Tirconnail Tribune :: 27th December 2000
Howya, if you’re reading this then you survived Christmas. Maith thu!It is, after all, the time of the year when you are most likely to be murdered by a member of your family. And as most murders are inter-family-it’s the time of the year you are most likely to be murdered full stop!
This is the strangest week of the year-of course if you’ve been murdered over the feckin turkey in you wont notice anything strange about it at all.
For those of us who haven’t been murdered this week, the seven days between Crimbo & New Year IS strange.
It isn’t really like a week at all.
You forget what day of the week it is.
It does lend itself to thinking about the year ahead.
People determine to do things differently in the coming year.
Now, they never do because the reason they have been doing things as they have been so far is because they’re themselves.
They would need a DNA transplant and a new childhood to become different people.
So feck that.
If you’re into your adult years then you’re the person you are so settle for it.
What CAN change are the circumstances around you,
Sometimes that’s good-a new job, an annoying neighbour dies.
Sometimes its bad-you lose your job and an annoying neighbour pulls through.
This week of the year is also the week where journalists have to pretend to be mystics and predict the future.
Well I don’t go in for all that crystal ball crap-but I do think it is useful to look at how things are gonna pan out in the next 12 months.
OK. Here goes-keep this one and try and embarrass me with it in a year’s time.
Those of you who know me will know that attempting to embarrass the Murph is a largely fruitless exercise.
OK clairvoyance begins at home.
Donegal.
What do I see, the mists are clearing-Oh yes-I see a Brown envelope!
What could this mean?
I see an important man, yes he’s turning around his face is…
Sorry, he sprits have left us!
What I would wish for is a Tribunal on planning decisions in this county in, say, and the last 10 years.
I don’t know if that will happen-cause I ain’t a psychic (actually NO-ONE is a psychic, its all BS).
I rather suspect that there is more of a chance that Martin O’Neill will be Rangers next manager than the current crop of envelope-takers in the Dail will unleash the can of worms up here over planning.
Like in many other things the Bowsies in the Dail hope that Donegal will go away y’know.
Port Na Blagh has been destroyed-not altered-destroyed-to make a few bloated feckers rich. That could only have been done-with at best- inappropriate planning decisions.
Either people weren’t up to their jobs or they were bent.
Either way I want to know and the people of that part of the county want to know as well.
Will we?
Don’t hold your breath.
What of our annoying neighbours in the North?
Will they pull through?
I somehow doubt that also.
The British gameplan is being revealed and the extent to which the current leadership of the republican Movement has been played like a piano is there for all to see.
The tap is sprung they have no where to go but to go quietly into SDLP-dom.
In the 80s they had the choice of the Vietcong in the jungle-bas no bua.
Having spurned victory as a possibility they now must accept that Britain was lying when they republican Leadership was originally enticed with the prospect of an end to hostilities that was positive for Republicanism.
British mandarins telling lies-pass the smelling salts Martha!
In the meantime good ol boy Sammy will continue to lynch the niggers of North Belfast.
The trap is sprung the vice will tighten around Sinn Fein as a pro agreement party.
The Brits are hostile and Ahern helpless-dithering in the face of a crisis-well to be fair he dithers in everything else.
The GFA is unravelling and Bill Clinton wont be around to lean on the Brits to lean on Trimble.
I wouldn’t be surprised if –in a year’s time people can write after their sloinne “MLA (retd)” as well they might write other things that they’ve retired from.
Bottom line-Sammy still likes to kills Taigs-no-one will stop him.
Trimble-to survive his own rejectionists will have to push for visible proof of an IRA surrender and the British political elite are tied to their generals worldview.
Don’t expect good news form the North this year and don’t drive yer Donegal car in fun spots like South Antrim if ye can avoid it.
In Sammy’s mother country it WILL be election year. With Clinton gone Middle England’s embarrassing little paddy problem will slip off the political radar.
This will leave the Oxbridge boys at he NIO and the security types to turn the screw.
Yeah, a bad year for North-which means in many ways a bad year for Donegal.
Blair will, probably, get a second term.
However, a Hague victory is not as long odds as it was a year ago. He is now credible in Middle England.
If he wins then the whole Northern things goes pear-shaped.
Hague in Number 10 coupled with Dubya in the White House is a nationalist nightmare.
In the South I don’t expect an election-all of the coalition members-especially the junior partners have much to lose by going early.
Fine Gael is a mess-Bruton is hopeless and he won’t get any better as a threat to Bertie.
The Tiger is till providing for Navanman so don’t expect a rush to the polls. Only a catastrophe at the Tribunals could cause a raft of “resignation by handcuff”.
The whole thing would need to implode like it did with the Christian Democrats in Italy-our lot are no less corrupt-but they’re much cuter.
The PDs are turkeys-they ain’t going to vote for Christmas.
Now is there any of that Turkey left?
Phil Mac Giolla Bhain
