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I made comments online during December in response to (inter alia) the following articles:

Sir, In her hagiography of President Higgins, Alison O'Connor describes her pleasure at hearing once more his “slapdown” of American radio host Michael Graham (“Be true to yourself, Michael D, and become a great president”, Comment, 4th November).

However she should do her research before indulging such glee. She clearly listened only to the four-minute Youtube clip that went viral last August with 1.8m hits (tinyurl.ie/2mikesedited), but which had been doctored in March 2012 to edit out Mr Graham's inconvenient contribution.

Had she played the original twenty-minute debate (tinyurl.ie/2mikesoriginal) which has been on Newstalk's website since it was broadcast in May 2010, she would have learnt that Michael Graham slapped down President Higgins's rants at least as much as the other way round, but without the rudeness and profanity. Yours etc,

Sir, / Ireland's written constitution of 1937 is the third oldest in the world, after America (1789) and Australia (1901). It has stood the test of time like few others, through a world war, through a cold war, through countless dictatorships in Europe, South America, Asia, Africa and through domestic trials and tribulations. Like few others, it is a well proven document that should therefore be amended only where there is an overwhelmingly strong case to do so, and it is up to those who want to change it to make such a case.

Thus before we vote in this referendum, its proponents should at least name even a single instance of child neglect or child abuse or unlawful child death that would have been prevented or mitigated had the proposed amendment been in place, and explain just how. But they cannot, because no such instance exists.

The referendum may make people feel good, but that is no basis for altering Ireland's sacred constitution. It needs to be rejected. / Yours etc,

I made comments online during November in response to (inter alia) the following articles:

I made comments online during October in response to (inter alia) the following articles:

Sir, / Regarding those remonstrating outside the Google headquarters and US Embassy about the availability of some pathetic Youtube clip ('Blasphemy' backlash spreads to Dublin as Muslims march on Google headquarters, News, September 29), is it not ironic that they should use Ireland's freedom of speech culture to protest against Ireland's freedom of speech culture? / Yours etc,

Sir, / Richard Kimball thinks that offensive speech should be restricted for fear of possible “public unrest” (Letters, September 21st). I find that a highly offensive contention and call on him to retract it and apologise to me. Oh, and he recycles that old canard about not yelling “fire” in a crowded theatre. What if the theatre is on fire? / Yours etc,

Sir, / The self-serving apologias in respect of Ireland's exorbitant cost of medicines, as advanced by the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association's Philip Hannon and by opthalmologist Kate Coleman, would be amusing were they not so pathetic (Letters, September 7th).

Neither answered the central point. Why, for identical pharmaceuticals, do pharmacies in Ireland charge double, treble and sometime ten times what pharmacies charge in the rest of the so-called free-trade area that is the EU, eg in Britain, France, Italy, Hungary, Spain, Portugal?

Here are a few more like-for-like comparisons with Spain: Xalacom (for glaucoma), Ireland €55 vs Spain €15; Tenormin (blood pressure), €16 vs €3; Premarin (HRT), €19 vs €6; Imigrane (migraine) €15 vs €7; Multivite (general health), €5 vs €1.

This is not a victimless situation. One wonders how many people don't take preventive drugs because they can't afford the exorbitant Irish prices, and as a result unnecessarily suffer afflictions in later life.

It explains why the bags of returning Irish residents are often stuffed with, er, drugs. / Yours etc

Source of data for this letter is a Tallrite Blogpost, “The Crime of Protected Pharmacists in Ireland”, October 2003. 
Note that this issue has been around unreported, unresolved and needlessly removing money from citizens' pockets for a decade

I made comments online during September in response to (inter alia) the following articles:

I made comments online during the month, in response to (inter alia) the following articles:

Sir, / The ESM Treaty, which when fully ratified will set up a permanent €urozone bailout fund (out of non-existent money), is a totalitarian abomination, which no patriot would ever sign his/her country up to (Bid to block ESM treaty rejected, Irish Independent July 31st, Court ruling allows for ratification of ESM treaty, Irish Times August 1st). Its ratification will be an act of national treachery against ordinary citizens. Here's why.

The treaty creates a new Eurocracy, the “European Stability Mechanism”, which is structurally designed to be an irresistible invitation to rampant, institutionalised corruption on an unprecedented scale.

This is because

The ESM piggy bank will thus contain a €700 bn cesspool of debasement available to enrich everyone who works in it and countless other bodies that come into contact with it.

The Germans are waiting for their Constitutional Court to make a ruling on the treaty next month. Meanwhile the German cabinet has apparently just rejected French, Italian and Spanish demands for ESM funding.

So what's Ireland's big hurry? Yours etc,

References provided -
http://tinyurl.ie/esm (my own analysis),
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPcWHBPYOSU  and
the ESM Treaty itself, http://www.european-council.europa.eu/media/582311/05-tesm2.en12.pdf

To Top of index

Comments were made online during the month, in response to the following articles:

A great article, but I have a couple of observations.

 

I am not sure where your (optimistic!) in/out figures of €14.4bn / €18.8bn come from. The Government itself estimates that its receipts for (the whole of) 2012 will be €39.9bn, while its expenditure will be €61.5, ie we will blow FIFTY-FOUR PERCENT MORE than we take in.
http://www.budget.gov.ie/Budgets/2012/Documents/Estimates%20of%20Receipts%20and%20Expenditure%20for%20the%20Year%20ending%2031%20December%202012.pdf

 

As a point of interest, the Shell-to-Sea palaver will have at least trebled the delivery time of the project from 4 to 12 years, and trebled the cost from €0.8bn to €2.4bn. The effect of this is to have REDUCED BY OVER SEVENTY PERCENT the tax that would otherwise have accrued to the Irish State from Corrib production. The protestors, while pretending they have the interests of Irishmen and women at heart, have royally shafted them.
http://www.tallrite.com/blog.htm#Troubling_Trebling_of_Corrib_Costs_Irish_Taxpayers_75%

Comments were made online during the month, in response to the following articles:

Ooooh! The EU is getting tetchy. Here are another couple of ideas.

Ask the Palestinians why they have refused their own state every time they have been offered it - in 1937, 1948, 1967, 2000 ... That's the ONLY reason there is no such thing as “Palestinian land”.

Secondly, ask them why a future Palestinian state has to be Judenfrei (and why the EU also seems to think it should be emptied of Jews, which I believe has tried before, within Europe). Why cannot Jews (in for example those controversial “settlements”) become full citizens of a Palestinian state just as Palestinians have been full citizens of Israel ever since its foundation?

A long - and indeed somewhat tetchy - exchange with mostly anti-Israel correspondents ensued in the Comments section

Effectively, only people with cash are able to buy.

And then they sell their existing larger properties.

Effect?

Who are the people most desperate for houses?

Sir, Let's see if I've got this straight.

A man becomes aware, in the 1970s, of a vile child molester. Yet he fails to tell the police or take any action that might put a stop to the molester's depraved activities and even tells the child-victim to remain silent. So consequently the molester continues child-raping with impunity for years. That man today holds a senior position of authority.

Ireland's Tánaiste [deputy prime minster] Eamon Gilmore, Taoiseach [prime minster] Enda Kenny and numerous other worthies who are not members of - and indeed are hostile to - the entity which the man now leads, declare that he “should not hold a position of authority” and should therefore resign.

This sounds most honourable.

Yet why then do they remain so pally and respectful with Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein?

For decades, he hid and facilitated his allegedly debauched, incestuous, child-molesting brother Liam who is accused of routinely raping his own daughter Aine as from when the little girl was just four years old. Oh, and used to beat up her mother, his wife. Gerry not only protected his brother but got him work in youth clubs where he had easy access to children [Ref 1].

Gerry was outed as a child-rapist-protector only when Aine eventually told her story publicly in 2009. Liam was finally arrested only six months ago on charges of rape and gross indecency.

Now, what was that about Cardinal Sean Brady?

Then, on today's front page [Ref 2] Harry McGee reports that Northern Ireland's “Deputy First Minister, Martin McGuinness, said when the issue first emerged two years ago he had said Dr Brady should consider his position. He said many Catholics would be ‘dismayed’ at the new allegations and Dr Brady should reflect on his stated position that he will stay on as leader of his church in Ireland.”

Yet apparently Mr McGuiness's own leader, being Cardinal Brady's fellow child-rapist-protector Gerry Adams, does not need to “consider his position” and can happily “stay on as leader of” Mr McGuinness's own party Sinn Fein.

A cynical person might conclude that the current furore is more about attacking the Catholic Church than being concerned about the rape of children. Yours etc,

References

Explanatory Note

The context of this letter may  be understood by reference to a contemporaneous blog post entitled “National Leaders and Child Rape”.

Sir, - Tom McElligott blithely asserts that “there is now a body of evidence comparing straight and gay parenting and the results are negligible in terms of psychological and material wellbeing” (Letters, April 24th). Such an extraordinary and counter-intuitive statement should not be allowed stand without providing links to such evidence, which I challenge him to furnish.

In return, I offer him, at http://www.tinyurl.ie/oq, copious hard evidence in support of the statement that “married biological parents are better for children”. - Yours etc,

Reference:
Head 2 Head “Should the state sanction gay marriage”, Irish Times, 14th January 2008

However the Moderator evidently deemed my comment
far too friendly to the hated Catholicism, so it was censored into oblivion

“All necessary information should be disseminated by the department ... Other parties, particularly those with vested interests, should not be encouraged to circulate parents and other members of the community.”

As if this Report of the Forum of Patronage and Pluralism did not itself reek of “vested interests”! Anti-Catholic, pro-atheist, pro-multiculturalism vested interests.

And “jody12”, if parents, who are CONSTITUTIONALLY the educators of their children, happen to want their young children to be proselytized by the Catholic faith, then who exactly are you to tell them this cannot be allowed? Where do you fit into the constitution in regards to the education of other people's children? Ditto “Snukes” and others who express a similar sentiment.

Moreover, “jody12”, on what basis do you make the arrogant assumption that parents who want a Catholic education for their children are "thick and ignorant", rather than yourself? (BTW,why do you and “Snukes” hide behind pseudonyms? Ashamed? I would be.)

The problem will all these anti-Catholics is that they are convinced they are right. But that is the same as Catholics. Catholics also believe they are right when they talk of God, Jesus, his teachings, heaven, hell etc. They would therefore be remiss NOT to share this good news with their own beloved children.

Just as anti-Catholics want to share their bad news!

We'll all know the truth only when we're dead.

Stop calling it “avoidance”which is perfectly sensible, widespread and wholly lawful. Non payment of the household charge is tax evasion, pure and simple, which is a criminal offence.

If author Dan Hayen doesn't know the difference between tax avoidance and evasion, he is unlikely to gain his law doctorate. Unless of course his law professor is the similarly knowledge-challenged co-author Colin Scott. ;-]

Jim O'Sullivan

And right on Tony Allwright, what next, herding pensioners etc into prison for tax evasion or even worse again, confiscating their homes!!! We really have, well and truely, lost the plot.

Sir, - Alan Quinlan's appeal for the IRFU to embrace seven-a-side rugby was more timely than he evidently realised (“It's time Ireland woke up to sevens”, April 4th). He rightly emphasised that Sevens will feature in the 2016 Olympics. But he forgot to mention that the quadrennial Sevens World Cup will be held in Moscow as soon as next summer.

Moreover because of the inclusio  of Sevens in future Olympics tournaments, the 2013 Sevens World Cup in Russia will be the last ever. Therefore whoever wins it will become Sevens World Cup Champion for all eternity. In similar fashion, the United States won the Olympic title when Sevens was last an Olympic sport - in 1924 - so has reigned as Olympic Sevens Champion ever since.

For information, the current Sevens World Cup Champion (Dubai 2009) is Grand Slammer Wales. On that occasion, underdog Ireland, under doughty coach John Skurr, participated enthusiastically and reached the Quarter Finals by defeating mighty Australia (sound familiar?). Tournament details at http://tinyurl.ie/09-7s.

The IRFU needs forthwith to get the Sevens ball rolling, so to speak, if Ireland is not to be left behind in a wonderful, fast and furious version of international rugby, as Mr Quinlan so eloquently described. - Yours etc.

PS - The Irish Times kindly published two articles by me about the 2009 Sevens World Cup:
“Lining out for the Dubai sevens heaven”
“Alternative rugby brings many surprises”

By stopping spending, that's how.

This State employs far more people than it needs to (not a single layoff since the downturn despite the crash in activity), and pays each of them far in excess of comparable jobs elsewhere in Europe (eg €100k for a doctor; €50k for the same doctor in France; ditto professors BTW!). If the public service were to cut numbers by 33% and pay by 33%, its cost would be halved.

However, since both this and the previous administrations have shown themselves utterly unable or unwilling to take seriously the massive budget deficit of €22bn, the best thing that can happen is that foreign loans dry up and the necessary - and eventually inevitable - cuts are enforced.

Only when the cost base has been ruthlessly driven down, and quickly, has Ireland a hope of recovery, and a stop be put to the shameful looting of the future of children, babies, foetuses and the yet unconceived.

Pat De'mond
John, You can see that Tony Allwright and 'Shellshock' have put their fingers on the answer--- where we read on the same page that the head of Barclays got paid an obscene €7.5 million in 2011. John your cosiness as described by qwerty51 leaves your mind set fixed on the status quo -- you are conditioned to read the game you are programmed in one way only.
9th March, 13:00:42

Wexford Musings
(@ Tony) I wish people would stop attacking the public sector. Some people who attack the public sector turn around and then complain about the services we receive, whether in hospitals, our roads, our water, refuse collections, SNA's etc. You cant have your cake and eat it too. Reducing staffing in the public sector will lead to a reduction in services. As an example take the plan to move the processing of Higher Education Grants to Dublin City VEC. Why is this happening, it wasn't so long ago that we were questioning how VECs handled there [sic] money, but I digress.

Here are some facts about the public sector and the savings achieved under the CPA:

1. Changes in areas like medical laboratories (now saving €5 million a year) and radiography (estimated savings of €3.5 million a year).

2. The Croke Park Implementation Body has verified that the agreement directly led to annual savings of over €680 million in the year up to June 2011, exceeding Government targets.

3. €289 million in payroll savings (compared to a target of €223 million) arising from reduced staffing, cuts in overtime costs, and various efficiencies

4. €308 million in non-payroll savings arising from greater efficiencies, work reorganisation and better use of resources including property rationalisation, improved procurement practices, and reduced purchasing costs

5. Almost €86 million savings from cost-avoidance initiatives

6. staff reductions achieved under Croke Park have exceeded the targets set, leading to substantial savings in the public service pay bill. Public service numbers fell by 16,000 in the two years up to mid-2011, generating annual savings of €900 million. This trend has continued in the second half of 2011.

7. Public service gross pay was cut by an average 14% (through direct pay cuts and the introduction of the so-called ‘pension levy’) before the Croke Park agreement came into force. Pay for new entrants has been reduced by an additional 10%, which means that new entrants to the public service are being paid almost a quarter less than in 2008

8. While recent political attention has rightly focussed on indefensible and unsustainable pension packages for a very few senior public servants, an answer to a recent Dáil question revealed that 78% of civil service pensioners receive annual pensions of €30,000 or less.

I could go on but I think I've made my point. Public sector workers are doing their best to make savings. All have taken pay and pension cuts. The public sector is not part of the problem but is, and has been for more than 3 years a part of the solution

John Ryan
9th March 2012, 13:56:56

"Being a very tall teenager of either sex is tough" [writes Ms Hourihan].

Tell me about it! As an awkward shy teenager, I was a towering 6ft 5in but was
+ the sole white man in first a boys' Chinese secondary school,
+ then the sole Caucasian male in an all-giggling Chinese typing school,
+ after that the sole honkie student in the University or Hong Kong.

Not wanting to sound stereotypical or anything, but the Chinese, especially Southerners, are not renowned for their loftiness.

A singularly unimaginative response by the IRFU. They should emulate Nike: "Just do it". Use 7s as a development step for young players, a kind of Ireland Academy, for minimal additional cost. That's certainly worked for Felix Jones.

Ireland competed in the 2009 World Cup in Dubai and performed creditably. Will it compete in next year's World Cup in Moscow? Pretty pathetic if it doesn't. It will be a last chance to win a 7s World Cup before this is replaced by the Olympics.

Oh, and America may be the reigning Olympic Games 7s rugby champions, but Wales are the current World Cup champions. See http://tinyurl.ie/09-7s

Pathetic article. Who exactly cast your supposed veto re the Rwandan genocide? When did house building become a fit subject for the UNSC to even discuss? And why is a future Palestinian state supposed to be Judenfrei anyway?  

The P5’s veto is not the problem with the UN. It is the UN’s endemic corruption that gives the president of tyrannies like Zimbabwe or Saudi Arabia equal voting powers as those of democracies like the US or New Zealand. It is perverse to consider that a club whose majority membership is dictatorships should somehow be the world’s moral arbiter on matters or war or human rights.  

The sooner the UN and other democracies defund the UN and set up their own United Democracies the better.

From fearghalobrien

@Tony Allwright, since the "house building" in question is in an occupied region, it's considered in breach of the Geneva convention. Breaches of this convention are most definitely relevant to the UNSC.

From Tony Allwright

@fearghalobrien  
The so-called Occupied Territories of the West Bank were seized in the 1967 Six Day War in self-defence from Jordan who had occupied it (illegally) ever since the unprovoked war it and other Arab states launched against Israel in 1948. Prior to that it was still technically part of the area legally Mandated by the League of Nations to the British after the WW1 defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1918.  

Moreover, the UN has never demanded Israel's unilateral (ie non-negotiated) withdrawal from the West Bank (eg UNSC 242).  

As such, under UN rules, the West Bank is "disputed" territory, not "occupied" (no legal sovereign entity preceded Israel there). Therefore Israel is as entitled as Palestinians to build on it until such time as the dispute is resolved. Furthermore, after resolution, why cannot Jews continue to live there (as Arabs live in Israel), or does the world believe a Palestinian State that includes the West Bank should conform to Hitler's Judenfrei philosophy?  

Have a look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4SOr6HvuoA

To Top of index

No discussion of the cost of alcohol-fuelled damage and of the taxation of alcohol is coherent unless hard numbers are provided. Which €uro figure is higher?

Taxes on tobacco and the early deaths that tobacco causes (reducing pension payments) far outweigh the cost of treating tobacco-fuelled damage (eg treating lung cancer). In Britain, smokers pay for themselves in just 13 years.

Similarly, the British pay £14 billion a year in booze taxes, whereas alcohol misuse costs the NHS £1.7 bn, to which should be added a further £7 bn as the cost of alcohol-fuelled crime. So drink renders a net profit of £5 bn to the taxpayer.

Thus it would be a fiscal disaster if Brits gave up their booze and fags. Do we think the situation would be different here in Ireland?

So, John, next time quantify your arguments.

Elpenor Dignam (p2)
@Tony Allwright
One could cynically justify going to war on the same basis however this makes the argument no less morally repugnant.

inotherwords (p4)
@Tony Allwright
Interesting information there and i would expect similiar statistics for this country. Makes me feel less guilty at continuing to smoke throughout my adult life but gave up drinking alcohol about 27 years ago except for the rare glass of wine no more than 4 times a year. Whatever happens, i am paid up in full!

Of course the fact that i actually agree with JW today could drive me to drink......

Jim O'Sullivan (p7)
"Tony Allwright"
Is money all that counts? Your logic seems to be that it is cheaper to let people suffer and die prematurely rather than control consumption. What next, minimum speed restrictions of 200K an hour and 300 in built up areas? That should result in a few less pension payouts! The PD train left the station sometime ago!

Bere says “Could the Irish feminist movement ask the sisters to dress in really revealing clothes during their march, for the boys?”

Yes, please. The less you wear, the more you prove your point that ... actually what is your point? Who cares? Just tell us where we can find your demo so that we can cheer on your cause. Please don't disappoint!

Trinity College's Philosophical Society will debate on Thursday 2nd Feb whether "Patriarchy is inevitable" (I am an invited speaker). This article and the CSO report certainly illustrate that within Ireland anyway, the Matriarchy is on a relentlessly upward trajectory!

These problems would virtually vanish were the Irish Government to drastically cut back it's utterly profligate spending so as to bring the budget back into balance.

Last year alone it added €25 billion - a record - to the €120 billion national debt. This is nothing less than looting the future (that means the future of today's youngsters, toddlers, babies, foetuses and the yet unconceived) solely in order to shield the present from the consequences of today's adults' own past behaviour. If that isn't child abuse I don't know what is.

By balancing the budget, there would be no need for additional borrowing, so the effect of bond rates would become largely moot. 

25 Jan, 10:10:25

Johnny Volume
How exactly do you suggest the Govt "cut back it's utterly profligate spending so as to bring the budget back into balance"?? By closing hospitals, schools, garda stations? How much more do you think can be taken from this society before it implodes?

25 Jan, 11:58:57

Johnny Volume asks whether the Govt should "cut back it's utterly profligate spending so as to bring the budget back into balance" by "closing hospitals, schools, garda stations?" 

If that is the only way to close the deficit, the answer is yes. The economic implosion was caused by the adult generations of today. Therefore it is they who should pay the price and take the pain, not innocent future generations. Why is everyone so keen to punish children by confiscating their economic future, in order to pay for the sins of and avoid suffering by adults?

26 Jan, 08:12:58

Wouldn't it be a fairer regime if abortion were permitted only during, say, the baby's first year outside the womb. Then the child would have a chance to make its case for life. If, however, the parents still decided they didn't want it, they would be entitled to have the infant put down before its first birthday.

Even the bull in the ring, or the fish on a hook, or the pheasant in the sights of a shotgun, or the fox fleeing from hounds has a chance to escape its fate, unlike an aborted foetus. 

Why should animals be treated better? 

This is where you can find the BBC items:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16343906
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b018xtr9/Face_the_Facts_The_Disowned_Army/

Ireland's treatment of these men, and even of their children, was truly shameful and without precedent in the non-Communist world. It is indicative of Ireland's official sympathy with the Nazi cause. Now in their late 80s and 90s, many of the surviving soldiers still live in fear of a knock on the door from the authorities.

Yet even today, Ireland is the only EU country which still honours a native Nazi collaborator with a public statue (it's in Fairview Park), which only two years ago it renovated after vandals understandably knocked its head off. Moreover, the statue is the only one in Dublin to an Irish volunteer killed during World War 2. The man commemorated is of course the IRA’s Seán Russell who drowned on a Nazi submarine after negotiating some Nazi gun-running. See this photo from the Irish Times - http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/images/2009/0709/1224250318117_1.jpg.

Sorry, Sean Russell's is not the only Irish memorial to a Nazi collaborator. http://markhumphrys.com/sfira.tyranny.html#nazi.memorials

One of the biggest issues, not mentioned here, is the issue of personal liberty. It is a gross infringement of personal liberty for one person (Government minister, Trade Union official, Labour party apparatchik, whatever) to try to prevent another free citizen from spending his/her money as he/she sees fit, whether it is to be spent on drink, holidays, better food, personal insurance, a larger house - or better education for his/her kids.

Moreover, the only reason parents use private schools is because they don't think the State schools are good enough. The solution, therefore, is surely to bring State schools (adequately funded as David Quinn's article illustrates) up to the level of private schools, which would then put the latter out of business.

Gift Idea
Cuddly Teddy Bears
looking for a home

Good to report that as at
14th September 2009
he is at least alive.

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 What I've recently
been reading

“The Lemon Tree”, by Sandy Tol (2006),
is a delightful novel-style history of modern Israel and Palestine told through the eyes of a thoughtful protagonist from either side, with a household lemon tree as their unifying theme.

But it's not entirely honest in its subtle pro-Palestinian bias, and therefore needs to be read in conjunction with an antidote, such as

See detailed review

+++++

This examines events which led to BP's 2010 Macondo blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. 

BP's ambitious CEO John Browne expanded it through adventurous acquisitions, aggressive offshore exploration, and relentless cost-reduction that trumped everything else, even safety and long-term technical sustainability.  

Thus mistakes accumulated, leading to terrifying and deadly accidents in refineries, pipelines and offshore operations, and business disaster in Russia.  

The Macondo blowout was but an inevitable outcome of a BP culture that had become poisonous and incompetent. 

However the book is gravely compromised by a litany of over 40 technical and stupid errors that display the author's ignorance and carelessness. 

It would be better to wait for the second (properly edited) edition before buying. 

As for BP, only a wholesale rebuilding of a new, professional, ethical culture will prevent further such tragedies and the eventual destruction of a once mighty corporation with a long and generally honourable history.

Note: I wrote my own reports on Macondo
in May, June, and July 2010

+++++

A horrific account of:

More details on my blog here.

+++++

This is nonagenarian Alistair Urquhart’s incredible story of survival in the Far East during World War II.

After recounting a childhood of convention and simple pleasures in working-class Aberdeen, Mr Urquhart is conscripted within days of Chamberlain declaring war on Germany in 1939.

From then until the Japanese are deservedly nuked into surrendering six years later, Mr Urquhart’s tale is one of first discomfort but then following the fall of Singapore of ever-increasing, unmitigated horror. 

After a wretched journey Eastward, he finds himself part of Singapore’s big but useless garrison.

Taken prisoner when Singapore falls in 1941, he is, successively,

Chronically ill, distraught and traumatised on return to Aberdeen yet disdained by the British Army, he slowly reconstructs a life.  Only in his late 80s is he able finally to recount his dreadful experiences in this unputdownable book.

There are very few first-person eye-witness accounts of the the horrors of Japanese brutality during WW2. As such this book is an invaluable historical document.

+++++

“Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies”

This is a rattling good tale of the web of corruption within which the American president and his cronies operate. It's written by blogger Michele Malkin who, because she's both a woman and half-Asian, is curiously immune to the charges of racism and sexism this book would provoke if written by a typical Republican WASP.

With 75 page of notes to back up - in best blogger tradition - every shocking and in most cases money-grubbing allegation, she excoriates one Obama crony after another, starting with the incumbent himself and his equally tricky wife. 

Joe Biden, Rahm Emmanuel, Valerie Jarett, Tim Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Steven Rattner, both Clintons, Chris Dodd: they all star as crooks in this venomous but credible book. 

ACORN, Mr Obama's favourite community organising outfit, is also exposed for the crooked vote-rigging machine it is.

+++++

This much trumpeted sequel to Freakonomics is a bit of disappointment. 

It is really just a collation of amusing little tales about surprising human (and occasionally animal) behaviour and situations.  For example:

The book has no real message other than don't be surprised how humans sometimes behave and try to look for simple rather than complex solutions.

And with a final anecdote (monkeys, cash and sex), the book suddenly just stops dead in its tracks.  Weird.

++++++

A remarkable, coherent attempt by Financial Times economist Alan Beattie to understand and explain world history through the prism of economics. 

It's chapters are organised around provocative questions such as

It's central thesis is that economic development continues to be impeded in different countries for different historical reasons, even when the original rationale for those impediments no longer obtains.  For instance:

The author writes in a very chatty, light-hearted matter which makes the book easy to digest. 

However it would benefit from a few charts to illustrate some of the many quantitative points put forward, as well as sub-chaptering every few pages to provide natural break-points for the reader. 

+++++

This is a thrilling book of derring-do behind enemy lines in the jungles of north-east Burma in 1942-44 during the Japanese occupation.

The author was a member of Britain's V Force, a forerunner of the SAS. Its remit was to harass Japanese lines of command, patrol their occupied territory, carryout sabotage and provide intelligence, with the overall objective of keeping the enemy out of India.   

Irwin is admirably yet brutally frank, in his descriptions of deathly battles with the Japs, his execution of a prisoner, dodging falling bags of rice dropped by the RAF, or collapsing in floods of tears through accumulated stress, fear and loneliness. 

He also provides some fascinating insights into the mentality of Japanese soldiery and why it failed against the flexibility and devolved authority of the British. 

The book amounts to a  very human and exhilarating tale.

Oh, and Irwin describes the death in 1943 of his colleague my uncle, Major PF Brennan.

+++++

 
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After 48 crackling, compelling, captivating games, the new World Champions are, deservedly,
SOUTH AFRICA

England get the Silver,
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