The Feminist & the Fundamentalist

By all accounts Ivana Bacik is a bright person. She is a member of the Seanad for a university after all; so you would expect her to be bright. Recently I tweeted her re-the hash tag #End Demand…..I noticed photos of her with a group of women outside Dail Eireann; they carried placards with this ‘End Demand,’ indelibly stamped across them; I was perplexed what was it that Ivana wanted to end the demand for? She didn’t answer my tweet; people like Ivana rarely do. She is after all the champion of middleclass liberal values; one only attains that position by sounding off to their peers; not by engaging in some debate with a fellow twitterite who is by definition a suspected troll.

Last night Rte broadcast a ‘Prime Time Investigations Unit Documentary on ‘Sex Work;’ here in Ireland. It was fairly predictable stuff; more than enough in it to paint the whole sleazy world of sex workers and the sex industry as nothing but cruel; controlled by ruthless thugs who prey on innocent young migrant women. This is all well and good and who could argue; as when you leave something to criminals [like drugs] they will make a great fist of it; criminality is far more efficient than the passionless rigor mortis offered by mainstream society.
So full marks to the investigations unit; they correctly called it; Ireland’s sex industry is run by criminals. Tell us something new? Of course the sex industry here is run by criminals; it is illegal and backstreet sleazy and unregulated. Criminals love these conditions.

In the course of the documentary they interviewed a top brass Garda spokesperson. They went back to her on numerous occasions. The woman was calmness personified in light of this governments attempts at [remember the government has rendered the force sterile by trying to yellow pack it;] dismantling the forces moral and access to resources; I expected her to turn around any second and say ‘so you think we give a fuck about this?’

The documentary then went on to give us some startling information. Since the fundamentalist DUP; got silly Sinn Fein support to introduce the Swedish model to Northern Ireland; there has been no change in the status quo; the sex industry in Northern Ireland is as it was. The PSNI haven’t got the resources to implement the law as laid down. Will the advocates of this legislation in Republic of Ireland accept that the Garda won’t implement this daft legislation either?

Why is it daft I hear you say? It is daft my friends because it doesn’t work. But the Swedish model is hailed around the world? The Swedish model is failing because it is unrealistic. Sex workers in Sweden are been pushed underground; many have to make compromises on their personal safety to satisfy clients. The criminalising of clients has had no effect; despite the hysterical cries of people like Ivana Bacik and her dubious fundamentalist allies; the Swedish model is a disaster.

Criminality is just one reason why prohibition doesn’t work; the other of course is in our humanity itself. In the debate with ‘Clare Byrne’ that followed our documentary; the knives were drawn. At one stage Clare wanted to know, ‘just who are these men?’ [The monsters that rape women then go home to their wives or girlfriends;] this is how this nonsense is portrayed. If a woman accepts a man as a client for consensual sex and receives a fee; is this rape? The lobbyists want us to believe that all sex workers are trafficked and so are offering sex against their will; but that is untrue as the vast majority of sex workers will testify; in fact the numbers of women trafficked against their will is minuscule; this doesn’t sit well with Bacik and the gang.

It was said that the average sex worker client was a middleclass professional; the type of man that fifty euro for a half an hour wouldn’t put too much of a dent in his finances. The idea now been touted was that criminalising him; would make him think twice about spending his spare cash in this way. It was suggested that he might be afraid of being caught; obviously if he was arrested his wife or girlfriend might find out; wouldn’t that be sheer hell for the toe rag; logic is that he will quit chasing these poor innocent women and stay at home?

The current proposed law is on Francis Fitzgerald’s desk; it will be passed; possibly by a popular vote in favour. No politician is going to defend the right of a woman to choose sex work as her life choice. No politician is going to stand up and tell Ivana Bacik that talking about end demand;[men will stop using prostitutes] is never going to happen;[like banning Whiskey in the States in the 30’s] it will just give the criminals a greater mandate to make their dough.

The usual tired old hacks were wheeled out in the debate on Clare; the washed up reformed sex worker; the Catholic zealot from ‘Ruhama.’ And the misinformed representative from ‘Turn off the Red Light,’ who’s premise is that someday women will refuse to act as sex workers; the industry will vanish.

There was only one mention of the ‘W.H.O.’ who want to decriminalise the sex industry; to address an urgent matter of public health; Amnesty International who’s recent vote to decriminalise sex work has also fallen on deaf ears. Ivan Bacik the middleclass liberal hasn’t heard of Amnesty; as it doesn’t suit her fantastic agenda. The oddity is of course that this daft legislation might not have got a hearing; if that old right wing icon Alan Shatter still held the ministry. Shatter might be a cold calculating right wing henchman; but he is pragmatic and not stupid or influenced by Isis like feminism; he knows what is daft.

Maybe Ivan Bacik and her cohorts might ask the real question; why these professional middleclass men feel the need to visit sex workers in the first place. This is the question? Is it some unnatural urge? An imperfection in the moral fiber of men…..is it because they can afford it? What happens to the non-stereo typical clients of sex workers; the lonely the old the mentally ill. People who are isolated or disabled; in society as proposed by Bacik these people have no rights; only those who are engaged in full time relationships can have sex; all other outlets are illegal in the hope they might time out.

‘End Demand,’ not likely; ‘To dream the impossible dream,’

The law will pass but the Garda won’t enforce it properly; sex work will continue to be unsafe and run by criminals.

The Real Truth About Irish Football

There will be much discussion regarding the fate of Irish football after our recent draw with Scotland. As always the debate will focus on Martin O’Neill and his team selection, and the tactics employed to try an overcome what is after all a very average Scottish side. Actually when one thinks of the five "home" nations England are much better than Scotland, yet they were dismal in the last World cup so there is always a question mark about them and their true ability compared with the worlds top teams. Northern Ireland and Wales are punching above their weight. In the case of Wales they are greatly assisted by the much maligned [fashionable stuff] Gareth Bale who is every inch a class act so much so that he can mobilise his journeymen teammates to achieve greatness, and in the case of the North they have Michael O' Neill a giant killer with the David versus Goliath syndrome who without any real star manages to induce players like Kyle Lafferty to play out of his skin and grind out results.

Us well we could spend hours discussing O’ Neill and Keane and what they have done and not done since taking on their roles, but in fairness to them the damage was done to Irish football well before they took over at the helm. To understand what is wrong with Irish football one has to hold a mirror up to Irish society and the way this country has developed both socially, politically and culturally over the last twenty years in particular. We have as a people slavishly followed the doctrine of unregulated capitalism and we along with most European economies have become disciples of neoliberalism.

What’s that got to do with football—a great many things really but perhaps we are worse off than our European counterparts in that football wise we were always at a disadvantage anyhow.
One might think that competition from GAA, Rugby, & other sports puts soccer in the halfpenny place but not so, the problem with Irish football is in that we don’t have and never had an industry. Whether this was by design or an accidental fall out from when the two main associations split I don’t really know, but it is safe to say that a football industry was never created here.

So many years ago or brightest talent went across the water to ply their trade amongst our colonial masters. This in turn led to the idolisation of clubs like Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal etc. We had our heyday when Arsenal boasted the likes of Brady, Stapleton, & O’ Leary, and also two Northern Ireland fullbacks. The Irish were now set firmly within the traditions of England’s top league. But all of that was to change with the arrival of the Premier league and the Champions league. Big money bought into the game not only were big clubs effectively bought by millionaires but the premier league itself was bought by Sky television.

Now let’s examine the FAI. John Delaney said recently that he loved Irish football and the Irish international team. This from a man who earns in the region of €300.000 per year. The champions of the league of Ireland get €100,000 says it all I am afraid this love affair is a little one sided. The FAI look upon the Irish football team as a product. Their product filled Lansdowne road and now the Aviva with Croke Park thrown inbetween.

The product to give the Premier league barstool brigades multiple opportunities to see their TV heroes, and not only that but mixing them up, the masters of Old Trafford with those of Anfield throw in a few more well know names and put on a green jersey and you are sold out.

This was masterstroke stuff from Delaney whilst he set himself up as FAI emperor he became the great survivor. He survived roaming around Poland mixing with fans whilst looking very drunk--and now he deflects more mud as one remembers Paris & then a few years later the indignant Estonians in the first leg play off as we all sat and watch the referee rob them.

But for a while Delaney's approach worked mainly due to the fact that Ireland had still the nucleus of top players playing at top clubs. But like the other "home" nations the prevalence of young players breaking through especially at the top clubs became less and less, and even now this has become only a trickle and is affecting the prospects of all five countries going forward.

Delaney has no plan B of course. Plan B would have to recognise the fact that top class Irish players playing for the premier elite is most likely a thing of the past. Save perhaps for someone willing to spend big money on the likes of Seamus Coleman who still has huge potential even if he was poor against Scotland. But where did Coleman come from, not through the schoolboy ranks of a top premier club but no he came from Sligo Rovers.

You see what Delaney can’t countenance is the replacing of his product. In order for Irish football to thrive we need to have a re-think. Money for investment in the domestic game has to be found and invested with government assistance if required.

One notes the five million they screwed out of FIFA went into the bricks and mortar to help guarantee the continuation of the FAI’S premier league product. Remember these are the zealots that brought us Eircom Jim adverts over replays of the action in the first leg play off against France for the Sth Africa World cup, like you couldn’t make it up.

This is one of the reasons the FAI won’t invest in our own domestic league because if any of our domestic players made the Ireland team a great deal of the sixty thousand in the AVIVA wouldn’t know who they were. That’s no way to sell a product John.


But when this management team fail and they will barring a miracle, we might have to thread more carefully in the corporate world of football, and go for an altogether modest management team. This predication is based on our continuing reliance on players from the championship for now and maybe lower in the future. That’s not a great crowd puller John? The fickle fans will jump from the sinking ship to pack the pubs and watch their beloved premier league.

Last Saturday we had a goalkeeper who sadly should have stayed retired from international football. We had two players from Everton, one from near relegated Sunderland, three players from survival hopefuls Stoke city, a left back from relegated Hull, a player from Norwich just promoted, and a championship hopeful from Derby. All this was finished off by veteran centre forward from Ipswich. Hardly world beaters John, and let’s remember that Ireland were the only team in Euro 2012 that had no domestic player in the squad.

The writing is on the wall John your corporate premier league product is melting. The days of blood and guts and average crowds but real Irish soccer fans are just around the corner.

Enda Kenny's Equal Ireland

These days the keyword is emotional. Everywhere you look there are tears, so much so that I have taken to having a lemon at the ready when watching television. It is everywhere from the bland soaps, to the real life documentaries about lost children reuniting with their parents. We live in an age of mass hysteria where most of the news stories carried are dreadful, and things happen that are beyond our comprehension or at least they are presented to us as so. Our world is served to us on moralistic silver tray with the good morals on one side and the bad on the other and nothing in between.

We have smiling politicians wearing casual clothes and embracing the LGBT community like its liberation time, and you know who you have to thank for it. Well yes me Enda Kenny the flying liberal, or me Joan Burton the last bastion of social democratic principles, or me Micheal Martin the I would be more liberal than I am allowed to be, and of course me Gerry Adams the leader of a party that proposes to discriminate against sex workers and their clients for the sake of pragmatism, and brown nosing the DUP.

Amongst all of these are some genuine left wing activists who regard the freedoms awarded to the LGBT community as just a tiny step on the road to equality in our society. As in reality the plight of sex workers and their clients is just another LGBT scenario, just wind back the clock, and if you do you can see our society had a very similar attitude to homosexuality back in the days when David Norris ploughed a lonely furrow.

The thing about our esteemed politicians is that despite the smiles and the rhetoric they are lying, well it’s a bitter pill isn’t it to speak earnestly of equality whilst ruling over a society that is inherently unequal on so many levels not least economically, and for the leader of the country to tell the world that Ireland loves equality this should be regarded as a crime, and he should resign. Where are the media to challenge him when he makes such a bland and inaccurate statement, the figures are indisputable Ireland is an unfair and unequal society, and no amount of ranting by Enda Kenny re-our process will change that sad fact.

These after all are the people that go ducking for cover when the word abortion is mentioned. Such is their fear of the Catholic constituency, they must have been elated to find that the popular emotional vote was going to stick it to the zealots this time, but you try and muster that kind of support for women seeking an abortion within their own state? I am afraid you could be weeping your way to tidying up your office in Leinster house. No these politicians don’t want to take on the church on this issue. The other great issue is the criminalisation of the buyers of sex. Sex workers have long advocated this legislation will only push the industry underground and further into the hands of criminals, but the zealots say that we can stop men buying sex by sanctioning them by law. Well it doesn’t take a genius to work all of this out does it?


Of all of the issues we face regarding sexuality and our bodies’ sex work seems to attract the biggest loathing. It is a deeply held resentment and prejudice so much so that much discussion around it is irrational. Recently Ruhama the pro Catholic agency urged men not to buy sex which is grand an all until you realise that the trading of sexual favours is rampant in our society in and out of marriage, and to plead otherwise is insane.

So now the great Irish middle classes have lent their support to legalise the LGBT community and allow equal rights within the law. A great move considering our ultra-Catholic history. However it reminds me a little of Mel Brooks you know the one, ‘ok the Chinese can stay but no Irish,’or something like that.

If people want an equal society then they must be prepared to pay for it. We must repair the huge gap between the well off and the poor within this state. We must also examine the rights of individuals to have abortions within this country, and also the rights of consenting adults to provide sexual services for money, and the rights of others to pay for these services if they so wish.

Now that’s equality Enda.

Not the Nine O' Clock News

We are in a strange place. The economy is recovering? The government are claiming their policies have been instrumental in achieving this. RTE political analysis supports this claim. Twice this week the comment ‘the government are finally getting through to the electorate,’ was used.

Well the thick electorate are finally realising what are great government we have. If we had all only listened to RTE all along sure wouldn’t we have realised this ages ago? It is of course a smug ascertain, obviously it counts for nothing that young people are still leaving in numbers, and indeed even more poignantly staying away. The fact that our health service is in meltdown doesn’t even register as these are the pundits of Ireland Inc. and if Ireland Inc. blinks its multiple orgasm time. To these people recovery is turgidly aligned to access to bond markets, and Ireland’s reputation abroad. They are consumed by FDI and fickle job creation that distorts figures and facilitates lying to the citizen. Anyway wasn't everything economic sponsored and overseen by the ECB-in a kind of threatening manner, so if there is any credit their hatchet men forced the issue for sure.

The truth is there can be no recovery without a full scale social recovery. A real recovery would hail the introduction of measures to create equality, and the only way this can be achieved is by redesigning the tax take to pay for services. Not as the neoliberals propose to cut taxes and slash services to all, save for those who can afford to pay for them privately. Fact is there is no recovery in the real sense, as this so called governments message is really ‘you will be alright as long as you can afford to pay for it.’

RTE purports to be our public broadcaster but it doesn’t serve the citizen. Its reverential tone to ministers, and government representatives is nauseating to say the least. Time after time it sells the government line through stealthily placed, and unchallenged dictates, which are devoid of balance. Their reporting of the water meter protests are shamefully biased and class conscious, and especially when they try to bring some absurd middleclass ethic to the right to protest.

Now the shinners have no chance with RTE. But also this week they were presented meretriciously with another shameful exploitative Spotlight-show. The BBC has much in common with RTE as both have lost their independent objective journalistic ethic, to be replaced by government interference, and demands for propaganda rather than truth.

I say this because any sane person knows that child abuse is not the remit of any political ideology or group. Sex abuse is the property of a society that has failed to deal with its dreadful reality. It is a societal issue, and the responsibility lies with all of us to face this reality. We should seriously and without prejudice examine its causes, and why it is so rampant throughout our society. To narrow it down to a single political party, or to try and align it with a group like republicans is disingenuous.

We all know that since the foundation of the state, that many groups including the Catholic Church were instrumental in creating the culture of silence in relation to abuse. All the political parties were complicit also. It is incredible to hear Lab, Fine Gael, and Fianna Fail, trying to make political capital out of what is a horrendous problem facing our humanity, but one expects little else from the ideologically bereft.

The shinners don’t help themselves mind. They are poorly advised re-strategy. At one stage they had the opportunity to seize the initiative, as the citizen was crying out for some form of radical protest. SF were surging in the polls, and the opportunity presented to lead a popular movement, that might break the right wing stranglehold on the Irish people. But the pragmatist within SF obviously won the day. We have since witnessed their watered down policy on abortion, and also their downright savage attack on the civil liberties of sex workers and their clients, [supported DUP bill to criminalise the clients of sex workers.]

The SF representatives on twitter are a pragmatic bunch as well; they are either in the non-responsive because of how important I am genre, or the passionate beret wearing agitators who have gone quiet since their election to councils. Or they are neo-middleclass business owners who like to tweet strong republican rhetoric, but yet can’t comprehend why someone could dare question their party’s policy on sex workers, like sex workers like? In a DM I was told they didn’t care about sex workers north or south, they just didn’t merit a concern. Then I was blocked from sending a reply.

I am afraid the shinners can only blame themselves for the drop in support, as I fear serving the Catholic ethos in matters of social policy, and an unwillingness to discuss their own policies, will send shock waves throughout the Irish left.

Take Me Up To Monto

Now when the Tsar of Russia
And the King of Prussia
Landed in the Phoenix in a big balloon,
They asked the police band
To play "The Wearin' of the Green"
But the buggers from the depot didn't know the tune.

So they both went up to Monto, Monto, Monto
Scarpered up to Monto, lan-ge-roo,
To you!

The old song made famous by Ronnie Drew this was written well before the world went mad. The lyric is full of fun and divilment, and nowadays its bawdy content would probably make it controversial. The world is gone mad. In my opinion this is mainly down to the media, you see somewhere along the line the media exploded. There are fragments of stories continuously flying through the air so beware as its dust particles are falling on you as I write. We have stories about everything. Politics and finance, sexual predators, paedophiles, murderers, rapists, drug addicts, human traffickers, and pimps.

Now I am around long enough to know there is no way of stopping this, the tide is very much on the way in, and all we can do is move further up the beach. However you know it is not the dust settling on my shoulders that bothers me, no it’s more the kind of dust that is lingering around the place. In their haste to inform us the media have perniciously infected everything with a syringe full of sensationalism, and for me it seems the secret formula, the gauge with which we inform our moral judgement is some kind of dilution of middleclass female respectability.

Some middleclass women are indeed very respectable but that is not the real world, as the real world is riddled with the savagery of nature,and with all of the cruelty that goes with it.
You know what I mean don’t you, with wars and starvation, and murder and torture, many of these evils happen as a direct result of land grabbing, and economic expansion, and the ruthless ambition of those we entrust with power. But we won’t go there; we will just stick with the moral sensibilities of my middleclass woman for now.

You may feel I am meandering a little but my brain got to thinking of sex workers. The days when Ronnie Drew sang about Monto and the bawdy fun and games associated with it, are long gone. What we have now is full-fledged lobbyists like Ruhama, [founded by nuns,] I kid you not, think, [Magdalene Laundries, Tuam Babies etc,] and before you say poor old nuns trying to rid our streets of desperate prostitutes? No these are serious players they can command airtime on RTE nine news, and they can spread their message unchallenged before we switch to Thurles, and the inauguration of a celibate bishop, who wants to preach about the dangers of human trafficking in a country where statistically it hardly exists.


Alongside these lobbyists we have the secular feminists. Now secular feminists make the nuns look like girl guides. They erupted in Sweden originally with a basic plan based on their fantasy view of the real world, and their obsessive hatred of men. Thus they brought in this largely discredited criminalisation of the buyers of sex doctrine that is so beloved of catholic right wing movements like Ruhama. Of course the reason it doesn’t work is that it is fantasy, like all prohibitionist policy the law is there to be broken. So when society at large criminalises something that is in demand, the criminals rub their hands with glee, and go yes we will have some of that. Logic wouldn’t be an ultra-feminists strongest attribute mind you, and so they send fragments of this failed strategy throughout society, and it is just amazing who picks up on it without question or any kind of forensic examination.

A few months back the DUP brought legislation to the Stormont parliament to criminalise the clients of sex workers. Now alarm bells should ring for all sorts of reasons. One because the whole proposal is daft and won’t work. The other is that the DUP think it’s a good idea, and have they ever had a good idea before? Incredibly they get support from the Irish Republican leftist anti austerity, remember the men of 1916 and a thirty two county socialist republic, yes folks Sinn Féin. In essence what Sinn Féin has done is voted against the civil rights of sex workers. Sinn Féin are the people who marched against the British Paratroopers to assert the rights to civil liberties, yet in an instant they have voted to deny a tiny minority of people the right to work unhindered as sex workers.

I have challenged all my SF contacts on twitter about this; I have constantly reminded them of how anti republican and anti-civil liberties their support of the DUP legislation actually is. So far I have been blocked by two accounts, and I have not received any response from anyone else. I think there are two reasons for this; one is that SF has rightly calculated that nobody gives a rats piss about dirty sex workers. Two is that people don’t like discussing sexual matters in an open forum.

That’s dirty talk the kind of bawdy stuff that Ronnie Drew sang about. Either way the brilliant FG are intending following our northern brethren’s example, and the minister intends to railroad her poorly researched legislation, so as the Irish citizen can create another sector exclusively for criminals. All under the guise of stopping sex trafficking, which has no correlation with normal sex work by the way.

It’s a wonder that smart boys like Simon Harris are not bleating on about how we should have an official IFSC type of red light district. You know we could create a red light tax haven and re-brand it as ‘Dublin’s Monto.’ Well at least if it was state run Irish prostitutes could work safely, and we could remove the criminals from the stage. But then again my middleclass female conscience wouldn’t agree.