For 'Elite' read 'Emigrant'

I wonder why the government hasn’t learned from the Nice and Lisbon referendums? Nobody wants to see even more money wasted by having to give the right answer next time. The electorate doesn’t like being told what to do; and we have good reason not to trust government in general. The supposed saving of €20m is nothing compared to the amount that will be spent on the new privately appointed committee experts, as proposed by Richard Bruton TD recently.

The chronically insulting aspect of the Seanad Abolition Referendum is the Yes/No option. A reduced and reformed second house of actual experts, as opposed to failed TDs is an alternative. But the Taoiseach won’t engage or debate an alternative proposal.

There’s a lot of talk of ‘elitism’ about the Seanad, yet the unions have nomination and voting rights, almost twice that of the universities. The Socialist Party launched their Yes campaign recently, citing figures for graduates eligible to vote in particular Postal Zones. As you’d expect, Dublin 4, a densely populated area including Irishtown and Ringsend and many rural migrants, has markedly more university panel votes than Dublin 10. Dublin 4 is also twice the size. Similarly, the numbers in Rochestown, Cork, outweigh those of Ballyvolane.

What’s disingenuous about this extrapolation is the suggestion that everyone who has a vote is ‘elite’. Any graduate of UCD, UCC, TCD, NUIM, NUI Galway can be one of the six candidates and vote. Or simply, anyone who worked hard to get into college, took a part-time job or two, paid their way, somehow studied and passed exams. Does that make every social worker, nurse, secondary teacher an elite? The architects who’ve studied for at least five years and have lost their jobs? Not every graduate is the offspring of an affluent dynasty.

It’s easy to slap the label on all graduates, easy to demark society by people’s earnings, by those who try but can’t find work and those who claim benefits. But the main problem with the Seanad is the political appointees; all candidates should be drawn from a broader category base. Why are there eleven senators on the Agricultural Panel and eleven on the Labour Panel, with only five on the Culture and Education panel? Why isn’t there a computer science panel, a medical and legal panel?

The Seanad simply requires reduction and reform. As does the Dáil and, if anything, the Dáil needs more so called ‘elite’, professionally qualified practitioners, industrialists, thinkers and do-ers and less school teachers on long term leave.

I took a straw poll of fifty people on my email list, equally divided between men and women, most are sole traders, some are doing something different to their ‘celtic tiger’ job, some are retraining or planning to emigrate.

Within a day I had twenty replies: Yes to Abolition: 4; Unsure: 1;   No: 15

The fifteen who will vote No were very clear why; the alternative is non-transparent, unsafe, wide open to corruption and ultimately jobs for the boys.

I was a first-time graduate at thirty-three, with two small children and a part-time job. I didn’t bother with Seanad elections, there was too much paperwork and I didn’t know any of the candidates, there were other things to worry about. It wasn’t until the last election, when my children were old enough to do my research that I voted. I asked my sons to go through the list and choose someone. On the basis he was well qualified as a cancer surgeon, ie. he might know a thing or two about medicine and he was donating his Seanad salary to cancer research, we picked Professor John Crown, who has since drafted a reasonably sensible Reform Bill. Both of my sons have now finished college, the youngest has a Seanad vote, the eldest does not. Does that make one penniless son elite and the other one, with a Cork girlfriend who has a vote from UCC, bitterly cynical?

The reality is that our ‘elite’ university graduates won’t be here to vote, they will all have emigrated.

A Load of Old Rubbish

Model of #Success

It’s a wet Saturday; I’ve just bought the Irish Independent having scanned it in the Spar to make sure my piece is in it, otherwise, I’m afraid it’s online for me. I’m still pinching myself that my opinion is getting into print. No point in wondering if I went public on the D v Ireland case eleven years ago how my *career* might have shaped. Would my yearning to be a writer have been fulfilled sooner? I wouldn’t have done all the other stuff like a Masters in Building Conservation to block  the memory of the D Case and because the college was in walking distance.

The Cost Centres were eleven and thirteen when I started that course, I was sure it would slot nicely into our lives. One should always remember that taking exams and writing a thesis in a subject one loves is guaranteed to put you right off. It does, until it suddenly helps you find work, work that you enjoy and that pays. I'm even going back to college again in a few weeks, or rather I will be if I can pay my fees in kind. More anon.

Since the Big R the old building conservation work dwindled to nothing, so in 2011 I decided to write a novel based on my thesis; the Cost Centres were going to be away for the whole summer on their J1s, absolutely no excuse to put it off any longer. I had it finished in six months. Finished as in 70,000 words with a beginning, middle and end. Basing it on the thesis didn't work (as in boring) so I set half in New York and half in a rural Irish backwater. I'm not trying to sell it here BTW.... Plenty of time for that.

This week I did the thirteenth re-write, cut from 140,000 words to 98,000, having been two books in one, with a screenplay rearing up every now and then.

Discipline, I realise now, is everything in writing, I just filled pages to get wordcounts up, which is a good ploy, very motivating. But then you've got to get the scalpel at it quickly.  It has been read in many versions by dear friends and one professional editor. The editor had me dismantle my ‘experimental’ structure; every alternate chapter was set in 1850 and 2011. After meeting an agent three weeks ago who encouraged me to shorten it and change the title, I had a new version on Tuesday to be read by a literary queen. It just had to be printed and bound, I was relieved to email it to the printers with instructions for two copies.

Little Cost Centre graduated in Economics and Philosophy this week, he wasn’t even bothered about his graduation, but a lot of work went into those exams so I encouraged him, planned a lunch with his girlfriend, brother and a dear family friend and prevailed on jewellery star, Clarice, to find a worthy memento for the day, the *boy* version of the ‘success amulet’. I sat beside his girlfriend in UCD while the ceremony proceeded, naughtily tweeting and checking emails on my phone while other people’s children were being conferred.

I had an email from info@panda.ie ‘this appears to have been sent to us in error’.

My manuscript. My two and a half year slog. The meaning of my future career/life. 

I’d sent it to the binmen.

The cost centres have told me not to over-react.

When X is not a Kiss

Suicide Blonde

On Monday I joined the paid employment people on the Luas into town.  Cheered on by the fact I’d got free parking and my return fare was 3.70. So far, so budget. The tram glides through the backlands, the more fascinating underbelly of Victorian Dublin, built the year of the Offences Against the Person Act of 1861, a British law under which Ireland still operates.

For a change, I immersed myself in the world of digital wizardry and got some savvy ideas from Helen Shaw at Athena Media. There are so many free and clever things you can do with Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and now that I’ve discovered Tumblr, Dublinlandlady will be on the move with dynamic content – that’s the idea anyway.

So, I missed the morning presentation by psychiatrists at the Seanad, a woman in the public gallery told me Dr Tony McCarthy, resident psychiatrist at Holles Street, made her cry. I remember attending him once for an hour after losing my twins, it cost 180 euro, I decided I couldn’t afford to be depressed. In fact, it took so long to get an appointment with him that by then I had started my masters in UCD architecture school and I was so consumed by the amount of study ahead, I didn’t have time to be depressed.

Anyway, the Health Committee hearings are all about that, depression and suicidal ideation in pregnancy rather than after pregnancy. And that, I can assure you, is very depressing to listen to over and over, cogent arguments by experts and extremely held ideological views by well funded lobbyists.

I felt nobody in the room really understand the human side of the story, yes the doctors might be familiar with patients in tragic circumstances, but it is quite another thing to go to a strange hospital in another country grieving the loss of a wanted baby.

A woman sitting beside me in the gallery asked if I was a journalist, as I was making notes on my ipad. 'No', I said, 'I took the D v Ireland case.'

'Oh, wasn’t she very brave, I read all about her.'

'No, I mean, I am D,' I said.

We both laughed, she nearly fell off her chair and nudged the women beside her, Nora Owen and Gemma Hussey - the early sisterhood, I suppose. From that moment I felt fine, protected. They took me for coffee and I got to see the famous Dáil bar. Not a bad place to work, Leinster House, very plush and lovely ceilings.

I wonder if X, at 34, is married with other children and how she remembers an experience that is relentlessly exercising the individuals in this chamber, the people on the street, the media, the clergy and the members of this House. I wonder if we heard from her would it clarify the question at the centre of the debate, that termination is not a 'treatment' for suicide. I’d like to know how she thinks the legislation should be framed for victims of rape and incest, as serious crimes that would surely provide a compelling case to give that woman a choice.

Wherever you are X, I hope you are bearing up.

Every Little Helps

Step away from the Rancheros

Got up super early this Monday while Gentlemen Lodgers and Cost Centres were captive to zzzzz’s. Cost Centre #2 needed a lift to his final exams and I wanted to beat the traffic, though we are only three miles away. I try to write early in the morning, like serious successful authors say they do, except I find I tackle one word of scrabble from the night before instead.

I am saddened by the death of Donal Walsh, the brave Kerry teenager, taken at sixteen after his battle with cancer. That despicable word. The good really do die young. His message to other teenagers is cool, his parents must be incredibly proud and equally devastated. It reminds me we must treasure and forgive our sons when they stray wayward. Easier said than done.

I didn’t intend to write about this, its just when you get up on Monday morning you never know WTF is ahead. And I was going to write a cheerful post about top shopping tips. Which I will anyway.

Having dropped CC#2 to the RDS and watched him with a lump in my throat, saunter, seemingly carefree, with a bottle of water and a sheet of paper, I did several u-turns to extricate myself from the excess of moms and dads taking pity on their offspring and trying to get them near the gate. The sign that says UCD Exams, still gives me a labour pain.

I carried on with hairy mutt to Tesco Merrion, apparently the most expensive Tesco in the world. I’ve researched this, not extensively, but I’ve tried Lidl and Aldi once or twice and get lost in the aisles, get frustrated trying to find the coffee or cereal we eat and give up. And find the total bill no less irksome than a Tesco one. Except they do loyalty cards and I had clocked up 22 euro of free money. So, what’s not to like?

A lot. They really squeeze the Irish suppliers, so there is hardly a margin to survive on and that's how you put people out of business, this is clearly a fact, as Philip Boucher Hayes said it in his RTE documentary, What's Ireland Eating and they don't want to be sued, you know.

It's over two weeks since I’ve done the Big Shop, pre hospital I think, so emergency Spar runs in between. But with four men in the house, there was a dearth of loo roll, I believe we were down to one sheet per bathroom, no washing powder or dishwasher tabs, it was time to do an actual shop and there’s nothing I loathe more than pushing a trolley in Tesco. Most products are now reduced to two choices, own-brand and one other cheapo they found in eastern Europe. Once you’ve got used to where to find the stuff, they switch the location or randomly place special offer alerts in front of items not on special offer and you find you bought two of something you don’t need. And to give them back you need to join the long customer service queue, every second time I find an overcharge or dupe like this.

Here’s what I re-discovered about arriving before 9am on a Monday, the carpark is empty, no four-wheel drives to scrape my slim car. The aisles are empty; nothing has moved since my last visit, the checkouts are even empty. And Top Tip for saving money, the wine section is closed, so no temptation to see what special offers they have on a merlot or a pouilly fuisse, I mean, at ten euro its £7.88 in old money. I still convert. Sadly. Wine was way dearer eleven years ago. So, big saving there, on the pocket and elsewhere.

Mutt and I have time for a walk on Sandymount strand and it’s still not ten o’clock. I phone ahead to CC#1 who is in bed and put in a request to have shopping unloaded and stored, my second biggest hate. It’s time for me to get back to writing and get ready to meet a film-maker at lunchtime. Which turns out to be a great flowing chat with his producer colleague and well, watch this space, as they say.