This referendum is the Emperor's New Clothes of democracy!

It's a shame that I now feel so apathetic and cynical about the European Union.
20 years ago I was a strong and fervent believer in the power of European unity, but looking back now, I wonder how much of that was down to the desperate and urgent need we all then felt to calm the Soviet and American superpowers, who were forever threatening to use Europe as the venue for their nuclear war.
In my mind I dreamed of a United States of Europe, strong enough to tell the big bad boys to shut up, go away, take their Intercontinental Ballistic Nuclear Missiles and station them a lot closer to their own homes. I hoped that the EU might offer a world-beating combination of financial might, historical depth and cultural strength to the worldwide mix, and hold firm as a great force for peace.
The seed that grew into this European Union was formed when the French, German and English considered a coal and steel co-operative in the late 1940's. Naturally the English wanted none of it, (Nasty dirty Johnny Dago, we have plenty of coal, yuk yuk go away, you rather lowly recently-liberated people) but planted into the rubble of a billion bombed out houses and nurtured by the exhausted war torn millions of Western Europe, the seed of co-operation germinated into a spirit, and above all, a determination that we would never go to war with each other again.
With the very best of intentions, I settled down to read the wee leaflet that had been delivered to our door. What was this Reform Treaty all about?
Checking to see if both sides had been allowed the same space, I found only an upside-down Irish language version of the English language 'Yes' vote's arguments.
But really, that didn't matter either, because before I read to the end of the very first paragraph, I had given up.
Under the heading 'What is the Reform Treaty?', the para was trying to explain the name of the thing that we were voting for:
"Its official name is the Treaty Amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty establishing the European Community."
My brain flushed awash with images of Monty Python's 'Life of Brian', the debates between the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front.
In a vast conference suite, somewhere in Brussels, people had been hammering out this bureaucratic befuddlement.
"Bonjour, guten tag, hello, buenas dias, prynhawn da, dobar dan, bom dia, svitchi svotcha, bugga booger, a dunkin donutski..."
"Yes please to get on with it. Last two weeks only beetroots saying hello we are in so much heat and bad coffee, honey drip drip drop as we say in my country honey drop a long time it taking to not get business done."
"Put on your interpretators headphones you foolish balkan type. I am not interested in your lack of manners and cultural ignorance of my people's protocols."
"So this reform treaty can be maybe called a Reform Treaty of Lisbon Treaty?"
"No, because Lisbon Treaty is already reforming treaty of all the other treaties, so they their names must be having in the name of this treaty. Beetroot fool."
"My delegation respectfully request that this Reform Treaty be called: The Reform Treaty that will be Reformed by any given EU member State, Country, Principality, Nation, or Dodgy Region with its own Funny Dialect and Enough Nutters With Bombs, near good-sounding City where in five years when We need to change Treaty again we will vote Treaty replacing all other Treaties and excluding Cities and Countries who have already either won a World War, or Eurovision , or already had a Treaty named after them ... Treaty."
Not much of a way to run a continent, really.
The Reform Treaty referendum, as presented to the Irish people, is nothing but a retelling of the children's story of the Emperor's New Clothes, wherein the voice of one innocent child screams out the truth that the Emperor is riding naked through the streets, allowing all in the crowd to stop pretending, and mock as one.
We are willing participators in a democratic process, but we are loathe to own up and confess that we have no clue what we are voting for. Even those of us sad souls who have read the damned treaty have no clue what we are voting for.
We want to vote 'Yes', because there is always the feeling with the European Union that you have to be in it to win it. But Ireland has already won the EU's Euromillons, and is now having to pay to support other less-well-off countries, and nobody likes that.
Our inability to understand what is being reformed is actually hampered by exponents on both sides.
A recent letter to a local paper from Fianna Fail MEP, Sean O'Neactain, stated:
"Ireland will have exactly the same rights of representation within the European Commission post 2014 as Germany and France."
On the very same page, a letter from Sinn Fein supporter Anna Marley stated:
"...under the new formula, Ireland's voting strength is cut in half while the voting strengths of the largest states - France, UK, Germany, Italy - doubles."
Pathetic, isn't it, and the only loser is democracy itself, because we are being invited to vote out of ignorance.
After my recent rant about the bureaucratic nightmare that is the EBU and the Eurovision Song Contest, I was sent a note by a friend of Conservative Party MEP, Chris Heaton-Harris, who is rightly concerned about his fellow MEP's' own ignorance of what they vote for in the European Parliament itself:
"MEPs vote to approve the budgets of each EU institutions like the Commission, the Parliament, the myriad of European agencies. Towards the end of one such session, as we were voting to approve something called the GNSS Supervisory Authority, my colleague Chris Heaton-Harris stood up and asked whether there was a single MEP present who knew what the GNSS was. There was an awkward silence. The Deputy Speaker, a genial Spaniard called Alejo Vidal-Quadras, told Chris that, by the end of the day, everyone would have looked it up."
(the GNSS is the European Global Navigation Satellite System.)
This colyoom will not advise you whether to vote 'Yes' or 'No' on June 12th. An old friend once told me that if you can't work out the answer, you might simply be asking the wrong question.

Best of both worlds? I'm a tourist, but I live here too!

Tum tee tum, this is fun. I'm sitting at my breakfast table in Casey's of Baltimore, staring out over the bay where small boats bob in the wet wind, a soft mist hangs tropical over tops of hills.
Choral music seeps gently through the ether, and over by the fireplace, two waitresses are kneeling, squealing and laughing with joy at the chirpy sound of the chicks nesting high in the chimney above.
Sauntering over to the simple but thoughtful buffet laid out in the dining room, I sip my orange juice, and am taken aback.
Not only is it fresh, but soft, sweet and silky.
Yea, I have drunk of many orange juices, but this baby takes the biscuit, not least because its excellence was so unexpected.
Grabbing three days of freedom, the Snapper and I head off to West Cork.
I'm excited, as this journey will close the book on a personal and very pleasurable odyssey: after walking the cliffs at Mizen Head, I will have either trod upon or driven alongside the entire west coast of Ireland.
Loving the Ennis bypass, we plunge south, and park the car in Schull. This trip is a pootling adventure, with no advance bookings, but I have already checked out a couple of Schull hotel websites, and expect to find them in flesh and stone when we arrive.
But no, we cannot find the hotels of Schull. Despite an abundance of touristy brown signposts, we walk up and down the tiny town, drive in and out of it, until eventually deciding that Schull doesn't want us.
The Snapper and I are tired, but neither of us gripes. The sun shines low and bright between black cloud downpours, and Shaaany Car zips along through rainbows.
We head to Rolf's, which has been recommended by a friend, where we are met by a rather disinterested woman, who appears to be prepping the veggies whilst working in reception, and not really wanting to show us a room, even when we ask to see one.
High above Baltimore, Rolf's represents the new face of Ireland, as given life by the likes of me and all the other blow-ins who arrived over the last 20 years.
The communal areas look so lovely, warm and friendly, it is a shock to be shown a small dark bedroom that is so cold the carpet is queuing up to get out.
And so we end up at Casey's; an altogether better result.
Completely unpretentious, Casey's manages successfully to balance three different functions.
At the roadside there is the original pub.
Behind, a restaurant that serves perfectly good grub that will satisfy the local and tourist palate alike, without surprising or intimidating anyone.
Above, there are bedrooms, offering standard modern facilities and comfy beds.
All of which conspire to make me feel relaxed, happy and yet, blown away by the orange juice.
Having waited a healthily long time for my Full Irish to arrive (I hate it when breakfast arrives in two minutes - you know it's just preheated ingredients microwaved to buggery and back) I am amazed at how good the food is.
Each rasher, banger, pudding and egg has been cooked perfectly, and offers exceptional flavour.
A sticker on Casey's front door declares the place is listed in the 2007 Michelin Guide, but my brekkie is not fancy shmancy Michelin cooking. No, this is just bloody excellent Irish home cooking.
As I eat I overhear the couple at the table behind me. They talk in German, until her son calls on her mobile. She then speaks in English, and when she involves her husband in the phone conversation, he responds in English too, revealing an Irish accent.
Don't know why, but that makes me happy too.
Saturday night, and the Snapper and I walk into town to see what's going on.
Nothing is going on.
The place is empty, and everyone we meet is heading up to Casey's, where there is music promised later.
We find the one restaurant open, an eccentric French place called Chez Youen. Truth be told, we had been trying to book a table there for a couple of days, but nobody ever answered the phone.
The waiter is a tall, far-too handsome Frenchman, who carries himself with an arrogance so Gallic it is almost a caricature.
The food is superb, but presented with disdain, as if the waiter is saying:
'You feeelthy h'Irish pezzants, you h'are not wurrzy of ziss gastronomic h'excellence! You are not hivven feet to look at ziss food, you h'ignoran' spurrd heeterz!'
It's not just us. All the customers are scared, but it is worth it. Just about.
The next day we listen to a debate on NewsTalk Radio, about the loss of 'Irish charm' in the hospitality industry.
Apparently, since the influx of Eastern European and Latin workers, Irish pubs, hotels and restaurants don't offer the same 'Irishness' to tourists.
Lets get something straight here. Whilst the Irish are masters of craic and charm when they are being served, I harbour hardly any recollections of joy felt when being served by an Irish person.
Sometimes surly, resentful and even churlish, Irish waitstaff often pale in comparison to our new arrivals.
Admittedly, it is vital that everyone working the floor can understand the menu and converse a little with the customer, but beyond that, let's just be happy that we're lucky enough to suddenly have an eager smiling workforce, wherever they are from.
After dinner it's back to Casey's, where the bar is hopping.
Don't know whether it's our body language or anoraks, but we feel and are treated like the tourists we are.
Backs are turned towards me as I order drinks at the bar, and we find ourselves sitting in a windowsill, as the locals get into the spirit of the night.
When I earlier saw the sign declaring 'Traditional Irish Pub' I felt a shiver of fear, wondering with dread what kind of clichéd wooden monstrosity the owners had pieced together for the Yanks and the Germans, but I was wrong.
This is traditional all right.
The band strikes up 'Gee It's Good To Be Back Home' and right in front of us, three huge female backs at the bar suddenly raise their hands and voices to help out with the chorus.
As they wail and pierce the air with careless melody, I wonder:
Maybe too traditional, altogether!
cadley1@eircom.net
http://doubledoublevision.blogspot.com

When 'prolonged heavy showers' become rain, do they throw a party?

Past Paddy's Day, with the first parade of the year behind us, vernal equinox come and gone: It's not winter any more!
Spring and summer can be indistinguishable in Connacht. On late April afternoons, with a gentle easterly breeze holding the high pressure, I have lain back on the hills of Clare, heated by the glorious sun above, warmth beneath seeping into my spine from the limestone slab.
Mark Twain is known to have said, 'The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco.'
Ditto for Galway, where we are just as likely to endure three months of rain as two weeks of heatwave.
'Why all this weather nonsense now all of a sudden?' you ask. 'Weather shhmether!' you cry, "tell us something we don't know already!'
Well, that's why I'm on it, because with the coming of spring there arrive the early enquiries from friends for summer visits, asking the inevitable question:
"What's the weather like?"
Then you have stop and think. We here simply accept whatever falls from above, but these people are coming all the way to see you, and the least you can give them is some kind of guide as to what the weather might be like.
Well, let me think: What is it like?
Smilla had her sense of snow, and the Inuits have their pantheon of words for the white stuff, but by god, we give them a good run for their money with our skies.
Kings of the meteorological euphemism, Queens of celestial subtlety, the English and Irish have created a universe of weather terms that are indecipherable to foreigners, and let's be honest, pretty much incomprehensible to ourselves.
Anyone know exactly what they mean by bright? Are we talking clouds, sunshine, or what?
And when did the word 'rain' disappear from forecasts, to be replaced with 'unsettled weather'?
It's not unsettled at all. It's days and days of rain. Just say it baby, we can handle the truth.
Unsettled, me hole.
Is it breezy or blustery? Windy or just blowy? Is it bright or clear? Does that look like a haze or a fog or a mist, or just plain good ol'-fashioned pollution?
Rain? We do rain in all sizes: soft rain, drizzly rain; damp rain; showers (but is that occasional showers, frequent showers, constant showers; heavy showers, or prolonged heavy showers?); moderate rain; constant rain; heavy rain, and top of the Rain Pops, sideways rain, locally enjoyed in the vernacular as 'lashing rain', which conspires to come at you from the horizontal.
Not good.
When a 'prolonged heavy shower' finally gets called rain, does it throw a party?
Personally, I go with the Snapper's definitions. She divides all precipitation into either 'wet-making' or 'non-wet-making', which is really all you need to know.
Temperatures in Ireland's west come aplenty: we offer mild, warm, cool, bitter, chilly, fresh, coolish, and on the odd summer's day 'shplittin' rocks!'
363 days of the year our reality is sunshine and showers. Quite a simple balance, which the media forecasters go and complicate enormously by predicting 'Rain in places, sunshine at times'.
That, I have to say, is my personal favourite, purely because they have gently overlooked the only important pieces of information: which places, at what times?
Oh yes, and any ideas just what an 'odd shower' might be?
An odd shower? Perchance, one in which the rain falls upwards?
You can keep your extremes. I'll admit to being generally happy living between 10 - 20C, or 50 - 60F in the old money.
We rarely have extreme weather here, but we have an extremely large vocabulary with which to describe it.

*****

So yes, the Paddy's Day Parade has come and gone, and when might we see another?
Having received less Arts Council funding than they anticipated, Macnas understandably intend to focus all this year's artistic and financial attention on their Halloween parade, and every Galwegian will look forward to that with glee.
At the time of writing, several major local arts figures are trying to find funding for a Macnas parade during the Arts Festival.
Oh my, how we would miss their Arts Festival Parade.
I can barely remember the last time I went to an Arts Festival event, just as I cannot remember ever missing the Macnas Parade, if I had not already fled the crowds, the traffic jams and jammed-up pubs, filled with people wealthy enough to go to shows that I could not afford to see in my own home town.
As regular as the cuckoo, this colyoom makes the same noises every year.
If you judge the success of a festival on how many sold-out shows it has, Galway's Arts Festival is a humdinger. But if you bring into the equation the festival's relationship with the people of the city, we're stuffed.
The Macnas Parade was a big smoochy kiss on the cheek and 'Thank You!' to all us Galwegians who had suffered another festival season. We took the jams, the noise, litter and queues, and the parade made us feel special.
The Arts Festival that used to, sadly no longer does.
And sadder yet, the leadership of the Arts Festival appear somewhat entrenched, if not a tad stubborn. Yes, their shows are sold out each year. But Galway has gone from being a Festival City to becoming merely a city that has a festival.
Last year, Galway bit back in the shape of Project 06. Seminal figures from Galway's arts scene, including Macnas founder, Paraic Breathnach and Arts Festival founder Ollie Jennings, helped to put together a phenomenally successful 'festival in a festival', bringing life to the streets of Galway, and Galwegian artists, musicians, writers and performers onto the festival stage.
Indeed, what Project 06 succeeded in doing was making Galway City once more the stage for an arts festival.
To those upholding the Arts Festival status quo, I plead, on behalf of geezers like me, the Galwegian in the traffic jam and bus queue: please consider the recommendations laid out in the recent Project 06 report.
No need to tut or wince. We're not having a go at you.
We just want our arts festival back.
Project 06 was neither a fringe festival nor a rival. It was an outburst of artistic and social longing for inclusion in our own arts festival, and you have no reason to ignore that; absolutely none.
cadley1@eircom.net
http://doubledoublevision.blogspot.com