The Cedar Lounge Revolution

Kick over the statues? March 31, 2019

Jason O’Toole, not unknown to this parish, has a piece supporting the idea of a statue to Dolores O’Riordain here in the Mirror. He argues that:

Dolores was one of the most brilliantly gifted singers to emerge from this little island and fully deserves to be honoured with a statue.

 

And it is true that this would have some attraction for those from further afield. Recently there were not one but two Luke Kelly statues sited in Dublin – I’m quite fond of the one on the Northside, though someone who knew him personally who I have a passing acquaintance with told me that it didn’t look like him at all. That I cannot judge, but all this does raise the question what are the criteria for selecting those who are commemorated in statues? I’ve genuinely not a clue, it seems hit and miss, a mix of opportunity, chance, funding and so on. Any suggestions as to how that might be regularised, or whether it should be?

Closed borders, less music. March 31, 2019

…a digital, culture, media and sport committee report to MPs…also found that employment opportunities within the UK live sector may be under threat after Britain leaves the European Union. More than half of the musicians who responded to surveys by the Incorporated Society of Musicians stated that they receive at least half of their income from working in the EU.

Nothing better to do? March 31, 2019

I’ve long thought that boredom is an under considered aspect in the dynamics of human behaviour. The sheer need to fill time, to give it purpose and meaning, at least in those contexts where there is free time available, seems to drive so many behaviours. But note that point – where free time is available.

For example, what of the rather pathetic story about a TCD group that calls itself the Knights of the Campanile which is now caught up in an alleged hazing ritual controversy. Of course said Knights provide a neat little network, of their 1200 members only 50 are current students – this apparently being a limit set by themselves to determine… some standard or another (interesting, on the IT in comments there’s the usual wailing and gnashing of teeth about freedom of speech issues). All this ritualistic stuff is remarkably primitive really.

And that reminds me of my father who in the 80s was invited to become a Freemason. My father saw that as the absurdity that it was, but he also had problems with the way such organisations lock into business and other networks (and as a republican, small ‘r’, he was well aware of the links into the UK police etc).

Because while some of this is innocuous, or stupid, some clearly isn’t. Privilege defines itself by defining others as others. That’s part of the trick. Always has been.

Sunday and the Week’s Media Stupid Statements March 31, 2019

I’m slightly out of contact for the Sunday papers this weekend – travelling as it were – so all comments on them gratefully accepted. But from earlier in the week…

Someone confuses indifference with loyalty and doesn’t appear to understand the GFA/BA, or the political dispensation in the UK…

The most obvious way out of all these traps [in regard to Brexit] is for Britain to usher Northern Ireland towards the door. A groundswell of public exasperation could have been expected, and should have had no difficulty finding a voice. From the Labour left to the Tory right, via the socially liberal centre, just about everyone has been given cause to reject the union. But there is absolutely no sign of a popular shift against it. Occasional comment pieces decrying Northern Ireland as more trouble than it is worth, while seized on by nationalists, have gained no perceptible traction. To take the least charitable view, perhaps the union’s low worth has always been priced into British public opinion.

Meanwhile in the IT there’s this:

However, the notion that Ireland is now home to a progressive consensus is a sheer fantasy, as the 33 per cent of voters who opposed the liberalisation of abortion laws, and the 38 per cent of voters who opposed the legalisation of same-sex marriage, would surely attest. Ireland is in fact a profoundly divided society, and is likely to remain so for a very long time, no matter how many avant-garde referendums we manage to push through.

…

Whether or not these differences are aired publicly, pretending that “we” all agree, that the new Ireland is a haven of progressivism and the old Ireland is just a a relic of the past, “water under the bridge,” is a piece of historical revisionism that only serves to paper over the deep moral fault lines that now define our social landscape.

No one pretends ‘we’ all agree. Both referenda were won. Most on the losing side have had the good grace to accept the results. There is no serious effort to reverse marriage equality and those who are anti-abortion are scattered and the one party established in their name is not even registering at the polls. These ‘deep’ moral fault lines? He wishes. 

Latest Sunday Business Post/RedC poll March 30, 2019

From this evening:

FG 31% NC

FF 25% +1

IND 15% NC

SF 13% -5

LP 5% NC

IND ALL 3% +1

SD 3% +1

GP 3% +1

SOL/PBP 2% +1

RENUA LESS THAN 1%

AONTÚ LESS THAN 1%

Moon walk 2 March 30, 2019

And thinking of the fact no woman has walked on the Moon I know my ten year old self in 1975 would have found this incomprehensible. After all Space 1999 and Moonbase 3 from the early 1970s both depicted futures, and not far-futures either, where women lived and worked on the Moon with men. Granted while those showed women in positions of authority they were tilted towards psychology and medicine for the most part. But there was no question that there would be a human presence on the Moon and that women would be part and parcel of that.

But on a slight tangent I find it intriguing that the Moon hasn’t featured much in television science fiction since. There have been visits – as with Doctor Who, and cameo appearances (as with the start of Independence Day) but it is oddly notable how few fictions address our nearest neighbour in space – albeit Moon while a bit hokey is pretty fantastic. And yet the paradox is that we are likely in the next decade to have orbiting space stations there as well as a return.

Perhaps the slow retreat to low earth orbit was mirrored by a cultural aversion – that the events of the late 1960s and early 1970s were so great that subsequently it was difficult to match them particularly once it was clear there would be no repeat of them any time soon. Then again one could argue that fictions based on the Space Shuttle or the ISS have been few and far between, and tellingly the latter seems to have been depicted most as a backdrop for horror films.

Moon walk March 30, 2019

Isn’t it genuinely shocking no woman has stepped out onto the surface of the Moon. And it takes that unlikely feminist, Mike Pence, to articulate the following:

“It is the stated policy of this administration and the United States of America to return American astronauts to the Moon, within the next five years,” said Vice President Mike Pence in a speech in Huntsville, Alabama, the “Rocket City” where US launchers have been built since the 1960s.
“Let me be clear, the first woman and the next man on the Moon will both be American astronauts launched by American rockets from American soil,” he said, echoing previous declarations by NASA chief Jim Bridenstine that a woman could be the next human to set foot on the Moon.

Mind you, given that NASA had problems just organising the first all-woman spacewalk, slated for the next week or so, but now deferred due to not having correct clothing for the astronauts, does not instill confidence. It’s also kind of shocking to think that in 2019 all spacewalks have been either all male or male and female and at no time have two or more women spacewalked without men.

And of course this is all utterly self-serving on the part of the US administration – a sort of grand version of ‘look over there, not here’.

TIG… and now Change UK March 29, 2019

Well given their admiration for business why not give their ‘new’ ‘party’ a name like a company?