My column in The Kerryman. 9 October, 2013

There are upsides to being older and childless. I can go on weekends away whenever I want. I can spend all my money on smelly cheeses and fancy food for my dog. I can even spend years agonising over my never to be finished novel, because being middle-aged and childless, means it can all be about me. However, the real benefit to my situation is that I don’t have to worry about climate change.

It’s like watching a mid-table, fifth division game of football. Unless one of the teams is mine or I have money riding on the result, I’m going to be bored. The ‘controversy’ over climate change has the same effect on me. I will be too old or dead to care if the temperature rises and I won’t have children to worry about.

If the scientists are correct though, we’re not facing the end of our species. We’re not headed to extinction. This isn’t a meteor hurtling towards our planet. It’s just that the planet will become a little less hospitable. It may take some time to adjust, but we’ve survived Ice Ages, so a bit of heat won’t stop us winning Sam again and again and again.

The lack of reaction to climate change by young people or those with children does put me in mind of that story about frogs. If you drop a frog into boiling water, it’ll immediately hop out. If you put it into cold water and apply heat, it’ll boil to death. Now I don’t know if that’s a fairy tale or scientific fact, but it makes me wonder about what kind of scientist would drop a frog into boiling water, just to see what happens.

It’s stuff like that which makes me think scientists are not the most reliable people on the planet. After all they did invent the atomic bomb, chemical weapons and a way to freeze someone’s face with poison to prevent wrinkles. Of course on the other hand, most people who get cancer today, have a fighting chance at survival. We can also thank scientists for those little devices in our cars that tell us how to get to Cork for chemo.

It’s hard to know who to trust really. Almost all the scientists who work in climate research say it’s now very likely we’ll have a 2 degree rise in global temperatures by the end of this century. They say this is caused by the billions of tonnes of CO2 released into the atmosphere by our burning of fossil fuels. These scientists are then flatly contradicted by the various industries that profit from the burning of fossil fuels.

Fortunately, as I said earlier, even if the scientists are right, our species will survive. There will be hardship. The island of Ireland will be smaller as rising sea levels eat away at our coasts. Some of our cities may even be lost to floods, but though it’ll cost us billions of euro, it’s unlikely anyone on this island will starve. Other people, in other parts of the world will, but we’ll only be poorer.

We could spend money now to prevent this possibility, but let’s face it, we’re not much smarter than frogs and neither me nor my genes are going to be around to suffer.

My column in The Kerryman. 2 October, 2013

It was an easy decision in the end. I’ll be voting to rid this country of the parasitic Seanad, though it’s not a vital issue. Placed beside the pensions we pay to former government ministers, it’s tempting to ask why we aren’t voting on that particular breed of parasite too.

Speaking of parasites, we’d be better served discussing our TDs and what function, if any, they serve. Try to imagine an Ireland without the Seanad. It’s easy. That Ireland is exactly like this one. The Seanad does nothing and can do nothing. So keep that Ireland in your mind and then try to imagine an Ireland where the vast majority of TDs are utterly pointless and overpaid. Again easy, as that’s what our TDs are really like.

Now imagine an Ireland where the Government (by tradition, not by Constitutional requirement) gets its way almost the entire time, on whatever witless nonsense it comes out with. Yep, not much imagining required there either. That is the system of governance we have allowed evolve in this country.

Now try imagining an Ireland where a Taoiseach is gifted such power and influence, that he or she can appoint and dismiss Ministers at whim. An Ireland where a Taoiseach, a mere Prime Minister don’t forget, can decide to eliminate an entire house of parliament, because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Have I tested your imagination yet? I don’t think so. That’s the power we cede, and cede means give up, to our TDs, who then cede it to the Taoiseach.

The Taoiseach has this much power because that’s what many people in this country want a Taoiseach to have. We have a tradition of wanting to be led by strong and charismatic men. That a Taoiseach is appointed by a committee of 166 people, who could eject him or her at the push of a button, does not alter the fact that many of us want to be led.

Opposing that tradition are people who see taoisigh as mere Chairpersons of sub-committees, or the Cabinet in this instance. To the Cabinet is delegated certain powers by the Dáil, who can remove those powers at a moment’s notice. It is a system of Committees which need not have built-in Government majorities. A system of committees that attempts to govern by consensus, instead of by majoritism. A system where all 166 TDs, retain a relevance above mere begging for medical cards and tarmac.

Try imagining that sort of Ireland. An Ireland where TDs from Kerry don’t compete with TDs from Roscommon for a hospital; who then compete with each other for the right to claim which of them it was who succeeded in depriving their fellow Irish citizens of a hospital. And then we reward them for it.

We have been taught that General Elections are ‘winner take all’ contests, when in reality they are a process of creating a body of people that is as broadly representative of the population as possible. That’s an amazing exercise in democracy, yet we insist on immediately neutering huge swathes of those representatives. They are paid a hundred grand a year to just do as they are told.

The Seanad is a bad joke, but a Dáil scared of its own power is no laughing matter.

My column in The Kerryman. 25 September, 2013

Being from Kerry, the closest I’ve ever gotten to the Winter Olympics is watching Cool Runnings. This is a film about the Jamaican bobsled team that competed in the 1988 Olympics in Canada. Based on a true story, the idea was still so farfetched it was written as a comedy. I now have a vague idea about how the sport of bobsledding works. That has been my entire Winter Olympics experience. Unfortunately I now have to add a place called Sochi to my tiny bank of Winter Olympics knowledge.

Sochi is the Russian town that’ll be hosting the 2014 Olympics. Something I need never have known until the Russian government decided to make the lives of its gay citizens that bit more scary and dangerous. It recently passed a law, to the glee of conservative Christians and neo-nazis, thats bans ‘gay propaganda.’ What does that mean? It means gay people are now officially second class citizens in Russia. It means gay couples with children must flee the country or risk losing their children. It means gay people who protest about this law will lose their jobs and be beaten up. Then they’ll probably be arrested.

The country that is hosting the Olympics (ok the Winter Olympics) doesn’t even allow gay people demonstrate on its streets. Not that we should be surprised by the International Olympic Committee’s behaviour. They did after all give the Summer Games to Hitler in 1936.

But why should we care? A gay couple still cannot safely walk, hand in hand, down a street in Tralee. Our laws still don’t treat gay people as equals and gay people still endure above average levels of mental ill-health due to their precarious place in society. How can we look down our noises on the Russians in that case? At least gay people do not face the death penalty here or in Russia as they do in many Middle Eastern and African countries. Things could be a lot worse in Russia, indeed they could be a lot worse here.

This is true. Things could be a lot worse, but our species is better than that. We feel empathy. I don’t know if we evolved as social animals because we feel empathy or that we evolved to feel empathy because we are social animals, but I do know that most of us can’t help feeling a pang of something, when we witness suffering. Many of us can’t even cope with seeing animals in pain. That is our nature, though we are also very good at deliberately not seeing the nastiness that surrounds us. And we are very good at claiming to be helpless. Sure what can we in Kerry do about the vicious treatment of gay people in Russia? Haven’t we enough to be getting on with ourselves?

We do have a lot to be dealing with in Kerry, but few of us are so badly stuck we can’t send a letter saying we don’t agree with people having to live in fear, just because of their sexuality. Write that down and send it to Ambassador Maxim Peshkov, 184-186 Orwell Road, Rathgar, Dublin 14 and to The Olympic Council of Ireland, Olympic House, Harbour Road, Howth, Co. Dublin. A boycott of the Olympics may not be appropriate, but expressing dissatisfaction most certainly is.

My column in The Kerryman. 18 September, 2013

It’s taken me 39 years to work it out, but I finally know what I want to be when I grow up. I want to be famous. Not necessarily world famous like Tom Cruise or the Healy-Raes. I’d settle for locally famous. Famous enough that everyone in Kerry knows who I am and famous enough to be allowed say or do anything I want, yet still be taken seriously.

I realised this was my dream after seeing the response to the jailing of Irish Times columnist and Eurovision Song Contest devotee, John Waters. He was put away for refusing to pay a parking fine. He was 16 minutes late back to his car so he received a ticket. No one likes getting a ticket, or so I’m told, I’ve yet to get one as I really can’t afford to pay fines, so I avoid getting them.

Mister Waters chose to fight the system. He didn’t plead poverty. Instead he called into question the ‘system’ itself. Truly heroic stuff. For this epic struggle he ended up having to serve two whole hours behind bars. Was he lambasted for being a ridiculous crank? Was he attacked for costing the tax payers silly money? Was he dismissed as an arrogant twit? No, he was given acres of newspaper space (and yes I am aware of the irony here) which will further his career and convince him he was right to become a nuisance to the State.

Would someone without a national profile have gotten away with this kind of behaviour? I doubt it. Fame insulates the famous from the reality of their silliness. Former child-star Miley Cyrus caused a bit of controversy last month by spending an inordinate amount of time rubbing her arse against a male performer, at an awards ceremony. It doesn’t make for comfortable viewing, but Ms Cyrus remains convinced that rubbing her behind against people, on television, is a career highlight. Oh to be famous.

That wasn’t even the most cringeworthy thing to happen recently. We had the spectacle of Ivan Yates pleading for martyr status. He’d been forced to live on over 15 times what someone on the dole must survive on, while serving out his UK bankruptcy in Wales. This sick making lack of perspective was made worse by him walking into a well paid, high profile job on national radio. Oh the joy of fame.

So I want to be famous. Not because I want to turn careless arrogance into a virtue. Not because I want to dirty dance with impunity. Not even because I want to live on €3000 a month and call it sacrifice. No, I want to be able to walk my dog down any street in any town in Kerry and have her empty her bowels to her heart’s content. Then I want to just leave her leavings there.

You see my dog is very pretty and often a good looking woman will stop to pet it, giving me the opportunity to flirt. But carrying a bag of dog poo often spoils the mood. If I was famous, I could ignore my duty to society and call it heroic.

So please get onto amazon.com and type in Paul WS Bowler. Make me famous so I no longer need care about any of you.  

My column in The Kerryman. 11 September, 2013

It’s hard to know what to do about Syria. The more one reads on the subject, the more complex it seems. Syria is a country of over 22 million people and has many different religious and ethnic groups. It’s ruled by a dictator, Bashar al-Assad, whose family has been in power since 1971. In 2011 the people took to the streets to demand democracy. The army fired on them. There were mass arrests. Torture and executions were rife. The demonstrations turned into an armed rebellion.

This is where it gets complicated. Most Syrians are of the Sunni version of Islam. Al-Assad and the entire upper echelon of the army, are part of a Shia sect called the Alawites. There are few places in the Arab world where Shia’s are not persecuted, and only in Syria are the Alawites in the ascendancy.

The two powers in this region are Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran is a Shia majority country and is backing their fellow Shias, the al-Assads. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni nation and is funneling arms and money to the rebels. Hezbollah, a Shia military organisation, based in neighbouring Lebanon and funded by Iran, is backing al-Assad. Al-Qaeda and its proxies are Sunni, so are backing the rebels.

Thrown into the mix are the Christians, who enjoyed a privileged status under al-Assad and are now being targeted by Sunni extremists. Finally there are the more secular groups among the rebels, who are possibly receiving covert help from the West.

Outside of the region, the Syrian regime is being backed to the hilt by the Russians. They were allies during the Cold War and Syria receives a great deal of military aid from Russia. This support is bolstered by Russian discomfort at calls from the West for a regime change anywhere. This feels threatening for authoritarian establishments in Russia as well as in China.

The US and its allies are backing the rebels, or at least the less religiously fanatical rebels. The US government is as always concerned for the welfare for Israel, which shares a border with Syria, but it is also under pressure to fulfil its role as the only global super-power to end the massacre of civilians. America’s allies are also experiencing moral pressure to intervene on the side of the civilians.

To date, two million Syrians have been forced to flee their country. Another four and a quarter million Syrians have been internally displaced. Millions of children have been left homeless and traumatised and now chemical weapons have been brought into play.

Many of us in the West want the Americans and their allies to get involved sooner rather than later. American military might is such that it could simply swat away the al-Assad regime. Of course we and the wounded prestige of America have learned, that defeating an army is the easy part of nation building. The disaster in Iraq has taught the more sensible, a bit of humility. But what of the surgical strikes on al-Assad military assets? These are already being moved into civilian districts and his money moved to safety.

We in the West have but two choices, an ugly compromise or a war fought in the teeth of Russian, Chinese and Iranian opposition. It’s hard to know which is the least worse option.

My column in The Kerryman. 4 September, 2013

I saw a great clip on YouTube recently. It’s a sketch done in the style of a Nationwide report, about ‘Ireland’s foremost racist B&B.’ It was made by comedian Tara Flynn in response to her husband suffering racist abuse in her hometown of Kinsale. The best comedians say the things we mightn’t like to hear. When they warn that racism is on the increase in our communities, many of us prefer to look the other way.

Worse, some of us will look the other way even when we see the real thing, as happened to Kerry woman Una Minh Kavanagh when she was racially abused and spat on, in broad daylight. No one helped her.

I’m sure it must have been scary for the people who saw what happened to Ms Kavangh, not as scary as it was for her, but scary nonetheless. I can’t even be certain I’d have intervened, but I do know one thing; we were all told the same stories and watched the same films growing up. It is ingrained in most of us, that when we see someone in trouble, we help.

That’s how we are raising our children. I had Clint Eastwood films, today they have Harry Potter. Stories about heroes who prosper and stories about the terrible things that happen in this life and the next, to the villains who do not stand with or for those in distress.

No one stood by Ms Kavanagh’s side, but I know we haven’t lost the ability to be brave. Not the courage under fire, climbing Everest and winning Sam Maguire kind of heroism, but the bystander intervenes at great cost, kind of heroism. Not so long ago we read here about a man intervening to help a wedding party that was being attacked. In this cynical age, it’s inspiring to know that real heroes still exist.

Does that mean we should all be obliged to step up and step in, every time we see someone being attacked or abused? I wish it did, but who knows how any of us would react in the presence of real danger. But in the face of a rising tide of racism?

Our parents and grandparents endured ‘No Irish, No dogs, No blacks’ when they emigrated. Today our sons and daughters in Australia are already being accused by some, of overstaying their welcome.

It might be naive to expect us to be strengthened in our resolve to combat racism, just because we suffered it, but it’s not naive to take some simple steps. We can ridicule the racists, as Tara Flynn has done. We can call them out, as Una Minh Kavanagh has done. Easier still, we can raise our kids properly. We can correct our siblings, parents or friends when they say or do things which hurt the powerless. We don’t have to correct our neighbours, but we can certainly show disapproval. And if condemning a stranger is too scary, at least log onto www.iReport.ie to have it recorded. It’s not much, but it becomes useful information, which is better than doing nothing.

Ultimately racism will be defeated by telling our children very much the same stories we were told, but bigger and roomier stories. Stories with ever more characters. That’s a kind of heroism open to us all.

My column in The Kerryman. 28 August, 2013

One thing we can say for Enda Kenny’s campaign to abolish the Seanad, is that it’ll be mercifully short. We’ve the end of the summer to embrace, the return of the Premiership to watch, the ‘back to school‘ craziness to endure and the All Ireland finals to enjoy. Then quick as a flash, it’ll be October 4 and we’ll be voting in the referendum. Well, a small few of us anyway.

It’ll be a small turnout and some of us will be motivated by something other than the Seanad. Sometimes referendums are used by voters to express anger at a government. While I don’t think we should use a referendum vote just to make a point, if you really need to get something off your chest, then this is the referendum in which to do it.

We’ll endure no negative consequences if we vote no. We’ve been given a free hit on the government. I voted for and support this government. I’m even inclined towards abolishing the Seanad, but I feel a very strong temptation to remind some very powerful politicians who the boss really is.

Let’s look at some of the actual issues. Those who support getting rid of the Seanad say it’s an elitist and largely pointless assembly. They suggest that abolition will save the taxpayers approximately €20 million a year. And they argue that we have too many politicians for our small population, when compared to other European countries.

Those who argue against abolition dispute the amount of money that’d be saved. After that it gets more complicated. It’s a check on the executive. It provides more oversight. Whole swathes of the population can be enfranchised. And they point out that there is a distinct lack of enthusiasm for abolition, on the government back-benches.

The no-side have a much harder message to sell, yet they’ve not been blown out the water. This isn’t because of any merit or otherwise in their argument, but because to get rid of something, people have to be motivated to make an effort. The Seanad is so irrelevant many of us lack the energy and interest to get rid of it.

On the other hand, there’s Enda Kenny and his lieutenants, bent over, presenting their backsides for a firm kick from those they’ve taxed, whose benefits they have cut and from those who’ve lost family members to emigration.

No one believes the Seanad will be reformed if we vote to keep it, as the only way it can be usefully reformed is if the Dáil reduces its own power. And that can only happen if the Government agrees to reduce its power. Politicians do not and will not volunteer to have less power and influence and therefore have less goodies to shower on their constituents.

This is frustrating, as TDs have all the power needed to behave like a properly functioning Seanad. TDs have the power to keep the Government honest and connected, but because of their chronic cowardice, they allow the government they appoint, to ride roughshod over them.

The Seanad is a cultural trinket from our time in the Empire. We won’t notice its abolition and we won’t notice its retention. So we’re faced with giving some really powerful politicians a huge black eye, or ridding ourselves of a whole host of less powerful ones. Hardest choice I’ve ever had to make.

My column in The Kerryman. 21 August, 2013

There have been calls for the Government to get involved in what we can and cannot see on the Internet. As is the usual case when people are demanding censorship, we are being urged to think of the children. The argument is that there’s so much pornography on the Internet, it’s too difficult for parents to protect their children from seeing things they shouldn’t see. The State must step in. And of course there’s the issue of online child abuse material.

What’s vexing about this call for censorship is not that it’s pointless, not that it’s crass populism and not that it’s so lazy, but that it’s so inaccurate. It’s unforgivable to confuse protecting children from seeing images that are not meant for them with the wholly separate issue of child abuse material on the Internet.

The first thing one has to do is get one’s terminology correct. There’s pornography and there’s child abuse material. There’s no such thing as ‘child porn.’ Pornography is the explicit depiction of consenting adults engaged in sexual acts. It’s a multi-billion euro industry and readily available online. Unfortunately it’s so easy to access that a child can find it.

The exchange of child abuse material is not motivated by money. It’s a dark underground activity of barter. This system of exchange exists in an area of the Internet that was created to circumvent the attentions of dictatorial governments. Its idealistic creators were not to know that it would become a medium for perverts to connect with other perverts.

Police forces around the world, as well as in Ireland, trawl through these vile images of children being raped and abused, trying to identify the victims. By identifying the victims, they hope to track down the perpetrators. We the public can help by emailing info@hotline.ie if we see something on the Internet, we think may involve a crime against a child.

Making and exchanging child abuse material is a crime. One of the worst crimes there is. It has nothing to do with parents not being able to prevent their children from accessing pornography. It has nothing to do with parents not educating themselves about the technology their children routinely use. It has nothing to do with parents not speaking to other parents about what controls they have in place to prevent their children from seeing pornography.  And it certainly has nothing to do with parents failing to educate their children about what pornography is.

It’s virtually impossible for a child not to use the Internet. The Internet is everywhere and pornography is everywhere on the Internet. If you have children you’ll need to learn how to use Internet filters. Then you’ll need to have a conversation with your child, that your parents never had to have with you. You’ll need to have a conversation about pornography with your eight year old. You’ll need to have that conversation several times as your child grows up and needs bigger words and more information.

There are supports out there for parents; the person selling you your computer or smart phone, the principal of your child’s school, the local library, parents’s groups and the Internet itself. Information is everywhere. The State is already doing what it can about child abuse material, let’s not invite it into our homes as well. Let’s do our own parenting.

My column in The Kerryman. 14 August, 2013

I’m sure I wasn’t alone in being amazed by the reaction of Joe Brolly to Tyrone’s victory over Monaghan in the All Ireland quarter final of August 3. An amazement fueled by confusion. Football has long since descended into an almost unwatchable cheat-fest between amazing athletes, with occasional moments of skill and grace. Just where was Joe this last decade?

That the rules of the game allow and even encourage tactical fouling, has finally been recognised by the GAA. They are bringing in changes next season, to try making it less attractive for players to cheat so obviously. Why this has taken so long is anybodies guess.

Not that cheating is unique to the GAA. Look at cycling. Just not too closely. It’s a thing so diseased, one should keep some distance from it. This is a sport almost defined by cheating. When its greatest star, Lance Armstrong, was finally outed as the epic cheater he always was, his seven Tour de France titles couldn’t be awarded to the runners up, because they too were under suspicion. As were third, fourth, fifth and sixth places.

Athletics has a very ugly history of cheating. From East Germany systematically ‘doping’ its to top athletes to the recent failure of some top Jamaican sprinters to pass drug tests, it’s increasingly difficult to take top athletics seriously.

In soccer, on-field cheating is so rampant it never even occurs to us to wonder if anyone is taking drugs. ‘Diving‘ is commonplace and players will be called naive if they don’t collapse under a challenge. The professional foul has evolved, so that a player will be ‘taken down’ further from the danger area, as this will only merit a yellow card, not a red.

In rugby, they’ve recognised that players will cheat for gain, and so have introduced the ‘sin bin’ and the penalty try. This discourages cheating, but does not eliminate it. Even in cricket, which long held itself as the very epitome of gentlemanly conduct, batsmen no longer simply walk if they know they’re out. He’ll now wait for the umpire to make a decision.

Long standing records in baseball have recently tumbled to men playing under a dark cloud of suspicion. The records stand, but for the fans in the know, those records will always have an asterisk next to them.

Cheating is rampant, yet sport is thriving. We are watching so much of it that it has become a multi-billion euro industry. But it’s no longer a positive vehicle for teaching the values of teamwork, honour and honesty. Now it’s an arena for generating money and fueling brutish tribalism. We are getting fatter while our sports men and women are getting ever richer as we pay through the nose to watch their dubious antics. As we indulge our passion for seeing triumph wearing our colours.

What is intriguing here, is that there was no money involved for Sean Cavanagh. He simply did not wish to lose a game, and as the rules encourage the option of cheating, he cheated. Now I could simply whine about the message this gives to children, but truth be told I’d have done what Cavanagh did, so no moral high-ground here. I’d just like to know how and when did sport and honour become such strangers to each other?

My column in The Kerryman. 7 August, 2013

How often can a government minister simultaneously save the country from a constitutional crisis and from the expenditure of 20 million euro (the approximate cost of a referendum), by simply going with the crowd? This grand feat of avoiding so much annoying hassle and expense was achieved by Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore by just taking an oath.

Gilmore, as Tánaiste, sits on the Council of State and our Constitution, Article 31.4, demands members of the Council take an oath made “In the presence of All Mighty God.” Gilmore is an agnostic and so isn’t convinced there’s a god, be it the god of the Christians or some other extraordinary being. But he took the oath anyway and now we can continue to pretend that the Constitution is ‘our’ Constitution.

“In the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, from Whom is all authority and to Whom, as our final end, all actions both of men and States must be referred…”

That is the first line of the Preamble to the Constitution. Many people assume our foundation document, the defining and regulating affirmation of our Nation, to be just a legal text. It isn’t. Our Constitution is more like a Christian prayer. A prayer, that with some modifications, has sufficed for most of our nation’s history.

Today, over a quarter of a million Irish people don’t have a religion. There are more of us than there are Anglicans, Presbyterians, Jews and Muslims. The only group bigger than the non-religious, are the Catholics. Yet our nation is defined by this National Prayer.

To be the President of this country, the democratically elected candidate, no matter his or her beliefs, is obliged by Article 12.8 of the Constitution to take an oath, “In the presence of Almighty God I…” To be a judge in Ireland, Article 34.5 insists the judge swears, “In the presence of Almighty God I…”

It’s a source of irritation more than anything, as it has always been unlikely anyone outside the mainstream would rise to such heady heights. There was a moment of excitement when some of us incorrectly assumed Michael D. Higgins was an atheist. He isn’t and thus his conscious was clear as he took the Presidential oath of office.

We non-religious people finally thought Gilmore offered a real opportunity to highlight the exclusionary and discriminatory nature of the Constitution. The President asking the advice of the Council of State on the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill, gave Gilmore an open goal: He could’ve refused to take the oath, explaining that it denies high-office to a huge section of Irish society.

He didn’t take that chance. He said the required words though I’d guess that, in his heart, he affirmed to do his duty with all the diligence and ability that he could bring to bear. To some this may smack of hypocrisy. I know that in his position I’d have thrown my toys out of the pram and be feeling pretty smug right now.

Would a referendum to remove references to God from the Constitution pass? I don’t know but I think spending €20 million so those who don’t believe in God, could say ‘our’ Constitution and mean it, would be money well spent.