihr Schreiben gegen die Zensur. Christa T., ehemalige Mitstudentin und zugleich alter ego der Erzählerin, hält die Spannung zwischen gesellschaftlichen Maßgaben und den eigenen Ansprüchen auf individuelle Entfaltung nicht mehr aus, sie meldet sich aus dem Leben ab, denn gebraucht werden nur "schräubchengleich funktionierende Tatsachenmenschen", sie wird krank und stirbt an Leukämie. In einem Selbst-Interview schreibt die Autorin zur Arbeit an Christa T.: "Später merkte ich, dass das Objekt meiner Erzählung gar nicht so eindeutig sie, Christa T., war oder blieb. Ich stand auf einmal mir selbst gegenüber." Das Buch wird ein Fall für die Zensur, denn es macht einer Gesellschaft den Prozess, die sich "die Entfaltung des Menschen zum Menschen" auf die Fahnen geschrieben hatte. Nach drei Gutachten wird im Mai 1968 entgegen der vermeintlichen "Gefahr ideologischer Desorientierung" doch noch eine Druckgenehmigung über 15.000 Exemplare erteilt, im Dezember nimmt man unter dem Eindruck des "Prager Frühlings" davon Abstand, schließlich erscheint im Frühjahr 1969 eine Auflage von nur 800 Exemplaren.
"Doppelleben"
1969, ein Jahr nach dem Einmarsch der Warschauer-Pakt-Truppen in die Tschechoslowakei schreibt Christa Wolf scheinbar resigniert an ihre Kollegin Brigitte Reimann: "Zu leben, und möglichst nicht gar zu sehr gegen den eigenen Strich zu leben, das heisst zu arbeiten und ein paar Leute daran teilhaben zu lassen, ist die einzige Art von Tapferkeit, die ich heute sehe." Und ihrem Tagebuch vertraut sie ihr "Doppelleben" an, "dass ich auf die äußeren Ereignisse, auf Worte, Nachrichten, mechanisch reagierte, dass aber in mir drin ein ganz anderes, tief verzweifeltes Leben abrollte".
"Wie sind wir so geworden, wie wir sind?"
"Wie sind wir so geworden, wie wir sind?" Um diese Frage zu klären, reist Christa Wolf 1972 in ihren polnischen Heimatort Landsberg a.d. Warthe, heute Gorzów Wielkoplski, in dem sie Anfang der 30er Jahre aufwuchs. Trocken, distanziert zeichnet sie ihren Erinnerungen dann im Roman "Kindheitsmuster" (1976) auf. Nelly heißt das Kind, das sie selbst gewesen ist. Es erinnert sich an die roten Geranien vor allen Fenstern, die blaugelb gestreiften Vorhänge des Kinderzimmers und den Kolonialwarenladen des Vaters mit Kathreiner-Malzkaffee und Knorrs Suppenwürsten. Es erinnert sich auch an die Schule, wo Rassentheorie zum Lehrplan gehörte wie Mathematik und Sport ... So stellt sie die im antifaschistischen Staat selten behandelte Frage: Wie funktionierte der ganz alltägliche Nazismus, der von "Mitläufern" getragen wurde? Christa Wolf findet sie in der eigenen Familie und untersucht die "Muster" der Anpassung.
Romantik und antike Mythen als "Fluchträume"
Tatsächlich zieht sich die Autorin nie ins bloß Private zurück. 1976 - im Jahr der Ausbürgerung Wolf Biermanns gehört Christa Wolf mit zu den Initiatoren des Protestes. Sie bleibt im Lande und verlässt es zugleich, indem sie ihre Stoffe in die fernere und fernste Vergangenheit verlagert. 1979 erscheint "Kein Ort. Nirgends". Die Handlung spielt 1804. Auf einer Festgesellschaft der Erfolgreichen und Etablierten treffen sich zwei Menschen, die nicht dazugehören: Der junge 24-jährige Schriftsteller Heinrich von Kleist, der nicht gegen die restaurativen Stimmung und das enge Preußen, in dessen Staatsdienst er sich befindet, ankommt, und Karoline von Günderode, für die eine freie schriftstellerische Arbeit als Frau aus gutem Hauses sowieso undenkbar ist. Dazu bemerkte die Autorin, dass sie sich durch die Biermann-Ausbürgerung dazu veranlasst sah, den "Zusammenhang von gesellschaftlicher Verzweiflung und Scheitern in der Literatur" zu untersuchen. "Ich mußte über eine Zeit hinwegkommen, in der es absolut keine Wirkungsmöglichkeit mehr zu geben schien." 1983 folgt "Kassandra", sie geht nun bis in die Antike zurück. Den Mythos von der trojanischen Seherin greift sie auf, weil sie darin eine der ersten Frauengestalten sieht, die durchlebt, was dann Jahrhunderte lang Schicksal der Frauen sein wird: in einer patriarchalen und kriegerischen Welt zum Objekt gemacht zu werden. Kassandra lässt sie sagen: "Ich will Zeugin bleiben, auch wenn es keinen einzigen Menschen mehr gibt, der mir mein Zeugnis abverlangt."
Wolf als "gesamtdeutsche Autorin"
Die Kritik bescheinigt ihr, mit "Kassandra" zur gesamtdeutschen Autorin geworden zu sein. Die Erzählung wurde auch ihr größter internationaler Erfolg, was sicher mit dem Anfang der 80er Jahre besonders brennenden Thema "Frauen" und "Frieden" zu tun hatte. 1987 thematisiert sie in "Störfall" die Reaktorkatastrophe von Tschernobyl, die in den DDR-Medien weitgehend verharmlost wird.
Unter Beschuss als "domestizierte Opponentin"
Mit der Wende beginnt der Stern der Autorin zu sinken. Nachdem sie im Juni 1989 aus der SED ausgetreten ist, mischt sie sich mit Reden, offenen Briefen und Lesungen immer wieder in die aktuellen politischen Geschehnisse ein. Am 28. November 1989 gehörte sie mit Stefan Heym, Volker Braun und Friedrich Schorlemmer zu den Erstunterzeichnern des "Aufrufs für unser Land", der sich für die Weiterexistenz einer eigenständigen DDR und gegen die Vereinnahmung durch die Bundesrepublik einsetzte. Doch wird sie daraufhin in den Medien als "domestizierte Opponentin" des SED-Staates angegriffen, als Verbündete des Systems. Die Schriftstellerin zieht sich von der Tagespolitik zurück. 1990 erscheint der schmalen Erzählband "Was bleibt", Reflexionen der Erzählerin, die sich von der Stasi observiert sieht. Das Bändchen zieht einen Literaturstreit nach sich. Reißerisch wird sie als "Heuchlerin" und "Staatsdichterin" abgekanzelt. Sie steht stellvertretend für die in der DDR gebliebenen Künstler und Wissenschaftler.
"GI Margarete" und OV "Doppelzüngler"
Als sie sich 1993 als Stipendiatin des Getty Centers im kalifornischen Santa Monica aufhält, wird ihre IM-Tätigkeit von März 1959 bis Oktober 1962 publik. Sie sieht sich einer regelrechten "Dampfwalze von Vorwürfen" gegenüber, die jegliche vernünftige Auseinandersetzung in der Öffentlichkeit verhindert – stand sie selber doch seit 1969 bis zum 11. Oktober 1989 unter Observation der Stasi, die "GI Margarete" 1960 bescheinigt, "sehr gern über ideologische Fragen unserer Literatur" zu diskutieren, aber nicht die "erforderliche Liebe zu unseren Aufgaben" aufzubringen. Nach dem Eklat auf dem 11. Plenum und "Nachdenken über Christa T" wird sie der "anderen Seite" zugerechnet, 1969 schließlich der Operative Vorgang "Doppelzüngler" gegen sie und ihren Mann Gerhard Wolf angelegt, der zum Ende der DDR 41 Bände umfasst.
"Leibhaftiger" Abschied von der DDR?
Das Schreiben bleibt ihr Mittel zur Befragung der eigenen Positionen und Biografie. 1999 erscheint eine Sammlung ihrer in den letzten Jahren vereinzelt veröffentlichten Reden, Aufsätze und Erzählungen unter dem Titel "Hierzulande, Andernorts". Im zehnten Jahr nach dem Mauerfall und dem Scheitern "ihres" Staates erklärt Christa Wolf die Trauerarbeit für beendet, geblieben sei "etwas wie ein Phantomschmerz". 2002 meldet sich die Autorin mit der Erzählung "Leibhaftig" zurück. Unter Verwendung autobiografischen Materials erzählt Christa Wolf den Alptraum eines Krankenhaus-Aufenthalts in der Endzeit der DDR. Eine namenlos bleibende Patientin gerät an den Rand des Todes, ihr Körper wird zum Seismographen eines allgemeinen Zusammenbruchs. 34 Jahre nach "Christa T." knüpft Wolf damit wieder an ein altes Sujet an: Der kranke Körper wird zum Austragungsort für ungelöste Konflikte. In "Christa T." führen sie die Protagonistin in den Tod, in "Leibhaftig" therapiert die Kranke sich selbst und befreit sich von den letzten Illusionen. Die Kritik urteilt, mit dieser Erzählung nehme die Autorin endgültig Abschied von der DDR. Und noch ein Rückblick: 40 Jahre lang protokollierte Christa Wolf einen Tag im Jahr: den 27. September. Ein sehr persönliches und dennoch politisches Zeitzeugnis entstand, das 2003 erschien ("Ein Tag im Jahr").
Günter Grass überreicht Christa Wolf 2002 den Deutschen Bücherpreis fürs Lebenswerk.
"Ich lebe gerne."
Der biographische Band, der zu ihrem 75. Geburtstag vor fünf Jahren erschien, dokumentiert in Texten und Bildern das private Glück mit Freunden und Familie in Berlin und im geliebten Landhaus im Mecklenburgischen, aber auch die offiziellen Auftritte der Autorin, die immer nachdenklicher dreinzuschauen scheint und dennoch weiter auf die "Zähigkeit von Hoffnung" setzt, weshalb sie am Ende kein verbittertes Fazit zieht: "Ich lebe gerne."
She grew up in the 1930s in Landsberg a.d. Warthe, today the Polish town of Gorzów Wielkoplski.
Wolf was an 'accepted' author in the GDR and on the collapse of the East German state argured for the retention of a state with a separate identity to the Federal Republic.
In the early 1980s she was a symbol, a flag-bearer for an alternative 'life-style' to that offered by the SED.
She shows similarities with 'Dreyman' in the film 'The Lives of Others'.
The text below is downloaded from today's ARD web page.
Schreiben, Politik und Familie"
"Schreiben, Politik und Familie" seien die "Ordnungslinien" ihres Lebens, heißt es im Vorwort zu einer "Biographie in Texten und Bildern" (2004). In ihrem Leben spiegelten sich "die Auseinandersetzungen und historischen Kalamitäten der geteilten Welt nach der Jahrhundertkatastrophe des Faschismus". Christa Wolf wird darin auch wegen ihrer "moralischen Autorität als bedeutendste deutschsprachige Prosa-Autorin der Gegenwart" gelobt. Doch mit Moral und Autorität sammelte sie ihre eigenen Erfahrungen, was die Sache etwas komplizierter macht.
"Ich habe erfahren, dass es nicht immer möglich ist, zugleich 'moralisch' und menschlich zu handeln; als ich das merkte, war mir klar, dass ich in einer Klemme saß, aus der ich nicht unangefochten herauskommen würde. Und dass ich doch nichts anderes tun konnte." So schreibt Christa Wolf nach der Biermann-Ausbürgerung 1976 an Günter Grass. Sie kann nichts anderes tun, als zu versuchen, sich schreibend aus der Klemme zu befreien. Persönliche Erschütterungen oder aufkommendes Misstrauen gegen die eigene Erinnerung waren und bleiben für sie der Anlass für Erzählungen und Romane wie "Christa T." (1968), "Kindheitsmuster" (1976), "Kassandra" (1983) oder "Leibhaftig" (2002).
Die Anfänge
Ihre Diplomarbeit - "Probleme des Realismus im Werk Hans Falladas." -, die sie auf einer geliehenen Schreibmaschine für Hans Mayer in Leipzig tippt, scheint wie ein Vorgriff auf kommende Auseinandersetzungen um die "richtige Weltsicht". Doch zunächst scheint alles bestens zu verlaufen. Christa Wolf arbeitet beim Schriftstellerverband, dann als Cheflektorin beim Verlag "Neues Leben" in Berlin, schließlich beim Mitteldeutschen Verlag in Halle. 1961 findet ihre "Moskauer Novelle" große Beachtung.
"Der geteilte Himmel"
Mit ihrer Geschichte einer Liebe, die im Sommer 1961 an der Teilung Deutschlands scheitert, hat sie 1963 ihren Durchbruch: Für "Der geteilte Himmel" bekommt sie den Heinrich-Mann-Preis der Akademie der Künste – ein Jahr später schon wird der Roman verfilmt. Auch im Westen wird man jetzt auf die junge Frau aufmerksam, die sich trotz Mauerbaus zu den Idealen des Sozialismus bekennt und den "Bitterfelder Weg" befürwortet, der Autoren in die Betriebe schickt und Kumpel zur Feder greifen lässt, um Kunst und Leben, Hand- und Kopfarbeit zu versöhnen.
Das 11. Plenum 1965: "Unsere DDR ist ein sauberer Staat"
Scheinbar stärker als der Mauerbau wird das 11. SED-Plenum 1965, das eine restriktive Kulturpolitik einleitet, zum einschneidenden Erlebnis. Als Kandidatin des ZK der SED nimmt Christa Wolf daran teil. "Unsere DDR ist ein sauberer Staat", postuliert der 1. Sekretär des ZK der SED, Erich Honecker, in seiner Rede. Ein Exempel soll statuiert werden gegen "modernistische, "anarchistische" oder "nihilistische" Strömungen in Kunst, Literatur oder Film; gegen die "Verabsolutierung der Widersprüche" und die Anwendung des Begriffs "Entfremdung" auf die DDR-Verhältnisse wird zu Felde gezogen. Infolge werden zwölf Filme - darunter "Spur der Steine" - also ein ganzer DEFA-Jahrgang, verboten. Theaterstücke, Radio- und Fernsehsendungen werden abgesetzt, Bücher kommen nicht in Druck. Als Übeltäter werden namentlich Autoren wie Heiner Müller, Stefan Heym, Peter Hacks, Volker Braun oder Werner Bräunig genannt.
Als einzige widerspricht in diesem geschlossenen Funktionärszirkel Christa Wolf. Sie verteidigt Werner Bräunig. Der Autor, der 1959 noch den Aufruf zur 1. Bitterfelder Konferenz verfasste, nun aber mit seinem Wismut-Roman "Rummelplatz" wegen angeblicher Beleidigung der Werktätigen und der sowjetischen Partner auf so harsche Ablehnung stößt, dass er die Arbeit an dem Roman später abbricht. Christa Wolf mahnt auf dem Plenum, dass das "freie Verhältnis zum Stoff" nicht wieder verloren gehen dürfe, gleichzeitig bekennt sie sich zur DDR, nur dort wolle sie leben und schreiben. Doch ihre Rede, die überzeugen und wachrütteln soll, wird als Provokation aufgefasst. Gleichwohl wird sie durch ihr Auftreten zur Identifikationsfigur der Intellektuellen.
16. 11. 1976 - Zäsur in der DDR-Geschichte
"Nachdenken über Christa T." - Ein Fall für die Zensur
Mit "Nachdenken über Christa T." (1968) beginnt ihr Schreiben gegen die Zensur. Christa T., ehemalige Mitstudentin und zugleich alter ego der Erzählerin, hält die Spannung zwischen gesellschaftlichen Maßgaben und den eigenen Ansprüchen auf individuelle Entfaltung nicht mehr aus, sie meldet sich aus dem Leben ab, denn gebraucht werden nur "schräubchengleich funktionierende Tatsachenmenschen", sie wird krank und stirbt an Leukämie. In einem Selbst-Interview schreibt die Autorin zur Arbeit an Christa T.: "Später merkte ich, dass das Objekt meiner Erzählung gar nicht so eindeutig sie, Christa T., war oder blieb. Ich stand auf einmal mir selbst gegenüber." Das Buch wird ein Fall für die Zensur, denn es macht einer Gesellschaft den Prozess, die sich "die Entfaltung des Menschen zum Menschen" auf die Fahnen geschrieben hatte. Nach drei Gutachten wird im Mai 1968 entgegen der vermeintlichen "Gefahr ideologischer Desorientierung" doch noch eine Druckgenehmigung über 15.000 Exemplare erteilt, im Dezember nimmt man unter dem Eindruck des "Prager Frühlings" davon Abstand, schließlich erscheint im Frühjahr 1969 eine Auflage von nur 800 Exemplaren.
"Doppelleben"
1969, ein Jahr nach dem Einmarsch der Warschauer-Pakt-Truppen in die Tschechoslowakei schreibt Christa Wolf scheinbar resigniert an ihre Kollegin Brigitte Reimann: "Zu leben, und möglichst nicht gar zu sehr gegen den eigenen Strich zu leben, das heisst zu arbeiten und ein paar Leute daran teilhaben zu lassen, ist die einzige Art von Tapferkeit, die ich heute sehe." Und ihrem Tagebuch vertraut sie ihr "Doppelleben" an, "dass ich auf die äußeren Ereignisse, auf Worte, Nachrichten, mechanisch reagierte, dass aber in mir drin ein ganz anderes, tief verzweifeltes Leben abrollte".
"Wie sind wir so geworden, wie wir sind?"
"Wie sind wir so geworden, wie wir sind?" Um diese Frage zu klären, reist Christa Wolf 1972 in ihren polnischen Heimatort Landsberg a.d. Warthe, heute Gorzów Wielkoplski, in dem sie Anfang der 30er Jahre aufwuchs. Trocken, distanziert zeichnet sie ihren Erinnerungen dann im Roman "Kindheitsmuster" (1976) auf. Nelly heißt das Kind, das sie selbst gewesen ist. Es erinnert sich an die roten Geranien vor allen Fenstern, die blaugelb gestreiften Vorhänge des Kinderzimmers und den Kolonialwarenladen des Vaters mit Kathreiner-Malzkaffee und Knorrs Suppenwürsten. Es erinnert sich auch an die Schule, wo Rassentheorie zum Lehrplan gehörte wie Mathematik und Sport ... So stellt sie die im antifaschistischen Staat selten behandelte Frage: Wie funktionierte der ganz alltägliche Nazismus, der von "Mitläufern" getragen wurde? Christa Wolf findet sie in der eigenen Familie und untersucht die "Muster" der Anpassung.
Romantik und antike Mythen als "Fluchträume"
Tatsächlich zieht sich die Autorin nie ins bloß Private zurück. 1976 - im Jahr der Ausbürgerung Wolf Biermanns gehört Christa Wolf mit zu den Initiatoren des Protestes. Sie bleibt im Lande und verlässt es zugleich, indem sie ihre Stoffe in die fernere und fernste Vergangenheit verlagert. 1979 erscheint "Kein Ort. Nirgends". Die Handlung spielt 1804. Auf einer Festgesellschaft der Erfolgreichen und Etablierten treffen sich zwei Menschen, die nicht dazugehören: Der junge 24-jährige Schriftsteller Heinrich von Kleist, der nicht gegen die restaurativen Stimmung und das enge Preußen, in dessen Staatsdienst er sich befindet, ankommt, und Karoline von Günderode, für die eine freie schriftstellerische Arbeit als Frau aus gutem Hauses sowieso undenkbar ist. Dazu bemerkte die Autorin, dass sie sich durch die Biermann-Ausbürgerung dazu veranlasst sah, den "Zusammenhang von gesellschaftlicher Verzweiflung und Scheitern in der Literatur" zu untersuchen. "Ich mußte über eine Zeit hinwegkommen, in der es absolut keine Wirkungsmöglichkeit mehr zu geben schien." 1983 folgt "Kassandra", sie geht nun bis in die Antike zurück. Den Mythos von der trojanischen Seherin greift sie auf, weil sie darin eine der ersten Frauengestalten sieht, die durchlebt, was dann Jahrhunderte lang Schicksal der Frauen sein wird: in einer patriarchalen und kriegerischen Welt zum Objekt gemacht zu werden. Kassandra lässt sie sagen: "Ich will Zeugin bleiben, auch wenn es keinen einzigen Menschen mehr gibt, der mir mein Zeugnis abverlangt."
Wolf als "gesamtdeutsche Autorin"
Die Kritik bescheinigt ihr, mit "Kassandra" zur gesamtdeutschen Autorin geworden zu sein. Die Erzählung wurde auch ihr größter internationaler Erfolg, was sicher mit dem Anfang der 80er Jahre besonders brennenden Thema "Frauen" und "Frieden" zu tun hatte. 1987 thematisiert sie in "Störfall" die Reaktorkatastrophe von Tschernobyl, die in den DDR-Medien weitgehend verharmlost wird.
Unter Beschuss als "domestizierte Opponentin"
Mit der Wende beginnt der Stern der Autorin zu sinken. Nachdem sie im Juni 1989 aus der SED ausgetreten ist, mischt sie sich mit Reden, offenen Briefen und Lesungen immer wieder in die aktuellen politischen Geschehnisse ein. Am 28. November 1989 gehörte sie mit Stefan Heym, Volker Braun und Friedrich Schorlemmer zu den Erstunterzeichnern des "Aufrufs für unser Land", der sich für die Weiterexistenz einer eigenständigen DDR und gegen die Vereinnahmung durch die Bundesrepublik einsetzte. Doch wird sie daraufhin in den Medien als "domestizierte Opponentin" des SED-Staates angegriffen, als Verbündete des Systems. Die Schriftstellerin zieht sich von der Tagespolitik zurück. 1990 erscheint der schmalen Erzählband "Was bleibt", Reflexionen der Erzählerin, die sich von der Stasi observiert sieht. Das Bändchen zieht einen Literaturstreit nach sich. Reißerisch wird sie als "Heuchlerin" und "Staatsdichterin" abgekanzelt. Sie steht stellvertretend für die in der DDR gebliebenen Künstler und Wissenschaftler.
"GI Margarete" und OV "Doppelzüngler"
Als sie sich 1993 als Stipendiatin des Getty Centers im kalifornischen Santa Monica aufhält, wird ihre IM-Tätigkeit von März 1959 bis Oktober 1962 publik. Sie sieht sich einer regelrechten "Dampfwalze von Vorwürfen" gegenüber, die jegliche vernünftige Auseinandersetzung in der Öffentlichkeit verhindert – stand sie selber doch seit 1969 bis zum 11. Oktober 1989 unter Observation der Stasi, die "GI Margarete" 1960 bescheinigt, "sehr gern über ideologische Fragen unserer Literatur" zu diskutieren, aber nicht die "erforderliche Liebe zu unseren Aufgaben" aufzubringen. Nach dem Eklat auf dem 11. Plenum und "Nachdenken über Christa T" wird sie der "anderen Seite" zugerechnet, 1969 schließlich der Operative Vorgang "Doppelzüngler" gegen sie und ihren Mann Gerhard Wolf angelegt, der zum Ende der DDR 41 Bände umfasst.
"Leibhaftiger" Abschied von der DDR?
Das Schreiben bleibt ihr Mittel zur Befragung der eigenen Positionen und Biografie. 1999 erscheint eine Sammlung ihrer in den letzten Jahren vereinzelt veröffentlichten Reden, Aufsätze und Erzählungen unter dem Titel "Hierzulande, Andernorts". Im zehnten Jahr nach dem Mauerfall und dem Scheitern "ihres" Staates erklärt Christa Wolf die Trauerarbeit für beendet, geblieben sei "etwas wie ein Phantomschmerz". 2002 meldet sich die Autorin mit der Erzählung "Leibhaftig" zurück. Unter Verwendung autobiografischen Materials erzählt Christa Wolf den Alptraum eines Krankenhaus-Aufenthalts in der Endzeit der DDR. Eine namenlos bleibende Patientin gerät an den Rand des Todes, ihr Körper wird zum Seismographen eines allgemeinen Zusammenbruchs. 34 Jahre nach "Christa T." knüpft Wolf damit wieder an ein altes Sujet an: Der kranke Körper wird zum Austragungsort für ungelöste Konflikte. In "Christa T." führen sie die Protagonistin in den Tod, in "Leibhaftig" therapiert die Kranke sich selbst und befreit sich von den letzten Illusionen. Die Kritik urteilt, mit dieser Erzählung nehme die Autorin endgültig Abschied von der DDR. Und noch ein Rückblick: 40 Jahre lang protokollierte Christa Wolf einen Tag im Jahr: den 27. September. Ein sehr persönliches und dennoch politisches Zeitzeugnis entstand, das 2003 erschien ("Ein Tag im Jahr").
Günter Grass überreicht Christa Wolf 2002 den Deutschen Bücherpreis fürs Lebenswerk.
"Ich lebe gerne."
Der biographische Band, der zu ihrem 75. Geburtstag vor fünf Jahren erschien, dokumentiert in Texten und Bildern das private Glück mit Freunden und Familie in Berlin und im geliebten Landhaus im Mecklenburgischen, aber auch die offiziellen Auftritte der Autorin, die immer nachdenklicher dreinzuschauen scheint und dennoch weiter auf die "Zähigkeit von Hoffnung" setzt, weshalb sie am Ende kein verbittertes Fazit zieht: "Ich lebe gerne."
The Gospel does have a good story to tell
The Christian message has amazing and great stories to tell; news that really can inspire and transform.
This week Pope Benedict talks about condoms in Africa and a South American cardinal is in the news re abortion and excommunication.
How and why is it that the church is constantly so sure of itself when it comes to pronouncing on matters dealing with sexuality. And that same church loudly admits that it was not aware of the gravity of the harm that has been done to the victims of clerical child sex abuse.
The behaviour of the Vatican in the most recent legal case in the US is not in anyway edifying.
What is it about the church and sex?
Whether Pope Benedict likes it or not, the world's media will now concentrate on his 'condom' remark. And that's a pity when the man is telling the good news in poverty stricken Africa.
This week Pope Benedict talks about condoms in Africa and a South American cardinal is in the news re abortion and excommunication.
How and why is it that the church is constantly so sure of itself when it comes to pronouncing on matters dealing with sexuality. And that same church loudly admits that it was not aware of the gravity of the harm that has been done to the victims of clerical child sex abuse.
The behaviour of the Vatican in the most recent legal case in the US is not in anyway edifying.
What is it about the church and sex?
Whether Pope Benedict likes it or not, the world's media will now concentrate on his 'condom' remark. And that's a pity when the man is telling the good news in poverty stricken Africa.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
All in a day's work
Anyone ever wonder the daily flying hours of a short haul passenger jet?
It seems the Ryanair Boeing based in Kerry has the following daily workload.
Kerry Dublin, Dublin Kerry, Kerry Hahn, Hahn Kerry, Kerry Dublin, Dublin Kerry, Kerry Stansted, Stansted Kerry, Kerry Dublin, Dublin Kerry.
Maybe the plane is swapped at Stansted, Hahn or Dublin, but it seems unlikely.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Reaction of post primary students
On Monday at the beginning of a transition year and fifth year religion class I asked the students before blessing themselves to pray for the two soldiers who had been killed in Antrim the previous day.
The pupils are between 16 and 18, which means they have no lived experience about the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland.
Twenty years ago in a similar situation there quite probably might be someone in the class, for whatever reason, who would attempt to make some comment about 'striking a blow' for Irish freedom.
Last Monday there was nothing but unanimous sadness for the two soldiers who had been killed. It was also discernible that the young people in the two classes were not in any way interested in political events in Northern Ireland. It is not an issue for them, no more than what goes on in the council rooms of Kerry County Council. Again, 20 years ago it would have been different.
The three murders this week are a stark reminder to us of the terrible past but we are also forced to realise what has been accomplished and what it actually means to live in peace.
The pupils are between 16 and 18, which means they have no lived experience about the 'troubles' in Northern Ireland.
Twenty years ago in a similar situation there quite probably might be someone in the class, for whatever reason, who would attempt to make some comment about 'striking a blow' for Irish freedom.
Last Monday there was nothing but unanimous sadness for the two soldiers who had been killed. It was also discernible that the young people in the two classes were not in any way interested in political events in Northern Ireland. It is not an issue for them, no more than what goes on in the council rooms of Kerry County Council. Again, 20 years ago it would have been different.
The three murders this week are a stark reminder to us of the terrible past but we are also forced to realise what has been accomplished and what it actually means to live in peace.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Archbishop Dermot Clifford steps over into Cloyne to help Bishop John Magee
Late last week it was announced that Bishop John Magee would not be confirming children in his diocese. The reason given by church authorities was that he was a busy man dealing with all the paper work involved in the current child sex abuse cases in his diocese.
Rumour on the ground is that the parents of some children due for Confirmation made it known to church authorities that they did not want their children confirmed by Bishop John Magee.
Then at the weekend it was announced that Archbishop Dermot Clifford had been appointed apostolic administrator of the diocese of Cloyne.
Why has this action been taken now? Just some few weeks ago Bishop Magee received the support of three archbishops and many bishops in Ireland. Do these same men now support and approve the most recent action?
Bewildering actions in a bewildering time by bewildering and maybe even bewildered people.
Is it possible to discern the workings of the Spirit in all this obfuscation?
Truth, transparency, openness, faith?
Power, control, fear, clericalism?
Can church figures not understand the importance of admitting guilt and asking for forgiveness?
There has to be something ironic about all this spinning and obfuscation.
Theory and practice.
Rumour on the ground is that the parents of some children due for Confirmation made it known to church authorities that they did not want their children confirmed by Bishop John Magee.
Then at the weekend it was announced that Archbishop Dermot Clifford had been appointed apostolic administrator of the diocese of Cloyne.
Why has this action been taken now? Just some few weeks ago Bishop Magee received the support of three archbishops and many bishops in Ireland. Do these same men now support and approve the most recent action?
Bewildering actions in a bewildering time by bewildering and maybe even bewildered people.
Is it possible to discern the workings of the Spirit in all this obfuscation?
Truth, transparency, openness, faith?
Power, control, fear, clericalism?
Can church figures not understand the importance of admitting guilt and asking for forgiveness?
There has to be something ironic about all this spinning and obfuscation.
Theory and practice.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Dominican websites
It may well be a problem of this blogger but it seems impossible to log on to the home page of the Irish Dominicans at present.
The home page of the Dominican Order has the following as an opening paragraph.
"Dominicans preach in churches and on the street, in universities and in mass media to the faithful as well as dissidents; we break open Scripture to different audiences and pursue works of justice and peace; we give retreats to nuns, visit the sick, console, listen, confess, forgive, and ultimately desire to go as far as need be to preach the Word of God to those who do not yet know it or need to hear it."
If you are a 'dissident' can you not be a member of the 'faithful'? It seems an odd idea. Obviously the word is being used in the narrower sense as opposed to the now more commonly accepted meaning of the word - someone who dissents from the opinion of the majority.
It seems difficult to navigate around the website of the Dominican Order.
The home page of the Dominican Order has the following as an opening paragraph.
"Dominicans preach in churches and on the street, in universities and in mass media to the faithful as well as dissidents; we break open Scripture to different audiences and pursue works of justice and peace; we give retreats to nuns, visit the sick, console, listen, confess, forgive, and ultimately desire to go as far as need be to preach the Word of God to those who do not yet know it or need to hear it."
If you are a 'dissident' can you not be a member of the 'faithful'? It seems an odd idea. Obviously the word is being used in the narrower sense as opposed to the now more commonly accepted meaning of the word - someone who dissents from the opinion of the majority.
It seems difficult to navigate around the website of the Dominican Order.
We're Irish they're German
Back in 1972 I visited Germany for the first time. I was on a two-month language course in Cologne. It was a different world from Ireland. Everything about it was different. Fresh rolls in the morning, sleek trains running on time, motorways that crisscrossed the country.
And then we got rolls, sleek trains and motorways.
But back then it was clear to see that there was 'something' behind the German economy. They made things. They made their own rolls, built their own trains and supplied all the steel for the bridges over and under their motorways, with correct median barriers to boot.
And their business people seldom gave the impression of being slick 'merchant princes'. They never seemed to be arrogant or full of their own importance.
The Germans have a tradition of treating their tradespeople with respect, their teachers too and their locomotive drivers.
The vast majority of their schools are state run and funded.
They have universal medical insurance. Universal medical care too.
You could say it is a secular state that tries to care for all its citizens. It avoids playing games with people and tries to tell the truth.
Take a look at what they have done in Dresden, Chemnitz and Weimar. And in Berlin too. All in 20 years.
Thirty-seven years later there still seem to be great differences between Germany and Ireland.
Will Irish managers, business people, politicians, who have brought us to where we are today pay the price for their lack of vision, arrogance and greed?
Oh and by the way, the Germans make their own sugar, glass and paper. They are doing it right now - producing and manufacturing. They were never stupid enough to believe that it made sense to close down sugar factories and glass factories and paper factories. And their managers never had the arrogance/stupidity/greed to tell them the cock and bull stories we were fed.
The article below appears in today's Irish Times.
BERLIN LETTER: GERMAN PUBLIC broadcaster ZDF treats its viewers on Sunday evenings to a bracing dose of time-warp television called Our Farm in Ireland .
It’s the story of Martin Winter, a German doctor and widower who moves to the fictional town of Ballymara with his three daughters. There he eventually falls in love with local girl Erin O’Toole, described by producers as an “attractive shepherdess”.
Not much happens and the dialogue is witless, but over six million Germans tune in for the sheer escapist value and the beautiful Irish scenery.
In short, Our Farm is the latest incarnation of the idealised Ireland Germans have cherished for decades.
In this world view, Ireland is a wild, romantic place closer to “the nature”, as Germans call it, than, say, the Ruhr or Frankfurt.
The Irish are friendly bordering on manic, loveable but wholly unreliable people who would sell one of their many children for a drink.
A newspaper headline over a recent interview with writer Anne Enright summed it up nicely: “The Irish drink, the Irish fight, the Irish are funny”. In the last decade and a half, though, this consensus view of Ireland has been sorely tested by the march of modernity in the Grüne Insel or Green Isle.
First Ireland’s economy took off, then emigrants returned, immigrants arrived and something resembling modern infrastructure began to stretch its tentacles across the country.
Older Germans with fixed notions of the country would return from holidays and complain to the first Irish person they encountered that the place had finally succumbed to the curse of motorways.
It was doubly galling for many of these Germans – truly, madly, deeply in love with “the nature” in Ireland – to hear that it was probably their tax money that had built the motorways.
Modern Dublin was a mystery – in particular the IFSC, a mysterious place of smoked glass and mirrors that seemed to be beating Frankfurt at its own game, generating vast sums of money after luring over big banks with low corporate tax rates.
As German economic growth hovered near zero, the Irish economy appeared to roar ahead. The beige-wearing Germans with their 12- year-old Mercedes had been overtaken by the sharp-suited Irish in their new BMWs.
Irish economists decided that the German economic model of slow, steady growth had had its day.
They had no qualms in telling Germany that Ireland had seen the future and it was all leverage and Louis Vuitton.
The peak of this Irish confidence-cum-cockiness came with the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.
No one here really cares for complicated explanations when a simple one will do: the “No” vote was Ireland thumbing its nose at the rest of the EU after pocketing its billions.
The final drop of goodwill towards the Irish evaporated last September when Berlin, through gritted teeth, signed loans and guarantees to prop up the Dublin-based Depfa bank, a subsidiary of Munich property investor Hypo Real Estate. Today that bill has reached €102 billion and counting.
“Technically speaking we didn’t have to do that,” one leading finance official fumed to this paper last month. “We could have left that in Ireland’s lap.”
Irish financial experts would disagree, saying the highly illiquid bank was Germany’s problem, even if it operated from Ireland.
Regardless of who was responsible for the mess, it stuck in the craw of the Berlin finance ministry to have to bail out a bank that had deprived Germany of billions in tax revenue by moving to Ireland.
And what was this Ireland, financial officials in Berlin asked, except an economic basket case of fictitious money and very real debts, and regulation so light to the touch that it amounted to a “regulation-free zone”.
After previous banking dramas in 2007, the Depfa episode confirmed many German suspicions that modernity and Ireland don’t mix.
German newspaper reports of the Irish meltdown confirm that view. The Frankfurter Allgemeine headlined its article on Ireland “For They Know Not What They Do”.
After a disorienting decade and a half, many Germans have decided that Ireland is once again a chaotic island run by chancers, a people who are a little too fond of the drink and not the best with money.
That much seemed to be confirmed last week when news reached Berlin that Dublin was dusting off its begging bowl, hoping that Angela would consider a dig-out for her Irish pals.
“If we take responsibility for ourselves, we may obtain some European assistance, especially in connection with our banking sector,” said Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to a journalist from the German weekly Die Zeit.
“Clearly our banking sector is under threat. That is something our European friends recognise.”
It was like a real-life version of the parable of the prodigal son: after squandering the inheritance he had been given, the son returns home, barefoot and penniless.
There is a cold-eyed realisation here that if something has to be done for Ireland, then something will have indeed to be done.
Talking to Chancellor Merkel’s senior advisers, however, it is clear that no one in Berlin is rushing to prepare the fatted lamb for the Irish prodigal.
A leading government official explained last week, wearing a wintry smile, that Berlin “assumes the Taoiseach will be successful with his cost-cutting programme”. It sounded like the traditional vote of confidence in a football manager.
Watching the unravelling of the Irish economy from Germany, it’s hard not to wonder if perhaps there was more than a grain of truth in the stereotypical view of the Irish as a chaotic, irresponsible bunch.
On ZDF’s Our Farm in Ireland , life is golden and the Germans still love us.
“In the real world, however, we have exhausted Germany’s good will and reverted to type as a nation of loveable rogues who are no longer so loveable.
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
And then we got rolls, sleek trains and motorways.
But back then it was clear to see that there was 'something' behind the German economy. They made things. They made their own rolls, built their own trains and supplied all the steel for the bridges over and under their motorways, with correct median barriers to boot.
And their business people seldom gave the impression of being slick 'merchant princes'. They never seemed to be arrogant or full of their own importance.
The Germans have a tradition of treating their tradespeople with respect, their teachers too and their locomotive drivers.
The vast majority of their schools are state run and funded.
They have universal medical insurance. Universal medical care too.
You could say it is a secular state that tries to care for all its citizens. It avoids playing games with people and tries to tell the truth.
Take a look at what they have done in Dresden, Chemnitz and Weimar. And in Berlin too. All in 20 years.
Thirty-seven years later there still seem to be great differences between Germany and Ireland.
Will Irish managers, business people, politicians, who have brought us to where we are today pay the price for their lack of vision, arrogance and greed?
Oh and by the way, the Germans make their own sugar, glass and paper. They are doing it right now - producing and manufacturing. They were never stupid enough to believe that it made sense to close down sugar factories and glass factories and paper factories. And their managers never had the arrogance/stupidity/greed to tell them the cock and bull stories we were fed.
The article below appears in today's Irish Times.
BERLIN LETTER: GERMAN PUBLIC broadcaster ZDF treats its viewers on Sunday evenings to a bracing dose of time-warp television called Our Farm in Ireland .
It’s the story of Martin Winter, a German doctor and widower who moves to the fictional town of Ballymara with his three daughters. There he eventually falls in love with local girl Erin O’Toole, described by producers as an “attractive shepherdess”.
Not much happens and the dialogue is witless, but over six million Germans tune in for the sheer escapist value and the beautiful Irish scenery.
In short, Our Farm is the latest incarnation of the idealised Ireland Germans have cherished for decades.
In this world view, Ireland is a wild, romantic place closer to “the nature”, as Germans call it, than, say, the Ruhr or Frankfurt.
The Irish are friendly bordering on manic, loveable but wholly unreliable people who would sell one of their many children for a drink.
A newspaper headline over a recent interview with writer Anne Enright summed it up nicely: “The Irish drink, the Irish fight, the Irish are funny”. In the last decade and a half, though, this consensus view of Ireland has been sorely tested by the march of modernity in the Grüne Insel or Green Isle.
First Ireland’s economy took off, then emigrants returned, immigrants arrived and something resembling modern infrastructure began to stretch its tentacles across the country.
Older Germans with fixed notions of the country would return from holidays and complain to the first Irish person they encountered that the place had finally succumbed to the curse of motorways.
It was doubly galling for many of these Germans – truly, madly, deeply in love with “the nature” in Ireland – to hear that it was probably their tax money that had built the motorways.
Modern Dublin was a mystery – in particular the IFSC, a mysterious place of smoked glass and mirrors that seemed to be beating Frankfurt at its own game, generating vast sums of money after luring over big banks with low corporate tax rates.
As German economic growth hovered near zero, the Irish economy appeared to roar ahead. The beige-wearing Germans with their 12- year-old Mercedes had been overtaken by the sharp-suited Irish in their new BMWs.
Irish economists decided that the German economic model of slow, steady growth had had its day.
They had no qualms in telling Germany that Ireland had seen the future and it was all leverage and Louis Vuitton.
The peak of this Irish confidence-cum-cockiness came with the rejection of the Lisbon Treaty.
No one here really cares for complicated explanations when a simple one will do: the “No” vote was Ireland thumbing its nose at the rest of the EU after pocketing its billions.
The final drop of goodwill towards the Irish evaporated last September when Berlin, through gritted teeth, signed loans and guarantees to prop up the Dublin-based Depfa bank, a subsidiary of Munich property investor Hypo Real Estate. Today that bill has reached €102 billion and counting.
“Technically speaking we didn’t have to do that,” one leading finance official fumed to this paper last month. “We could have left that in Ireland’s lap.”
Irish financial experts would disagree, saying the highly illiquid bank was Germany’s problem, even if it operated from Ireland.
Regardless of who was responsible for the mess, it stuck in the craw of the Berlin finance ministry to have to bail out a bank that had deprived Germany of billions in tax revenue by moving to Ireland.
And what was this Ireland, financial officials in Berlin asked, except an economic basket case of fictitious money and very real debts, and regulation so light to the touch that it amounted to a “regulation-free zone”.
After previous banking dramas in 2007, the Depfa episode confirmed many German suspicions that modernity and Ireland don’t mix.
German newspaper reports of the Irish meltdown confirm that view. The Frankfurter Allgemeine headlined its article on Ireland “For They Know Not What They Do”.
After a disorienting decade and a half, many Germans have decided that Ireland is once again a chaotic island run by chancers, a people who are a little too fond of the drink and not the best with money.
That much seemed to be confirmed last week when news reached Berlin that Dublin was dusting off its begging bowl, hoping that Angela would consider a dig-out for her Irish pals.
“If we take responsibility for ourselves, we may obtain some European assistance, especially in connection with our banking sector,” said Minister for Finance Brian Lenihan to a journalist from the German weekly Die Zeit.
“Clearly our banking sector is under threat. That is something our European friends recognise.”
It was like a real-life version of the parable of the prodigal son: after squandering the inheritance he had been given, the son returns home, barefoot and penniless.
There is a cold-eyed realisation here that if something has to be done for Ireland, then something will have indeed to be done.
Talking to Chancellor Merkel’s senior advisers, however, it is clear that no one in Berlin is rushing to prepare the fatted lamb for the Irish prodigal.
A leading government official explained last week, wearing a wintry smile, that Berlin “assumes the Taoiseach will be successful with his cost-cutting programme”. It sounded like the traditional vote of confidence in a football manager.
Watching the unravelling of the Irish economy from Germany, it’s hard not to wonder if perhaps there was more than a grain of truth in the stereotypical view of the Irish as a chaotic, irresponsible bunch.
On ZDF’s Our Farm in Ireland , life is golden and the Germans still love us.
“In the real world, however, we have exhausted Germany’s good will and reverted to type as a nation of loveable rogues who are no longer so loveable.
This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A collapsing economy
Every news bulletin every day is ladened with horrible economic news. Where is it all going to end? It now seems so dreadful that what was said yesterday becomes irrelevant today.
It is a sobering and worrying experience to observe the faces on those standing outside the ever-lengthening dole queues.
It certainly seems that matters are worse in Ireland than in many other EU countries, especially those in the western part of the Union.
The economists and captains of industry and the politicians who took their advice all seem to be at sea.
If communism had not collapsed would this have happened?
Does it make sense that in Ireland we no longer make sugar, paper or glass? The three facilities lie idle in Mallow, Clonskeagh and Ringsend.
Does it make sense that an island nation has such an ill-equipped fishing fleet?
The taoiseach missed an opportunity at the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis on Saturday to make an apology for the mistakes his party has made in their years in government. It is not too long ago since Mr Cowen reprimanded people for 'talking down' the economy. Maybe it was during the election campaign that he made his comment.
In his Ard Fheis speech Mr Cowen referred to Ireland 'as a brand'. Is it not that use of PR language that has helped us lose the run of ourselves?
Where would we be if we did not have the euro?
What next?
It is a sobering and worrying experience to observe the faces on those standing outside the ever-lengthening dole queues.
It certainly seems that matters are worse in Ireland than in many other EU countries, especially those in the western part of the Union.
The economists and captains of industry and the politicians who took their advice all seem to be at sea.
If communism had not collapsed would this have happened?
Does it make sense that in Ireland we no longer make sugar, paper or glass? The three facilities lie idle in Mallow, Clonskeagh and Ringsend.
Does it make sense that an island nation has such an ill-equipped fishing fleet?
The taoiseach missed an opportunity at the Fianna Fáil Árd Fheis on Saturday to make an apology for the mistakes his party has made in their years in government. It is not too long ago since Mr Cowen reprimanded people for 'talking down' the economy. Maybe it was during the election campaign that he made his comment.
In his Ard Fheis speech Mr Cowen referred to Ireland 'as a brand'. Is it not that use of PR language that has helped us lose the run of ourselves?
Where would we be if we did not have the euro?
What next?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Mass cards
The article below appears in today's Irish Times.
A serious discussion on all aspects of Mass cards is long overdue within the church. The pity is that these issues seem to be discussed in a reactive sense rather than the hierarchical church giving the lead on the subject.
CAROL COULTER, Legal Affairs Editor
A SECTION of the Charities Bill may be unconstitutional because it makes it a criminal offence to sell a Mass card not authorised by a Catholic bishop, according to a former attorney general. The Bill went to President Mary McAleese for signing earlier this week.
The section in question was inserted into the Bill by the Seanad on February 11th last to deal with a problem of the sale of “bogus Mass cards”, which purport to be signed by a priest, but where the signature is not genuine and no Mass is actually said.
The Government amendment was put forward following the earlier proposal of a similar amendment by Senator Ronan Mullen.
Former attorney general John Rogers SC has provided an opinion on it to the solicitor for a man who sells genuine Mass cards, signed by a priest in the Philippines by arrangement with a bishop there. The money raised goes to build churches there. He fears shops may feel pressure on them not to sell if the Bill becomes law.
During the Seanad debate, Senator David Norris read from Mr Rogers’s opinion, which stated that section 96 was “an unjustified restriction on the Article 44 guarantee of the free profession and practise of religion.” The section provides that a person who sells a Mass card “other than pursuant to arrangement with a recognised person” is guilty of an offence. A “recognised person” who can authorise the sale of such Mass cards is defined as a bishop of the church, or the head of an order recognised by it.
The section defines a Mass card as a card that indicates that “the holy sacrifice of the Mass” will be offered for a person’s intentions. In any proceedings it will be presumed, unless proved to the contrary, that an offence has been committed.
In his opinion Mr Rogers says this goes further than is reasonably required to deal with the problem of the sale of a Mass card not properly signed by a priest, where no Mass is said, or where the purchaser thinks it is for a charitable purpose and it is not.
“The narrow categories of persons is arbitrary and unfair and represents a serious interference with the religious practice of some priests and others who are members of non-Catholic churches and religious communities in this State,” he states.
He also points out that it presumes an offence has been committed until the contrary is proven. “The criminalisation of the sale of Mass cards is another aspect of the disproportionate nature of this piece of legislation,” he says.
A serious discussion on all aspects of Mass cards is long overdue within the church. The pity is that these issues seem to be discussed in a reactive sense rather than the hierarchical church giving the lead on the subject.
CAROL COULTER, Legal Affairs Editor
A SECTION of the Charities Bill may be unconstitutional because it makes it a criminal offence to sell a Mass card not authorised by a Catholic bishop, according to a former attorney general. The Bill went to President Mary McAleese for signing earlier this week.
The section in question was inserted into the Bill by the Seanad on February 11th last to deal with a problem of the sale of “bogus Mass cards”, which purport to be signed by a priest, but where the signature is not genuine and no Mass is actually said.
The Government amendment was put forward following the earlier proposal of a similar amendment by Senator Ronan Mullen.
Former attorney general John Rogers SC has provided an opinion on it to the solicitor for a man who sells genuine Mass cards, signed by a priest in the Philippines by arrangement with a bishop there. The money raised goes to build churches there. He fears shops may feel pressure on them not to sell if the Bill becomes law.
During the Seanad debate, Senator David Norris read from Mr Rogers’s opinion, which stated that section 96 was “an unjustified restriction on the Article 44 guarantee of the free profession and practise of religion.” The section provides that a person who sells a Mass card “other than pursuant to arrangement with a recognised person” is guilty of an offence. A “recognised person” who can authorise the sale of such Mass cards is defined as a bishop of the church, or the head of an order recognised by it.
The section defines a Mass card as a card that indicates that “the holy sacrifice of the Mass” will be offered for a person’s intentions. In any proceedings it will be presumed, unless proved to the contrary, that an offence has been committed.
In his opinion Mr Rogers says this goes further than is reasonably required to deal with the problem of the sale of a Mass card not properly signed by a priest, where no Mass is said, or where the purchaser thinks it is for a charitable purpose and it is not.
“The narrow categories of persons is arbitrary and unfair and represents a serious interference with the religious practice of some priests and others who are members of non-Catholic churches and religious communities in this State,” he states.
He also points out that it presumes an offence has been committed until the contrary is proven. “The criminalisation of the sale of Mass cards is another aspect of the disproportionate nature of this piece of legislation,” he says.
An apology
Apologies re the banner in Tallaght. Delighted to know that it means the opposite to what was said on this blog. Again, apologies and good luck.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Banner attack
There is a large banner poster in Tallaght village which proclaims 'Daddys are for life and not for Saturdays'.
At the bottom of the banner there is the web address www.usfi.ie.
The insult and the arrogance that such a poster represents surely can have nothing at all to do with the Christian message.
What must it be like for a man walking or driving past that sign who has been separated from his children? No one ever knows why someone is not with their children.
Men separated from their children need to be inspired and given hope, not attacked.
At the bottom of the banner there is the web address www.usfi.ie.
The insult and the arrogance that such a poster represents surely can have nothing at all to do with the Christian message.
What must it be like for a man walking or driving past that sign who has been separated from his children? No one ever knows why someone is not with their children.
Men separated from their children need to be inspired and given hope, not attacked.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Worrying words from bishop
The quote below is taken from an internet site. If the quote is accurate it is another insight into the direction the church is currently taking.
The alleged quote fits into a pattern and raises the most serious of issues for the church. And especially in the present climate.
Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of The Society of Saint Pius X, has been making news since his excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in January. On January 21, 2009, in a nearly six minute interview Williamson told a television news program in Sweden that "I believe that history is strongly against, is hugely against, six million Jews having been gassed in gas chamber as a deliberate policy" during the Holocaust. In 2001, the bishop wrote "That girls should not be in universities flows from the nature of universities and from the nature of girls: true universities are for ideas, ideas are not for true girls, so true universities are not for true girls." The Vatican is now repudiating the Holocaust denials. And Bishop Williamson has claimed he will reconsider the issue of Nazi gas chambers by reading the book of a former Holocaust doubter.
The alleged quote fits into a pattern and raises the most serious of issues for the church. And especially in the present climate.
Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of The Society of Saint Pius X, has been making news since his excommunication was lifted by Pope Benedict XVI in January. On January 21, 2009, in a nearly six minute interview Williamson told a television news program in Sweden that "I believe that history is strongly against, is hugely against, six million Jews having been gassed in gas chamber as a deliberate policy" during the Holocaust. In 2001, the bishop wrote "That girls should not be in universities flows from the nature of universities and from the nature of girls: true universities are for ideas, ideas are not for true girls, so true universities are not for true girls." The Vatican is now repudiating the Holocaust denials. And Bishop Williamson has claimed he will reconsider the issue of Nazi gas chambers by reading the book of a former Holocaust doubter.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Cork fishing port
During a class in Religious Studies in West Kerry on Monday there was a discussion on our present economic situation.
A student who comes from a fishing background commented that the busiest fishing port in Ireland is Cork airport because of its large business in fish importation.
Who are the politicians, economists and 'wise men' who have allowed this to happen? The absurdity of allowing this nonsense in an island nation is bewildering.
Seemingly we are the biggest 'exporters' of bananas in Europe.
The economy is in such a serious situation it seems that what was said yesterday becomes irrelevant today.
How close are we to civil unrest and the arrival of a demagogue? Hopefully our political class are taking wise and good decisions so as to keep at bay any such disaster.
A student who comes from a fishing background commented that the busiest fishing port in Ireland is Cork airport because of its large business in fish importation.
Who are the politicians, economists and 'wise men' who have allowed this to happen? The absurdity of allowing this nonsense in an island nation is bewildering.
Seemingly we are the biggest 'exporters' of bananas in Europe.
The economy is in such a serious situation it seems that what was said yesterday becomes irrelevant today.
How close are we to civil unrest and the arrival of a demagogue? Hopefully our political class are taking wise and good decisions so as to keep at bay any such disaster.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Irish Rail and its crazy timetable
Both Dublin Bus and Irish Bus are in the process of laying off close to 600 workers. Irish Rail will most likely follow suit.
Last month Irish Rail introduced a new timetable on its Dublin Tralee service. The new timetable means that passengers travelling on the 20.00 ex Heuton Cork train arrive in Mallow at 22.19 and are obliged to wait 31 minutes for their connection to Tralee.
What surer way to drive people away from the railway and anger and annoy those who wait the long 31 minutes on cold wet and windy nights in Mallow station!
A decision such as this is obviously made at managerial level. You don't need to know anything about the railway to know that this timetable alteration is absolute nonsense. And it must make any ordinary person lose trust in a management class that could do something like this.
There are many stories circulating as to why passengers have to wait. They are of course anecdotal but each story is sillier than the next.
It is the same manager class who decide who will join the dole queues in the coming weeks and months.
Maybe someone needs to ask who exactly are these people and how have they been running the railway up to now.
Last month Irish Rail introduced a new timetable on its Dublin Tralee service. The new timetable means that passengers travelling on the 20.00 ex Heuton Cork train arrive in Mallow at 22.19 and are obliged to wait 31 minutes for their connection to Tralee.
What surer way to drive people away from the railway and anger and annoy those who wait the long 31 minutes on cold wet and windy nights in Mallow station!
A decision such as this is obviously made at managerial level. You don't need to know anything about the railway to know that this timetable alteration is absolute nonsense. And it must make any ordinary person lose trust in a management class that could do something like this.
There are many stories circulating as to why passengers have to wait. They are of course anecdotal but each story is sillier than the next.
It is the same manager class who decide who will join the dole queues in the coming weeks and months.
Maybe someone needs to ask who exactly are these people and how have they been running the railway up to now.
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