Der Spiegel's English-language website features an article on the latest "taboo-breaking" book on the Third Reich to appear in Germany. The book in question, Heil Hitler, The Pig is Dead (apparently the punchline to a joke), deals with the incongruous subject of humour and joke-telling during Hitler's regime. What is suggestive about the article is that it implies that it was only as the regime faced collapse was there a concerted effort to crack down on those who dared puncture the propaganda balloon:

But by the end of the war, a joke could get you killed. A Berlin munitions worker, identified only as Marianne Elise K., was convicted of undermining the war effort "through spiteful remarks" and executed in 1944 for telling this one:

Hitler and Göring are standing on top of Berlin's radio tower. Hitler says he wants to do something to cheer up the people of Berlin. "Why don't you just jump?" suggests Göring.

This late-stage crackdown contrasts with the Soviet Union, where, from the start, even the most innocuous comments could land you in the gulag. (One recalls the story of the old babushka, accused of being a Trotskyist, who thought her charge was of being a 'Tractorist.'")

What is also illuminating about the review is that the jokes indicate how early the nature of the Nazi dictatorship was perceived by the populace

This joke about Dachau concentration camp, opened in 1933, shows people knew early on they could be imprisoned on a whim for expressing an opinion:

Two men meet. "Nice to see you're free again. How was the concentration camp?"

"Great! Breakfast in bed, a choice of coffee or chocolate, and for lunch we got soup, meat and dessert. And we played games in the afternoon before getting coffee and cakes. Then a little snooze and we watched movies after dinner."
The man was astonished: "That's great! I recently spoke to Meyer, who was also locked up there. He told me a different story."
The other man nods gravely and says: "Yes, well that's why they've picked him up again."

On Monday Fianna Fáil senators and TDs gathered in Westport, Co. Mayo for their annual "think-in." One suspects that such events are designed as much to send out signals about the party's intellectual credentials ("You know, we're not just cute hoors who skull pints in the FF tent at the Galway Races") as they are to inject some new ideas into our government's hive-mind. And, on closer inspection, the speakers organised for the two-day event seem unlikely to create any new paradigms in Irish politics. Curiously, the lineup include RTE sports anchor Tom McGurk. As stand-in RTE radio presenter during the summer months, McGurk is perhaps best known to non-rugby supporters as the coiner of the least original catch-phrase in the history of broadcasting--"Good morning, good morning." Also featured is Bank of Ireland's Dan McLoughlin, an economist so relentlessly upbeat he makes Pollyanna seem like Schopenhauer. Then there's Conor Brady, "emeritus" editor of The Irish Times, who managed to secure for himself an extravagantly generous golden parachute at a time when one-third of the paper's workforce were being laid off.

The only figure really to pique interest is Dr Dieter Helm, the energy policy expert who has apparently advised Tony Blair on how to package the return of nuclear energy as a viable option. So does this mean FF is blowing the dust off the plans for a nuke plant at Carnsore Point? It's unlikely. According to the Sunday Business Post, Tom Kitt, junior minister at the Department of the Taoiseach and government chief whip, insists that the decision to invite Dr Helm has no significance for Fianna Fáil's opposition to nuclear energy. The article goes on to say that Kitt stated "Fianna Fail does not favour nuclear energy and there is no debate inside the party on this issue." Such comments crystallize the real thinking behind the think-in: that is, invite a few pointy-heads over for some lectures to indicate that at least the government sort of cares about the "big picture." But God forbid if the confab sets off anything as potentially electorally damaging as a debate.

In a recent issue of The New Yorker, an article by pop-sociologist Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point and Blink) yokes together the decline of General Motors and the rise of Ireland Inc. The connection is demographics: just as the ratio of active workers to retirees became a major burden on the American behemoth, the ratio of workers to dependents in Ireland started to become favourable. Apparently, the belated Irish Wirtschaftswunder is all down to the fact we stopped breeding like rabbits:

But, as the Harvard economists David Bloom and David Canning suggest in their study of the “Celtic Tiger,” of greater importance may have been a singular demographic fact. In 1979, restrictions on contraception that had been in place since Ireland’s founding were lifted, and the birth rate began to fall. In 1970, the average Irishwoman had 3.9 children. By the mid-nineteen-nineties, that number was less than two. As a result, when the Irish children born in the nineteen-sixties hit the workforce, there weren’t a lot of children in the generation just behind them. Ireland was suddenly free of the enormous social cost of supporting and educating and caring for a large dependent population. It was like a family of four in which, all of a sudden, the elder child is old enough to take care of her little brother and the mother can rejoin the workforce. Overnight, that family doubles its number of breadwinners and becomes much better off.

The 19th-century French novelist Gustave Flaubert was famous for his attention to detail. He was reputed to spend over a week agonizing over a single sentence, weighing up each word's exact shade of meaning.

It seems that Flaubert has some distinguished heirs among the tabard-wearing intellos who occasionally work for Iarnród Éireann. Commuter and intercity rail services to and from Cork were suspended this week when

Sporting a scar running from his ankle to hip from when he was attacked by a buffalo several years ago, Hon. Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley, scion of Kenya's Delamare dynasty, sounds like something Evelyn Waugh might have invented while suffering from a particularly nasty hangover. Think of a darker version of Basil Seal. The great-grandfather of the current Cholmondeley (pronounced CHUM-lee, dear boy), Hugh Cholmondeley, the third Baron of Delamere, "took chunks of the Rift Valley from local (and illiterate) Masai tribesmen in the early 1900’s, turning the area into a playground for whites."

Hugh's descendant is now on trial in Kenya for shooting dead a black man whom he took for a poacher.

Emanating the mephitic whiff of old-fashioned colonialism is the fact that this is actually the second time Thomas Cholmondeley has killed a black Kenyan. In 2005 he shot dead a ranger who was, in fact, detaining some poachers on Cholmondeley's land.

But before we damn the accused as someone who kills black Africans with the same casualness with which he picks off rabbits, let us contemplate the statements of character witnesses:

The Thomas Cholmondeley described by white friends is much different: charming, genuine, a good listener, a father involved with his two sons, the type of rancher to speak Swahili to his workers and look them in the eye.

The director of his family’s dairy and beef ranches, he is a proponent of wildlife and his efforts have increased the numbers of giraffes, zebras, pelicans and flamingoes in the area. One reason he was licensed to carry a gun was to protect that game.

“Tom loves that land,” said Dodo Cunningham-Reid, a friend who runs an exclusive bed-and-breakfast in Naivasha.

This blog didn't make me laugh, but it did make me smile once or twice. Wryly.

Almost five years on, and we still cannot not turn away. Trawling across the wasteland of digital TV, we still have to pause and allow that second plane--filmed from so many angles because its predecessor had done its job of alerting the world--make its inconceivable rendezvous with the South Tower. It doesn't matter that the rational voices struggle to do their bit to place the catastrophe in context: that day in September was merely the equivalent to a week's worth of accidents on U.S. highways, or a handful of months' civilian causalities in Iraq. It still seems, viscerally, an event that ushered in a new era. This new age makes me, at least, somewhat nostalgic for the much-maligned circuses of the 1990s. Even OJ Simpson is preferable to Muhammad Atta

It is arguable that poor old Karlheinz Stockhausen was right on the mark when he claimed that 9/11 was "the greatest work of art ever." He was vilified for the comments by people who equate art with morality, but cannot 9/11 be recognized as some kind of demonic achievement in that it altered our perspectives on what was possible? The invisible wall separating the everyday--our world--from the Hollywood blockbuster and the sci-fi apocalypse also fell with the towers. But though our viewing of imagery borrowed from a 250 million dollar actioneer was skewed by the knowledge that the rag-dolls drifting past the matrix of glass and steel were not pixallated creations of Industrial Light and Magic, we could react to the footage only in ways learnt in the darkened cinema. If you were fortunate not to be personally connected, the event was filtered as pure spectacle, a diversion from the humdrum. After all, who did much work on the afternoon of 9/11?

But maybe after five years it is time to move on from the footage, or at least to start to question why it continues to rivet. On Monday, CNN is presenting over the Web the original TV coverage of of 9/11/01 "IN ITS ENTIRETY." How is one expected to prepare for this 15 1/2 extravaganza? With a monster gulp and an extra-large box of M&Ms? And what entertainments will be lined up for the sixth anniversary? Perhaps a special episode of "I Love 2001" in which various C-list children's presenters and comedians watch "highlights" and share their own carefully fabricated memories of the day. I can imagine Ed Bryrne flicking back a stray lock and saying, "When the second plane went in--well, that's when it really went loony!"

In yesterday's Sunday Business Post, Vincent Browne claimed that a sense of "menace" was a necessary quality for the leader of which Irish political party?

A) Sinn Féin
B) The Progressive Democrats

Given that it's the death-bed amanuensis of Charles J. Haughey writing, you won't be surprised to learn that the correct answer is option B. Perhaps the PD leader's supposed intimidating aura is to compensate for the fact that the organization boasts a mere 8 TDs and doesn't even have its own private army.

*Actual quote: "[Liz] O’Donnell lacks the menace to be a real PD leader."

Mary's gone, Tony's leaving (eventually), and now Göran might have to sling his hook. Göran Persson, prime minister of Sweden for the past decade, is facing the possibility of being forced out of office if he loses next Sunday's closely contested election. Persson is also leader of the Social Democratic party, which has, the Economist reports, "ruled Sweden alone or with other parties for 65 of the past 74 years." One of the reasons that the government faces a possible defeat is that, aside from sheer boredom among the electorate with a party in power for the past 12 years, the right-leaning opposition has successfully raised questions about how successful the economy really is.

Another liability is apparently Persson himself. Unlike our own rigorously inoffensive prime minister, Persson seems--according to this report from the FT--to be a bit of a jerk. Apparently, during the 1970s, the bulky politician pioneered a "tactic that became known as "jabbing."" Sounds unpleasant. And recently he upset Sweden's egalitarian applecart with his ostentation:

The site Limerick Blogger (http://thelimerick.blogspot.com) has being doing a sterling job of collating information about the violence that has been unfolding in that city's Moyross suburb. The apparently humdrum routine of petrol bombing your neighbour's gaff segued into something far darker with the horrific arson attack on a car with two children inside. The children, a six-year-old girl and a four-year-old boy, have been moved to the Children's Hospital in Crumlin, where they are undergoing treatment for severe burns. Latest reports suggest that one of the two teenagers arrested in connection with the attack might have acted as he did because the mother of the children refused to give him a lift. Guess where he wanted to go? The courthouse.

Sometimes you feel your fragile facade of the understanding liberal--who acknowledges that criminality and brutishness are rooted in poverty and dysfunctional family life--begin to collapse. What is left is a person who thinks that some judicious use of, say, waterboarding techniques, might not entirely be amiss.

But that way madness, and torch-wielding villagers (also known as the Garda reserve), lies.

No, maybe the only hope for blighted suburbs such as these can be found (surprise, surprise) in the property market. To say places like Moyross have problems is a bit like saying local TD Willie "Corporal" O'Dea is sometimes prone to slight gaffes. But in Dublin, areas the young bourgeoisie would not have touched with a barge pole fifteen years ago have suddenly become desirable, or at least acceptable. In wake of this sea-change, no apartment in Smithfield or the Liberties is more than 5 minutes from a paper cup-served mocha. (One of the five symptoms of gentrification.)

Of course, prices might have to skyrocket quite a bit further for certain suburbs to become, in estate-agent speak, a "destination" (as opposed to "terminal"). Perhaps to the point--mirroring that famous anecdote about the Imperial Palace in Tokyo--when a house in Shrewsbury Road becomes more valuable than all the property, in say, Portugal. But that will probably occur sometime in mid-2009. And where else in the state can you buy a 3-bedroom house for 75,000 euro?

(The above ruminations constitute a pretty feeble solution, I admit. But I would have entirely breached the bounds of credibility if I had had the nerve to suggest that the police and the judicial system were going to sort out the chaos.)

Or "please make sure we have remembered to close the doors".

The Economist on the truth behind airlines' safety announcements.

The shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2006 was announced Thursday afternoon (pasted from the site ):

Desai, Kiran The Inheritance of Loss (Hamish Hamilton)
Grenville, Kate The Secret River (Canongate)
Hyland, M.J. Carry Me Down (Canongate)
Matar, Hisham In the Country of Men (Viking)
St Aubyn, Edward Mother’s Milk (Picador)
Waters, Sarah The Night Watch (Virago)

When the longlist was announced, David Mitchell's Black Swan Green was the bookies' favourite to win the prize outright, so its failure to make it to this stage is a surprise. (Several months ago, I promised the Three Monkeys Online site a review of the novel--if you're reading, Andrew, I know you lost hope a long time ago but I will hand in that review...promise).

On the back of several rapturous reviews , I bought a copy Claire Messud's The Emperor's Children, also a longlist casualty. Previously I thought that this work was a strong contender because a) it's by a woman writer (and a woman hasn't been awarded the prize since 2000, when the winner was Margaret Atwood) b) it deals with the "legacy" of 9/11 (big theme) and c) it was praised in the U.S. (Brits seem to have an inferiority complex about American fiction).

I have to admit that all of the above are strictly extrinsic factors--at the time of writing, I'm on page 6 of the book. Even for me, this is a little early to be making (cough) aesthetic judgments.

Heavyweight Peter Carey, with Theft: A Love Story, has also fallen by the wayside, along with Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer.

I don't really know all that much about the books still standing. A while ago, I read this TLS review of Edward St Aubyn's novel. Being told that "St Aubyn sometimes goes at his dislikeable toffs in a none-too-subtle fashion. His overdressed ninnies and billionaire dullards are given reams of dialogue exposing their tedious witlessness and even more tedious wit" didn't exactly compel me to discover this author. Overall, with its apparent focus on very rich, very jaded, and very unpleasant individuals, the book sounded as if it operated in such a hoity-toity realm as to make even uberposh 2005 winner, Alan Hollinghurst, seem like a bit of an oik.

A nugget I discovered today: M.J. Hyland is a women and her book is set in Dublin, the grim version. See here .

Finally, despite all this jabber about "bookies' favourites" how many people actually put money down on a bloody literary prize? If they do, most of the transactions probably occur in the freeing anonymity of cyberspace. I can't imagine many lit-nerds queuing up behind some tatooed bloke punting the children's allowance on the 3.30 at Haydock, summoning up to nerve to ask what are the latest odds for Edward St Aubyn...

Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist noted for her vitriolic attacks on Islam, has died , aged 76, in a hospital in Florence. A proper journalist, she was almost killed in Mexico, made Kissinger tug at his collar, and was willing to go to jail for her views (although some of them were a bit barmy).

Also, if these photos are anything to go by, she also succeeded in making that absurd archetype, the glamorous smoker, seem plausible.

In my previous post, I suggested that the late Oriana Fallaci succeeded in making smoking a fag seem quite glam.

Susan Sontag, some of whose journals were published last Sunday, could also strike a fine pose with a ciggie.*

(Caption: Sontag at a symposium on sex in 1962 at the Mills Hotel, now defunct, on Bleecker Street.)

*Please note that acknowledging a tenuous link between smoking and style will not prevent me from occasionally annoying the smokers I know with queries about when they might consider giving up.

On the letters page of Saturday's Irish Times the names of over 60 Irish and Ireland-based academics were listed under a petition calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. The rubric under which the letter appeared, "Academics call for a ban on Israel," might have exaggerated their case, but the petitioners are nevertheless quite radical in the scope of their demands:

Aside from its cumbersome language ("refraining, where possible," as opposed to "refraining, where impossible"?; and that tautological "joint collaboration"), this righteous call to arms is difficult to stomach. The stance taken seems hypocritical at best and possibly pernicious. Three objections spring to mind:

1) Anyone who cracks open a newspaper from time to time might be aware that public opinion in Israel about the country's foreign policy and the treatment of the Palestinians is far from monolithic. Unlike most of its neighbours, Israel tolerates critical voices, and those voices are often raised in the country's campuses. For example, mirroring the right-wing U.S. website Campus Watch, Israel Academia Monitor is

[An] Israeli watchdog group that monitors abuses of academic freedom and politicalization of Israeli campuses by extremists and radicals in Israeli academia who probably damage Israel because they want to be accepted by the enemy or by some of Israel's worst adversaries.

The site contains extensive and vehement attacks on figures in Israeli universities, demonstrating that criticism of Israeli policy is not the exclusive domain of tenured European academics:

Four Israeli universities are today the centers of anti-Israel tenured extremism (nearly all of the extremists by the way are leftist Jews; few Arabs are as venomously outspoken as they), although each of the other schools also has a few such people. Many academic extremists have been part of the international campaign to boycott Israel. Most have been involved in attempts to organize mutiny and insurrection among Israeli soldiers and to promote refusal to serve in the army until Israel adopts the policies endorsed by its Arab communist parties. Many make the University of Colorado’s Ward Churchill look like a sane moderate.

There is some argument over the question of which campus is the very worst. Ben Gurion University is certainly a serious contender for that title, crawling with extremist leftists who do not think Israel has the right to exist. It contains at least one entire department (political science) in which no Zionist, pro-Israel faculty members may teach, and the single pro-Israel non-leftist lecturer there was fired last year for incorrect thinking. The operation of such an anti-pluralist department goes with the blessings of Ben Gurion University President Avishay Braverman, himself a leftist who has now joined trade union thug Amir Peretz, the new anti-productivity anti-market head of the Labor Party.

One wonders what will happen to these beleaguered dissident voices if they are placed in moral quarantine. Some figures among the Israeli left actually support an academic boycott. But isn’t it also possible that cultural isolation will enforce the view among some that a hidden vein of anti-Semitism lies behind such calls? Already some voices have been raised: why not the same treatment of Russia over Chechnya, they ask? This, tangentially, brings us to point number two.

2) Two of the signatories, including the august Seamus Deane, are based in the U.S., at the University of Notre Dame. One doesn't have to be a master of geopolitical detail to understand that Israel's "policy of violent aggression" against the Palestinians and Lebanon would be considerably less aggressive if it were not for vast amounts of U.S.-supplied finance and munitions. One could argue that if the 60-plus academics listed were committed to helping the Palestinian cause, this academic Coventry should be expanded to include the several thousand academic institutions operating in the United States. Of course if that were to be the case, they would be effectively boycotting themselves.

3) And why stop at Israel and the United States? Two of the signatories work in the Dublin Institute of Technology (DIT). Coincidentally, in the Weekend section of the same edition in which the letter appears, Fintan O'Toole, in one of his seemingly never-ending series of articles extolling the Chinese miracle, waxed lyrical about DIT’s collaboration—“joint collaboration”, I suppose—with the Harbin Institute of Technology. Again, it is a hardly a bombshell to announce that China does not exactly bend over backwards to comply with “basic human rights norms.” Yet any university president or senior academic who suggested vetoing academic contacts with China would have their sanity questioned. After all, as O’Toole never tires of informing us, the 21^st century is destined to be the Chinese century. So anyone with qualms about the suppression of democracy, Tibet, religious minorities, ethnic minorities, free speech, the peasantry, or family rights just has to suck it up, it seems.

So it appears that demography is destiny, at least when it comes to ethics. To castigate publicly a nation of six-million-or-so is feasible. To do anything more than murmur disquiet when dealing with a country boasting a populace of 300 million, or even 1 billion, is unreasonable.

Finally, this poster does not believe that Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and its recent failed war in Lebanon can be defended as appropriate responses to perceived threats. However, I don’t think closing lines of communication to one of the epicentres of constructive protest in that nation is going to change anything (let alone improve things), except for making those calling for that isolation feel more secure about their rectitude.

And perhaps this was sheer naivety: but I always thought that those in the academic world were dedicated, even if they wouldn't dream of explicitly expressing it, to some concept of a community of the mind that transcended national borders. That the modern intellectual, often forced to travel in search of tenure and teaching positions, viewed her or his colleagues qua colleagues, regardless of their ethnicity or nationalism. Of course, such thinking can be dismissed as so much soggy liberalism, irrelevant, maybe even contemptible.

The English-language web edition of Der Spiegel offers a rather chilling portrait of that supposed expat heaven, Dubai:

If one accepts the commonplaces of the debate on world cultures, Dubai is an impossible city. On the one hand, it's more cosmopolitan than eastern Germany and southern Italy, more tolerant than Poland or Louisiana, and consumers spend more here than in Munich or Madrid.

But on the other hand it's a dictatorship, almost a rogue state, a desert regime without a parliament or a political opposition, without trade unions, political parties or associations. All books and newspapers are subject to censorship. Sharia law is observed, including corporal punishment, and all Jews are strictly banned from entering the country.

But hey, you can play golf 365 days a year!

Link via Arts & Letters Daily

What is the driving force of the modern U.S. economy, that $12.5 trillion colossus? Can it be found in Silicon Valley, recovered from the dot.com slump and rejuvenated by the revivalist-tent atmosphere of Web 2.0? Or is it manufacturing, leaner than ever and profiting from IT-led productivity surges? Or is it even the industrial-military complex, fattened by the wars of 9/11 and an indulgent Pentagon?

According to Business Week, the answer is more prosaic. It's hospitals:

To guard against any bias from self-reporting, the second batch of data used objective medical test results for people aged 40 to 70. These confirmed the higher rates of disease among Americans at all income levels.

Way back when, Monty Python had a sketch mocking the insularity of BBC newscasters. The "News for Parrots" delivered an unashamedly parrot-centric view of the world: "Good evening. Here is the News for parrots. No parrots were involved in an accident on the M1 today, when a lorry carrying high octane fuel was in collision with a bollard ... that is a bollard and not a parrot. A spokesman for parrots said he was glad no parrots were involved."
This moth-eaten scrap of satire floated into my mind this morning while reading the Irish Independent's take on the recent turmoil in Hungary:

Hungarian crisis could be disaster for property investors

Of course, those parrots, I mean concerned Irish property investors already have enough to fret about. I mean, will the weather hold for the Ryder Cup ?

"Jealousy is the illusion of clairvoyance."

Well, I thought it was good. The above apercu is from recentish review in the Times Literary Supplement by Craig Raine of a London production of James Joyce's only play, Exiles. The TLS was also quoted a while back by John Boland, better known as the Indo's TV critic. His bullshit detector usually gives reliable readings, and he doesn't spare the rod even if the program is homemade. (So I doubt he's many fans out in Montrose). Here he is applying his solid discernment to some very short poetry:

Back from a short break from the blog after a weekend in Berlin: A truly great city, easy to navigate with an excellent U-Bahn & S-Bahn system, and with a laid-back ambience that seems at odds with the white-knuckled atmosphere that sometimes seems to choke Dublin. (Monday-morning rushhour in the German capital seemed positively somnolent in comparison with the congested hysteria of my home-town commute).

Of course, Berlin has a few problems. It's officially bankrupt, the unemployment rate hovers at around 17%, and even the popular mayor (who, in an echt Berliner move, asked his boyfriend up onto stage to celebrate his recent election victory) seems bereft of significant ideas about how to revive the city's economy. (See the Economist's report for more)

Yet the question remains: why does a bankrupt Berlin seem more liveable than a booming Dublin? Well, one answer was on offer in the Irish papers on my return. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, a man who seems to illustrate the gap between politician and statesman, has so far refused to counter the accusations that he received between €50,000 and €100,000 in the early 1990s (while he was serving as Minister for Finance). In a brazen (and futile) attempt to stifle the story, Bertie laughably told reporters "he could not be expected to reveal 'what I got for my holy communion money, my confirmation money, what I got for my birthday, what I got for anything else'."

Ahern is expected to make a comprehensive statement about the accusations today. However, unless he announces that he didn't actually receive the alleged monies than there is no question that he should step down. Assuming that Ahern will not make such a statement, an observer is compelled to conclude that yet another generation of Irish politicians has been totally discredited.

This latest scandal once again highlights the disconnect between a nation that has shed its inferiority complex and a political class that is either too inept or too corrupt to govern effectively. The gombeen mentality means that connections trump qualifications, clientalism beats good administration, and money wins over all.

With such a venal ruling class, it's not a surprise that public services and infrastructure here are so ramshackle, but that they in such relatively good condition.

And yet . . . if Bertie somehow wriggles out of this imbroglio, he could win the next election. Such are the advantages of shamelessness in Irish politics.

There were so many dubious defenses thrown up by Bertie Ahern's teary performance during yesterday's television interview, that one would have to devote a dozen blogs to demolishing them.

Yet here's one angle that I have yet to hear amid all the cant about our leader being basically a salt-of-the-earth bloke: can you recall the last time you borrowed money from a friend? It doesn't have to be a noble "debt of honour" (whatever the hell that means) but merely 50 euro passed on during a night on the town or the price of a airfare booked for a joint trip abroad. How long did you wait before paying your friend back? A couple of days, a few weeks? Certainly 13 years would not have to elapse before you coughed up what was owed. Why? Because real friendship, as opposed to mere cronyism, cannot bear too much financial strain. Normally, those owing wish to clear the debt as soon as possible. Sheer considerateness is one factor, but there's also the recognition that running up debts to one's circle is a very quick way to poison relationships.

So how could Bertie look in the eye his "friends", to whom he owed tens of thousands of euros? The obvious explanation is that these "helpers" were not genuine friends, but astute investors who judged throwing a few grand Bertie's way would pay off in the long term. One doubts they were naive enough to believe that the loans would be repaid in the most obvious way--out of Bertie's own back pocket.

Ahern mentioned "honour" plenty of times yesterday. If he retains even a faint notion of what the word signifies, he will resign.

One rarely gets to witness a major political career imploding. It's not a pretty sight, as evidenced by the footage of a floundering Bertie Ahern attempting to deal with journalists' questions about a fee (or was it a gift?) he received for "promoting Ireland" at a mysterious gathering of business people in Manchester. (Click here to view.)

The phrase "flop sweat" comes to mind after watching such a performance. One almost feels sympathy.

Almost.

So, if you're reading in Ireland, make sure you're on the electoral roll. You might be asked to visit your local polling station before Christmas.

Incidentally, Bertie claimed his address to this unknown group of fans was "unscripted." Now that really begins to test the outer limits of plausibility--I mean, what person in their right mind would pay a large sum of money to listen to Bertie Ahern--graduate of the George W. Bush school of oratory--give an off-the-cuff lecture on the macroeconomic situtation in Ireland?