Finian’s rainbow

Dublin North-Central Independent TD Finian McGrath revealed on Friday of last week that, as part of his deal for supporting the Fianna Fáil/Green/PD Government, he has won the concession to keep the threatened Greendale Community School in the neighbouring constituency open as an educational facility.
Unfortunately for Finian, though, while he was telling the media of his triumph, someone else was claiming the credit for saving Greendale.
Fianna Fáil TD Dr Michael Woods had a leaflet going in the doors of the same constituency - actually while Finian was speaking to reporters - headlined “PROMISE DELIVERED ON GREENDALE SCHOOL”, only saying that it was the Fianna Fáiler that had delivered on the promise, not Mr McGrath.
With friends like Fianna Fáil...

FF eating up their Greens

Green Party Dublin City Councillor Bronwen Maher, a former deputy mayor, has objected to an order from the jolly Green giants in Cabinet that their councillors vote for Fianna Fáil Seanad candidates (I think what TD Ciarán Cuffe used to call “a deal with the Devil”).
Fianna Fáil’s Seanad numbers are under threat because they lost 80 seats in the 2004 council elections, thus reducing their voting power for Seanad candidates. Bertie has called in the Greens to shore up his party and has offered Clever Trevor two Taoiseach’s nominations if he can get his people to back their Fianna Fáil new best friends.
Green TDs and councillors have been ordered to vote for two FF nominees on each of the five panels. And to make sure they do as they’re told, Green Party commissars will ensure that Green councillors express their free, democratic will by checking their ballot papers. Officials in the Greenhouse say they’re only checking the papers because the Seanad list voting is complicated, which is either disingenuous or just plain insulting to the intelligence of Green Party councillors.
“Fianna Fáil are effectively asking the party to scrutinise our ballot papers and report back to them,” Bronwen Maher fumes.
“I have an ethical problem with being told how to vote. My attitude is that this ballot paper is given to me as an elected representative by Dublin City Council, not by Fianna Fáil or the Green Party.”
So will Patricia McKenna’s angry former PA resolve this ethical problem on her right to a free vote by taking a clear stand? Why, of course. Bronwen Maher will be voting for Fianna Fáil anyway. Work it out yourself.

Veiled threats

In the Pakistani capital of Islamabad, hundreds of burqa-clad women Islamic students from the Red Mosque, wielding six-foot poles, are sweeping through the streets on a moral crusade to clean up what they see as the city’s descent into depravity.
Six Chinese masseuses, alleged to be working as prostitutes, have been kidnapped by the burqa brigade in the past couple of weeks and ‘re-educated’ about the sins of touching male flesh, whether it’s the sort of rub-down you’d get in front of 70,000 fans on the pitch at Croke Park or a one-to-one in the back room of a seedy Soho sex den.
Earlier, women students, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles, took over a public library to protest against the government. Shops selling DVDs and videos have had morally uplifting visits from veiled women with guns.
Leaders at the Red Mosque proudly boast that their 8,000 students are not allowed music, games or kite flying as a person’s time on earth should not be wasted on such self-indulgent frivolities. The London Independent said that a visit to the office of the ‘principal’ revealed that he had a paint colour chart adorning his wall, which therefore suggests that “while music and play was banned, interior design was not considered ungodly”. He obviously hasn’t seen Changing Rooms.

Crying all the way to the bank

All-round rascal, the very blokeish and multi-interested Keith Allen — he plays the Sheriff of Nottingham in TV’s Robin Hood; he’s one quarter of the band, Fat Les, whose sing-along pop number, Vindaloo, became England’s unofficial 1998 World Cup anthem; and now he fronts TV documentaries on Channel 4 - was heavily featured in the British press in the run-up to the weekend concert at Wembley for the late Princess Diana’s 46th birthday because his mercurial daughter, Lily Allen, was a star turn there.
Keith had a little moan about how British newspapers just make up stuff about him and his family.
“Most of the time I don’t give a fuck because it’s so obvious that they’re lying. For example, I read the other day - and this is absolute shit - that I comforted Lily at Princess Diana’s funeral when she was crying.
“In fact, I was at that funeral with Lily’s brother, Alfie. We were on the Mall but the crowds were ten deep so we walked to the Groucho Club and nicked two step-ladders out of the caretaker’s cupboard. We walked back to the Mall and sold them for $500 each to some Americans to sit on and take photos. That was me going to Princess Di’s funeral.”
Keith Allen not only plays the unscrupulous Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood but he’s from an Irish background. Explains it all really, doesn’t it?

DUP pipe dream

The News Letter said last Friday that it has been told by “senior Irish Government sources” that they don’t expect a united Ireland “to be raised again for 20 or 25 years”.
The News Letter adds that the DUP brags that hopes of a reunited Ireland are “a pipe dream” after a new study claims that only 56 per cent of Catholics surveyed favour Irish unity.
So I reckon there should be no reason for either the News Letter or the DUP to be afraid of all-Ireland co-operation on the economy and social services, should there?