HOME Thursday, 8 August 2002

With the rerun of the Nice Treaty referendum coming up in another month, one can only wonder what the public reaction will be, to being as good as told that they are fools and to try and get it right this time   For that, of course, is what Bertie Ahern and his fellow Euro-crawlers are saying to us. The majority of people who bothered enough to vote and say no, are being rewarded by being told that their vote isn't worth spit. Our elected representatives hadn't the spine to stand up to their Euro-masters and to ask that the treaty be renegotiated to take account of the justified fears of the voters that the EU is at last showing itself in its true colours and turning into a rich man's club.   Instead we were threatened with isolation and all sorts of drastic consequences, which cannot be done under the present treaty, unless the EU breaks its own rules, but may well happen if the Nice Treaty is ratified. The best they can come back with from the corridors of European power, is a verbal assurance that Ireland's neutrality would not be compromised. What glorious self-confidence they have, to think that anyone would take the word of a politician, even if it was written in stone. And, of course, loss of neutrality was only one of the fears of the people who voted No. What about the fears that Ireland and the other smaller countries would be sidelined by percentage voting, even on items of national importance? No reassurance on that? I thought so.   One has only to recall Ahern's first action after the defeat, when he forbade the referendum comission to provide the public with the pros and cons of an issue in future referendums, starting with the present one. In this, of course, he is admitting that the case for a yes vote is lame, in spite of the might of all the major political parties being behind it.   I am very much afraid that in the lack of the impartial presentation that the referendum commission would have provided, that the Yes people will win this time. But still I dream that the people will give Bertie Ahern and his cohorts the kick in the teeth that they so richly deserve for selling their own country into slavery.

HOME Sunday,18 August 2002

If I was a songwriter, I would not be able to enjoy this life, or rest easy when I was dead, if I knew that Ireland's Own would come along one day and get hold of one of my songs and print it without any credit in a version I would hardly recognise myself, getting the words and sense most senselessly wrong.   They have just once again printed a version of "Morning Has Broken" as Eleanor Farjeon never wrote it, with three extra maudlin verses that some hack (possibly Cat Stephens) stuck on to the end of it, so out of tune with the three original verses (even in their slightly mutilated state), that even someone as completely clueless as the IO editor should have noticed it. I have read the original version in a collection of Farjeon's poetry, so at least this time, I know what I'm talking about. In that book, it was titled "A Song For Spring".   Perhaps, even more nauseatingly, churches now sing the overt religious version of the first three verses, which, in their original state only gently hinted at an awareness of the divine.   In the same version of IO, they print the "words" of Kevin Johnson's "Rock and Roll, I Gave You all the Best Years of my Life". Now everyone is inclined to make mistakes when learning song words by ear (I have been putting wrong words into several songs, myself, down the years, before being finally corrected), so I would pass over most parts of this version that I think is wrong - but I cannot let the last half of the last verse pass as being in any way correct.   Kevin Johnson was (and is, of course!) an Australian and the last half of the last verse goes- She followed me when finally I sold my old guitar And she tried to help me understand I'd never be a star. IO has it - She followed me back to Tennessee where she finally made me see I'm just a plain old country boy, and that's all I'll ever be.   This is not just a case of mishearing the words, but of writing new ones altogether. What was at the back of this horrible perversion? Had the person responsible completely forgotten the ending and just written a new one without a care for Kevin Johnson, or anyone else? Did they actually think the song was American? Oh, Lordy, Lordy.   Why am I letting myself be irritated by such trifles? I have a feeling that this kind of carelessness and "couldn't care less"ness is more lethal to the world than any of the high-profile catastrophes. Everything noble and perfect is chipped away at and marinated until it becomes the kind of sludge that even the baby in the cradle can safely digest and excrete. Consequently, the world is slowly suffocating in its own shit.