It was fantastic to see mental health and suicide being discussed on RTÉ Frontline last night. It can be unusual to see constructive discussion on current affairs programming, but I think that’s what the Frontline team achieved with the mix of guests – Minister Kathleen Lynch is a strong voice for mental health and within the constraints she has to operate in, I am confident that she will do her best to improve things.
A lot of what George Hook was saying made sense to me, and reminded me of much of John McCarthy and Mad Pride’s campaigning ground on mental health – that the medical model can be highly damaging, that nobody knows what to say to somebody depressed (trying to talk, instead of just listening, as we should), and that the pharmaceutical industry’s aim of getting as many people on as many different medications as possible suits an under-resourced health service. I was sorry John wasn’t around to participate, but I’m glad the conversation is happening.
Here’s my editorial from last week’s edition about John (originally printed in the Cork Independent).
“The world won’t be as much fun now that he’s left it.”
A user of the website Broadsheet made this comment when the site marked John’s death yesterday, and I can’t say it better.
John was a campaigner, a pugilist, a debater, a temporary politician, a poet and a rogue, but it was his fun that made him shine.
He had none of the hang-ups that the rest of us have, and it made him extraordinary.
The last time we met was in the new Marymount Hospice at Curraheen, where he had gone for respite. It was the best night out I ever had in a hospice.
We made Singapore Slings in plastic cups with glacé cherries, laughed, and argued.
He knew he hadn’t long left, and he was full of sage advice. Never one to beat around the bush, John asked my partner and I whether we loved each other, and if we had a good sex life, saying that nothing else really matters.
He was like that.
John adored his lovely wife Liz with the ardent passion of a teenager. He loved life with the same passion, and his death makes the world a little darker for those who knew him, even if it was just through this newspaper or his frequent radio appearances.
His writing was a beacon for those in pain, and his raw honesty about so many things was refreshing in a world of spin and cynicism.
My last communication with him was a text I sent him the morning he died, asking if he’d heard about Mary Raftery and would he like to write about her for his column this week.
John and Mary Raftery worked together on ‘Behind the Walls’, the documentary that focused on the horrors of our mental health system, past and present.
Both were fearless campaigners with a sense of justice and fairness that is rare. Both stood up for people who had nobody else, who were ignored or who just needed someone with a loudspeaker to shout, “This is not right”.
The loss of John McCarthy will be felt by a great many people. His family has lost a wonderful husband, son, father, grandfather, and brother, and his friends have lost a counsellor, an advisor, and a drinking buddy.
But those represented by Mad Pride have lost a fearless advocate, an unquestioning giver of support and love, and someone who understood that being mad is normal and human.
That’s why we called John’s column The Human Condition; because John understood the pain and joy of being human better than anybody I have ever met. He knew about despair and about great love, and his life was one lived to the full in every possible sense.
John was not one for prayers, but there will be thousands of people worldwide thinking of him and sending their love and light to Liz and their family today as he is buried.
And, as he said himself of love; “In this life it is really all that matters”.
Related articles
- Mad Pride Founder Dies at 61 (kenyatta2009.wordpress.com)
- Carrying on the work of the late John McCarthy – End forced ECT (kenyatta2009.wordpress.com)
- Remembering John McCarthy (ztrek.blogspot.com)
- Rest in peace John McCarthy: founder of Mad Pride Ireland (beyondmeds.com)
Café Bar Deli on Academy Street has been a firm favourite of many Corkonians since 2005 but a new focus on pricing sets it out from the crowd.
Main courses for as low as €10 and reasonably priced, quality wines mark it out as a perfect ‘go-to’ spot for couples, families and colleagues seeking tasty food and a cosy atmosphere which is still upmarket enough to be considered a treat.
We visited last weekend and the restaurant was surprisingly busy for a Saturday night in January. Our starters, a mixed plate of antipasti including some cured meats with an unusual, sumptuous smoked aubergine dip (€8), and a very large portion of delicious chicken liver paté (€7), arrived promptly and were eaten just as quickly.
An excellent value, very drinkable Pech Roc Merlot 2009 (€22) was a great accompaniment to the paté.
For mains, the Moroccan lamb tagine was served in a hearty portion and was pronounced delicious, with perfectly cooked couscous and a nicely spicy, but not overpowering, sauce. A scattering of feta cheese brought a lovely piquancy, and all for just €12. The Pepper Salami pizza, which also included red onion, pepperoni, chilli, red peppers and olives, was very tasty – and also good value, at €10. A shared mixed nut caramel sundae was delicious, and excellent coffee rounded off a great value, tasty meal. We’ll definitely be back.
This post also appears on http://corkindependent.com/blog
It’s been a while (ok, over half a year!) since I posted here directly, although I’ve continued to feed my editorials from the paper through here. What can I say, we’ve been busy at the Cork Indo!
The main reason for lack of posting here was that we were busy getting www.corkindependent.com revamped. The site now includes a blog of its own as well as much more comprehensive and regularly updated content. We’ve been busy tweeting, Facebooking, blogging and updating, as well as having some changes at the paper otherwise.
But, like every January, it’s time for me to pick this up again and run!
I’ll start 2012 with this site, which every journalist should keep an eye on – and not just journalists, but people who consume news. It’s well worth analysing your own motives and influences when writing a piece, and we all need a reminder once in a while about ‘framing’ in news. 2011 was a fascinating (if in many ways very depressing) year to be a journalist, with Leveson in the UK and the debate that sparked. I’ll be bookmarking News Frames and checking it often to remind myself that, even when I don’t mean to, I might be playing to someone’s agenda.
I interviewed Peter Aiken last week in relation to his hugely successful Live at the Marquee series in Cork. You can read it here:
http://www.corkindependent.com/stories/item/2516/2011-24/The-business-of-music
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On Monday evening I was in Dublin to attend RTÉ’s The Frontline as a participant from the audience.
The show was about the Presidency and my contribution was about the absurdity of the political hoops prospective candidates must jump through, before they ever get to our ballot papers.
Our only directly elected national representative must first be anointed by the political elite. That is wrong.
Aside from this entirely, a mounting debate about the price of the Presidency is taking place. Debate is always welcome, but the Presidency plays a role that is absolutely crucial for our society, now more than ever. While our President has very limited (that is to say, almost no) powers, it is a crucial role for a person of good standing to fill in this country.
We have lost faith in the Church, the State, politics and Europe, not to mention in ourselves. We need somebody to look up to.
The reaction to the tragic death of Brian Lenihan proves that it is still possible to see the person beyond the politician. Many were unhappy with his political legacy, but the vast majority have acknowledged that he was an exceptional man who believed passionately in public service.
We need exceptional people in public life, and we need exceptional people who are in a position above and apart from the petty squabbling that politicians are necessarily engaged in.
Politics is not pretty and it is not edifying. Even at Cork City Council level, politicians are rarely inclined to cover themselves in glory, as we saw from this week’s meeting.
But leadership is a different thing, and can come in many guises. Sporting figures like Paul O’Connell and even entertainment figures like Mary Byrne – laugh, but she has shown immense dignity since she was shot to fame – prove that. There are a few key attributes that they share; dignity; charm; knowing what is appropriate; and having achieved something in their chosen field.
I’m not suggesting Paul O’Connell or Mary Byrne for President.
What I am suggesting is that a President should be someone we can be proud of. Someone who has achieved something for this country already, be that social, cultural or in the voluntary sector. Someone who we know will put the good side out and make us proud of them and of ourselves.
It sounds twee, but the President has a hugely important role as someone for young people to look up to. Someone who won’t cause the adults in the house to throw something at the television or change the channel.
President Robinson is an inspiration to women of my generation. I saw her numerous times throughout my childhood, planting trees, cutting ribbons and even on children’s television, and she had an impact. Her work before and since being President of Ireland means she continues to be an icon to those who believe in justice and equality. President McAleese, too, has had an immense impact on the psyche of the nation, and the recent visit of Queen Elizabeth is a testament to her skilled and subtle Presidency.
Think of a future generation with nobody to look up to but people like Paul O’Connell and Mary Byrne. They are great role models for potential sports people and singers, but to get beyond our current confidence crisis, we need role models for potential good citizens.
Related articles
- Brian Lenihan: Admired and respected Irish finance minister who struggled to cope with the economic crisis he inherited (independent.co.uk)
- Critiquing Brian Lenihan… (cedarlounge.wordpress.com)
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I was on RTÉ Frontline #rtefl as tweeters know it, last night, talking about the Presidency (from the audience). It was an interesting discussion but disappointing in that of the four candidates present, two won’t be in the race after Sunday. I was quite impressed with Fergus Finlay. Full thoughts in this weeks editorial, but here it is in case you missed it.
(Next time, I’m bringing a hairbrush into the studio).
Related articles
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Unmarried mothers, and children with no mothers. Children whose mothers weren’t deemed suitable and women who weren’t deemed suitable to be mothers. Girls whose fathers weren’t working, or girls whose children were their father’s. Little girls whose crime was to give cheek to a nun or be from the wrong family.
Latter day prisoners of no conscience, the fates of these women were wrapped up in the sheets and towels they laundered for the profit of the church and the State.
Slaves for no reason other than coming to the attention of the wrong person or having a bit of fun. Or because they had been raped, or they were orphans, or their parents couldn’t cope.
The last Magdalene Laundry closed in 1996. 1996! The Celtic Tiger was underway, we were winning Eurovisions, the ‘knowledge economy‘ was in full swing and people were buying houses as if they were penny sweets.
All that time, women were being released who had spent 20, 30, 40 years incarcerated. Silent days of enforced prayer, laundering, locked doors and the threat of the national police being sent to retrieve them should they try to escape.
What good was the mirage of the Celtic Tiger if your life was spent in prison for committing no crime and nobody will acknowledge it?
We may be more educated, richer (despite the bust, the average household here has €22,125 in assets), open to civil union and immigration and all the other things that mark a modern pluralist country, than we were when those women underwent that ordeal.
But what good is a changed Irish society to them if it continues to ignore the terrible reality that they have lived?
The struggle of those brave women appears to be reaching a tipping point, but it has appeared this way before.
For 14 years – coming into power just after the last laundry closed and at the apex of the church abuse scandals – successive Fianna Fáil Governments completely ignored this issue. They made noises, some promising and others absolutely, disgracefully dismissive.
Former Minister for Education Batt O’Keeffe just last year referred to the incarcerated women as “employees”, then as “workers”, in an appalling statement that firmly denied any right to compensation and attempted to wash the State’s hands of its sordid past.
The new government promised yesterday that Justice Minister Alan Shatter was very close to making a statement on the matter. It’s to be hoped that the Government is taking the long view on this and that those around the Cabinet table realise that a society is made of more than money.
It took a long time for abuse victims to be acknowledged and compensated. Many never were. These women are abuse victims too, and our failure to acknowledge them says as much about our society now as the society we think we have left behind. It’s time to acknowledge their suffering, apologise for it and, yes, compensate them. Their slavery made millions over years for the church and the State. Time they got some of it back.
Related articles
- Institutional child abuse: a timely reminder from Geneva (sluggerotoole.com)
- UN panel urges Ireland to probe Catholic torture (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
- Torturing Children and the Separation of Church and State (opentabernacle.wordpress.com)
- UN panel urges Ireland to probe Catholic torture (sfgate.com)
- Was there something Ugly about ireland’s boomtime ? (politics.ie)
- Victims of the Celtic Tiger? (politics.ie)
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In the last 24 hours, I have heard three different people say:
“I’d hate to live with a Chink. They smell, you know.”
“His children? [referring to well-known Irish man of mixed race] You’ll find them in the zoo.”
“He’s foreign, but he’s gorgeous. It’s ok, I checked, he’s not Polish.”
Edit: Is this just me? Was I underestimating how racist we are in this country?
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- Is Facebook the New ‘Face’ of Racism? (theroot.com)
- Where and when did racism originate (wiki.answers.com)
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During Tuesday night’s Prime Time programme about how carers and their loved ones are suffering under cutbacks, I watched Twitter for commentary on the show.
It’s a great way of monitoring how people are reacting to a TV programme or an ongoing debate, and the huge amount of comments on the subject showed that it really hit home.
The situations of the people featured were difficult, heartbreaking and sometimes downright insufferable. Carers contribute invisibly to a society that does not recognise their contribution.
While it’s a welcome opener for a fresh push on carers’ rights, the programme contained nothing new. If you are a regular person living a regular life, with family, friends and neighbours with varied incomes and the usual assortment of mental and physical ailments people suffer in life, there should have been nothing new in it.
If you have an elderly relative in need of a home help or nursing home care, you will have experienced a degree of what the people featured experience every day. If you have a disabled child and can’t get them speech therapy or physiotherapy or respite care, you will have experienced it. If you have a family member with a mental illness, who has to live alone and vulnerable because of cutbacks to their residential care facilities, you will know about it. If you look after a family member who has waited so long for vital surgery that they cannot walk, you know about it.
What I couldn’t get over was how shocked by the programme people appeared to be. Tweets like “This is the Ireland nobody sees” and “I just can’t believe this” were more shocking to me than anything I saw on the television.
If you have not seen that the way we do things in the country was causing this inequality long before there was any bank bailout, you are blind. Or self-centred. Or both. Because almost everyone knows someone in one of the situations above.
Before any recession or any bank bailout I knew children who could not get special needs care, schools that were falling down but wouldn’t be re-built, and people waiting for years on hospital lists because they couldn’t afford private healthcare. None of this is new, and most of it is nothing to do with cutbacks.
Cutbacks are making it worse, and will continue to do so. But before there were any cutbacks, when the Government was throwing money at problems, we still had a two-tier health system; we still had very little community care; there was no support for carers beyond a rare respite place and a pittance of a payment; and inequality was ingrained in our society.
As one person replied to me on Twitter when I commented to this effect, “I’m alright Jack… until I see it on the television.”
We voted for low taxes and we voted for a Government that wanted to build private hospitals on public land and subsidise private healthcare companies. After voting that way, we used our new found “wealth” to buy health care and basic services for our children, elderly and disabled family members.
Now that so few of us have that money to spend, our lack of basic systems is hitting the middle classes. The new Government has promised to reform the health system, and after Enda Kenny‘s comments in the Dáil on the issue of carers, it’s to be hoped they will look the same way at the provision of care.
Related articles
- Caring for the Carers: Dealing with Depression in Carers (brighthub.com)
- Women and the coalition: social care (guardian.co.uk)
- Carers rightly call a spade a spade (politics.ie)
- Juggling the Costs of Dementia Care (everydayhealth.com)
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The Queen’s visit to Ireland has been a subject of puzzlement for many of us.
What’s the big deal? Why so much security? Who cares?
To many of us in the Republic, particularly people under 40, the Troubles are – mostly – an unpleasant memory that never affected us directly. To many young people even in the North, they are of the past, and the few dissidents who continue to stir trouble are reviled as throwbacks to times that nobody wants to repeat.
It was only on Monday that I realised the significance of the visit, and why it is being hailed as historic in the manner that it is. It’s not about us.
We take peace for granted now; this is not a country at war, no matter what the deluded dissidents say.
The visit is historic because the North has become a symbol of hope for people who suffer under oppression in other places. Even rare outrages like the despicable murder of PSNI Constable Ronan Kerr only serve to demonstrate just how few people in the North wish to return to violence. When an atrocity like that is a notable exception that outrages society, it shows a society that has grown unused to violence.
Much of the pivotal work on the Peace Process was carried out by people like former US envoy George Mitchell. He has just resigned as the US envoy to the Middle East.
On Sunday, Palestinians commemorated the ‘nakba’ or ‘catastrophe’, their name for the 1948 settlement of Palestine and the declaration of the State of Israel. Israelis know it as Israeli Independence Day.
Thousands of unarmed Palestinian refugees attempted to walk from Syria, Jordan and Lebanon across the border to what is now Israel. The majority were peaceful. Accounts differ, but approximately ten Palestinian civilians were killed and hundreds injured after they were fired on by border security.
No matter what your perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is no doubt that the situation there is desperate. Violence, terror, and atrocities on both sides are widespread. There is no security, no trust and no social cohesion.
Think, for a minute, just how far our lives in Ireland are from that reality, when they could be so close to it. If so many people had not worked so hard on achieving peace here, scenes like the shameful, pathetic riot in Dublin on Tuesday would be commonplace.
Peace has brought civilisation, and it cannot be taken for granted. At this moment there are active wars going on in 38 different countries, according to the website globalsecurity.org. That is 38 countries where people do not trust their authorities; where civil liberties are at risk; where violent death is commonplace; and where acts of war like rape and torture are part of everyday life.
The Queen’s visit is a symbol of a time beyond war and terror. For ordinary people in places like Palestine and for politicians and peace brokers, it’s a sign that, in one generation, giant, unthinkable progress can be made.
For us, who no longer realise the gift we have been given, it may be a minor inconvenience. But it’s not about us.
Related articles
- Source: George Mitchell stepping down as Middle East envoy (cnn.com)
- The Queen in Ireland: what Irish writers have to say about it (kimbofo.typepad.com)
- Letters: Queen’s Ireland visit heralds new chapter (guardian.co.uk)
- In Ireland, Queen Elizabeth writes new chapter with visit to Bloody Sunday site (csmonitor.com)
- Queen gives Ireland closest royals have come to apology for Britain’s actions (guardian.co.uk)
