It disgusts me that carers, the disabled, families with children, teachers, gardai, the unemployed and all who didn't benefit in any way from the economic boom now have to pay for the incompetence of our politicians and the recklessness of our bankers. When the Government talks about the end of the recession being in sight, let's not forget that they and their highly-paid advisors didn't foresee the property and banking collapses, even though many commentators at home and abroad warned about the risks for years. Can we really rely on the same bunch of miscreants who got us into this mess to get us out of it?

It is highly immoral that the EU actively promotes the cooking of the national books so that the billions being pumped into the banks don't have to appear on the national balance sheet or within the budget. As the banking black hole continues to swallow billions - primarily to protect shareholders, bondholders and property developers - let's never forget that it is our money that's being used to cushion the rich from their own reckless investments.

The select few who are benefitting from the banking bailout will feel no pain whatsoever from this cruel budget. Their friends in Government have sold Ireland's soul, thrown away much of what we stood for, and all in the interests of protecting the rich. But even Scrooge saw the light eventually, so I live in hope!

Merry Christmas! Hohoho!

Thierry Henri has just quit football and is turning to handball as this is obviously where his skills lie. But seriously folks, Henri's hard-earned reputation as a great footballer is now in tatters as he was the lead cheater in a team of French cheaters that denied Ireland a place in the 2010 World Cup. But instead of just feeling angry, here are 4 things that you can do to ensure that a travesty such as this does not happen again:

1. Email FIFA and demand that video referees are brought into football, exactly as they operate in rugby. http://www.fifa.com/contact/form.html

2. Boycott all Gillette products until Henri is pulled from their crappy ads - and let Gillette know that you're boycotting them!
http://pg.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/pg.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php

3. Contact the FAI and insist that they put in a formal complaint about the referee in the game - the guy was clearly under orders from on high to err on the side of the French. Also, he was generally useless and made many huge mistakes.
info@fai.ie

4. Email the French papers and all other media and make it clear that France should feel ashamed at qualifying for the World Cup by cheating and that the rest of the world wants them to be humiliated in South Africa. Email addresses to follow.

On top of all this, the Irish people have now had enough of being cheated - first by the British (for about 800 years), then by our own inbred politicians and smarmy, useless bankers, now by French footballers and FIFA. GET UP, STAND UP!

TOP 5 REASONS TO VOTE NO TO LISBON TREATY:

1. The treaty is unchanged since it was rejected by the Irish electorate in 2008. Another vote makes a mockery of democracy. Why can't we have another go at choosing our Government? (The current one didn't work out too well.)

2. The treaty is simply a dressed-down version of the EU Constitution, which was rejected by the electorates of France and the Netherlands.

3. The EU has show itself to be impotent in dealing with disgraceful Irish decisions such as the routing of the M3 motorway through the historic Tara Valley. So what's the bloody point?

4. The European Union is undemocratic by nature, with all key decisions being taken with no possibility of intervention by the electorate. The Lisbon treaty makes no attempt to address the democratic deficit at the heart of EU decisionmaking.

5. Ireland cannot be excluded from the EU by voting against Lisbon as the treaty cannot then be ratified. If the treaty is rejected, the EU will have to come up with a fresh solution to the mess it created by not revising its decisionmaking processes before enlargement. If the treaty is passed by the Irish electorate, unanimity in decisionmaking is no longer required for decisions to be made, so there is NO TURNING BACK.

5a. If Lisbon is rejected, the Irish Government will surely fall, which means that NAMA will fall too...


TOP 5 REASONS WHY NAMA IS A BAD IDEA:

1. The Irish Government thinks that it's a good idea.

2. Taxpayers and their children and their grandchildren are bailing out the private shareholders in Irish banks. Why?

3. No Irish banker, developer or central banker will ever go to jail for ruining a nation's economy. String a few up, then NAMA might fly.

4. The Irish property bubble was generated and nursed by the Fianna Fail-led Governments of the past decade. They didn't foresee the problems and so their basic competence is in question. Are they sufficiently competent to think through the solution? Not a fucking chance.

5. The Irish Government (including John Gormley's Green Party) thinks that it's a good idea.

Just a heads up for a forthcoming blog on Ireland. The Lisbon Treaty Part Deux looms on October 2, 2009 while the Irish Government meanwhile tries to save the banks by screwing taxpayers - for generations to come - with NAMA, the National Asset Management Agency. Oh Lordy, where will it all end up?

Stay tuned to www.rte.ie/news (though that's State-owned media), explore the issues and watch this blog.

Can U2 still rock it? Hell yeah!

Pure Mad, a shocking Irish crime thriller, is released on Amazon.com, through its print-on-demand model, and sales are very healthy

It seems that the global appetite for crime fiction is still growing. Pure Mad is a crime thriller set in Limerick, Ireland, by author Gary J Byrnes. Pure Mad has tapped into the growing demand for crime fiction set in new locations and with compelling characters at the core.

Sales on Amazon.com (search Pure Mad) have started well and the book has sold out in Alan Hanna’s, Rathmines, one of Ireland’s most famous bookstores.

What Pure Mad is about: Meet Charlie Doyle. He’s a jaded private dick in Limerick who assumes that his latest adultery case is just more easy money. When he learns that his client is one of the city’s most-feared gangsters, he realises he’s in trouble and that things can’t get much worse. But his journey towards the truth accelerates into madness and fear as he stumbles across the trail of the most feared killer to ever stalk the city. How will Charlie react when faced with evil of unspeakable magnitude? How would you react? Would you go Pure Mad?

NOMINATED FOR THE CRIME WRITERS’ ASSOCIATION DEBUT DAGGER AWARD

What Amazon’s print-on-demand is about: Any writer can upload PDFs (printer description files) of their work to Amazon’s CreateSpace subsidiary. The book is then made available on Amazon.com. When a customer orders the book, it is printed one at a time and delivered by mail. This revolutionary service not only enables authors to reach a global market, but it is the most environmentally friendly form of book publishing ever.

For more: If you would like a sample of the novel or a high-res cover image, please contact the author. Gary is also available for interviews.

Find out more at www.Amazon.com
PURE MAD also retails in Alan Hanna's Bookstore, Rathmines, Dublin 6.

Ireland voted in local council, European and two Dail by-elections on June 5, 2009. It is with great pleasure that I can report that both Government parties, the Greens and Fianna fail, are being hammered, the electorate's hatred for their shit policies, lies and corruption being translated through the ballot box.

It's important to remember that the right-wing, conservative, corrupt Fianna Fail party, then led by disgraced Bertie Ahern, decided to build a motorway through the Tara Valley in County Meath. Though anybody with a brain cell knew that the chosen route was insane and that plenty of cheaper alternatives were available, the stubborn fools stuck with their plan, mainly because Fianna Fail cronies owned the land that was bought at a premium for the motorway.

Before Ireland's last general election in 2007, the so-called Green Party campaigned AGAINST the M3 motorway though the Tara Valley. But Fianna Fail needed them to make up the numbers for Government and the Greens, under their leader John Gormley, took the King's Shilling. The Greens betrayed their core values for ministerial cars/bikes and filthy power. Now that they have been found out and their support has evaporated, it is but a matter of time before the Irish Greens are consigned to the dustbin of history.
It is only to be hoped that somebody else sees sense and reroutes the M3 - it's not yet too late.

Europe - can you save Ireland from the fools that lead her? Who knows, if you save Tara, we may yet vote for Lisbon!

The report into the abuse of children in Irish schools run by the Catholic Church marks the most disturbing and shameful episode in Irish history. In my opinion, Bertie Ahern's finest hour was when he apologised on behalf of us all and accepted that the State bore the ultimate responsibility. But I believe that fiscal realities should come to the fore when adequately compensating the thousands who were damaged, often beyond repair.

Some of those most horribly abused will receive just €100,000 in total, through the unfair redress procedures in place. This is less than the annual salary of one TD. How to value a childhood? A lifetime? Even the paltry sums for victims are being unfairly paid, with the State paying about €1.1 billion and the Catholic Church coughing up only about 10% of this.

Though it's impossible to put a value on the secretive Catholic Church, Ireland currently has assets of about €37 billion, while the Church has assets of at least €100 billion. At the very minimum, if he wants to salvage any shred of human dignity, the Pope needs to stand up and say he'll match the State's payments, euro for euro. Anything less would be a betrayal of the highest order.

Find out more in the Irish Times.

Ireland is in crisis. Our police are underpaid, understaffed and under-resourced while the criminal gangs that rule entire communities under the law of the gun seem untouchable. Our criminal justice system allows sadistic murderers to walk free after serving a few token years in prison and often lets paedophiles off with just a fine. Sex offenders don't have to undergo any form of treatment while incarcerated and are downright unlucky to be put on the register. Our prisons are bursting at the seams, while the cash that could have been used to expand them was blown on a few fields in north County Dublin. Meanwhile our judges still wear the ridiculous wigs that were all the rage in 17th century England and the country is, well, bankrupt and living on credit.

So what does our Minister for Justice, Dermot Ahern TD deem worthy of his time? Blasphemy. A crime which should be removed from the constitution of a modern, secular republic is instead being enshrined in law. I say to you Minister Ahern: God does not exist. In my opinion, those who believe in an omnipotent deity who created the universe and all living things and who passes judgment on all, even babies who die during birth, and who can forgive all sins, even those of the paedophiles and murderers who are destroying this country, anyone who believes in this god is crazy.

Prove to me that there is a god. Then get all the fractured faiths to agree on that god. Then give me your blasphemy law. Blasphemy. 2009. This would be hilarious if it wasn't so serious. What fools we are to put up with the fools that lead us.

Read the Guardian's take on it here.

An intriguing question, posed recently in the Irish Times newspaper by one of Ireland's top novelists, Colm Toibin.

Interviewed in Weekend Review on April 25, 2009, Mr Toibin said he wondered when composing an article for the New York Times:

"Whether what's happening in Ireland, and the degree to which it's happening, is not as a direct result of disturbing that landscape? I'm talking about a general lack of thought, of planning, about how people are going to live, about how the disturbing of that landscape - who planned it, and how, and why - has made its way into what's happening now. Of how it is a metaphor for other things that have occurred. So I'm not just talking about the disruption of magic."

FYI, Ireland's economy is falling further and faster than any other economy in the world. The recent 'boom' was built solely on an unsustainable construction bubble. Now it's over, the country is bankrupt, unemployment expected to reach 20%. But the M3 construction continues. And the same politicians who engineered the bust are still in control. Time for some sanity, time to protect Tara.

Read Colm Toibin's excellent piece in the New York Times here.