I AM not a big watcher of television. When I have my way – which is usually when everyone else is out – the TV goes on only when there is something I want to watch. Other times it is a constant background noise. An intrusion. Like white noise.
Sometimes I just like the silence. Or some good music.
Alexa and I have become friends. I like to listen to music when I’m writing. So Raidió Na Gaeltachta, Raidió Fáilte, LyricFM, Radio Ulster and RTE Radio 1 are my broadcasters of choice. I also have tons of tunes on my phone. And an iPod loaded up with thousands of songs from Seamus Drumm, who has the most expansive reservoir of ceol of anyone I know. My ambition is to listen to all Seamie’s collection before I die. Listening to music on these various devices wraps me in a melodious comfort blanket of uplifting sounds. Sometimes I will even join in.
If I’m not working, if I’m relaxing with a book or chilling out, then I find that playing LPs is a different listening experience. I also have cassette tapes from long ago. And hundreds of CDs. When I play my LPs or CDs then that is a session dedicated to the tunes I select. It is different from music in the background while I do other things.
Playing LPs is a particular pleasure. Selecting the album. Placing it on the turntable. Setting down the needle on the record. The initial sizzle and scratch of needle on vinyl. And then the glorious melodious vocals of your chosen singer or the rich instrumental from your selected musician or musicians. Nothing beats it. Except a live session or a concert. But that’s another story.
I started to put down a list of my favourite performers. But I scrapped that after I got to twenty. It depends on my mood. But one thing is for sure. A world without music or without the creative folk who provide it is not worth contemplating. Which is why we sing even quietly to ourselves. Or collectively at special times of mourning or celebration. And why I listen to music so much.
My tastes are very wide-ranging but I find I usually come back to ceol I have grown up with. That includes popular as well as folk and rock music. I am also very conscious that we Irish are blessed with a vibrant living music tradition. There is a special connection, a comforting acoustic from singing, playing or listening to music which is hundreds of years old. We are very lucky.
So whatever you are doing, take time to sing a song or to listen to someone else doing so. Let good tunes take you out of yourself. Let the music carry you away. Let it keep your spirits high.
An important rebuttal from Máirtín
AT the weekend leading trade union activists from across the island of Ireland came together in Newry for a packed Ireland’s Future event in the Thomas Davis Hub. It was a wet winter morning and I was pleasantly uplifted by the turn out.
The panel included ICTU assistant general secretary Gerry Murphy; Unison regional general secretary Patricia McKeown; Phil Ni Sheaghdha, general secretary of the Nurses and Midwives Organisation; Katie Morgan of FORSA; Greg Ennis of SIPTU; and Gerry McCormack of the ICTU. It was a lively and informative debate which pointed to a much better future for workers in a united Ireland.
Ireland’s Future is for holding the referendums by 2030 and Saturday’s public sectoral meeting is part of a consultation for what it believes is the ‘crucial five-year period’ ahead of us.
REMINDER: Máirtín Ó Muilleoir
Niall Murphy, who is the secretary of Ireland’s Future ,explained that it seeks “to continue to inform, educate and stimulate the conversation on constitutional change in the years preceding a referendum. The pace of change has quickened and we are firmly of a belief that a referendum will take place around the year 2030, therefore it is incumbent upon the political administrations in Dublin, Belfast and London to prepare, and it is also imperative that civil society, including the trade union movement, recognises the constitutional space we are now entering.”
This month will also see further meetings in the USA organised by Friends of Sinn Féin, modelled on the work of the party’s Commission on the Future of Ireland. Following two very successful events late last year in the Ohio cities of Cleveland and Columbus, two more public events are planned before the end of this month. The first will take place in Washington on January 27 and the second in Rockland County, New York, on January 30. North Belfast MP John Finucane will address both meetings.
In addition, the Commission also has plans well advanced for a series of sectoral and People’s Assembly events in Ireland in the first six months of this year.
A few weeks ago Uachtarán Shinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald announced that Conor Murphy is one of six Sinn Féin candidates the party is running in the elections to Seanad Éireann. Conor has been at the forefront of republican politics for decades as a councillor, an MP, MLA and Minister. He is an experienced activist, a vocal and determined united Irelander and has been a key negotiator for the party from the time of the Good Friday Agreement. If elected Conor will use his place in the Seanad to promote the all-Ireland economy and agenda as well as being a strong voice for the North in that institution.
The Financial Times ran a recent story claiming that a united Ireland could cost the South between an initial €2.5bn to €20bn a year for two decades. The €20 billion claim first made last summer has been firmly rejected by most economists and in response former Executive Finance Minister Máirtín Ó Muilleoir took the paper to task.
Máirtín reminded the FT that the block grant “contains expenditure for the UK debt, UK museums, the colonial holdover that is the Northern Ireland Office, UK defence, military material and much more. And then of course, here in the ‘wee North’ we do pay taxes: VAT, corporation tax, income tax, capital gains tax, duties etc. to HMG – all of which should be netted off the block grant.”
He continued: “That being the case, a transfer from Dublin of €20 billion each year for the next two decades would make us one the wealthiest regions in these islands.
“Moving the North of Ireland from its status as a poor cousin of Great Britain to a vibrant economy, via reunification and readmission to the EU, adds up. No doubt there will be an initial cost to Dublin (to whom our taxes would flow) but the benefits would be incalculable.”
Well done, Máirtín, for this nail-on-the-head rebuttal to this daft analysis.
Time to do the right thing
THE Irish government has formally joined South Africa’s genocide case against Israel. The South African government took its case to the International Court of Justice in December 23. In its historic advisory opinion issued last July the Court established that the occupation of Palestine is illegal and that states are under an obligation not to engage in trade which entrenches the occupation.
Confirmation that the Irish government has now joined the South African case as negotiators in Doha reportedly closed in on a ceasefire deal is welcome. The government should go further and insist on a full oral hearing before the ICJ. It must also move urgently to enact the Occupied Territories Bill which Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil have been frustrating for over five years now. There is also a need for sanctions to be imposed.
This becomes even more urgent in light of last week’s report in The Lancet medical journal which suggests that the number of Palestinian dead is significantly higher than current official estimates.
The delaying tactics of the government parties has to end. Every effort must now be made to quickly enact the Occupied Territories Bill and to introduce strong sanctions against Israel. The genocide has been going on for 16 month.
Close the ceasefire deal now.
