Hoping For A Society That Cares

By Charley Brady

"It's our job to report the truth, not to fabricate it. That's the Government's job." - film script for "V for Vendetta"

"The police believe that the father of two was targeted because members of his family gave evidence against a leading member of the notorious McCarthy-Dundon crime gang in Limerick."

"A woman has had her teeth kicked out and nose broken before being gang-raped after being dragged into woods by up to six young men..."

"A priest faces new allegations into sex crimes..."

"A women was raped by two men this week when they broke into her home and attacked her while her child was kept in the room next to her..."

I could go on and endlessly on but what good does it do? It's just another couple of weeks in what was once the Land of the Welcomes.

There are decent and honourable journalists in this country who are shackled up to their necks by libel laws because the criminal scum who don't wish us to lead a normal life in a society that actually cares have more rights than the victims.

We have decent police who are hampered in their attempts to do a godamned thing because they know that the guys they are putting away will walk in a couple of day's time.

We have scum sucking murderers and rapists and drug- pushing vermin who don't give a one-cent p*** because they know that everyone is borne down by the threat of violence and murder directed at their families.

Why would they care? We have outmoded laws and we have judges who should have been put out to pasture and left to live out their senile and out of touch lives at whatever gentleman's club they belong to.

It's a country where terrorists are rewarded and hailed as heroes and - incredibly - peacemakers; where a life sentence for murder means that scum will serve around half a dozen years after time off for "good behaviour". Where a rapist can walk out after a couple of years.

Where this week a top detective here and one whom I have the utmost respect for held his head in his hands while almost yelling about the frustration he feels when he knows that one of the pond life has committed a crime but he has to be careful because if they hurt his feelings he'll have some overpriced lawyer up his arse, because his client's human rights are being infringed

And nothing will happen anyway.

I'm sick and tired of this. People who complain to the law aren't asking for much. As a matter of fact they shouldn't even HAVE to be asking. All you want is to switch on an old episode of "Frasier" or take a look at "Coronation Street" without wondering if some young doped up baby hit-man is going to put your window in because you have given evidence against his pig-masters.

In Limerick in particular it is completely out of control. I worked there from '79 through '83 and can tell you that I met there some of the best people I ever came across in my life.

Yet now there is a relatively small group of feral cretins who have made it not just dangerous for people who speak against them but absolutely lethal.

When American troops on their way to Iraq come through Shannon Airport they avoid Limerick because they know they would be outgunned. That used to be a joke. Not anymore.

The cops know who these slime are. The journalists know who they are. So now it comes time to voice something that wins me no friends because of the connotations around the word: isn't it just time to inter the bastards?

Yes, I know that internment is not a popular word but bugger all else seems to be working, does it? We have rights that don't seem to work for us and we have unenforceable laws that are worth precisely shag all. And of course this will get me the usual emails about how we "must take due process into account". But guess what? That's not working either except that it makes an obscene amount of loot for suit and tie Johns who don't have to worry about going about their business without getting their heads kicked in by some low-rent thuggish fascists who laugh at such terms.

Instead we get Cowen and Lenihan who will still be in their well-paid jobs and taking their over-inflated pensions to the grave with them. We'll still have Typhoid Mary of Health denying people who have worked all of their lives treatment while all three of these dark creatures of the Apocalypse are telling us that we must be "patriotic" and "share the pain".

One look at this smirking over-fed bunch should be enough to start you screaming if you ever hear those brain-dead clichés again. And that wouldn't be good because then the nurses would have the restraints on me again and it's damned hard to type when you're wearing those.

But what person can remain sane when they see a photograph of Big Brain Lenihan grinning in his shiny, ill-fitting suit and charging down the steps of the Dáil before he delivers his hideous new and improved budget?

Whatever happened to priorities in this country? Whatever happened to decency and manners and just plain simple respect for each other?

Instead we get Finance Minister Brainy Lenihan's AUNTIE, for heaven's sake, telling us to go easy on the poor soul. It seems that the dear over-educated boy has been so worried about his budget that, as she says, he has hardly slept in two days and hasn't taken a drink in a month. Jesus wept.

With aunties who are also your fellow politicians coming out with that kind of nonsense why would you need enemies? Why hasn't she been stuck into a Home for the Bewildered?

And all this bull about "who is there in Opposition?"

ANYBODY would be better (well, except the Shinners, of course).

These last budgets on what you can eat, think or breathe have left most people, except the politicians, without a pot to p*** in or a window to throw it out of. Orwell didn't know how right he was when he said that if you want a picture of the future then think of a boot stamping on the human face forever.

And now we have to worry about junked-up murdering thugs and their human rights as well. It's a joke, but not a very funny one.

So, since we obviously have nothing to be concerned about what do we print? Well, Mel Gibson's divorce of course. That will take our minds off it.

Let me be absolutely clear on this, so that the usual dingbats don't have me up to the screaming phase with emails: Gibson would probably hate me on sight for my disbelief in almost all that he stands for in his private life. Yet I still believe the man do be a genuine genius if only for works of sheer Art such as his "Apocalypto".

Yes, he has messed up and I have sympathy for his beautiful wife Robyn. Why in hell he would stray when he is with such a lovely lady is beyond me. But I also know what it's like to get blind drunk and to then come out with really stupid statements about "Jews being responsible for all the wars in the world."

Cut the guy a bit of slack, please. That is, unless you yourselves are so perfect that you've never been drunk, have never been stupid, have never gone through the hell of an awful break up and have never lived.

He has, and taken real chances with his work, not all of which I liked; but then I have messed up too many times to point the finger at him. He's not out there molesting sheep, he's just going through his own private Hell.

I can think of quite a few "first stones" that I would be happy to plant on genuinely evil people, but in this case? Give me a break and leave the guy alone.

Hope to see you all again.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

And Foley! Thanks for the money but even better, thanks for your sense of humour!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net