Kathy Foley

June 29th, 2008

The French haven’t been this exercised about Ireland since the Normans invaded in 1169. Nicolas Sarkozy, the president of France, will visit us next week to discuss our No vote on the treaty of Lisbon, and Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, a former French president, has been complaining loudly - and rightly - that his comment about the public being led to accept the treaty by stealth was taken out of context and used unfairly by the No campaign.

It’s a shame that Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, who is busy with the launch of her third album, can’t accompany her husband. She could have provided a most suitable soundtrack. “Quelqu’un m’a dit,” she crooned on the title song of her first album, “que tu m’aimais encore.” Which translates as “somebody told me that you still loved me”.

How appropriate. Having delivered a stinging rejection to the treaty, the Irish people then informed the rest of Europe that we still loved them. In a Eurobarometer poll, 82% of us said Ireland had benefitted from EU membership, 73% said it was a good thing and 65% had a positive image of the EU.

If the No vote left the EU in “gigantic incomprehension”, to quote France’s foreign minister, this teasing declaration of our abiding affection can only have left them bewildered. No ardent beau courting a reluctant paramour could be as determined as Sarkozy. His credibility and authority as president of the European Council is at stake, as is the future of the treaty, now ratified by almost every other member state.

At last week’s summit in Brussels, Sarkozy promised to “keep the [European] family together”, but once he arrives in Dublin he will be pressing for a second referendum. He will get it, not because of the bullying tactics France might employ, but because Brian Cowen, as the leader of a country that has just tipped into recession, knows Ireland cannot afford to be left behind.

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June 15th, 2008

Copy as filed, not as published

Confuse them, bamboozle them and make them think for themselves. This is the latest bright idea from John Henry, the director of the Dublin Transportation Office (DTO). He wants to perplex drivers by ridding Dublin city centre of footpaths, traffic lights, stop signs, pedestrian crossings and other “clutter”. When drivers aren’t told what to do, he says, they will slow down and take more care, which should result in fewer accidents.

Alright, stop guffawing down the back. Yes, it does seem like a preposterous idea. It’s easy to imagine this plan leading to pandemonium. Think of a “clutter”-free College Green, for example, and the image that springs to mind is one of buses, taxis, vans and cars frozen in chaotic gridlock and engulfed in a cacophony of screeching horns and expletive-laden bellowing from frustrated drivers.

Any pedestrian or cyclist rash enough to try to cross this hellish junction would be lucky to escape with their lives, so we can add the wail of ambulance sirens to the tumultuous din of this imaginary traffic dystopia. It didn’t seem possible that Dublin’s traffic problems could get much worse than they already are, but there’s always room for disimprovement.

Amazingly, however, there’s plenty of evidence to show Henry’s counter-intuitive suggestion might just work. The notion of recasting streets as “shared spaces”, where there are no set rules (other than a speed limit of 30km/h), no one has the right of way and pedestrians, cyclists and motor traffic are all given equal priority, is not an idealistic flash-in-the-pan, but one that has been gaining traction with urban planners the world over.

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June 1st, 2008

The fact that I am a mathematical genius may come as a surprise to anyone who knows me. But by today’s standards, it’s true.

A new report exposing rampant grade inflation in the Leaving Cert shows that anyone who received a C or D grade in the early 1990s could now expect an A or B. So that C3 I scraped in maths in 1994 would probably be an A2 if I were to sit the exam next week. So I’m entitled to regard myself as a maths whizz and, as long as I’m not challenged on the square root of pi, I should be fine.

In 15 years, the number of students awarded an A or B in higher level has doubled in many subjects. In 1991, 19% of honours English students got an A or B. In 2006, that had risen to 38%. In Business, 40% of students obtained As or Bs in 2006, up from 20% in 1991. It’s the same story across most other subjects.

We must assume these soaring grades are not an unexpected side effect of the better standards of living ushered in by the Celtic Tiger. American teenagers may have become taller and healthier as a result of better nutrition after World War II, but I doubt access to Bebo and twice-yearly foreign holidays have magically made intellectual behemoths of the nation’s secondary school students.

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Getting a lot of traffic this week from people looking for information in plain English or in layman’s terms on the Lisbon Treaty. It’s a bit late, but not too late, to post this - The Treaty of Lisbon: A Spoofer’s Guide to How Not to Vote No by Jason O’Mahony. (It’s a PDF, by the way, just so you’re warned.)

Fair play to the guy - it’s about the easiest-to-understand guide to the treaty I’ve come across. Unbelievably, it’s actually quite enjoyable to read.

And don’t bother leaving a comment afterwards about how his guide, clear and all as it is, is designed to get you to vote Yes. I know it is. If you’re not already convinced, I hope he convinces you

And if the last page doesn’t give you a lump in your throat, you’re probably dead inside.

May 25th, 2008

Nothing compounds the post-holiday blues quite as much as the realisation that the news rumbled on without you, leaving you frantically scrabbling to catch up. I had one of those post-holiday moments last week when a colleague mentioned that Ciaran Cannon had called for prostitution to be legalised.

“He did?” I responded politely, as my mind whirred into overdrive. Who the hell is Ciaran Cannon? That quiet fella I worked with years ago? My colleague’s mad friend, who calls for all sorts of things after a feed of pints?

“You know. Senator Ciaran Cannon, leader of the Progressive Democrats,” my colleague added helpfully. Now I was shocked: the PDs were still going?

I checked their website, just to be sure. It’s still live and, yup, there’s a picture of a nice young man on the home page. Must be this Cannon chap, although the image is not captioned and sits atop a headline that begins “Minister Harney…”.

Cannon recognises that people may be surprised to realise the PDs are still in business. He has acknowledged that its campaign for a Yes vote on the Lisbon treaty is partly aimed at showing the electorate the party still exists and will have candidates standing in next year’s local elections.

An interview with him in Hot Press, in which he endorsed the legalisation of prostitution, was another effort to garner some publicity. And boy does this party leader need publicity. Just prior to the official announcement of his accession to the leadership, none of the assembled press photographers had any idea what he looked like. Last Wednesday, the Indo referred to him as “Green chief Ciaran Cannon”. At least they spelt his name properly.

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It may seem a tad early and it’s hard to think about winter woollies while the sun is shining gloriously, but I’ve had a sneak preview of the trends for autumn/winter and I just have to share them with you.

The big news? Austerity is the new black. Spending is out. Stinting is in. Who’ll have money for new clothes when Bord Gais is set to raise its prices by 19% and petrol is already costing as much as €1.79 a litre in Dublin? Millilitre for millilitre, that’s almost as pricey as a skinny latte.

Dropping thousands on designer duds may have been all the rage in the past few years, but there is going to be no more “shop till you drop”. Instead, the absolute “in” thing will be to watch as the shops drop. Habitat is gone. Which store will be next? The marvellous truth is that it doesn’t matter. We won’t care, because we won’t be shopping.

Sure, those pointyheads over at the Economic and Social Research Institute may think the economy is going to recover by 2010, but that is seasons away. Countless collections will have come and gone by then. In the meantime, those of us who care about being on-trend are going to have to cut our cloth.

Autumn-winter 2007/8 may have been all about cocoon coats and bright jewel colours, but the only must-have this year will be tightfistedness. Plaids and tartans are completely passé, whereas parsimony and thrift are de rigueur. Remember the utterly gorgeous 1940s glamour-goddess look for which we all went so crazy last winter? Well, that 1940s trend rolls right on through to next season, but the emphasis has shifted. Think rationing. Think clothing coupons. Think make-do-and-mend, ladies.

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April 6th, 2008

Were you caught rotten on Tuesday? Sent out by the boss to get tartan paint or a left-handed hammer or discovered your stapler suspended in a block of jelly?

Maybe you were lucky enough not to suffer any April Fool’s jokes, but thousands of motorists in Mayo were nicely pranked by the county council this April 1st, when it left a cardboard cut-out of a garda car at the side of the N5 Castlebar to Dublin road.

The cut-out was remarkably convincing and appeared to have a guard poking a speed gun out the driver’s window. The council said its plan was to highlight the dangers of speeding and remind drivers “the only ones they are fooling when they are speeding are themselves”.

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March 30th, 2008

The mandarins of the French foreign ministry in Paris have one overweening preoccupation these days, apparently. According to a ministry adviser quoted in the Irish Times, “they talk of little else at the Quai d’Orsay”.

What do you think this obsession might be? Go on, have a guess. A possible French boycott of the Olympic Games because of the unrest in Tibet? No. President Sarkozy’s visit to London or his new wife’s
decision to wear flat pumps when meeting the Queen? No and no.

It transpires that the issue that has caused much grimacing, gesticulating and exclamations of “quel horreur!”, is the sale of the French embassy in Ireland. France is verging on bankruptcy and its gaff in Dublin is being flogged for €60m as part of a global fire sale to raise some much-needed argent.

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March 23rd, 2008

Copy as filed, not as published

Suffering from the perennial complaint of having hundreds of TV
channels but finding there’s nothing on? You could soon have something
new to watch, if a senior garda gets his way. Paschal Feeney, the
president of the Association of Garda Sergeants and Inspectors (AGSI)
wants murder and kidnapping trials to be televised. It is, he says,
“high time that the general public became more fully aware of the
carry-on” in Irish courts.

Unfortunately - because it would have made for truly entertaining
television - Feeney didn’t mean there is carry on in the courts in a
Carry On Judging sort of way, with lusty old judges, skimpily dressed
stenographers and a steady flow of ooh-err missus double entendres
from senior counsels.

Instead, he seems to think day-to-day goings-on in the Four Courts are
more like scenes from Chicago, with guilty-as-sin defendants skipping
free from justice, having given ‘em the old razzle dazzle in the court
room. Irish trials should be televised, he said, so the rest of us
could see “the histrionics, the antics and the showmanship and they
should also see the venality and, where it exists, the nobility.”

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March 16th, 2008

Copy as filed, not as published

Did you hear the one about the man in a straitjacket who wouldn’t get
into a taxi outside the Central Mental Hospital? It’s a corker.

A couple of comedians thought it would be funny to dress up as a nurse
and a patient from the hospital and prank an unsuspecting taxi driver.
They stood outside the hospital in Dundrum, the “nurse” called a taxi
on a mobile phone and, when the taxi arrived, the “patient” in the
straitjacket refused to get into it, ran away, hid behind a small tree
and lay on the ground refusing to get up.

Alright, so it’s not likely to win a major comedy award. But when this
skit aired on the I Dare Ya programme on RTE 2, members of the public
complained to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission (BCC). The BCC
upheld the complaint, ruling that RTE had breached broadcasting code
stipulations against stereotyping or stigmatising people with mental
disability.

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