My Trip to the High Court

  When I was seven years old, I did a bad thing. I defied authority in school and opened a door I was told not to go near. I received a series of punishments for this which had a bad effect on me. I quickly became a burden on my parents, who had fallen on hard times around the same time due to our dairy herd being decimated by disease. They had managed to build a new house before this happened and were rightly proud of it and the comfort it provided - running water and everything.  One of the great joys of my life was to look after them when they were no longer fully able to look after themselves. They stayed living in their home, a place where they were almost always happy.  My mother went into a coma, isolated and extremely distressed (the night nurse's report doesn't make for pleasant reading), on a Covid ward in Mullingar during Christmas 2020. She died a day later. My father's death was not much more natural. Though I had become very close to both of them, they'd h...

How we are played, in five easy lessons.   2. A LITTLE MORE PEE It is 1990 and Ireland is in dire need of a makeover. The West Coast Americans are coming and we're can't stop singing 'ole ole' - for reasons nobody knows. Five things need to happen, and happen fast.  A: the brazen brown envelope corruption has to be seen to be tackled, then replaced by a more restrained and universal corruption.  B: the Troubles have to end.  C: a corporate tax evasion scheme has to be put in place.  D: the raw connection between priest and people has to be severed, without endangering the power and wealth of the corporate Vatican.  E: a secular (neo)liberal priesthood has to be introduced to fill the void.    All the above was done, with un-Irish efficiency, within a decade. For (A), see Scandal 1. (B) was a simple affair, directed from London. (C) was largely the brainchild of Athlone man Feargal O'Rourke, who invented the Double Irish , the largest tax evas...