Ireland

English Schadenfreude

Everyone always says that there’s no english equivalent of schadenfreude and I’ve always assumed, recklessly as it turns out, that since everyone always says this it might be true. Not so! Hats-off to Mr Ciaran J Breen of Celbridge, County Kildare for writing to the Irish Times to explain that: But there is a one-word English equivalent. It is “epicaricacy” which means rejoicing at, taking fun in, or getting pleasure from the misfortune of others. The word is derived from the ancient Greek “epi” (meaning upon); “kharis” (meaning joy) and “kakos” (meaning evil). The German language equivalent, Schadenfreude, is more commonly used as a loan word in English. – Yours,

Heated debate | 12 December 2009

Major bad language warning on the video below, but this incident in the Irish Parliament yesterday is too extraordinary not to post.  Maybe the Tories will take notes for their new, more aggressive approach… Hat-tip: Tim Montgomerie

Rum, Sodomy and a Radish

Proof that even well-intentioned and useful fads can go too far: the Grow Your Own Vegetables movement has reached a tragi-comic end with the news that Shane MacGowan, the hardest-living poet ever to emerge from the mean streets of Tunbridge Wells, is, well, this… Shane MacGowan is set to appear in a reality TV programme about growing vegetables. The Pogues’ frontman and his girlfriend Victoria Mary Clarke both take part in the RTÉ One programme, which is called ‘Victoria and Shane Grow Their Own’. In the show, the pair attempt to emulate the plot of ’70s sitcom ‘The Good Life’, which saw characters Tom and Barbara Good attempt to live

The Sins of the Fathers

The least surprising thing about the latest revelations of the Irish Catholic Church’s complicity in thousands of cases of horrific child abuse is that almost none of it is surprising at all. Shocking, yes, but not surprising. Even those of us with an appropriately cynical view of the Chuch, mind you, can only marvel at the breathtaking mendacity displayed by the Church. The Archbishop of Tuam, Michael Neary, says he is ” mindful of the perceived hollowness of repeated apologies” and he has a point. Because until they were caught, the Church displayed no remorse whatsoever. Time and time again, as the Murphy Commission’s report makes only too clear, the

La Main du Match

Photo: Lionel Bonaventure/AFP/Getty Images If there were a World Cup for Being Sanctimonious, Ireland would qualify every time. So, mind you, might Scotland. The aftermath of last night’s match in Paris has been predictably entertaining. One refereeing blunder (though it’s quite pssible the referee was unsighted and so did not, in fact, “bottle” the decision) has provided ample opportunity for cant and humbug. Thus, the Irish demand that the match be replayed. Good idea! Let’s have another go at the 1966 World Cup Final while we’re at it! FAI President John Delaney complains: “There’s a team that should be in the World Cup today and that’s us. We should be

Stickies vs Provos

Tory Bear is upset with the continuing brouhaha over the Conservatives’ pals in the European parliament. Well, fair enough. I find it hard to believe that anyone, apart from euro-obsessives, cares about the european parliament but perhaps I’m mistaken. Accordingly he wants, not unreasonably, to draw attention to some of Labour’s less than wholesome allies in Europe. Among them… How about Proinsias De Rossa, ever heard of him? Well he is a murdering terrorist who is linked to the killing of six British Policemen. This former IRA man originally joined the Communist and Allies group before transferring to the PES and taking an active role in the drafting of the

Department of Things Could Be Worse: Irish Edition

George Osborne may be warning of austere times ahead, but the situation is much graver on the other side of the Irish sea. Yesterday’s Irish Times revealed the startling details of a new plan to resuce Hibernia. Even the cute hoors are cheap hoors now. [Hat-tip: BadJournalism via Twitter. My Twitter feed is here.]

Time to start banging on about Europe

It’s not yet official, but everyone is couning on a big “yes” from Ireland – to the tune of about 64% says The Guardian. I say in my News of the World column tomorrow that this is far from a disaster for the Conservatives. It works well for them, in fact: it isn’t nerds who want a UK referendum but any fair-minded person who has just witnessed the way Brussels bullies, bribes and cajoles to get its way. Tony Blair was the one who reneged on his promise of a rederendum – something which, in my opinion, should be a criminal act (but, as Stuart Wheeler tested, is not technically

Forget referenda. If the Irish vote Yes, a future Conservative government would have to adopt the Lisbon treaty

According to exhaustive polling data, the Irish will vote Yes to the Lisbon treaty. With Czech senators looking set to ratify the treaty also, the probable future Conservative government in this country faces a dilemma: what to do about Lisbon. Simple, says Bill Emmot in the Times. Cameron and Hague must hold their noses because it is in their national and partisan interests to do so. ‘For a new Tory government in Britain, the European scene could not be better, with right-wing parties in power in both France and Germany. The chance is there to seek common cause on an issue dear to Tory hearts, namely defence and the protection

America’s Worst Congressman

The loathsome Peter King is at it again. Speaking to Politico, he’s up in arms that some people think torturing prisoners is wrong. King, channeling both the sense of outrage and of political opportunity felt in parts of the GOP, defended in detail the interrogation practices — threats to kill a detainee’s family, and or to kill a detainee with a power drill — detailed in a CIA inspector general report released yesterday. “You’re talking about threatening to kill a guy, threatening to attack his family, threatening to use an electric drill on him — but never doing it,” King said.  “You have that on the one hand — and on the other you

Peter King Watch

Apparently there’s a stooshie over Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Barack Obama. Whatever. As might be expected, America’s worst Congressman, Peter King of New York, is busy offering his opinion: Robinson’s views are well out of the American foreign-policy mainstream. Rep. Peter King (R-LI) says, “She is definitely from the school of moral equivalency which somehow invariably comes down on the side against vibrant democracies such as Israel and the United States.” Fairness demands that we absolve Mr King of all charges of moral equivalency. After all he’s been a keen supporter of terrorism

Gone Cricketing

Note the jaunty attempt to emulate Gordon Greenidge; note too the lack of control which has caused the bottom hand to leave the bat, suggesting that this attempt has, alas, more or less failed. Photo: Grant Kinghorn. No blogging until next week, I’m afraid. Holiday time. Albeit an unusually energetic trip overseas as I’ll be playing cricket every day this week. I’m making my debut for the White City All Stars – a team skippered by Peter Oborne, late of this parish – on the club’s annual tour of Ireland. Should be fun. Runs and wickets permitting, of course. Anyway, see you on the 28th or so.

Everyman’s voice

Frank O’Connor was once stopped on the road west of Kinsale by a man who said to him: ‘I hear you’re a famous writer. I’d like to be a famous writer too, but ’tis bloody hard. The comma and the apostrophe are easy enough, but the semicolon is the very divil.’ The man was wrong, of course: the ability to punctuate, and even to spell, correctly are often missing from some of the best writers. What counts is the ability to be on that road, allow yourself to be stopped, listen to what the man says, remember the voice, and know when and how best to use it. O’Connor’s art

Where the Sisters Have No Mercy and the Brothers No Christianity

Carol Sarler may be correct to argue, as she does in this week’s edition of the magazine, that we have an unhealthy fascination with sex crimes that is both prurient and puritanical. But I’d suggest that, whatever the merits of her wider argument, she doesn’t know very much about Ireland: In Ireland, some 2,000 adults who gave evidence of assault at the hands of Roman Catholic priests and nuns are, probably correctly, spitting tacks. The inquiry into their treatment when in children’s institutions has ruled that, although they did indeed suffer, no charges may be brought, no names shamed and, for what it’s worth, no bank balances swollen by damages

Billionaire Actually Sweetie Shop Owner…

I’m sure that there’s a Deep and Significant Meaning to this that helps explain something about the Irish economic landscape these past dozen years. It’s like an episode from An Irish Onion or something.: A “BILLIONAIRE” businessman linked with a string of high-profile potential investments has been identified as a sweet-shop owner based in rural Co Kilkenny. Stuart Pearson (25), a native of Co Wicklow, lives in a rented house in the village of Goresbridge and operates the shop at a rented premises in the nearby town of Graiguenamanagh. Over the past year, there have been claims in national and regional media that he was the head of a major investment company

Irish Army Told They May Only Play Tiddlywinks

I’m not* one to mock the Irish armed forces and there’s no gainsaying the fact that Irish troops have done their bit in various peacekeeping operations around the world. But (you guessed there’d be a “but”, right?) it’s hard impossible not to be amused by the fact that Irish troops preparing for deployment to Chad have been told they cannot play football soccer on the dusty playing fields of Chad: Defence Minister Willie O’Dea said the decision was made for health and safety reasons. “The reality in Chad is that the ground is extremely hard. Some of the sports are played out on open ground and when people fall, it

Poverty: Grim but Authentic!

There is, as you might expect, some good stuff in Christopher Caldwell’s Weekly Standard piece on the rise and fall of the Celtic Tiger. But it also contains some strange thinking, albeit of a kind that is often found when foreigners consider the Irish. Thus: This [prosperity and immigration] is all very exciting for the Irish, but there is nothing particularly Irish about it. Irish identity has often been–explicitly and officially–a matter of protecting citizens from both the temptations of modernity and the vicissitudes of prosperity… De Valera’s Irish Republic was organized around the idea that money doesn’t matter that much. This may have been a noble aspiration, it may

Home is where the heart is

Brooklyn, by Colm Tóibín Colm Tóibín’s Brook- lyn is a simple and utterly exquisite novel. The writing is so transparent, so apparently guileless, that I kept wondering what trickery Tóibín had used to keep me so involved, so attached, so unaccountably warmed. The tale’s simplicity is, in a sense, like life’s: an Irish girl called Eilis can’t find good work in her home town of Enniscorthy, so she goes along with a well-intended family conspiracy to send her to a decent job in Brooklyn. It is the early 1950s. Her father is dead. In Brooklyn, she finds her feet and falls in love. But when her older sister dies, she

Faith and Begorrah…

Good lord, it’s like the last thirty years never happened: the Irish government wants a new law to prohibit blasphemy. If passed then, astonishingly, the courts will be asked to decide if the supposed victim has been sufficiently outraged for there to have been an offence. Remarkable. And expensive too since it could cost you up to €100,000 and a visit from the Gardai Siochana to confiscate the “offensive material”. As Carol Coulter explains: For that to happen, a court will have to be satisfied the matter published is “grossly abusive or insulting in relation to matters held sacred by any religion, thereby causing outrage among a substantial number of

Ireland today, Britain tomorrow

It was Brian Lenihan yesterday and in a fortnight it will be Alistair Darling’s turn to announce the bad news when he delivers his emergency-in-all-but name budget. Or bloodget. Lenihan, the Irish finance minister, did his best to spread the pain around, announcing tax increases and cutting spending while leaving many of the most difficult measures to next year’s budget. The Irish economy is forecast to contract by 8% this year and, even after the cash-saving and raising measures announced yesterday, the government will run a deficit of 10.75% of GDP. Eye-watering and sobering stuff.  In the Irish Times Mark Hennessy writes: For weeks, the Cabinet has debated the options