Emigration ! People talk about it as if it is a bad thing !

Back when people seem not to remember, when interest rates were between 19 and 21%, and unemployment was over 20% , I joined most of the rest of us that were lucky to get a third level education (a luxury back then – not a God given right – and we had to pay for fees !) and emigrated from this, our great country. 

It was the best thing that ever happened to me.

I was born in 1964, and whilst growing up, got to recognise each and every budget, as a bad thing, where income tax was raised every year. Petrol, cigarettes, alcohol – you name it – went up in price. Tax bands were narrowed at every budget and any pluses were not worth mentioning.

But I was lucky ! I didn’t think it then, like most people under the age of thirty don’t think it now. I got a great education and was able to graduate from University (there were only five then – with a narrow enough list of courses). I realised though that I would have to seek work PDQ (pretty damn quick) and if I didn’t, then it was off to the US, or the UK, or somewhere else far flung, to earn my living. I certainly wasn’t thinking of taking a year out to ‘find’ myself, or tour the world before I started off work – but perhaps that’s a good thing – that some can afford to actually ‘do’ that now.

Back then (it’s not that long ago), if you got a job offer, you bloody well took it and were delighted. It meant that you were one of the lucky ones – one of the ones to stay ! Like the eldest boy in the family, you got the farm !

Most of my class in College waited only until they had their University degrees in their hands, before packing a bag and heading to the Airport or Ferry – and then, like now, it was seen as the ‘cream of the crop’ was leaving, never to return. Those days are thankfully gone. Most of the people who I knew to emigrate in the 80’s are now back in Ireland, living their life, raising their families, and getting on with things.

Emigration was seen in the past as just that (and indeed for many it was) – leaving the Four Green Fields never to return. Emigrating to America was the then equivalent of leaving to set up shop on the moon – never mind going to Australia or New Zealand !

Emigration in the mid 1980’s was our first step into the world of business – and by that I mean, first time going to work – whether you were an engineer, a nurse or a bricklayer. It was the first time a lot of us had been away from home. It was the first time we had to really look after ourselves.

We had to realise that this wasn’t a summer holiday away from home – this was it ! This was life ! It was this that all our parent’s teachings had been about. This is what school and college was preparing us for. To stand on our two feet and be counted – and thankfully most passed, some with flying colours.

You see, we were Irish. This had happened before to our brothers and sisters,  fathers and grandfathers – and make no doubt, even if we find endless gas off the Mayo coast, and oil in Dublin Bay – it will happen again. Emigration made men and women out of us and made us all the stronger for it. It happened to our forefathers, but in those darker times, international travel was not an option – and there was the fact, that if you came home from overseas in the past, without the trappings of being rich, then you were viewed as a failure. 

It is hard to believe that even today, there are Irish men and women, living on the streets of England, that will not come home, for that very reason, and even though there are many of them, thet are/were in a minority. Most people who left these shores in the past, are able to look back on those days and reflect that it was a good experience in the long run. Personally it was very hard to be a strange city and so far from family and friends, but in time, it became more bearable and soon it became the norm.

Once again the media are jumping on the band wagon, berating the Govt and the politicians, at every hands turn, saying that once again, Ireland’s brave young are having to leave. RTE last week, on their Six One News, had a piece about two young lads about to leave a certain village in Ireland, and that the village was going to suffer because of it. There is nothing to suggest that even if the two lads stayed in Ireland with an abundance of work, that they would stay in their village. More than likely they would have been off, if only for a few years, to Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick or some other place, with brighter lights than their own small home town.

And there lies the rub – most of those who are forced to spread their wings at this moment in time, will be back. It might be a few years, it might even be decade, but they will return. They will have learned more of the world.  They will have gained invaluable experience, which they would not have gained here. They will come back to settle down and begin a new phase of their lives – and all our lives will be richer because of it.

If the World is warming up, why am I so cold ?

Experts say it is the single biggest challenge facing humanity at the present, but are we looking at the wrong end of the Global Warming problem

You may be of the believe that climate change and global warming are parts of a normal cycle of our world, naturally heating and cooling every few thousand years, or, you may be part of the school that believes this heating of the world’s atmosphere, to the detrimental effect of mankind, is actually of mankind’s doing. 

If we are facing these problems because of what some might call Mother Nature, and the natural cycle of the earth, heating up and cooling down, then there surely is little we can do, and indeed nothing we should do. 

If, on the other hand, we are at this stage because of the burning of fossil fuels and our erosion of the ozone layer etc, then we need to examine if we can alter this situation – and how best to tackle it.

But are we being given the full picture ? We, as consumers, are being squarely blamed for our part in global warming, whereas it could be argued that it is actually the world’s corporations and governments that are actually more to blame, and that they have shifted the onus onto us mere citizens. We alone cannot stop countries like China and India from polluting the world’s atmospheres, Kyoto or not.

However, even if all governments in the world were willing to spend more money on solving the problems (which they are not !), it cannot all be done at once. We have to prioritize. The biggest problems need tackling first. It is the national governments that can effect real change – and real change at home, not abroad.

CO2 emissions and carbon footprints have become the bywords for fighting global warming, but yet here in Ireland we have huge problems with water quality, which has a far more damaging and direct effect on our population, than what the world’s multi-nationals are pumping out. We even have the Green Party as part of the Government, so things should be looking up ! But, are they ?

Last year in Galway, people had to buy bottled water, or boil their own before using it, for months on end. Why ? because of the failure of the local water plant to filter out the germ ‘cryptosporidium’ as it was an old and out of date filtration system. What was done about this ? Local and national authorities argued over who was to blame and pointed fingers at each other whilst the dirty water continued to be ‘fed’ into the public system. The irony is here that one of the local councils was headed by a Green Party mayor. And there are other blackspots for drinking water around the country which continue to cause problems for Joe Citizen. Yet, what is being done ? 

Other countries would be less tolerant for a water service akin to the third world.

Environmentalists the world over are focussing on the melting ice caps and the rising seas, when a look closer to home might yield better results. The ice caps and the seas are worrying problems and there is enough evidence to show there is significant change, but bringing your bottles to the bottle bank and composting your rubbish is not going to change the polar meltdown. 

Whilst taxing carbon does seem a popular and perhaps effective initiative, but why are we not growing more bio-fuel crops which can provide the world with non-fossil fuels - a fuel we can grow, time and time again ? A natural solution to an un-natural problem ?

But, if you are now feeling even more desperate and useless – don’t be. We, as citizens, and as a nation, can have a meaningful and tangible impact on the quality of where we live. We can have a role in the heightened protection of our coastal waters, our lakes and our waterways – we can plant more forestry and clean up our country a little more. 

This can be achieved if we combine our efforts, and not sit back and wonder what can be done about oil spillages in Alaska and CO2 emissions, over which we have little power to change.

The Copenhagen Consensus meets again this year, with the world’s greatest authorities, to find out what are the biggest challenges facing mankind in the 21^st century and beyond. Climate change ranks a lowly 13^th on the scale of threats, yet some would have us believe differently.

The panel at the Consensus found that climate policies have "costs that were likely to exceed the benefits". It further stated "global warming must be addressed, but agreed that approaches based on too abrupt a shift toward lower emissions of carbon are needlessly expensive."

Critics of the Consensus say that this is too simplistic an approach and further criticised the fact that it was only ‘economic’ in its outlook. Who do we believe ?

Wherever you stand on this issue, it is surely easier to concentrate on issues we can change and which are far simpler, than trying to alter something that, even collectively, we have little power to change. So, perhaps the powers that be could concentrate on providing more initiatives to help us help ourselves – and let us try and change the things we can change.

Beautiful Game ?

The recent tribulations on and indeed off the football pitch must force us to reflect on what was once called ‘The Beautiful Game’

It was the great Edson Arantes do Nascimento or Pele, as he is better known, who called his auto-biography ‘My Life and the Beautiful Game’ but with the way the game has been allowed to deteriorate to such terrible levels, one wonders if he still thinks it is still such.

Proponents of the game will say it is a beautiful game when it is well played well – but that could be said about any and every game/sport by its followers ! that’s why we like some sports over others.

Not to put too fine a point on it but it seems that at the very top of the game, in the hallowed halls of places like Old Trafford, The Bernabeu and the San Siro, the aim of the modern footballer is to win AT ALL COSTS – and if that means by cheating then, so what. 

What makes this all the worse is that it is taken as the norm now among, not only the supporters, but, by their lack of ability to deal with it properly, also by the games’ governing bodies. No other game on the planet suffers this behaviour – why does Soccer.

Now readers will be saying ‘rubbish – the referees are dealing with it !’ Not harshly enough says I.

Can you imagine Tiger Woods or Ronnie O’Sullivan accidentally touching the golf/snooker ball and trying to get away with it – no ! They play the game in the spirit it is supposed to be played – “May the best team/player win”

The ability of players to dive in the area, hoping to get a penalty, is becoming an art form. If it wasn’t so sad it would be funny.

Again, at the top level, where some of these guys are getting paid the equivalent of a small nations debt every week, act around so much, they should be getting an Oscar.

Picture a leading ‘star’ racing into the opponents box (and it doesn’t even have to be in the box), an opponent tries to take the ball off him, and in a dishonest effort to get a foul awarded, act like he’s been shot at point blank range by Harry Callaghan's 44 Magnum – and yet a few short moments later he’s running around like a march hare, with quite obviously nothing wrong with him – make no bones about it, that player is a cheat – some even now wave their invisible card at the ref, hoping he will book the tackler or even send them off.

And don’t let anyone brush it off by saying ‘ah sure they’re all at it’ – they are, because they have been allowed to !

We can all remember incidents where disgruntled footballers confront the referee in no uncertain terms, and without leaving anything to the imagination, telling them of their displeasure of their decision – who remembers Jaap Stam and Roy Keane venting their spleen so much to one referee, that he had to run backwards at rate of knots, being told how he was an effin this, and an effin that – what other sport tolerates this behaviour ? and of course a lot of the managers if not encourage, then also tolerate this behaviour. What do the 10 and 12 year olds now learning the game, think ? and what message is it sending out to them.

The FA and UEFA and the other governing bodies have simply to give the referees power to deal with this problem – and the clubs should back them up with real and hard fines. 

If a player on the pitch is rolling around in agony, then quite obviously he is pain – so get him off the pitch. If wants to come back after he has ‘recovered’ he has to wait 10 minutes – and he can not be substituted unless he has left the pitch for the duration of the game.

If a player starts screaming blue murder and using bad language to a ref, first give him a yellow card (this actually does happen now and again) and if he persists then give him a red one, and let the club fine him one month’s pay.

It may seem draconian, but soon you would see the sport improve beyond recognition and the game improve no end. Of course not all cheats can be rooted out, but if the Associations (and the Managers) give the refs the back up they need, then we might be able to call it the beautiful game again.

WHY WE NEED TO LOOK TO THE FUTURE AND NOT THE PAST

The new Govt., just like the last one, seems to reel like a boxer receiving a standing count, have you faith in our elected politicians  ? do they actually know how to get out of this economic cul-de-sac.

Whatever way we will get out of it, and there is nothing more sure, we WILL get out of it, there is nothing to be achieved by looking back at who is at fault, or what happened in the past - what needs to be done now, is that we all need to pull together, and all our politicans, on the govt benches and on the opposition benches, need to do the jobs for which they were elected and lead this country out of the desert. 

To put it simply, they to get off their collective arses, stop pointing the finger of blame at everyone but themsleves, and get on with the job, for which we elected them - run the bloody country !

The past will be dealt with by voters making their own feelings known at upcoming elections. How we got here is very regrettable and infuriating, but it will not help us get out of it - It is to the future we need to look, not the past.

In recent times we have seen signs of industrial unrest become more prominent – something we have not seen in this country for a decade or more. The country was wealthier then and everybody was happy - or happier perhaps, but to ask where all the money has gone, is a little naive.

People seem not to want to accept this, the money has gone back to the taxpayers ! You, me and everyone else !

It would however be ignorant to say there has not been a waste of taxpayer’s money along the way, and at times a profligate waste, to which no one has been made accountable, but vast amounts of capital have been given back to the taxpayer through a string of budgets, where every year the tax rates were lowered, the tax bands widened and the minimum wage increased. Where did all the money go ? Into your (and my) pockets !

It is for that reason that the Irish voters made their choice to return FF to power the last time – they were the govt that gave most money to the people – health, education, social welfare etc seemed not as important.

Now that more and more people are joining the dole queues, and the public sector have been asked to take a pay freeze or even a pay cut, the true reactions to the downturn are being heard.
 

We hear of teachers, Gardai, civil servants etc all singing the same song – ‘we all need to stand together to get out of this mess – tough decisions have to be made – some will have to cut back ...... eh... but not me ! it’s not my fault.....take some money from someone else......not me’

Do people working in the public sector not realise that people in the private one have lost their jobs – that is not a threat to have a cut back, or a pension levy, or a pay freeze – it is being made redundant ! Losing your job – having to sign on. A little realism needs to be thought of – and if you, as a civil servant are screaming madly at the words you are now reading, then back up the truck there a bit, and think what life would be like if YOU had no job. Yes, private sector gets better pay, but it is not as secure – so what you lose on the swings, you gain on the roundabouts.

If there was one thing that this Celtic Tiger did for this country, (and don’t believe anybody who says it did nothing for them ) it made people more selfish.

However we have been here before - many believe it was worse in the past – we will get out of it – it’s just a matter of when, and the more realistic we are, the quicker that will be.