Let Slip The Dogs Of War And Bombard Heaven!

"I here proclaim myself thy mortal foe,
With resolution, wheresoe'er I meet thee -
As I will meet thee, if thou stir abroad -
To plague thee for thy foul misleading me."
- From Henry the Sixth Part 3, the Bard gives us sound advice on how to greet the FFers who will soon be knocking at our doors

By Charley Brady

It was kind of sweet yesterday, really. Honestly, I was so happy for the Sinn Fein Party that I wouldn't want to even suggest that their win was actually a vote against Fianna Fail in their traditional stomping ground of Donegal South West.

Personally, I would vote for the Uncle Adolf National Socialist Party before I would vote for the Shinners; but if push came to shove and I had a gun held to my head (which in this context might be a possibility) I would definitely vote for Sinn Fein before I would vote for Fianna Fail.

Wasn't it kind of worrying, though, for the "opposition" parties of Fine Gael and Labour that despite the fact that you would expect FF to be detested countrywide at this stage - and particularly given the awful week that was in it - they still came out ahead of those two.

The results came in at 40% for Sinn Fein, 21% for Fianna Fail, 19% for Fine Gael and a disappointing 10% for the Labour Party, who had been expecting to do great things. Disappointing for them, by the way, not for yours truly.

Well, it couldn't have been much more decisive as SF senator Pearse Doherty collected 13,719 first preference votes. So the Government majority in the Dail is down now to two seats.

FF's Pat "the Cope" Gallagher put a brave face on it and said:

"This was the first opportunity that the electorate got to express their dissatisfaction; and in Pearse Doherty's vote I think Sinn Fein would acknowledge that there were many Fianna Fail votes in that.

"I believe that a lot of the Fianna Fail vote would have stayed at home and that voted by way of protest will be back on side in the General Election. They realised that by not voting Fianna Fail this time that it wasn't going to change the arithmetic that much."

This is what worries me about the coming General Election. I hope that I'm wrong but I think that so many people are weary and demoralised about the entire joke of a political situation here that they will simply not bother to vote at all, possibly shrugging their shoulders and saying in effect, what's the point?

No matter which lot we put in the damage is now done and the dreaded four-year plan is here in any case. I hope that this doesn't happen, as I would like to see nothing less than a complete wipe out and humiliation of this Government.

I also don't kid myself - and nor should anyone else - about the power of the Fianna Fail political machine to mobilise themselves and have every grass roots member out there on Polling Day, no matter what those same people have been muttering into their pints for months.

The Fine Gael and Labour leaders, respectively Enda Kenny and Eamon Gilmore, certainly wouldn't have helped people's confidence in a decent alternative party this week.

I mean, what the hell had Kenny done with himself? At a time when he should have been to the forefront he seemed instead to have slipped on Harry Potter's Cloak of Invisibility. They sought him here, they sought him there, but to say he was keeping a low profile would be like saying that Pavarotti had a bit of a singing voice to him.

As for Gilmore, he didn't hold up well a while back when he was asked to answer questions on his wife's sale of land to Galway National School for the nice sum of €525,000 and his feelings on it now being worth only €100,000. And while we're used to seeing politicians doing U-turns his own particular reversal this week was nothing less than head spinning.

Only two weeks ago he stated unequivocally on live television his stance on whether or not there would be a reversal of the government's decision on the budget; but this week he was suffering from one of those extraordinary memory lapses that seem to be almost peculiar to our political species.

Honestly, how can they expect anybody to take them seriously? This is a time when they should both be marching ahead in the polls and even in your face at every opportunity. This would definitely not be much fun for us, but at least it would show a bit of willing intent.

The gormless Green Party, which I loath almost as much as I do Fianna Fail came out fighting as Cork Senator Dan Boyle courageously showed where his priorities were.

He laid into the Minister for Tourism, Culture and Sport Mary Hanafin and proposed that we formally recognise chess an official sport. He repeated this in the Seanad again last Wednesday. Do you think we could thrash out this serious problem another time, Dan?

What the hell, I've had enough of politics for the duration and I really think that most people here would agree with me.

What have the religious been up to lately? Surely we can get a bit of wisdom and sanity from these deep thinkers. Oh, let's see now: at a time when people might be forgiven for being apprehensive about North Korea we have calls from the Christian Brothers to "bombard heaven".

I love the mad imagery of this. We are supposed to "bombard heaven" until God and all the angels and saints listen to the Brothers and the prayers of the faithful and decide to canonise their blessed Edmund Rice.

According to Brother Donal Blake, who is postulator for the Cause of the Blessed Edmund, the gang are all in their Rome headquarters at the moment drawing up plans to have people from 32 countries pray to their founder in order to get him to throw a few auld miracles our way. If he's doing nothing else at the moment, like. He's already been canonised after one miracle in 1996 so they need another one to swing the vote and get him that crucial sainthood.

Can't you just see Edmund Rice up there in the clouds, shaking his head and saying: "Ah, they're making a holy show of me. Would they not leave me in peace with my beatitude? They're awful messers, so they are."

I don't get this weird thinking: do we have to send prayers in order to influence God in who He charges with sainthood; and what about the ones who have been demoted over the years?

What is going on up there anyway? Is it another class system? I mean, are the garden variety plebs who are enjoying eternal life on a rung below the beatified who are in turn beneath the saints who don't themselves have as much clout as the angels?

No wonder Lucifer got a pain his butt with the whole palaver.

"Bombarding Heaven": coming to a cinema near you soon.

Meanwhile the Pope has confused me once again. I had thought that the use of condoms was a real no-no for the Catholic Church but now he thinks there might be a bit of an auld get-out clause:

"There may be justified cases, for example when a male prostitute used a condom, where this can be a bit of responsibility. But it's not the proper way to deal with the horror of the HIV infection."

Well, I'm glad that's cleared everything up. I assume that he means it's OK to use them if it isn't putting a stop to procreation. It's a real Christian attitude, that. "Oh, let them use condoms as long as they were never going to breed anyway. They're not much good for anything else."

Just in case you thought he was easing up he clarifies in a new book that was published last week - "Benedict XVI: Light of the World" - that homosexual relationships are "never morally just... It remains something that is against the nature that God originally willed. Sexuality has intrinsic meaning and direction, which is not homosexual."

So take note, all you mintys who might be enjoying a loving relationship: a celibate man has just told you what God thinks, and that's that!

Memo to Santa: Don't even think of putting that book in my Christmas stocking this year.

They're all mad, I tells ya! Mad!

And talking of mad people of the Muslim variety, what's this about the developers of the mosque at Ground Zero applying for a $5,000,000 grant from a fund that was set up in order to rebuild after 9/11?

It's time for a lie down and definitely time for my medication, but soon we really must get together, when we will take it upon ourselves to bombard heaven until we get Edmund Rice his Sainthood. There's no time to lose!

Oh, wait a minute. He's dead, isn't he? Scratch that. We have lots of time.

Hope to see you next week.

Same bat-time!

Same bat-channel!

You can reach Charley at chasbrady7@eircom.net