Can we talk about Mary Harney for a minute? I'm really torn about this:


So Mary Harney is Ireland's Minister for Health and Children. Of course, it's a nation-wide joke that our Minister for Health looks about as healthy as Jabba the Hut. Now, as a feminist, I have a natural inclination to want to support women in politics. But politicians, well, they're politicians. As far as I can tell, Mary Harney seems to be one part robot and one part Orc. I mean, just look at her face. It's stoney and heartless. And that's pretty much how she rolls. The proposed cuts on the Health Service Executive (HSE), which is how I have a medical card -- the only way I have access to any health care at all -- are between 600 million and 1 billion euro. (For American readers, 600 mil is like 834 million dollars.)

Basically what's happening here in Ireland, as far as I can see, is that in trying to make fiscal ends meet, the government is trying to skimp on services from the bottom (the poor, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally ill, public sector workers) instead of demanding that the country's wealthy (and I mean wealthy, not middle class) pay more in taxes, or... any taxes. Mary Harney is essentially a demon right now as hospitals either close or are over-crowded with not enough staff.

So on one hand I think YEAH! I love the sight of Mary Harney, hands covered with the (symbolic) blood of people who will die from not receiving health services as a result of these cuts. But on the other hand, I'm just sad and discouraged. It's like eating that delicious chocolate eclair -- it feels good, but is it ultimately good for us? Will Mary Harney, or anyone else for that matter, suddenly come around because she was attacked with red paint? From today's interviews on the radio and online, it only seems to have made her feel all the more that it's ok to discount her critics. And I think god, how degrading it all is.

I'm back in Dublin!

This will be a quick post, so I apologize. I've been pretty busy upon my return, and to top it off I've had a bit of a cold. Since I've returned, I've been trying to get some SPRING CLEANING done to remove all that dust and fire soot from the winter, as well as all that dirt and clutter than builds up when you aren't paying attention. It's kind of slow going, I have to admit, but the weather has been just gorgeous since I got back, so I've been able to have breakfast out in the garden every morning and go for beautiful walks in the afternoons.

On tuesday we partook in the great Irish tradition of protesting. If you haven't heard, Ireland's economy is the in the shitter. And it seems like the only ones being asked to sacrifice through "cuts" are people who need it most and have the least to give. So we went on a little march. I was a bit apprehensive, although this wasn't my first Irish protest, because I always am afraid something bad is going to happen and I'll get in trouble and get kicked out of the country of something, but I being certain that my luck isn't *that* bad, I went, and it was a rather moving experience. People from all sorts of different looking backgrounds were there, from your anarcho-punks to your working class ladies, to your academic looking types, to your regular nondescript looking people. I even saw a lady in a very nice business suit there, holding a sign. I took a couple of pictures, and then I also took a little video so you can see what it was like from my point of view, walking in the middle of the short march.



There was a decent showing, but the sad part is that there was absolutely nothing in the news about it the next day. The major media outlets here in Ireland are so tied into the government and the church that it's like a built-in sensor. What amazes me is that when you listen to the news on RTE radio in the morning, you'll hear about every dumb-ass drunk dude who crashed his car in the entire country the night before, but you won't hear about a few hundred people who were protesting the Dail and Dublin Castle the day before.

It's happening again next Tuesday, and I highly encourage anyone who wants Ireland to take care of its hospitals, schools, workers, people with special needs, etc. to come along and be a body of support.

Ireland made the news in Boston today. It's about how crap the economy is here, of course.
Another 'Mass' Exodus.

(warning: the comments on the article by readers are bigoted and embarrassing.)

Money money money.

Sometimes it seems like it's all anyone talks about these days. The economy has become an obsession for almost everyone, yet most people have almost zero power to effect any sort of change. And those who do, well, it feels like they can only talk about how "We must all make sacrifices" to justify all the cuts that are about to be made.

Yesterday we created a budget for ourselves using a handy excel spreadsheet that covers our weekly expenses from now until March of next year. By March, if we are to pay our bills -- the minimum essentials -- we need to come up with an additional 6500 euro of income somehow (about 9250 US dollars). It's seriously alarming.

So we will have to bite the bullet and ask our landlord for a rent reduction, and I think we'll have to apply for rent allowance as well. But with the cuts that may happen, our income may go down even more. All of this takes a toll on the ole ego. Each week I apply to jobs only to get a rejection email a few days later. Back home I had a career doing a job I really enjoyed, and I felt as though I had options. Here, I can't seem to get jobs that are on my resume from years ago when I was just starting out.

But still, I really like it here. Dublin is a lot of fun, and I am still loving exploring the city. We are committed to staying for a long, long time. I just wish someone would cut us a break!

In other news, I called up and got my Medical Card number, finally! So I made an appointment to see the doctor about this awful chest cold that I can't seem to shake.

According to this report today in the Irish Times, "TAOISEACH BRIAN Cowen urged people to face the future with 'renewed fortitude and courage', saying Ireland needs a 'major national effort' to get through the recession. Speaking in Co Offaly yesterday, Mr Cowen said 'every recession provides the opportunity for a restructuring of our economy and that is what we have to do today'. This would involve painful decisions in the short term, he said. 'The purpose of all that is, of course, to adapt to the new circumstances. As business has to do, so must public administration, and in doing that we will provide the most effective response we can for the hard-pressed taxpayer, but also, of course, to prepare ourselves and put ourselves in the position to forge ahead again as we will when this recessions lifts,' said Mr Cowen."

Here's the thing. The recession isn't a head cold. It's not just going to magically "lift" like some random affliction that has inexplicably happened to the country. I don't understand how they expect all this cutting of budgets is going to help "taxpayers," (their word for residents -- seemingly the only residents of the country who matter to them) have more money. Why is there no investing in the economy, job creation instead of job cutting, and well, stimulus to the economy? I don't get it. I keep trying to figure it out and I don't understand it still. I do have American friends who are being laid off, of course -- it isn't all roses in the US -- but there is hope, and there is some kind of light at the end of the tunnel. Here, it's just doom and gloom everywhere you look, day after day.

I sort of naively thought that, Ireland being an English-speaking country, it would sort of be like living in a different state of the US, like moving to the deep south. I figured, ok, people will talk differently, act differently, in a quirky sort of way. But at the root of it, I didn't think much of how Irish values would differ from those I'd been brought up with, whether I'd grown to buck them or not.

However, the differences in the two countries' governments, I think, are really at the heart of what makes me truly, truly feel like a foreigner here, more than my accent or the fact that I say "Excuse me," instead of "I'm sorry," when I'm trying to squeeze by someone in a tight grocery story aisle, or that I still don't understand the differences between rugby, gaelic football, and football (aka soccer). First, there is the lack of separation of church and state. I know that America fails on this account sometimes, especially when anyone named Bush is in office. But it's there in our Constitution to fight for if we so choose. When I first arrived here, Mark explained to me a big news story about a woman who had been molested for years by the Head Teacher of the Catholic school she went to. She was recently taking legal action against the government for what had happened to her. The Church said it was nothing to do with them; it was the Department of Education's deal. The Dept. of Ed claimed no responsibility. But here's the thing: back home, if you go to Catholic school, it's because you paid for it. All public schools provided by the government are secular. But here, at the time of this woman's childhood, if you wanted a secular school, you had to pay for it. So this woman had no choice but to go to that Catholic school. If she didn't, she would have had a truancy officer coming to her house. To me, that is the most backwards thing I've ever heard, with or without the molesting Head Teacher. It went all the way to the Supreme Court. The woman made it clear that the case wasn't for money, but for someone to take responsibility for what happened to her as a child. Where is the accountability? But if the government takes responsibility and says, "What happened to you shouldn't have happened and you shouldn't have been made to go to that school," then it apparently makes a statement that they are unwilling to make. Which is terribly sad and makes this country look spineless and unevolved. And then do you know what they did on top of it it? They claimed damages against her for court costs. Talk about insult to injury.

Mark and I just finished listening to a radio program that completely incensed us both. It was about (what else?) the employment situation here and the amount of foreigners working and on the dole. Because of the high unemployment rates, people in Ireland and the UK are absolutely rabid about foreigners "taking up" their jobs. Never mind that the jobs they are "taking" are statistically for very specifically trained, higher-educated positions. Never mind that this is what being part of the EU is about. Ireland is part of the EU so that there *can* be a free exchange of the work force. Irish workers enjoy the like freedom to travel to other countries, which they do, and work there. Which is a point no one seems to bring up here. It's just conveniently forgotten about the thousands of Irish workers that go to other places and get work and benefits. The radio show featured a man from the Department of Social Welfare who cheerfully outlined how many foreign countries have people on the dole in Ireland, and specifically which ones have large numbers (and what those numbers are). What is the point of that? Just so you know who you can be angry at when you get the misguided notion that foreigners are bleeding all the tax dollars? He pointed out that the numbers of people with large immigrant groups coming here, from, say, Poland and China, have gone down by a very large margin. There was another man on there who was talking about how great it will be when Ireland makes it more difficult for people to immigrate here. Like that is going to solve all the problems. Some people here think that sealing off the country and keeping benefits away from non-nationals is going to solve the economic crisis. From what I've read in the want ads, not with the current work force it's not. And reading the statistics of how many Irish hold higher education degrees versus the rest of Europe, they need to do a much better job at educating their population if they want key industries to grow. People want the rules of the EU bent for them, just because things are rough. Well, it just doesn't work that way.

There's another case in the news of a woman seeking asylum here to prevent her daughters from undergoing genital mutilation in her country of origin. She already had one daughter undergo the procedure and die from it. Apparently after pleading for years, Ireland was just about to kick her out when the EU stepped in and said they couldn't kick her out until the case was reviewed by them. Of all the people who get to come here, here's someone with a legitimate reason for coming over, and they were just going to bounce her out on her ass. And so she's waiting and hoping. You would think that public support for this woman, who, by the way, is gorgeous, and so are her children, would be overwhelming. I think if she were white she'd have her own reality TV show by now. But because she's a black asylum seeker, no one seems to have the appropriate amount of compassion for her, in my opinion. It appears to be an inherent mistrust, or else she would have her asylum and be living comfortably by now without fear for future and those of her children.

And maybe this is something I understand, being from a place that is part of a union -- you live in a State, a part, that is a piece of the whole, the Country. The negotiation between the two is awkward sometimes. And sometimes the larger governing body decides stuff that the parts don't jibe with. But that's the way the cookie crumbles if you want to reap the benefits of being part of the larger mass. But Ireland should give its rampant bigotry and racism if it wants to be accepted by the international community.