When is a controversy..

….not a controversy?

Pat Kenny did a segment on the Egan “hijab” case a few days ago; the Egans still want to campaign to make the wearing of the Hijab in Irish schools a matter of right, rather than leaving it to the individual school as per Department of Education policy. However as was noted by so many callers and respondents to the show, the fact that there is nothing stopping their daughter from wearing the headscarf to her school and the fact that her school has not banned it seems to be a matter of dismay rather than rejoicing for the Islamic converts.

It is hard not to ask why, when they have managed to get their own way in this, they continue to make it an issue; one cannot help thinking that if the school or Department had refused their request outright they would have been happier. It is in fact hard not to feel that the Egans wanted to be refused, they wanted to make an issue out of it, and the middle ground espoused by the State has somewhat taken the wind out of their sails.

I make no secret of the fact that I find their attitude irritating; they have no grounds to complain, their child is allowed to wear it, they simply want to impose their own agenda on others. I also make no secret of the fact that I reject the apologist’s explanation for the wearing of the Hijab; I’ve said it all before so I won’t repeat myself.

There was however one comment of the Egan’s that annoyed me a few months ago and seeing as it has arisen again I’m going to comment on it now.

I remember Mr Egan’s response in one newspaper; he lectured the reader on cultural awareness and inparticular one phrase stuck in my mind “no public space is culturally nuetral.”

I would like to congratulate Mr Egan, we’ve finally found some common ground! Yes, no public space is culturally nuetral. And in Ireland the culture dominating that public space is Irish. This does not mean that we cannot or should not accommodate other cultures – but we do Ireland a disservice if we allow Irish public space to be abused by cultural expressions that in any way denigrate or diminish our citizens. And women make up a good half of the citizenry of this country.

As for schools, Schools are not entirely public spaces. I cannot simply wander in off the street and poke around a school. They are protected spaces, and subject to rules partly determined by the State and partly by the administration of the school. Uniforms are and always have been an accepted part of School culture. Schools have the right to impose uniforms, and to punish deviation from uniforms. These are the rules, and they apply to all pupils in the school equally.
Equally, there’s the rub. The fact is that many cultures demand a garment be worn in direct contravention of a school’s uniform policy; Music cultures for example frequently impose garments and modes of dress, in order to show allegiance to or appreciation of that culture. But I have yet to find a school that will allow children to contravene uniform policy by dressing like a punk, and dismiss it as “cultural”.

And the wearing of the Hijab, we are repeatedly reminded, is cultural, not religious.

Spam Spam Spam Spam

No not an influx of Vikings - the contents of my comments spam folder. I try to empty it regularly but it’s fallen to the bottom of the “to-do” list recently so I rolled up my sleeves today and got on with it. It was a mish mash of the usual idiocy – Enlarge this, Enhance that, Lose something, Gain something else. There was a comment that slipped through the net, that should not have been in the spam folder; several follow-up racist spams from my blog on Kevin “i used to be a journalist” Myers and Pamela Izevbehai ; several comments accusing me of racism because of  Hijabs and Irish Schools and a few agreeing with me on the grounds that all muslims are evil! evil! and the west is doomed! doomed!

What I found absolutely fascinating was the similarities between the racist comments and the ones accusing me of racism. They start with a sneering pseudo intellectualism “if you understood the first thing about…if you knew what I know….It’s a pity you have no facts to back up your facts…” then progress to a challenge “I will debate this with you if you are up to it? if you can prove to me that  you are worthy to debate with me I will reveeal the facts that I can’t reveal just right now as I am not sure you are up to debating them” and ending with outrage “Oh I see you have removed my perfectly polite comments / ignored my challenge. Obviously you are not fit to debate with me on this issue”

Some tips for would be challengers, if they want to avoid the Spam Trap.

• Firstly don’t post from, or give your website as, a racist site. This includes white supremacists, BNP, Aryan nation, and general blogs filled with idiotic racist randomness. Your comments will automatically drop into spam and I won’t even know they are there, until days like this when I read them for my amusement.
• Secondly, avoid personal threats. I don’t know what it is about them but they really make me unwilling to engage with the poster. Just my little foible.
• Try to remember that if you post racist comments you can’t then claim not to be racist. really. It’s a bit thick.
• Try to refrain from patronizing me. It’s a personal foible again, and I know it’s self indulgent but unless you can demonstrate a modicum of intelligence trying to sneer at me will result in my ignoring you.
• It’s not enough just to say I’m wrong, no matter how many different ways you say it and in the case of one correspondent, no matter how overblown and pompous the language. Although I am awarding him special points for the gratuitous use of the phrase Ad Hominem - sadly an incorrect use of it but points awarded for trying! Try to actually address the facts and prove me wrong. Otherwise, spam city for you.

So last year was a good year. In between personal ramblings about getting2008ried and some random thoughts on my gender and their foibles, friends, renting, and other topics, I managed to outrage the politically correct and the terminally stupid equally. Always a good sign I find! So here’s to 2009 – I hope to irritate both extremes just as much.

I refuse to Participate in a Recession

I really do.

Sorry and all that but I didn’t benefit from the boom, particularly so why should I have to suffer the bust?

Let me explain; I work hard for a living but in a job that will never yield massive riches. It satisfies me intellectually and emotionally and leaves time for my creative pursuits. I accept the trade off between satisfaction and renumeration. I have no shares, no mortgage, a small amount of savings, I drive a 15 year old car, I save for what I want, and my credit card (once a wasteland of debt and overspending) now boasts a measly and respectable balance.

Now I’m being told that I should tighten my belt – but I never got to loosen the damn thing. Doom and Gloom abounds, but I never got to be frivolous and wasteful. It’s not fair. I didn’t speculate, I am not a developer, I am not even a pawn of a developer because I don’t own a house. I pay my tax and I get nothing back, I can;t get a medical card, or social welfare supplements. I am that much maligned animal, the middle-class, educated worker. I am not eligible for the helping hand of the welfare system nor am I rolling in money and shares with a holiday home in France.

So, and here’s my stance on the whole matter. I refuse to participate. Go have your recession, you had your boom without asking me. I’m going to sit here in the corner listening to 80s music and contemplating the passage of time…someone come get me when the Lottery in on?

And while we’re on the subject….

Friends….yesterday I was musing on the phenomenon of friends becoming the main source of angst in my life and today on the same general theme I’ve been thinking about the way friends have changed or failed to change over the years.

The friends I have retained in my life the longest, have by and large reinvented themselves several times over; some changes have been superficial and some have been bone deep, but all have been radical in their own way. From party animal to family man, from career girl to mother, from liberal to conservative, from screwed up to sane.

Yet in some indefinable way they’ve remained the same person. There is something fundamentally and intrinsically “true” about who they are, even at their most lost.

On the other side we have the friends who seem to have undergone fundamental shifts in personality – who suddenly and without warning act so far out of character it leaves us stunned, who create damage and fallout and the rest of us can only gape in surprise.

Are they, like the others, fundamentally true to themselves? Is this seeming apocalypse of personality really only the unveiling of their true self? or are they both the person we thought them to be andthe person they morph into and the only difference is that prior to that moment they had not encountered a situation that plumbed the depths of their restraint, morality or self control?

As I get older I begin to embrace the latter explanation. I think that many people are kind, good, decent, friendly,moral or trustworthy only within certain parameters. Should they meet with a need that they cannot satisfy by such behaviour they will use other tools – cruelty, deception, lies, cheating. 

The work colleague who is  scrupulous about returning your change from a trip to the shops – thus earning a reputation for honesty – sees a promotion going your way and not theirs. They surprise you by claiming credit for your work, in order to secure the post. The prize outweighed any impulse to decency.

The friend who is so kind and thoughtful as a general rule, is found to be sleeping with her best mate’s husband. Her “kind” behaviour was less important to her than her desire to have a partner and her needs  were far more important to her. Being kind or trustworthy simply served her to a point, but once there was a contest between her needs and her friends, she chose herself.

This is a depressingly common behavioral pattern; people excuse their behaviour no matter how selfish, or cruel by invoking the “I have to be true to myself” rule. Leave your wife and kids for an affair? Well of course, you have to be happy don’t you! Stab your best mate in the back for a bloke? Well, it’s your life and you have to look after yourself.

The religion of self fulfillment that has been the legacy of the latter part of the 20th century has become all pervasive now. Duty, self sacrifice and loyalty are increasingly unpopular terms. But now I think of it, the friends I remain close to also share those virtues. They may change and grow and evolve as people but they are united in the things they won’t do to further their own agenda.

They may be a rare breed, these old and true friends, but then again, what’s rare is wonderful

With Friends Like These….

I remember in my twenties all our relationship problems centred around men. Who was dating whom, who fancied you, who had the most useless dysfunctional excuse of a boyfriend.

 Then in my thirties it turned into endless discussions and problems with and about friends. Whether because of age or the stage we’re all at in life, I don’t know but there seems to be a never ending stream of drama and angst coming from that source. Old friends, work friends, pals and mates….

Our friends groups have split into two camps – those who are settled in life and happy and those who aren’t.

Now I don’t mean those who are married versus those who are single. In fact more than half the first group is made up of single friends, who are happy and have found a good place in life, who may not have a partner but who are living successful lives, full lives. In the second group are a lot of married friends who are unhappy, dissatisfied and generally pissed off with the choices they’ve made.

But those who are happy overall are running out of patience with the drama and angst and whinging of those who aren’t and those who aren’t constantly accuse those who are of being smug and unsympathetic.
Many of the “problems” everyone seems to be fighting about aren’t problems at all they’re just silly things people have chosen to be insulted / offended by. And then there’s the recurring patterns – if you’re on your umpteenth bad relationship with a shallow vacuous man who is vain and selfish then no one really wants to give out the same tired advice yet again for you to ignore again.

Or friends engineering reasons to be upset with the rest of us, possibly out of self pity and possibly because they are as mad as a bag of snakes. One friend claims that no one will come and do the things she likes to do or if they do turn up, they moan and it spoils it for her. Sounds like a reasonable  complaint?  Sure – except what she fails to realize is that in fact she bullies friends into going: if they demur for any reason she tells them that they are no longer her friends as they have nothing in common any more. When the  emotional blackmail works and they drop everything to attend, she then spends the evening pointing at them and saying “Oh, I can tell you’re not enjoying it. Oh look at so-and-so, they’re just dying to say this is crap.” And then she goes home convinced that her friends attended reluctantly and called the evening crap.

It’s not just female friends either although they do provide some of the more tortuous and spectacular examples. It seems to be age rather than gender related; or maybe it’s just the fallout of having known one another a long time.

 One thing I notice, although I daren’t say it for fear of losing a limb to the outrage, is that the unhappy among us are those who are trying to live the same lifestyle that we all shared in our twenties. Whether attached or single, they want to party and they still seek their excitement in the social scene. Those who are content, seek their thrills with their partner, or in their achievements, or in a mixture of the good things in life;  from one end of the month to another they may not go drinking, or dancing although when they do they enjoy it.

One friend cannot turn up to meet us without being drunk. While this would have gone unremarked ten years ago, when you’re forty it seems a little odd. And the tolerance for bullshit we had ten years ago – including the drunken ramblings of mates – has decreased tenfold in that period.

And then there’s the mate who has always been excused by the words “Ah that’s just So-and-so.” You can’t take offence, call them out on anything, contradict them, or disapprove of them – they very early on established a reputation for being “mad” or “daft” or “so brutally honest you want to hit them over the head with a half brick.” And over the years you’ve bitten your tongue, swallowed hard and smiled through gritted teeth as everyone told you how you couldn’t mind them, sure that’s just the way they are.

Now as you hit forty, the same people ring you up to rant about their latest faux pas and how impossible they are and how they ruin everything and can be taken nowhere. (Smile as you drawl  “ah go on, sure that’s just the way they are.” You’ve earned it.)

I wonder in ten years time if we’ll all be friends, or even friendly – I know for me the desire to be around a lot of old friends has decreased, and while this may sound strange I choose to see even less of them than I’d like because if I see much more of them I’ll end up hating the sight of them. I think discretion is definitely the better part of valour in this case; I hope if we confine 0ur interaction to the most superficial layers of friendliness at some point in the future we’ll have more in common again and will not have spoiled it all with a row.

Friends are a pain in the arse sometimes.