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Another note from the Cocoon.

Let's Express Posted on June 2, 2020 by John MallonJune 2, 2020

We are over two months into this lockdown and I can report that I’ve been a good and responsible citizen throughout. Apart from two necessary short journeys around the city, I have not ventured further than one mile from my home.

Of more importance though I can also report that neither herself or myself, nor either of our two, (adult), children caught this flipping virus. I have a sister in the city, another two in West Cork and a fourth in Belfast and none of them got the virus. Between the sisters they have eleven kids, many married and with children of their own and they are scattered all over the country. Yet again, none of these people were brought down by this virus.

The area I live in is a sort of old fashioned community based area and news is passed by word of mouth, much as it was in the past up and down the land. The local supermarket, the post office, the butchers shop and several other ‘nests’ in the community are places where people meet briefly and share anecdotes. One glaringly obvious piece of news or gossip would be if someone locally had tested positive for this damned virus and yet I haven’t heard of a single person in the area being infected. Information such as that would spread like wildfire here in Mayfield so I can only assume I live in a Covid-free zone and I say again, I haven’t been outside it since March 23rd.

What I did hear about a fortnight back was that between all of the hospitals around Cork, there was only one single person left in intensive care. There are over 200,000 people in the greater Cork City area and a half million in the County as a whole so Cork appears to be a pretty safe place to live at this time.

Two days ago it was reported that nationally, only two people had died of the Covid that day. To put that in perspective, the daily death rate in Ireland averages eighty people a day so seventy-eight others also died around the Country but they are not national news. So any foreboding I may have felt about catching this cursed Covid is now well past me. I will still practice some caution of course but on balance, I reckon the worst is over.

If I have one small nagging fear it is the lack of herd immunity due to the lockdown. If there should be a round-two of the virus, as some so-called experts are warning, then all bets are off. But as I predicted a month ago, our Finance Minister has sounded several warnings that we are running short of money and there are already huge bills to be paid back due to the cost of the lockdown to the economy. A second lockdown due to a recurrence of the virus could not be funded so the option of staying home is unofficially off the table.

Fingers crossed folks!

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a reply

THE IRA RE-VISITED

Let's Express Posted on June 1, 2020 by John MallonJune 1, 2020

Mary Lou McDonald, the Leader of Sinn Fein in the South, was on radio yet again during the week. In another recent interview she stated that she believed the IRA campaign in Northern Ireland was justified and she was again asked about this. She didn’t deviate one iota and strongly maintained that it was indeed justified.

I was thirteen in 1969 when this modern iteration of civil strife in the North all began. What surprised me most in the years that followed was just how little British people knew or understood about it and indeed, just how disinterested they were in it. Technically Northern Ireland was a part of the UK in the same way Wales or Scotland were so it did appear very odd to this Southern Irish boy that British opinion didn’t give a hoot about Northern Ireland back then, (and maybe still don’t).

So for those who do not know, London decided back in 1922 to let most of Ireland be free but kept six of the nine counties of Ulster. This is the first point. If all nine counties had been taken, then the population split would have been 50/50. By leaving behind the three poorest and most Catholic counties the British Government were able to guarantee a two to one protestant majority in the six counties of Northern Ireland. Added to this was the fact that those six counties were the richest and most industrialised in all of Ireland, the rest of the country having been purposely denied the opportunity to take its part in the Industrial Revolution. As a result, the Republic of Ireland was a very poor agricultural country from its foundation.

Northern Ireland though was the opposite but the seeds of the problem were laid from the outset when Catholics were viewed and treated as second class citizens by the protestant government majority population up there. It was a self fulfilling prophecy too because by officially denying catholics any kind of meaningful employment, denying them entrance to third level education and by herding them into slum ghettos, the smug majority were able to joke that the catholics were thick, ignorant, lazy and dirty people who lived like pigs. With the winds of change in the sixties some educated catholics began to echo the demand for civil rights being heard all over the world. In any other civilised country, including mainland UK itself, this kind of protest would have been met by dialogue and an honest effort to properly address the legitimate concerns of a marginalised but sizeable minority.

But to Unionists in Northern Ireland, these peaceful protests was treated as an affront to their superiority. The very idea that a catholic would have the cheek and temerity to ask for equal access to jobs, housing and education appalled them and the demand for ‘one man, one vote’ was enough to bring the protestant mobs out onto the streets. It was these mobs, cheered on by the protestant police force who began to burn out whole catholic slums and thousands of people were beaten and driven from their homes. It was in the midst of this madness that the first IRA shots rang out in the night sky. The catholic communities were nightly under attack from vastly superior numbers and those first shots were fired over the heads of those attackers to drive them back. At that point, the whole of Southern Ireland, including this writer, were 100% behind those few IRA men and so Mary Lou was absolutely right at that point in time.

It’s what happened next is where she’s wrong. There is no doubt that Westminster could have done a lot more over the years to make the powers in Stormont treat all of their people fairly. The fact was that if the catholic minority had been able to access the same freedoms and opportunities that their protestant neighbours had, then thirty years of death and destruction would never have happened. I know from my catholic relatives all over Northern Ireland at the time, (1970), that they preferred living up there than down here and they were secretly proud and happy to be northerners. However, they were always ignored until they asked for civil rights and then all hell broke loose. In this sense, the ’troubles’ began as a sectarian problem. It was protestant versus catholic, played out as nightly rioting in urban centres across the north. The second problem was that the police force, (the RUC), was protestant also and very much against the catholic minority. As a result, this violence was lopsided in terms of numbers and arms and Irish opinion in both the Republic and the US began to sit up and take notice, so the British Government had no choice but to take action and send in the British Army to restore the peace.

In retrospect, even at that point, it might all have settled down again. Those first weeks, the Army ended up protecting the catholic areas from protestant attacks with the full support and gratitude of the catholic population living in them. At that time too, those half a million catholics living in the North were British citizens and content to be so. Sure, they would talk about their Irish dimension but their passports were blue and their money was sterling. It was the IRA itself who changed the emphasis and direction of the strife.

The original British plan was for the army to remain for a few weeks until the civil strife subsided and then they would return home to the UK. If Westminster had reined in Stormont at that point and driven through even some civil rights reforms for the minority then this would have happened and the war would have been avoided. Instead they left a political vacuum through inaction and the IRA filled that vacuum with talk of a British occupation and an armed struggle for freedom. It didn’t begin as that though. It was about civil rights and one man, one vote. The vicious unionist reaction to that protest was what made it so obviously sectarian and this was followed by the IRA seizing the initiative to make it about anti-Britishness and Irish nationalism. That was the perversion of Northern Ireland for me and in the years that followed it emerged that the IRA didn’t just want to overthrow the Government in Belfast, they wanted to overthrow the Dublin Government also and rule the whole island. A resolute British response prevented them from doing either but 3,000 people had to die unnecessarily in the process.

So for me, in the first days of the troubles, the few brave IRA men with ancient rifles were completely justified in defending their people and their homes against overwhelming odds. But the declaration of a war against the British State was not justified in my opinion and as soon as the first British soldier was killed by the IRA, all justification ended. In this way I believe the IRA hi-jacked justified civil rights claims to pursue their own agenda at everyone else’s expense. Equally I have no doubt that the Stormont regime was as evil as the apartheid regime in South Africa and should have been challenged and changed for the same reasons.

What a terrible and avoidable waste it all, was.

Posted in Politics | Leave a reply

NOTES FROM THE COCOON

Let's Express Posted on April 28, 2020 by John MallonApril 28, 2020

All through the Celtic Tiger years and for most of the resultant austerity, most informed conversation centred on the economy. Indeed most uninformed conversation did also. We moved from discussing life in terms of millions to using billions instead and soon no doubt that will be trillions.

But there was the elephant in the room always. That elephant was society itself. The social issues of family breakdown, drug dependence, vandalism, homelessness, overcrowding in education and health and growing social isolation were ominous. These and many others were the ills of our society and the politicians didn’t want to know about any of it. They appeared to presume that the society would always self-adjust and survive while the economy needed all of our care and attention all the time. It’s telling now though after they’ve shut down the economy that all we actually have left is our society. It is no longer about, “The economy stupid,” because the economy is useless in the face of a pandemic.

So what is lockdown like chez-moi? I haven’t been in a pub for over a month nor have I travelled more than 1.5Km from home. We had a death in the family during this virus, (not because of it),and I didn’t shake anyone’s hand, hug any fellow mourners nor go to any church service. I’m told our city centre is deserted but I have to take their word for that. I have not met any of my four sisters either nor actively socialised face-to-face with anybody. Our own daughter has only called to us twice, (she lives thirty miles away) and if our son were not living with us I doubt we would have seen him at all. It is all just so damned awkward.

I know it is the same for millions of us on the island and if you think about it, it means that society is also more or less shut down or travelling on fumes at best. From inside this cocoon looking out, the main road outside is eerily quiet. There are no more rush hours, no gridlock, much less heavy trucks passing and after thirty years here, the relative silence is spooky. People at the shopping centre across the road are queueing yards apart from each other either outside the Post Office, Chemist’s shop or Doctor’s surgery. People are just not moving or mixing and that’s unnatural. Even the usual trail of drunken piss-heads passing through the park after midnight are gone. It makes you wonder what everybody else if up to?

Here at Chateau Mallon we have some semblance of routine. I get up between 0600 and 0700 every morning including Sunday. I boil a kettle, make a large coffee in my travel mug and then leave a teabag in a cup for herself to trot down to while I’m out. I drive the mile or so to the riverside park and try to get a three mile walk in before 0830, sipping my coffee as I go. For the past three weeks there’s been a Garda checkpoint just down the road from the park and everything gets stopped. If the uniform isn’t satisfied with the purpose of your journey, you’re turned around and sent home. Anyway when I get home after that first walk of the day there is evidence that herself’s been up and tea, toast and her iPad have gone back to lie down. Favourite son can be heard on his phone upstairs as he works from home now. Morning papers and news generally are read on-line by all three of us and little chores get done too. Herself then goes out for her morning laps around the tank field as I switch from the western press to the eastern press to balance my news intake, (and rarely fully believe either).

I think the saving grace in all of this is the internet. While I do take three walks each day there is little else to do so I have even begun watching Netflix series to pleasantly while away the hours. By keeping alcohol for the weekend I have something to look forward to all week. I’ve also delved into some book reading, doing research into things I used to have an interest in but knew little about and I have the time to pursue other topics I am keenly interested in but now I can do so in more depth.

And yet this lockdown is soul destroying. Things like the absence of a coffee in the city and the chance of running into old friends. A drive in the car to the coast for a picnic or a meal out with good company are all life’s little compensations. Even my few pints on the weekend now must be had at home and that’s simply not the same thing. The one job we can and must do is grocery shopping and while this has always been an unwanted chore, now it involves a long queue outside the supermarket as well, nine feet from each other.

Tonight the main evening news headlined with a Garda announcement that 2,500 police will be out on the roads from tomorrow in preparation for the coming long weekend. Maybe it’s the cabin fever but to me the announcer tried to make it sound menacing, as if a foreign army were amassing on our borders for rape and pillage. You don’t get news anymore, instead you are served up breathless sensationalism, all to a narrative from someone else’s agenda, (the mushroom treatment).

However, I can say that my sanity is not yet tested. I have managed to maintain a calm equilibrium, avoiding fights and rows but then again, there is really only two others I could have a go at. The death I referred to was the wife’s brother and it has certainly left a pall of sadness in the home. So all-in-all, this pandemic is a downer but my light in the tunnel is that it will end. I’ve heard it might take another six to twelve weeks and even then we should see just the beginning of the end of it.

Personally though, I think it will end quickly no matter what Public Health wants. You see 25% of the population is now on social welfare and the money to meet it is, we are told, is being borrowed. That’s a well that will dry up and when it does, all bets are off. It’ll be business as usual and society will have to just fuck off and get on with it because in the end, “It IS all about the economy stupid!”

Posted in Health & Medicine, Life | Leave a reply

A BIT OF HISTORY.

Let's Express Posted on April 27, 2020 by John MallonApril 27, 2020

This bloody lockdown gives a fellow far too much time to think. I turned 64 last month and over the following few days I had too much time to think about that too. So here are some of my aimless musings from those days.

World War II ended on the 8th of May 1945, 10 years and ten months before I was born. That’s hard to imagine isn’t it. Three years before I was born Stalin died. The year 1956 was the year of my birth meaning I was a living breathing human on this earth that year so what was happening then? The Suez crisis was causing petrol rationing in Britain and the first C.N.D. Marches took place at Aldermarston. The Rock and Roll dance craze swept the World and Prince Ranier of Monaco married Grace Kelly.

It seems strange given recent news about Islam that Pakistan only became an Islamic Republic in 1956 and it was that same year that Alabama Bus segregation laws were declared illegal by the US Supreme Court. US H-Bomb tests continued at Bikini Atoll while Premium Bonds were introduced in England to encourage saving. Soccer star Pele joined Brazil’s Santos team at the age of 15 in June 1956 and 52 people died when the Italian passenger liner S.S. Andrea Doria collided with the Swedish liner S.S. Stockholm on July 25th off Nantucket Island, Mass.

Rocky Marciano retired in 1956 as the only undefeated Heavyweight Champion of the world with a perfect record and Elvis Presley entered the US music charts for the first time, with “Heartbreak Hotel,” the first of 170 hit singles from the man. The cinema smash hits included The King and I, Guys and Dolls, Trapeze, High Society and Around the Word in Eight Days. Bill Haley and the Comets were rocking around the clock.

Martina Navratilova was born on October 18th and Bo Derek on November 20th, 1956. The first hard disk was invented by IBM, an absolutely huge 5 megabytes of storage. Black-and-white portable TV’s sets hit the market in the US, the first Transatlantic Telephone Cable went into operation and the first commercial videotape recorder, the VR-1000, from Ampex Corp went on sale. Tefal started producing non stick Frying Pans and an Oral Vaccine developed against polio by Albert Sabin was passed for use. Nuclear Power England opened its first power station at Calder Hall, Dwight D. Eisenhower was in the White House and Nikita Khrushchev in the Kremlin.

There is much more of course but I was amazed that yours truly had lived through all of that in my first year. This morning I read that Hungary will overturn their recognition of transsexuals. It’s mad to think that in 1956 that same Hungary was invaded by the Soviet Union and several other Warsaw Countries. How times have changed.

But then I began to think of my Father and what he must have seen. He was born on the Cavehill Road, Belfast in 1908 so he was 3 years of age when they launched the Titanic down the road from his home and Edward VII was the British King. He was 6 years old when World War 1 broke out and only 10 when it ended. He was 21 when the Wall Street crash took place and Great Depression began and he turned 31 when the Second World War was declared. Six years after that the Americans detonated the Atomic bombs over Japan and my Dad was 37 by then. I was only 13 when my Dad died in 1969 aged only 61. Being a staunch northern republican it is merciful that he wasn’t around for the thirty years of the Troubles that came afterwards. Oddly though in the years after his death my Mother often said to me that Daddy always predicted that Northern Ireland would explode into violence because of social inequality and sectarianism. He apparently also predicted the rise of the IRA who he said would hijack the civilian strife to their own ends.

Live for the day and plan for tomorrow is all very well but sometimes it can be interesting to think back.

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