The Irish Patient

In 1996, British director, Anthony Minghella, had a massive hit with his film, The English Patient, a tale of love, lust and the horror of war set in Italy towards the end of World War 11. The film, which won nine Academy Awards, and deservedly so, and starred Ralph Fiennes. The film depicted the triumph of love in the midst of the torture and terror of war that engenders awful depravity in human beings. .
We are reminded of that thought-provoking film this week by the announcement that the Irish Film Institute has commissioned a film to be called The Irish Patient. This has no connection with the above film or novel.
The film is set in Ireland, a wealthy country located in northwest Europe. The film, which has an over-18 rating, will in our view, find it difficult to pass the scrutiny of the Film Censorship Board such is the high content level of horror and violence.
The plot is a little far-fetched to sustain credibility. It is based on a 1981 novel by noted fantasy author C.J. Haughey, (1925-2006) called The Tightening of the Belt. Producer, Albert Ahern, a confessed fan of all Haugheys’s works, has allowed considerable artistic licence to director Mary Harney to expand the theme.
Harney is, of course, well known from previous hit movies such as No More Smoking Chimney Stacks (1987) which really got her noticed in LA. She got two Oscar nominations for the 1998 unforgettable thriller that struck terror into the heart of taxi drivers in much the same way as Fatal Attraction did to wandering husbands, Deregulate the Bastards! This really set her on her way to success.
The Irish Patient portrays what can happen to a wealthy, smug, middle-class society when a very rare virus, called HSE, breaks out in this island nation of four million people.
HSE is a disease of the brain, thought to have originated in the island of Madagascar, off the African coast. Returning missionaries and health care workers unwittingly bring the disease into Ireland where it wreaks havoc in a chilling and most unusual way. HSE is a selective killer attacking the brain of medical and administrative health workers and Government civil servants. Death is a slow tortuous process as the brain cells melt away over a prolonged period. We do not want to spoil the cinema experience for our readers by giving away too much of the storyline, but suffice it to say that this is not for the faint-hearted. As the HSE attacks the brain, delusion combined with denial of this delusion creeps into the unfortunate victim. Doctors imagine that they are working in the Third World and act accordingly. They complain that their equipment is out of date, some of it is twenty years old, they shriek maddeningly. Health officials, meanwhile, are affected by particularly virulent strains of HSE causing them to close down hospitals and refuse admission to those whom the doctors deem not sick enough. But - and here is where Harney excels at twisting the knife and subjecting the viewer to mental agony - the doctors are no longer able to judge whether their patients are well or not. Their brains are disintegrating and they no longer have the ability to function properly. Chaos reigns and there are some terrible scenes which fully justify the over-18 cert.
Patients lie moaning and screaming on trolleys, the hospital cleaners won’t do any cleaning and stench and filth emanate from the operating theatres. Hospital porters become so deluded that they think they are now radiologists, and in a particularly harrowing chapter of the film, hundreds of women are recalled because they were given incorrect results of breast cancer screens, analyzed presumably by the porters. Unfortunate women are now told that they have cancer having been given the all clear months earlier. Scenes of heartbreak and emotion are too much to take at times, but Harney is gifted at projecting fantasy as reality. However, she may in some peoples eyes have overstepped the mark with The Irish Patient, and many critics feel it is not ethical to project such unrealistic images.
The disease spreads quickly throughout the country. Riots and panic erupt in the mid-west and the police are forced to baton charge an angry crowd in Westport. Many people are injured but unfortunately there are no ambulances to bring them to hospital as the medical administrators, now in the last throes of the awful disease, refuse to put fuel in the ambulances and instead put the funds into their pension plans. We would be acting unfairly to reveal any more of the plot but suffice it to say it gets worse.
Ahern, the producer, has stated to Variety magazine that he feels The Irish Patient is his best work, but the critics have savaged the movie, branding it as implausible and too much over the top for a horror movie. Ahern has taken umbrage at such criticism and threatened not to make any more movies. He indicated that was going to retire at 60 anyway, and said he didn’t give a damn what the critics and film goers thought about him.
As for Harney, given her previous success with unlikely material – Don’t Tell The Tanaiste springs to mind - do not be surprised if The Irish Patient horror movie defies the critics and is a box office success.
All we can say is just hope that the HSE bug never becomes a reality.
Sleep well!

PRACTICE NOT WHAT YOU PREACH !

We live in an Ireland that is experiencing incredible change. Cultural, social, economic and religious values now have different barometers. Migration to this country has created a multi-coloured mural of interaction in all areas of society from the home to the school and workplace.
Alas, in one segment of Irish life the more things change, the more they remain the same.
We speak about an institution with a venerable veneer that now ranks lower in the league of the Machiavellian arts of deceit, dishonour and denial than the Pentagon.
The Roman Catholic Church, of course, always worked in an under-handed and facile fashion, particularly in this God fearing island that we inhabit.
As we write today, on the Feast of St Brigid, we learn that former archbishop of Dublin, Cardinal Desmond Connell, is attempting to secure a high court injunction to prevent the Commission of Enquiry into clerical child abuse from accessing 5000 documents in his possession relating to various cases.
Connell is now retired, aged 81, and yet he continues to behave just as he did when he was in power. This so-called academic of the cloth, aloof and arrogant in all his mannerisms and pronouncements, presided over a diocese where priests routinely abused children in the most awful manner.
The victims of this abuse – many of whom took their own lives because of it- were overwhelmed by the relentless power of the Drumcondra crosiers when they tried to get justice, led by this two-faced coward, whose only action when informed of abuses was to move the offending cleric to another parish where fresh opportunities lay.
It is no wonder then that he will use every available resource to keep his hands on those 5000 documents. The legal obstacle course that he has now constructed will probably buy him a few years. He may be dead by the time the contents of the documents are revealed, if they are indeed ever revealed. It may be his most fervent wish that he will have passed from this Valley of Tears before the truth is out.
However, let us all hope this will not be the case. It would be nice to see the hypocrite humbled, brought down from his gold-leafed pulpit to face the ordinary people his intellect openly disdains.
The perpetrators of the abuse, sick and twisted people that they were, used the power of the cloth to intimidate and silence their victims. In the suppressed society created by the likes of Connell, and McQuaid way before him, there was no avenue of rebuttal for the victims, not even in their own home.
Credence was the weapon of the Church, moral authority the enforcer and ignorance the weakness of the flock. It was no contest.
The greater sin was for those on high to know, and then to ignore. Combine this unholy alliance and you give birth to consent. This is the only implication that logic allows.
Now Connell and his ilk, bereft of their once powerful cloth, seek a new weapon and another alliance, even more unholy. The Common law and Canon Law will create a potent elixir of distraction in the search for the truth. It will probably buy all the time Connell needs to depart this life festooned with suitable theological epitaphs from his peers.
During his time in office as Cardinal of Dublin and Primate of All-Ireland, matters of clerical abuse were passed on to a senior Cardinal in the Vatican, appointed specifically to deal with such unpleasant business.
His name was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. Now where have I heard that name before?

3&4 of The 10 things they don't tell you

3. Dublin Airport. For the first time visitor to Ireland, your initial impression of the country starts with your airport experience. It is the same when you visit any country. Airports by their very nature are busy places and the test of an efficient and smoothly operating airport is the levels of stress that the traveler experiences getting in our out of the place.

Be prepared for a zoo at Dublin Airport! If you have never visited the country, and are thinking of doing so, look at alternative methods of entering the country. If you are on an Ireland vacation from America or Canada, fly to London and take a shuttle back to Cork, Shannon or Belfast in order to avoid a chaotic experience at Dublin. If that is not an option, get a ferry from the UK to Dublin Port. If that doesn’t work, then swim the Irish Sea!

Believe us here, any of the above means of avoiding Dublin, the Calcutta of the aviation world, will be more convenient than arriving or departing the place.

Dublin Airport is trying, unsuccessfully, to handle three times as many passengers as it is designed to take. Designed is, of course, is the wrong word. Nothing to do with Dublin Airport was ever designed, or planned, other than on the back of some wet toilet paper.

We could devote an entire book about the horrors of this kip. It reminds the uninitiated of what a refugee camp must be like. Thousands of people are scrambling through check-in, security, baggage handling etc. etc. There is always an air of disorganized panic in the place.

The arrivals and departure terminals are indistinguishable with frantic outgoing passengers meeting disoriented incoming passengers. The baggage handling carousels are disgorging the contents of two or three planes at once, leading to massive scrums as people fight to get their luggage. Inevitably, the lost luggage section is very busy area – staffed only by one disinterested girl who will threaten security on you if you raise your voice.

We could go on and on but why waste ink or paper. Those who read this and use Dublin Airport will understand. We are preaching to the converted.

For those of you who have never suffered, the advice is – do all you can to avoid it!

4. The prices in Ireland. Nothing can prepare the tourist on vacation in Ireland for the shock that will get when they see the prices of food and drink that, along with many other essential services for tourists, are higher than the famed Magilacuddy Reeks in Kerry.

Ireland is an expensive place to live as a resident, but it seems to us here that when people are on an Ireland vacation, there is an additional tier of profit added to the top line. This manifests itself by the greed of many in the industry who regard any tourist as ripe for easy pickings on the basis that they will never see them again.

It is not alone the small “Mom and Pop’ souvenir shops that are the guilty parties in this instance; the rip-off mentality starts at the top with our state-run companies who are the same organizations that loftily lecture us on giving value for money to the visitors to Ireland.

The DAA will fleece you for parking in any one the Irish airports it claims to run.

Dublin Bus and the Luis light-rail system will extract the maximum it can from your pocket. Unlike any major city in the world, Dublin has no integrated ticketing system where one can buy a ticket for a day or a week that will allow avail of all bus, rail and Luas for a set price. The same applies countrywide, where Bus Eireann and Irish Rail cannot have the presence of mind to get together and offer tourists- not to mention our own commuters- a universal ticket that would make travel in Ireland a little more bearable. Even when the unfortunate visitor eventually coughs up enough to take a train journey, the state of the trains in general is shocking. If you are lucky enough to get a meal on one of these ponderous contraptions, you will never, ever again condemn airline food. In fact, after your experience, airline meals will seem like those served in a Michelin – star restaurant!

If you wish to avoid the nightmare that is public transport in Ireland, you may consider hiring a car. Be prepared for a shock! Car hire rates in Ireland are among the highest in the world. Comparisons made by consumer organizations have found that in certain classes of vehicle, Ireland can be up to six – yes six! - times as expensive as our European neighbours. Excuses lamely produced by the perpetrators of this scam include the old chestnut that insurance and labour costs are higher in Ireland and, of course, they

have no option but to pass these charges onto their customers. Of course, they haven’t, in much the same way, as they have no option but to bank the excessive profits generated in Ireland on the back of this daylight robbery.

Once on the road with your wallet somewhat depleted, you belatedly realize that perhaps the rail option wasn’t so bad after all. The train experience is a bit like being in Purgatory, expecting to get to Heaven when it is over, only to find that you are in Hell when you hit the Irish roads! Satan is laughing at you mockingly as stokes the fires to greater intensity whilst wearing a baseball cap with NTR written on it!

National Toll Roads are a highway bandit company, who in cahoots with the Government, will call every 10- kilometre by-pass a motorway and put a tollbooth on it. So, by the time you transverse the country you have parted company with all your beer budget for the vacation, sat in seemingly endless traffic jams, and are the hapless victim of wacky Irish language road signage system that tells you that Daingean in Offaly has suddenly moved to where Dingle once was in Kerry. Let the sat-nav go figure that one out!

All of the above initial experiences, or nightmares, are delivered to you in the most part by state-controlled organizations.
Now just wait until the private hustlers get their hands on you!
Mom and Pop are waiting, so have a nice day!

HOME TRUTHS ARE UNCOMFORTABLE

One of the most endearing memories of 2007 was the huffing and puffing by Irish politicians and civil servants because of the German ambassador to Ireland, Christian Pauls, making non-diplomatic comments about our lovely little island.

Normally the language of diplomats borders on the total inane, and in order to make a strong point about any subject to a host Government, a tortuous and saccharine-coated form of words is used to soften the blow, whilst at the same time getting the message across.

It was therefore refreshing to hear Mr. Pauls speak plain English to an audience of about 80 German industrialists at a conference in Clontarf Castle. Not alone was the speech in plain English, the content contained many home truths about Ireland.

Mr. Pauls mentioned that he was amazed that 20% of the entire Irish workforce was made up of public servants. There are only four million of us in Ireland. In Germany, with a population of 80 million, 3% of the workforce is required to provide services in the public sector.

He then told the audience that our Junior Ministers, of which there are many, earn as much as the Chancellor of Germany. This is true, and that was before TD’s and ministers have awarded themselves yet another massive pay rise.

He spoke of the appalling health service that we have and of how consultants in the medical service consider 200,000-euro per annum “Mickey Mouse” money. Mr. Pauls was spot on again. This was a comment made to the media by a representative of the consultants association during their spat with Mary Harney for higher salaries.

Mr. Pauls spoke of our unrestrained immigration policy and the potential harm to society it could cause in the years ahead. He clearly stated that he spoke from experience in his own country where such a policy had disastrous effects. Here was a man of consummate knowledge, giving us free advice, and all the Government could respond with was a knee - jerk reaction that he was wrong and it was none of his business. They should thank the man!

He enlightened the delegates even more by telling them of our awful roads, lack of transport infrastructure and general misuse of EU monies poured into Ireland over three decades. He suggested that perhaps these massive handouts were a major factor in the birth of the famous Celtic Tiger. He did acknowledge that the work ethic of the Irish had a big part to play in creating our good fortune, despite media reports to the contrary.

He reserved his most penetrating comment to last when he described the Irish people as being ‘coarse’ and attributed this particular trait to their new-found wealth and prosperity in recent years. In one word, he has summed up the dominant part of the modern Irish psyche. Coarse – meaning vulgar, ostentatious, arrogant, ignorant, self-centred and uncharitable

It really does take somebody standing outside the window looking in to see the complete picture. As much as we may deny the home truths that he illustrated to his German counterparts, Ireland has become an unpleasant society.

How perceptive this representative of the German state is and his honest opinions make our vain posturing in front of the green mirror a rather bad idea

An Ireland Vacation - 10 things that they don't tell you!

We here are never less than honest in our appraisal of any subject relating to Ireland that we write about. This may appear very negative at times but that is only because the subject matter is negative. Where praise is due, we give without trace of inhibition or caveat. There is much to praise about Ireland and its people

This week however we focus on the negative. Perhaps it is the awful January weather that has us in bad form or the doom and gloom economic forecasts for 2008 which, if it all were to happen, will have us begging on the streets of some foreign land and giving our children away.

The greatest industry that we have is not technology or pharmaceuticals. It is not farming or financial services. It is tourism. It contributes more to the economy than any of the above sectors. Last year, 7.8 million people visited this wind and rain swept north Atlantic island of ours. They spent billions on accommodation, food and drink, leisure pursuits and souvenir and gift purchases. Most had a great time, went home, and told their friends all about it. Word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool.

Those who know these things estimate that a positive review of a trip, or any experience for that matter, will be relayed to 14 people who will act on the information. A negative review of the same experience will heard and noted by 87 people.

As the old saying goes in business - it takes twenty years to build a reputation and just one day to lose it. Ireland is no different.

As a country, Ireland has forged an enviable reputation as a great place to visit for the sights, the history, the craic, the pubs and, most importantly, the people. We are perceived as a laid back, easy-going race with a manana attitude, which bemuses most people visiting us. The fact that it is only perception and not reality anymore should concern us deeply. The obvious rebuttal to that point is to indicate the figures for tourists on an Ireland vacation last year. We must be doing something right, you say, and we are in many sectors of the tourism Ireland industry.

However, we are also taking for granted many aspects of our service to the visitor. A large proportion of the visitors to Ireland are from America. Many come looking for their roots and would not dream of visiting us were it not for that. We have the Famine and various economic depressions throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries up to the late eighties to thank for that, if that is indeed the appropriate word to use.

Compared to our European peers there is a considerable amount of ground to be made up if we are to keep eight million visitors a year coming to our country on an Ireland vacation. The trick is to get those visitors to come back again or recommend visiting Ireland to somebody they know.

Here are some reasons why they might come once, but never again.

1.Our deplorable behaviour and attitude to litter: We must rank as one of the dirtiest countries in the modern world. Walk through the streets of Dublin and our other towns and cities on a Monday morning (or indeed any morning) and your senses are assailed in every possible way by the smell and the sight of discarded fast food packaging, beer cans and bottles, chewing gum, condoms and pools of vomit. Have we no shame at all? What sort of an impression is that likely to make on a visitor to Ireland? It is not just the druggies and the drunks that litter. Schoolchildren from all strata of society seem to think that is acceptable to drop their disused receptacles at their feet as they walk along. Many adults behave the same way as though there should be a cleaner walking behind them gathering their cast offs. There seems to be an inbuilt hereditary flaw in the Irish psyche that deems it acceptable to litter and not think about the consequences. We need to become organized quickly because in any survey of a visitors experience in Ireland, the dirtiness of the Irish people is always near the top.

2.Crime, drink and drugs: These three vices are put together as one is generally associated with the other. It is not alone the visitor to Ireland that suffers from this behavior, our own citizens do also. We are not a pleasant people when we are encountered with drink and drugs. Granted, the vast majority of our communities are decent and caring. However, the minority causes all the harm and smears the upright citizen with the unacceptable residue of their boorish behavior. It is downright dangerous to walk the main streets of our cities and towns after 9 pm any night of the week. Hordes of menacing youths, high as kites with drugs and drink, terrify innocent pedestrians. Little or no protection is offered by squeamish Gardai who take the easy option by looking the other way and perhaps bravely put a ticket on your for a parking misdemeanor. Stabbings and muggings of tourists are common, a lot more common that we are led to believe. Hotels now advise the unwary visitor of where to go and where to stay. Taxi rides are advised rather than public transport because the risks of attack on this mode of transport are deemed high.

Ireland needs to fight fire with fire in this regard. Arm the police and stop this nonsense of what could be termed as a holistic approach to crime fighting. Two cops with batons are no threat to the gangs of thugs that terrorize our streets. Two cops with guns is a different matter!

These scumbags are cowards who operate based on safety, strength and heightened threat in numbers. They need to be confronted, not by unarmed police who fear for their lives, but by well-armed officers who will make the gurriers fear for their lives. We are all affected by this scourge, not just our tourists.

It is time to take action on behalf of all.

Items 3 and 4 to follow next week

New Year Resolutions

It is the time of the year when we in common with many draw up our New Year resolutions with undiluted sincerity only for most of them to dissolve in no time at all – victims to the capacity of reality to suppress optimism.

So instead, we took a less painful method of self – correction and substituted wishes for resolutions, thereby letting fate control matters and allowing our conscience a brief respite.

Our three wishes are for dear old Ireland and its people, and not just selfish demands for our own personal dreams and desires although the two may indeed merge along the way.

Our first wish is that the Cead Mile Failte, the friendly genuine Irish welcome to visitors for which Ireland used to famous returns because it has gone away, you know. Figures just released from Tourism Ireland indicate that a record 4 million tourists came to these shores last year, despite the Heavens inflicting on the country the worst summer on record. Of this figure, over 1 million were Americans on an Ireland vacation, who are used to the “Have a nice day routine” as part and parcel of their service sector. Sadly in recent years the myth that this island was Ireland of the Welcomes proved to be just that - a myth - to go along with the many myths that Irish folklore presents us with.

In hotels, pubs, restaurants, shops and tourist attractions there seems to an ingrained surliness displayed by staff serving the public. It is almost as though the roles are reversed and that the customer is a nuisance to be ignored, or served with barely a civil word. It doesn’t help that a lot of assistants behind counters are not Irish and may have a poor grasp of English. It is, however, no excuse. They have employers who should instruct them in good manners and monitor their behaviour when serving customers. It is not as though the fault alone lies with our immigrant workers – our homegrown variety are a lot worse and are an example of one of the many undesirable legacies of the Celtic Tiger era.

Our second wish for 2008 is the impossible dream and we will not dwell long on the subject for we at Look Around Ireland are liable to get so worked up about it that we could become an unwitting victim of this beast. We are referring, of course, to the HSE, who purport to run our third world, so called health service. Please, for the love of God, do something to improve the calamitous situation. We are a country of only 4 million people. How difficult can it be to hire the best outsourced health management experts to be appointed with a brief to reform and make efficient this monster over which nobody seems to be able to exert control? Staff numbers in the HSE have risen from 81,000 in 2000 to over 106,000 in 2006 and yet the service gets worse. Bring in a multi-national chief executive familiar with overseeing such numbers of employees, and put him to work, free of political and union encumbrances that seem to stifle the system.

Make at least a start in 2008 – please!

Our third wish is one which applies to anybody who is a commuter/traveler in any shape or form, so therefore it applies to practically everybody – please grant us decent infrastructure so that we can get on with our lives in some sort of ordered fashion.

I think of the motorist, the train and bus commuter, the cyclists, the airline travelers etc. etc who are all victims of the worst infrastructure in the western world. The trains are definitely from the Iron Age as is the attitude and vision of the people running them. Dublin Airport is a well documented disaster. The few kilometers of motorways that we have are car parks with lots of toll booths, and no toilets or service areas. The Dublin Port Tunnel is too low for many of the trucks it was supposedly designed to cater for. The farcical and ultra- costly Luas lines don’t meet. The list goes on and on!

In Ireland it appears to be that the mandarins in power are only possessed of the ability to be reactive instead of proactive. Everything is done as an afterthought. They bolt the stable door in Dublin when the horse has reached Cork. The inadequacies of these people in charge, the grey, faceless public service suits, make life hell for all the people and businesses of this country. Do not underestimate the damage that it is doing to the social and economic fabric of life throughout this land – you only have to be dimly observant to note that family planning is now done on the basis of ones commuter time!

The levels of sheer stress experienced by the Irish commuter, traveler, delivery person, businessperson is a rumbling furnace about to burst! Please get your act together and make it happen, we say to those who are in charge but who deny responsibility.

An outlandish wish, we know!

So there you have my New Year wishes. It would be nice if those in charge treated them as resolutions, but I guess that is just wishing for the impossible.

Have a happy New Year

Christmas in Ireland

It is the run-in to Christmas and the madness has long started in Ireland. We at Look Around Ireland have long since given up attempting to explain the mentality that seems to beset Irish people when the days start getting shorter. Christmas in Ireland starts immediately after the October Bank Holiday weekend. Or rather the commercial exploitation of this holy event starts then. The radio adverts are the usual way the season is inaugurated, subtle reminders to book your Christmas staff party or hotels offering festive season packages that you need to book now or you’ll be disappointed! And so on.

The heavy stuff gets under way in mid-November. The dreaded songs start crashing into your brain no matter what channel you switch to. The old reliables make their annual appearance. The seemingly forever young Slade still in action from the mid seventies, with Noddy Holder strutting his stuff on some show or other, the eyes bulging more and more as he gets older. Then you have of course Bob, Bono and all that gang from that the Live Aid hit single of 1985, Do They Know its Christmas, a song about famine in Africa and the suffering of the little children. Twenty two years have passed since it was the Christmas number one and the great irony and sadness is that it could be released again because nothing has changed- just substitute Ethiopia for Darfur and a hundred other places.

Look Around Ireland has a particular favourite from 1987, Shane Mc Gowan, the Pogues and Kirsty McCall with Fairytale of New York, a very evocative song that lifts the spirits of this scribe. Shane McGowan being of Irish decent spends many a vacation in Ireland while sadly, Kristy McCall is no longer with us, killed in a water skiing accident some years ago.

The early introduction of Christmas songs on the radio is one of the very minor irritations of an Irish (and perhaps other countries) Christmas. However the total overwhelming commercialization of the season is a particularly Irish phenomenon since we all became cubs of the Celtic Tiger. Panic seems to overcome the Irish people – and yes, it is mostly women- who seem to think that there will be a famine when the Christmas break comes around. Shopping centres become something of a war zone with endless queues and short tempers providing car-park rage, trolley rage and the latest must-have gadget rage. The so called ‘season of goodwill’ resembles anything but in the lead up to Christmas in Ireland.

The entire concept of Christmas has changed from that of the holy celebration of the most important religious event on the Christian calendar to a marketing and commercial bonanza that is totally peripheral to what the period is supposed to be.

In Ireland, instead of the joy of Christmas for those that it really is meant for – the little children- drink, drugs and the eruption of family disputes means that for many children Christmas is one of terror and abuse, instead of harmony and happiness. The pursuit of earthly pleasures from over indulgence on drink and food, to spending far beyond your means just to keep up with the Jones has in recent years multiplied out of all proportion.

One of the most obvious elements is the fad, imported from America of course, of dressing up your house in garish multi-coloured lights and extravagant displays of various Christmas artificacts. One only has to drive through a regular working class housing estate to find some homes dressed in totally over the top illuminations more suited to a town square. Worse still, by the time Christmas arrives there will be many more of the same in those estates with the “I can do better than you” attitude of the neighbours coming to the fore. The credit cards are maxed out in getting one up on the people up the street. Come January, like revenge, one-upmanship is a dish best served cold as the lights are dismantled and the question is posed as to what was that piece of madness we indulged in? Come February when the credit card bills start arriving, the memories of Christmas past become very unpleasant indeed!

I always feel that Christmas should first and foremost be family orientated. It used to be until it was hi-jacked by the commercial Mafia, such as Coke, Pepsi, Budweiser, Guinness and every multi-national electronics company you can think of, who produce the latest gizmo game that creates peer pressure from kids to force their parents to go into debt to acquire this new toy. Clever marketing and false rumours by the manufacturers of impending shortages serve only to increase the frenzy to get hold of one of these things for their beloved kids.

In America Christmas lasts for one day, despite all the neon lights. However a month earlier they have Thanksgiving, a wonderful long weekend in which families all get together, no matter the distance to travel. There is warmth and a depth to this occasion without the commercial blitz that is Christmas on this side of the pond.

We could do well to emulate this spirit of Thanksgiving from America and import it into the Christmas festival of fun and frolics that passes for Christmas in Ireland.

Happy Christmas all!

Sam Maguire