Faithful Place

Am currently reading Faithful Place by Tana French.  It's another murder mystery, set in The Liberties in Dublin. I'm quite enjoying it, despite the problem I've had with this and the previous book The Likeness, which is that Dublin is fundamentally too small for the events to really occur. In The Likeness, we are asked to suspend our disbelief that there could be two identical women, unrelated, wandering around Dublin for years, and no one ever twigs, allowing the protagonist, an undercover cop, to assume the identity of a woman who looks exactly like her.

It's not going to happen. Dublin is a small city, where if you don't know someone, it's a fair call to say that you know of them, or you know someone that knows them. Six degrees of separation isn't in it, it's more like two, maybe three degrees at best. Put it this way, the very first day, of my very first job in Ireland, I discover that Himself had been to school, same year etc, as the boyfriend of the woman I sat next to. That's the kind of place Ireland is.  So the basic premise of The Likeness, or that of Faithful Place, in which the protagonist cuts ties with his family and never sees them, despite living maybe a mile away, on the same side of the Liffey, doesn't really wash. They would have been more successful had they been set in a larger, more disparate city, such as London, or Sydney.

But they're still well written, with an ear for dialogue, and so very much better than the psychopath-serial killer-murdering-young-blonde-professional-women that seems to be the hallmark of so much American crime fiction recently!

We won. Oh yes indeed, we did.

Richard has finally been elected after the Labour Party demanded a recount. Serve them right. He's done a lot of work in the locality over a long time and Ivana Bacik was a blow-in aimed, I suspect, at ensuring that the ULA did not get the seat. It backfired. FF's Mary Hanafin is declaring that "politics is in her blood" and bemoaning the fact that there was only 1 Dublin TD, no women, and only 18 so far overall. They've dropped from 77 deputies elected in 2007 to 71 in January 2011, to 18 now.

Which means that the ULA now has almost one third the seats of FF. A decade ago, who would have thought that could come to pass?

All 6 Greens lost their seats. They reckon they can come back. I wouldn't be so sure, myself, not after legitimising the fiasco economics played out by FF is the last few years. And SF have 14 seats.

But most importantly, we won five seats, with Richard Boyd-Barrett, Joe Higgins, Clare Daly, Joan Collins and Seamus Healy all winning seats. This means that there will be a strong, focussed and principled left wing opposition in the Dáil, and will ensure that what I think will be the inevitable slide to the right by SF will be checked. It will also be a thorn in the side of what will not doubt be a cosy alliance between FG and Labour, which is good.

So here it goes!

Election Day - Vote 1 ULA!

It's election day in Ireland today. The Sydney Morning Herald has run the photo beloved of the international press, of an unidentified islander somewhere off the west coast, lugging a ballot box with a member of the Garda Síochána. The islanders always get to vote early due, to the unpredictability of the weather and the inherent isolation of living on a very small island off a slightly larger island in the Atlantic. This is a quaint notion to many less isolated countries. 


Fianna Fáil, the dominant party for the last decade will be going down in flames, as those responsible for the fiscal irresponsibility that has put Ireland in the state it's in. There are a number of parallels that can be drawn between them and NSW Labor, nepotism, cronyism,  incompetence and much the same ethics. 


The Greens, who supported FF through the last few years, after the good times went and the bank bailouts began, will be done like a dogs dinner, and will in future have much the same relevance. It's said that to sup with the devil you need a long spoon. The Greens appear to have been using a teaspoon. They'd have been better off with the worlds biggest parfait spoon. 


Mine you, Fine Gael won't be much better, and alas, they will be the next party in power. Enda Kenny is a sanctimonious ex-teacher who hails from Mayo. Many wish he'd stayed there, not least those of us appalled by his "joke" about Patrice Lumumba, the first president of the Congo who was subsequently assassinated. Lumumba's relative live in Dublin, so not only was it crass, it was stupid as well. 


Still, that's the kind of person he is.


The ULA should do well. I'm not going to jinx it, but we should get at the very least two, hopefully three seats and the potential for a few more. It won't stop the IMF 'bailout', but it will ensure that ethics and honestly have a place in the Dáil that has been vacant for far too long. 


But now I will digress into the lovely topic of Irish political party names. Labour,  the Greens, meh. The late, but certainly unlamented Progressive Democrats had an American style name to match their ruthlessly American Republican style politics. All the left wing parties have decent workaday names that tell their politics, Socialist Party, Socialist Workers Party, People before Profit, United Left Alliance.


But the three parties that have their names in Irish, now THOSE are names! Fianna Fáil's name in English is "Soldiers of Destiny". They have their destiny all right, but I suspect it will be more soldering the remnant pieces back together, than the mighty army soldiering on. Plus I'm looking forward to the inevitable headlines over the weekend proclaiming Fianna FAIL! It's great the difference a fothar can make. 


Fine Gael's name means "Tribe of the Gaels". Well, they certainly are a tribe all right, despite the fact that in the 21st century they prefer to present a somewhat more sophisticated face to the world. Turn them upside down though, and you'll still see the mud on their wellies. 


And finally, Sinn Féin, Irish for we ourselves, or ourselves alone. Which they have been in Irish politics for a long time, sensibly keeping a distance from the centre right. However, as the North has shown, it won't be long before they're cosying up in positions of power. 


It promises to be interesting.