Archive for May, 2009

Suffer little children

May 21st, 2009

As we all now know, the Child Abuse Commission Report is out.

Listening to the news last night and to various other programmes, I was left with a feeling of revulsion and deep deep sadness.

Today I feel revulsion, but I am also very very angry.

For decades, institutions in this country systematically abused infants and children physically, emotionally and sexually.  What is worse, the abuse was not random but was endemic in all the institutions all the time.  I heard for example of a case where a boy was abused for 364 days a year.  He got a day of rest at Christmas, simply because the Brothers were too drunk to abuse him.  I would say that is typical of hundreds of cases.

Children were systematically beaten, raped and tortured.  They were told lies about their parents to quench their spirits.  They were sexually abused on a daily basis.  They were inadequately clothed and fed.  They were treated as commodities to be used and abused.

So who is to blame?

The government knew all about it, but did fuck all.  In those days, McQuaid ruled Ireland from the Archbishops Palace, and what he said, went.

The prime culprit is the Catholic Church.  Note the use of the present tense?  They are still guilty up to their rotten necks, from the bishops and heads of orders up to and including the Vatican.

Even now, they are issuing their apologies, but you can see from their faces that the apologies are sad attempts at damage limitation.  Their apologies are hollow and the words are what we are expected to hear, and not what they feel.

I will accept their apologies on two conditions.

The first is that they do a root and branch pruning of their own organisations and hand all the perpetrators over for justice.  They know who are guilty, but they are still shielding them.  All the time they are shielding one sadist or paedophile they are as guilty as hell and no apology will wash.

The second is that as a mark of atonement, they take full responsibility for redress payments.  The agreement made by that arsehole Bertie Ahern should be torn up, and the orders and the Church should feel the full force of the storm.

What about the government?

For a start they should issue an unreserved apology on behalf of themselves and their predecessors.  They should do everything in their power to redress the wrongs.

Most importantly though, they should remove any connection between Catholic religious institutions and the running of any school or institution involving children.  They have proven themselves unfit to be trusted, both then and now.

I know there are some religious institutions doing good work, but the power of the Catholic Church has to be severely curtailed in this area.

What really baffles me is that presumably people joined their respective religious orders out of a sense of vocation?  They must have believed in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ? They must have believed in love and humility?  So how did so many become such depraved, perverted, sadistic little fucks?

I’m baffled.

I’m also still very angry.

-oOo-

Further light reading -

A summary of the Report

The Full Report

A nice take on it from Bock

A growing list of other takes on the subject

Another article by Will Knott including video footage

Not very pleasant reading?

The quiet life

May 20th, 2009

I wasn’t going to write anything today, because nothing happened.

I connected up to the Interweb to see what was going on.  Nothing.

I browsed the newspapers.  Nothing apart from the government fucking up things again, but there is nothing new about that.

I went into my blog feed reader to see what the rest of you were saying. There was a remarkable lack of activity, so obviously you lot are experiencing nothing as well.

I had just come to the conclusion that God had forgotten to put sixpence in the meter, and that nothing at all was going to happen today when the door bell sounded.

I armed myself to the teeth in case it was some political yokels, but it was the bloke from Eircom.  I slipped him a fifty note so that he wouldn’t complain about all the extra wiring, and then shut him out on the roof where it was raining heavily.

He fixed the fault in record time.  It was a broken wire or something highly technical like that.  He asked to be let in off the roof, as it was really pissing down at this stage, and he had forgotten his coat.  I let him in again, but it cost him a fifty note and a promise to say nothing about the job.

He’s gone now, and the phone is working again.

Herself is catching up on all the gossip.

I’m waiting for something to happen.

Is there anything happening anywhere?

Incommunicado

May 19th, 2009

I hate telephones.

When I am talking to someone, I like to be able to look them in the eye and, if necessary, to be within thumping distance.

They are a necessary evil though, especially if you have Herself to contend with.

She likes the phone, and will happily spend hours yakking away to her pals, so I have to have one to keep her happy.

It does have other uses though, and is quite handy if I want to blast someone because my Interweb is disconnected or if I want to order five tons of fresh manure to be delivered outside someone’s gate.

Herself also insisted that I get in one of those satellite dish things so she can watch utter shite on television.  For reasons best known to God and some technician in Outer Mongolia, the satellite box has to be connected to a telephone line.  I now have a few extra satellite boxes, which I acquired off Spanner, and they all have to be connected.

There isn’t much point in having all my satellite boxes in one place, so I have one in the front room, one in the back room, one in each bedroom and one in the shed.  This means that I have to have a lot of telephone wires running all over the place.  Not wanting to bother those nice people in Eircom, I ran all the wires myself.  It’s a very simple job, and all has been running smoothly for quite a while; up to a couple of days ago, that is.

Herself started complaining that she couldn’t gossip to her pals because there was a crackling noise on the phone.  I checked it, and there was.  I didn’t bother fixing it though, as it was pissing rain outside and I didn’t feel like getting wet.  I told her to suffer it, and left it at that.  But then our K8 phoned from Thailand.  I couldn’t hear a word she was saying.  It sounded like she was thousands of miles away, for fuck’s sake.  I decided something had to be done.

Yesterday, I rewired the place.  I put more sticky tape on the places where I had twisted the wires together, and I removed one of the junction boxes from the bottom of the pond.  I don’t know how that got there.

When I had finished, I tested the lines.  Nothing.  There was a quiet hiss, but nothing else, so I disconnected.  Immediately, the phone rang.  There was no one there, just another hiss.  I tried phoning myself using my mobile.  The mobile told me it was ringing, but the telephone remained mute.  Herself is not pleased.

In the end, I phoned Eircom, using my mobile and told them some wanker has been messing with my phone, and that it’s not working.  I’m not having some snotty trainee telling me off, and criticising my work.

I’m still waiting for the trainee.  Life is nice and quiet.  I haven’t had a cold call since.

I would call up and cancel the trainee, but I hate my mobile too. 

Sandyford Lads

May 18th, 2009

Every now and then I get an email asking me to highlight some cause or other.

Quite frankly, I don’t like those mails, because I’m not a Damien Mulley who does fluffy links.

You see, when someone suggests a topic for me, it just doesn’t work.  My ramble becomes a guided walk which isn’t the same thing and my words dry up.

I received a mail the other day asking me to highlight the plight of a school in Sandyford who are looking for a new building.

I am all for doing my bit, and particularly when it involves children, but what really intrigued me about this mail was that he referred to me as a “former Sandyford man”.  What?  I only once ever mentioned Sandyford before, and that was just in passing.

What is strange though, is that Sandyford did play quite a big part in my younger days.  I used to go to Mass there every week.  Religiously.  In fact, I used to go to Mass on Friday night, Saturday night and all day Sunday.

Back around forty years ago, I used to pal around with a group and we called ourselves The Lads.  Apart from myself, all The Lads were from Sandyford, so it was natural to congregate there.  We used to meet up in Sandyford House which was a grand scruffy pub in those days.

The weekend would start on a Friday night, where the drinking wasn’t too serious.  Friday wasn’t really our drinking day, so we would down maybe half a dozen pints of stout and then go home.  Saturday was different.  Saturday was a serious Lads Day, and we would meet up in the pub at around six, because that was when Mass started.

Most of The Lads were a tad scared of their Mammies, and when they were told to go to Mass, they had to do something about it.  So every Saturday, we would meet in the pub and one of The Lads would be elected to nip down to the church to hear the sermon.  That way, the elected could return and tell all the others what the sermon was about, and they could all go home and tell their Mammies about it.  That is how going to the pub became “going to Mass”.

Life was very simple in those days.

Friday: A mere six to eight pints to get in form for the weekend.

Saturday: Serious drinking day.  Ten to twelve pints and off for a game of darts until about three in the morning.

Sunday: Recovery day.  A mere ten pints as a hair of the dog to wind down from Saturday.

In those days, alcoholism, binge drinking, drunk driving and the like hadn’t been invented yet.

Life was so much simpler then.

Grandad replies

May 17th, 2009

It has been a while since I did one of these pages, but I have had other things on my mind.

I have, however had an anguished plea from a reader that is quite topical and may be of help to the rest of you.

This poor reader is driven demented by canvassers and wants to know what to do about them

I have a wee problem with people knocking on my door asking me to
vote for them.  Now I have been burned in the past with certain people
from certain parties promising me everything.

Dear Demented,

The problem with this problem is that there are so many solutions.

You could take the rather drastic step of moving house, and going to live on some island which is inaccessible, but that may not be to everyone’s taste.

One golden rule is to never ever get into a discussion with them on politics or policies.  They will have all their lies well rehearsed, and will only confuse you.  You cannot believe a single thing they say apart from the one thing – they want your vote.

Tactics which I have used in the past, which I have found very effective are as follows.

  • When they ask if they can count on my vote, I tell them that I expect to be in prison at the time of the election, doing life for murder.  I then whip out a carving knife.  That is quite effective.
  • When they ask for my number one, I piss on them, and ask them if they want my number two as well.
  • When they ask for my support, I burst into hysterical laughter and tell them that’s the best joke I have heard all year.  That usually demoralises them enough to leave me alone.
  • I tell them they have the wrong address.  For some reason, that always confuses them.

If all else fails, I shoot them.

I hope that is of some little help?

Grandad

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