Germans call on Guttenberg to go

Fortunately, Germans took to the streets today to object to their lying and cheating defence minister.

It is now time for Chancellor Merkel to dismiss her minister.

Guttenberg wears that modern no-nonsense pseudo conservative mask. It is the new game in town and growing in popularity in State and church.

There may well be many more doctoral theses worth checking.

The German Army knows well what it means to have a liar and cheat in charge. And for that reason alone Guttenberg should be dismissed.

Remains in cabinet having lied and cheated

That Chancellor Merkel allows a man who lies and cheats remain in her cabinet is worrying. Frau Merkel cannot now wag her finger and tell others how to behave.

Deutschlandfunk Friday 06.48/07.48 UK time

Interesting report on Irish election on Deutschlandfunk this Friday at 07.48 German time or 06.48 Irish/UK time.

Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg must go

It cannot be good for democracy, for the EU, for Germany that the German defence minister is economic with the truth. Th man does not tell the truth.

His behaviour on being discovered to have plagiarised his doctoral thesis is typical of the Freiherr.

How can Frau Merkel expect to be respected when a minister in her cabinet cheats and lies.

To think what would happen a poor Bundeswehr soldier if he lied and cheated in Afghanistan?

And they speak of him as a future chancellor.

The Bavarian Freiherr seems to have cheated

The current revelations about German defence minister Karl Theodor Freiherr zu Guttenberg is another sad story about those who rule us.

What is far more sad are the functionaries, the lawyers, the theologians who try to justify how to keep the rulers apart from the ruled.

Karl Theodor Freiherr zu Guttenberg tells the story with his title.

And the Freiherr dares visit working class German troops in Afghanistam. Even brings his wife for the photo shoot.

German minister might not pen his own words

Germany's defence minister Karl Theodor zu Guttenburg is in the headlines again. This time the spotlight is on his doctoral thesis. There are allegations that he plagiarised.

The right wing minister is popular.

The arrival of the Bavarian aristocrat on the German political landscape has to be a cause for concern.

Irish Rail's unfair fares

If a passenger buys a €20 Irish Rail Dublin Cork single ticket for a specific train and then decides to change the time of travel to an earlier train, Irish Rail charges a €30 surcharge. If a passenger buys a single ticket for the same journey on the internet the ticket costs €36.

Can anyone try to explain the logic of that?

It does not make sense and it is neither fair nor sensible.

Fair fares please

Trite and silly words versus great words

Anyone who has read Hans Fallada's Wolf Among Wolves will have got a great insight into 1920s Germany.

Nor is he kind to the words spoken by the established regular clergy.

But most of all reading Fallada one is put in touch with great writing.

And then to have to see the words of so much terrible writing. The establishment material, the material that comes so glibly off the tongues of the 'permanent civil service' - State and church. Gosh, it is simply terrible.

Fallada wrote what he saw, believed and thought. Church and State spin doctors write what is expected of them.

Anyone who dares try preach the Gospel cannot avoid Fallada.

On fire in Kerry without a brigade

The article below appears in today's regional Irish newspapers of INM.

By Michael Commane
These days most of us are up in arms with what has happened Ireland and how we let it happen and right under our noses.

For years upon years we were told what was best for us and most people accepted on face value what they were being told.

There is much lip service given to protecting rural Ireland. But life on
the ground tells a different story.

The West Kerry village of Castlegregory has just lost its voluntary fire service. The authorities closed the rail service in 1939. They, the superior caste, promised a replacement bus service. Today there is a once-a-week token bus service. A social and economic Irish joke. So what, you say, I don’t live in Castlegregory. But you do – we all live somewhere and this shortsighted madness affects us all in different ways. For Castlegregory read your town, your village, Ireland, today.

In the past everything was explained in terms of economic rectitude.
Today the great excuse is always tempered with health and safety concerns.
And that’s now what we have been told about our voluntary fire service. How really can we be expected to believe them?

Castlegregory is about 25 kilometres west of Tralee.

In 1983 as a result of a community initiative a voluntary fire service was founded. Over the years the service had been developed and enhanced. Up to very recently there were only a handful of voluntary fire services in the country. Ballylongford and Tarbert in north Kerry also had fire services.

They have all been closed down.

Out of the blue last August the voluntary fire service in Castlegregory received a letter from Kerry County Fire Service telling them that they were to close their doors.

The peremptoriness of the letter was shocking. It was a cold letter conveying a fait accompli. The Kerry County Fire Service believes that the voluntary fire service in Castlegregory has not the appropriate training and skills to deal with fires.

Kerry County Fire Service is only doing what it is told by the ‘experts’. It is obliged to obey.

Of the nine current firemen, three have breathing apparatus training and
certification, the other six received basic training with Kerry County Fire Service.
Kerry County Fire Service has maintained the station and equipment in Castlegregory over the years. The local community paid 90 per cent of the costs for the building of the station. The remainder came from a grant from the Department of the Environment. The site was given free.

Last year it cost Kerry County Fire Service approximately €3,500 to maintain the fire service in Castlegregory.

If the firemen in Castlegregory are not properly trained to top standard, then why can they not obtain that training from the certifying authority?

Surely it makes both social and economic sense to keep the voluntary service in the village. What value do the ‘experts’ put on a life?

They shut the rail line from Dublin’s Harcourt Street to Shanganagh Junction near Bray in the 1950s. We all know now that was appalling vandalism. It cost millions to restore just part of that line for the Luas tram service.

If there be a house fire in Castlegregory tomorrow there will be a delay of between 30 minutes and an hour before a fire tender arrives from Tralee.

If we had our voluntary service, a fire tender could be in place within a maximum of 20 minutes.

Health and safety requirements are fine but say little to someone who loses their life or house because of the length of time it takes for a tender to arrive at the scene.

It sounds mad and it is.

Had there not been fire tenders in place at Cork Airport last week, the
terrible tragedy would have certainly claimed more lives. The Cork service has been rightly commended for its promptness. Time is at the essence of fire fighting.

In September 2007 there was a tragic fire in Bray where two firemen lost their lives. As a result of that fire there was a review of fire services in the country. But simply to close down and shut up is never the way to go about improving matters.
There is something amazingly short sighted and blinkered about how the rulers of the body politic work in Ireland.

And what makes it all so frustrating is that nothing ever seems to change.

These days we are forever looking at what is happening in Germany. German auto manufacturers are using their native language to sell their cars in Ireland. All things German have now a brand appeal. Well guess what, right across Germany there are voluntary fire services. And what’s more, they take such pride in what they do and their communities embrace them in an amazing fashion. You see them in their uniforms at every social engagement.

Of course it makes no sense that Castlegregory should have to close its voluntary fire service. What maddens me most of all is that the ordinary people such as I are asked to accept and believe the lore that is fed to us.

It really is amazing how the ruling classes manage to continue feeding us such guff, bluster and humbug. They always manage to justify their actions.

Guess what? This is the year of volunteering and President Mary McAleese was celebrating the event at Áras an Uachtaráin on Saturday. The irony of it.

Politics, fear and a new missal

Is the political debate becoming an irrelevancy? It is possible that we are getting closer and closer to civil unrest?

All levels of society are being greatly affected and people are afraid.

Anyone who reads Hans Fallada will get an idea why the Germans are so scared of inflation and depression.

Sound bites and political scoring seems so inappropriate right now.

And in the midst of this terrible crisis the Irish Catholic Church is about to print a new missal.

It is a shocking statement of how unconnected the hierarchical church is with the people.

No one escapes

On this Dresden Day one is forced to ask what one would have done had they been born in Germany in the early part of the 20th century.

But all institutions and organisations diminish in some way or other our free-thinking.

There is always a predominant clique. And they always set the mood and style. Those who don't
are ridiculed and laughed at, dismissed.

The 'permanent civil service' always say what is measured and appropriate.

Iran's opposition solidarity march

And a march planned for Tehran on Monday.

Bombing of Dresden

Today is the anniversary of the bombing of Dresden. Official estimates record 35,000 killed. But because of the large influx of people from the east, the real number is far greater.

Neo Nazis plan a march through the city today. The White Rose are forming a peaceful chain around the inner city.

Cairo crowd deserve a bow

Timothy Garton Ash's Guardian comment today is a great and inspiring read.

Brave individuals and good luck combine in Tahrir Square.

And then add to that social networking.

Of course Mubarak is in charge of terror and torture in Egypt.

Why the silence of western leaders?

The US give Mubarak's army €1.5 billion Dollars every year.

A priest alone with his coins

An elderly priest in the diocese of Würzburg has been charged with fraud after more than €1 million in church funds was found in his apartment and resting in his bank account.

Police searched his apartment and said they found €1.09 million, including an 'unusual amount of change'.

There is something profoundly sad about this story. Where were his fellow priests, where was and is the man's bishop?

These men talk and preach about supporting one another. Among all walks of life there is probably the least honest communication among priests. We hear the term 'brother priests' and 'brother bishops'. Powerful oxymorons.

Many years ago I experienced a man come to officiate at a funeral Mass in that German diocese. The man was clearly drunk and no-one had the love or courage to speak to him. The show went on.

So much of what goes on is a charade. Of course there are great priests and bishops but at present there is a new dispensation and style of secrecy developing which is going to have cataclysmic results.

The phenomenon of homosexuality within priesthood is not the problem. The problem is the secrecy and cover up and then all the lies that are told. And then the link between pseudo conservatism and closet homosexuality is becoming more scary every day. The stories, the anecdotes, the pain, the tricks - of course the issue has to be dealt with in a loving and Christian manner. That's not happening.

And it appears few if any bishops or religious 'superiors' are engaging in any real way with the issue.

Looking out the window at the same reality

This article appears in the Irish regional newspapers of IN&M today.

By Michael Commane
"Anois teacht an earraigh beidh an lá ’dúl ’un síneadh,
’S tar éis na Féil’ Bríde ardóidh mé mo sheol”

No, this column is not going to be about politics or the upcoming election.
Yes, Taoiseach Brian Cowen did quote these lines in his valedictory speech in Dáil Éireann last week.

Once January came my mother would sit on the top step of our stairs at home, looking out the window and waiting for the day when dad would arrive home from work in the daylight. I often sat there with her as a small boy. I must have been five or six but I can still clearly remember sitting on that step and seeing dad arrive at 16.45 and in daylight. The day it happened mum was ecstatic.

Maybe I was there every January for years upon years or maybe it was just on one occasion. I can’t tell you that.

I am back living in that house now after a gap of 43 years. And probably because of that I have been thinking of how the first years of our lives leave such an indelible mark on our souls and psyches. It scares me to think how actually ‘un-free’ we are in the lives we lead. Has it all been predetermined for us in the structure of our DNA. No, it’s not as simple as that.

Although I only spent less than a third of my life in that home nowhere else has left such a profound mark on me. I have flip-flopped from home to home. I have lived in seven different places in Ireland and have also lived in Rome, Cologne, and Berlin. The house in Dublin is what made me into what I am. Maybe in some small ways I have grown up and developed and changed but the Michael who was inside my head and body back then is the same Michael today.

So how much do we ever change? What at all happens us in our lives? I could list a plethora things that I do and they are a copybook repetition of what my mother and father did. Even down to how I lose my glasses or lock the door when leaving. Half way down the road I wonder did I turn off the light. I remember one day being out with my mum and dad and mum wondering if she had turned off the gas. We had to go back to check. Of course it was off! And I got annoyed with having to go back, thinking how ‘stupid’ my mother was.

It is probably partly due to my return to the old home that has made me ever so conscious of how we become what our parents were.

I often cannot remember what happened yesterday but I can clearly and vividly remember so much about my early years.

What has particularly engaged my mind on this topic in recent days is an incident that happened me last week. I was looking out the window of the bedroom and noted the electric cable that was outside the house. There was a light wind and the cable was moving ever so slightly. And then it dawned on me. I remember looking out at that cable, or the one that was there before it, maybe 54 years ago. I had suddenly transported myself back to that day. But back then I recall wondering what I would be doing when I was 'grown up', where would I be when I was 50. And I kept saying to myself that when I would get to 50 I would know so many things about all sorts of topics. I would no longer be so un-knowledgeable and how great it would be to know so much. I also thought about what it must mean to be really free and do whatever you want.

Funny really. I got it all so wrong. Fifty-six years later and I still know really nothing. But I am captivated with how I felt that moment 56 years ago and how I felt last week. It really was exactly the same feeling. And has anything at all changed?

That set me off thinking about life and God and the idea of a life after death. What is it all about? What is the purpose or reason for life? The only time I am really adamant about the idea of a life after death is when I visit my parents' grave. At that moment I am convinced that my parents have not been annihilated - I say they are with God in heaven.

But what exactly does that mean?

Probably the victory of life over death, the triumph of goodness over darkness, over misery and hopelessness.

In the end the good person is triumphant.

Goodness and honesty can push aside so much of the nonsense and humbug that is thrown at us from time to time from so many different quarters.

In that context it gives me courage, even in dark times, stripping away all the humbug, to say that God is good.

And just as I say that, I get scared of the clichés we use when we talk about God.

Maybe it is that the good person stays away from all those clichés, those high-sounding words, rules and regulations that when stripped to their core, have no meaning at all, just bluff and bluster to keep the little person down.

We can never get it wrong if we are attentive, gentle and kind to the little person, and the marginalised too.

Links between Hordorf and Dublin

A contributory factor to the rail accident in Hordorf in Sachsen Anhalt in Germany was the absence of a fail safe brake system when a train passes a red signal. The safer and more modern system is in place on DB Netz in the older States of the Federal Republic.

On similar single line track in Ireland there is no fail safe braking system.

The passenger train that crashed at Hordorf was operated and owned by Veolia, who operate Dublin's Luas

The new missal

Heavens. The new missal is somewhat similar to the DR 1988/1989 timetable.

And who will pay for it?

Michael Gilchrist writes on the new Roman missal

He argues that the new translation is more true to the Latin.

Does language not evolve?

On the one hand Gilchrist argues for holding fast on words, their use and meaning. Yet Gichrist's use of English is faulty according to his own rules. He misuses the word 'presently'. No doubt he will argue it has evolved to the US meaning. Ah, so words can evolve. But when it comes to these men who know exactly what God wants, says and does, then we have no alternative but to listen to them. It really is as absurd as that. And of course most of them, no doubt, know exactly the tricks they play. The boardgame is in constant change. The tragedy is the people who listen and follow them in good faith.

The issue of the use of the word 'men' in the new English edition of the missal is nothing less than laughable.

It's a little like the poor bargaining power the Irish have when dealing with the IMF compared to the Germans.

The German word Maenner means men, the German word Menschen means people. No need to say that the German bishops got their way. They may use the euro but the Vatican well knows the power of the mighty German Mark. Did someone mention God?

Any chance we could ask the brave people in Tahrir Square to move to a new location in Europe, south of the Alps?

Life triumphs over humiliation and tears

“But we don’t want to end this book with death, dedicated as it is to life, invincible life, life always triumphing over humiliation and tears, over misery and death.”

The beginning of the final chapter of Hans Fallada's Jeder stirbt fuer sich allein, Alone in Berlin

The conquering taste of freedom

"I've decided not to shut up again. We're afraid that things will turn bad again, but I've said to myself that I'm going to keep .... writing. You get used to freedom, even if you only have it for two or three days."

Tunisian journalist Hajer Ajroudi

The lifting of the siege of Leningrad

This  day,  in 1944, the Siege of Leningrad was lifted. 900 days of horror.
But,  in  that  time, the great art treasures of The Hermitage were hidden.
Shostakovich composed his Seventh Symphony.

Amid  the  wreckage  of their city and their lives, students sat and passed
their university exams.
By  this day, 27 January, 650,000 people died. But the human spirit endured
and life went on.

At a speech given today by Enda Kenny in Dublin reference was made to the anniversary of the significant date.

Humiliation of the 'little people'

"But there was a dark shadow over everything; had people like them any right to laugh? How could one really laugh in a world where captains of industry are allowed to line their own pockets and make hundreds of mistakes, whereas the little people who had always done their best were humiliated and squashed?"

When was it written? By Hans Fallada in Little Man, What Now. It was written in 1933 in Berlin before the Nazis came to power.

Whatever changes.

Where were the bishops and what were they saying about this horror? Pope Benedict constantly criticises a philosophy or relativism. Where was the voice of the church in supporting the 'little man' and condemning the oppressor?

How really is the church responding to the current misery of the 'little man'?

I think of rarefied discussions of whether or not people may receive communion in the hand. Close to where I am writing this there is a Catholic church where I may not receive Communion in the hand at certain Masses. Discussion about whether or not people wear religious habits in public and the dole cut by eight euro. Low paid workers paying a new Universal Social Charge and all because the bankers lined their pockets.

It is interesting how so many bankers and other pocket liners enjoy the old liturgy and how their friendly priests fulfil their needs.

Time for another Strumpet City.

It is always intersting how progressive church communities compare financially with ones which offer the old conservative words and ritual.

Most of us belong to the 'little people'

In recent days author Hans Fallada has been mentioned on this blog. His book ‘Alone in Berlin’ is a great insight into the Berlin of the Nazi era.

In ‘The Drinker‘ and ‘What Now, Little Man’, Fallada describes in an uncanny way some of the workings of the human mind and spirit. He cuts through so much humbug, nonsense and pretence, that his characters are impeccably real.

All the time the horror of the Nazi evil is lurking in the background but Fallada’s characters are real and alive today.

Clearly he sees the ‘little man’ with no chance when pitted against all-powerful authorities and institutions.

Anyone who is sceptical of authority and sees how the ‘little person’ can be and is enslaved by the horror and madness, the greed and jealousy of institutions and those who control them, then they will find hope and courage in Fallada.

Fallada sees the damage that is done to the ‘little person’ through the hands of all these all-conquering institutions.

We simply delude ourselves by thinking we have escaped from under the clutches of powerful institutions. Only stooges through all their various dancing and palaver attempt to give a respectable face to the cold cruel reality of institutions and authority.

And nothing changes.

An occasion to say no to 'the great'

The late John O'Gorman OP often spoke of the crass incompetence of the hierarchical church. It was something that engaged him greatly.

How so many spoke of the electoral machine that was Fianna Fáil.

We all hang on by the tips of our broken finger nails.

Read 'The Drinker' by Hans Fallada.

It all gives such a new and living perspective on a theology of grace.

German CDU call on Vatican to think again

German politicians call on Catholic Church to re-examine celibacy rules.

They believe parishes are suffering as a result and that Germany needs more priests.

Interesting development.

Whatever our dreams we die alone

This article appears in today's regional IN&M Irish newspapers.

By Michael Commane
On Tuesday morning just past midnight I finished the book, probably the best read of my life. I am not a quick reader but I tore through this book.

The book is Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin. It only appeared in English in 2009 having been written in 1947.

Fallada was born Rudolf Ditzen in 1893 in Berlin, the son of a retired judge of the Supreme Court. At 18 he killed a friend in a suicide pact that went terribly wrong. He spent close to two years in a sanatorium for the mentally ill. He struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction all his life.

After World War II the Communist authorities appointed him a mayor of Carwitz, a small town on the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Brandenburg border in Eastern Germany. But it was not a job he liked. He was not happy at all with his Communist bosses, and resigned.

He wrote Alone in Berlin in 28 days. He died in 1947 before it was published. His book Little Man, What Now was made into a film.

Before I say a word about the book I have to admit that Fallada seems to be a person who has big issues with authority and institutions and that’s probably one of the aspects of the man that has drawn me to him. Ok?

So to the book. Otto and Anna Quangel live in a flat in Berlin. The good, the bad and the indifferent live in the apartment building.

Otto is a foreman carpenter in a furniture factory, which is now making coffins.
It is 1940 and the German Army has rolled into France. The Germans are euphoric about the victory. And in those ‘glory’ days, the Quangles receive post telling them that their only child, also Otto, has fallen in France. Anna gets hysterical at the news, eventually telling her husband and adding, ‘you and your Führer’. Middle aged Otto senior was not even in the Nazi party but had done well for himself during the early years when Hitler came to power.

He is a silent man with big awkward hands and within days of his wife’s comment he decides to set out on an anti-Hitler campaign. He writes postcards denouncing the regime and leaves them in apartment buildings all over Berlin.

He knows that if he is discovered it is curtains. He persists with extraordinary purpose. Nothing but capture will stop him.

The policeman put in charge of the case, Escherich, is fascinated and obsessed with the case and names his target the ‘Hobgoblin’. He has a map on his wall marking all the places where cards were found and handed into the police – 276 cards and nine letters.

After two years Quangel slips up and is caught.

Inspector Escherich has been impressed with his Hobgoblin and now when he meets him face-to-face he realises what a special person he is. In all the time he has been looking for him he has picked up all sorts of creeps, hoodlums, cowards, sycophants, petty criminals, every type and all of them begged and pleaded for mercy. Eshcherich did many horrible and brutal things but he saw the goodness and bravery of Quangel, who was proud of what he had done.

The police inspector discovers that all but 18 of the postcards were turned into the police.

Escherich is so impressed with Quangel that he sees the folly of his job. It dawns on him how evil the Nazis are but realises that he is now unable to take up Quangel’s baton and out of fear and despair shoots himself. He tells himself that he Escherich is probably Quangel’s only convert.

The book goes on to show how the Gestapo root out everyone who had any contact with Anna and Otto Quangel, and how they lead them all to their deaths.
The English translation can be misleading. In German it is Jeder stirbt für sich allein, which means ‘everyone dies alone’.

Fallada creates characters that are so alive it is impossible to put down the book. The bravery, determination and lack of fear of those who oppose the regime is in stark contrast to those who are suppliant, approve and say yes to the Nazi authority.

It has nothing to do with class, occupation/profession, gender, none of those categories. It has all to do with those who are good and brave. It has all to do with what it means to be honest. It has all to do with speaking out openly and truthfully about what you believe and think.

I was particularly taken by the picture Fallada paints of two prison chaplains. Fallada does not believe in God or a life after death but he becomes greatly impressed with Father Lorenz – the first chaplain he encounters. He is a man in poor health and dressed in shabby clothes. Father Lorenz is greatly interested in the prisoners and is always willing to give them news of other prisoners – something strictly forbidden. He campaigns to have the drunken doctor removed from the prison and is not afraid to speak his mind to his superiors.

The other priest is referred to as ‘Reverend’. He does not have a name. When Quangel tells the Reverend what a fine man Fr Lorenz was, the Reverend replies, “Because he did your bidding! He was a weak man, Quangel. The man of God must be a fighter during these times of war, not a flabby compromiser”.

He asks Quangel to kneel down with him and pray. He takes a snow-white cloth out of his pocket and places it on the ground. It is only large enough for the Reverend’s knees!

Fallada’s insight of people is extraordinary. His description of the two different types of prison chaplains is remarkable and is as real and as authentic today in Ireland as it was in those terrible Berlin prison cells.

It’s the best book I have ever read. Read it and prove me wrong.
 
 

Barack Obama in Tuscon Arizona

Make sure we are talking with each other in a way that heals, not a way that wounds

Barack Obama in Tuscon

Iran stops Hedda Gabler in her tracks

Iranian authorities have suspended a Tehran theatre’s production of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler and set up a body to police cultural affairs.

Some months back Ibsen’s John Gabriel Borkman was at the Abbey in Dublin with Fiona Shaw in a lead role.

A spokesperson for the Iranian government said the play had some problems both conceptually and in the way it was performed.

“Hedda Gabler, which is adapted from a western play and is based on nihilistic and hedonistic ideas and was performed in a very vulgar and inappropriate way for the public, was stopped,” Fars news agency said.

With the tiniest of tweaking that comment is similar to something that a Vatican spokesman might say about a play, film or book.

The Vatican does not say that sort of thing as much today but that probable is because it will not be heeded.

The language, tone and style of the Iran comment is similar in so many details to Vatican speak that it must cause profound worry to people who are genuinely in search of truth and God’s Word.

“Setting up a body to police cultural affairs .” Really!

Toomevara gone and not a toilet in sight

The piece below appears in today's IN&M regional newspapers.

By Michael Commane
Every time my late father drove through Toomevara he would announce that great Tipperary hurlers came from the village and the older he got the more often he would recall those great Tipperary hurlers. Names such as Tom O’Meara, Garret Howard and Matt Kennedy were regularly mentioned.

My dad had been to school at Thurles CBS and the Cistercian Abbey in Roscrea and both schools played hurling. I have a picture somewhere of my father togged out in Roscrea gear before a hurling match. It was 1926, I think. A long time ago.
For over 50 years, every time going through Toomevara, I have heard, thought or smiled about great Tipperary hurlers.

So you can imagine what it was like on Bank Holiday Monday driving from West Kerry to Dublin. Toomevara was no more. Off in the distance of time and geography, no doubt those great hurlers were dancing about in the ether of the small Tipperary village.

It is motorway all the way now from just outside Adare to Naas. I travel on a weekly basis from West Kerry to Dublin but usually do the journey by rail. On Bank Holiday Monday I decided to take the motorbike. I was too late to get the last of the online rail tickets and rightly presumed that there would be few if any large trucks on the road.

It really was amazing to be able to travel at 120km/h from Limerick to Naas with just one stop at the toll booth near Borris-in-Ossory.

It was cold but I was well decked out for the journey – with just one exception. There was a tiny hole in the lining of my left glove. Some days later my little finger was still cold. It’s always that weakest link that screws things up, always and ever.

Most family cars have fuel tanks that can easily hold 50 to 60 litres of petrol or diesel. So on most Irish motorways there is no need to refuel. Not so with my motorbike – the tank holds approximately 17 litres. I left West Kerry with a full tank and just a few kilometres south of Naas I was fortunate enough to spot that the needle was hovering in the danger zone.

I began to wonder whether or not I would make it to the filling station at Kill, just north of Naas but began to panic a little. The thought of running out of petrol on the motorway simply did not bear thinking. I spend my life procrastinating and prevaricating but that sort of nonsense on the motorway was just that – nonsense. So I decided to take a short detour and go into Naas, which has among its claims to fame one of the most expensive places to buy fuel.

And just like my dad before me I have a tendency to dither about buying petrol – the needle is more often than not on red. It was something that caused major conflict between my mother and father. Funny, no matter how we try, we invariably end up like our parents. I wonder how psychiatrists explain that? Or what do theologians say about how grace can influence us in any real way if things have already been predetermined by our DNA?

But to think that there is not one single service station on the motorway the entire way from Adare to Naas is simply ludicrous. Okay, most of the people travelling the road are either in cars or trucks and with a little bit of sense will make sure to have enough fuel before setting out. But what happens if a small child needs to go to the toilet?

And indeed, you don’t have to be a small child to need to go to the loo. There are a myriad reasons why someone might need to stop. It really is preposterous that there is not one single pit stop on that road.

I presume it will be built but surely it would have been much cheaper to have built it during the road construction?

Okay, we get a lot of things wrong but the latest statistics on road deaths are remarkable.

Last year saw the lowest number of road deaths since records began 50 years ago. I remember when the Naas Road was turned into a dual-carriageway and when there was two-way traffic in Dublin’s Grafton Street. To think there were less fatalities on Irish roads last year with over 2.7 million vehicles on the road than back in 1960 when there were a mere 302,767 registered vehicles is simply staggering and great good news.

In 1960 there were 169,681 cars, 45,530 trucks, 37, 719 agricultural tractors, 41,467 motorbikes and 10,370 ‘other’ vehicles on our roads.

Sometime in the 1950s my dad bought a second-hand Anglia. It cost £90 and I can still remember the registration plate – ZL 9968 and I don’t know the number of my motorbike.

And that’s a little like the Toomevara hurlers – my dad could reel off the names of the famous men of long ago but had trouble mentioning any of the names of the modern day players.

It was in that Anglia I first heard about those great hurlers. These days it often strikes me how formative those years were. I can remember every detail about that car. I can even recall the hole in the floor through which you put the jack so as to change a wheel. As a small child I thought of other ideas for that hole. My parents were horrified. Come to think of it, with no service station on the M7, that old Anglia could well answer the prayers of many a motorist these days.
The thoughts that can go through one's head driving on the M7!

Fallada is talking to all of us

While Alone in Berlin is about an aspect of life in Berlin in Nazi Germany, the book forces the reader to question how easy it is to manipulate people to think and live in a particular way.

These days in Ireland it is popular to criticise and ‘blame’ the banks, Fianna Fáil, the hierarchical church for the woes of the country. But where were the ‘blamers’ during the so-called ‘good times’? But of course they were not good-times.

In every organisation crazy things happen and who ever has the courage or the wit to oppose and speak out? Once you do you are marked for life and there is no redemption unless there is revolution. And even then not necessarily.

We are privileged and lucky to live in a democracy. But it always happens that those in charge, those who are considered the ‘in people’ are admired and adulated. Maybe that’s natural but there is also something terribly wrong about it. It means people can easily be afraid to oppose and criticise.

Fallada manages to paint a clever picture how the Nazis were able to consider anyone who was opposed to them as ‘low people’ with no morals. Really extraordinary.

While the two prison chaplains play minor roles, Fallada has a curious insight into the transcendental and imminent aspects of ministry. Is it possible Pope Benedict has read the book? Interesting to know what he might say about the two men.

A fascinating book and a book for our times.

And if the Nazis had not been all that bad and evil, it could be possible to dismiss the book. After all it was written in something like 28 days by a curious character, who drank too much, took drugs and killed a person I a duel when he was just 16. He spent 17 months in a sanatorium for the mentally ill.

It seems as if Fallada spent his life trying to come to grips with the realities of the world around him. He was convinced he could succeed in asserting himself against it.

Hans Fallada's 'Alone in Berlin'

Alone in Berlin by Hans Fallada is simply an amazing read.

The book was originally written in 1947 and only translated into English in 2009.

Hans Fallada is the pen name of Rudolf Ditzen, who was born near Rudolstadt. An interesting man. His Little Man, What Now was made into a film

Anna and Otto Quangel live in a working class apartment in Berlin. The buildings in Jablonski Strasse are homes to families of all types and shapes. The usual lot of human misery: pain and love. Good people, nasty people, brave people, cowards.
France has ‘fallen’ to the German Army and there is euphoria in Germany. What and where next for the all conquering Wehrmacht?

The Quangels receive post from the front informing them that their only son, Otto, has fallen in France. Anna becomes hysterical and her husband asks here what’s wrong. She tells him Otto is dead, looks at him and adds, “you and your Führer”.

Otto was a man of few words, slow to show his emotions. He makes a decision. He spends the next two years delivering post cards all over Berlin denouncing Hitler.

The police are on his trail and eventually track him down. The inspector in charge of the case does good and bad things. He becomes obsessed about catching his ‘Hobgoblin’. He has a map in his office of all the places where the cards have been reported to have been dropped. Most of them are handed in to the police – people are afraid.

In the two years chasing the Hobgoblin the inspector comes in contact with all sorts of humanity. He does terrible things.

Early on the inspector realises that his Hobgoblin is a special type of person. When he does come face-to-face with him he sees his courage and exceptional personality.

Alone in Berlin is a great story of how brave people behave against the odds.

At he end of the book there is the portrayal of two chaplains – one a great man the other a stooge. One is interested in people, the other in souls and the recitation of prayers.

Published by Penguin Modern Classics. 568 pages.

The English title is a little misleading. The German title is Jeder stirbt für sich allein, which more or less means Everyone dies on their own/alone.

Cycling to work this morning it dawned on me how lucky we are to live in a democracy, even with its limitations. To be able to breathe the air. The prisoners in Prince Albrecht Strasse risk being shot by simply looking out their windows in search of fresh air.

The book is set in the Nazi regime but it is about people and their behaviour.