Well, hell-o there again, aren’t you enjoying the run up to the Festive Season, my first item concerns just that.

The Sixty Days of Christmas
Frank Kelly had a hit which some of you may remember a couple of decades ago with his take on the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ and what happens when Gobnait O’Lunacy’s True Love took the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ a bit too literally and started sending geese a-laying, lords a-leaping, maids a-milking, swans a-swimming etc. The result was the madness of Gobnait’s mother, the destruction of their home and, if I remember rightly, ruin and bankruptcy. If you still have a copy, dust it off and give it an airing this Christmas for a new generation – or just recycle it for the old generation.

But I was thinking (that’s a new one entirely – Ed) that all this talk of the ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’, the twelve days beginning with Christmas day that is, is really passé. Christmas, if it is anything, is a consumer festival and therefore must be celebrated as such. So instead of the ‘Twelve Days 0f (After) Christmas’, I have come up with the ‘Sixty Days Before Christmas’. (Is this a disguised one of your Liszts? – Ed)

The sickty days before Christmas

On the sixtieth day before Christmas

The chain store gave to me

My first glimpse

Of a Christmas tree

 

On the fiftieth day before Christmas

The phone company gave to me

A mobile phone mast on

The highest point of my vicinity. (Just to provide for all those new mobile phones being bought for Christmas, you understand)

 

On the fortieth day before Christmas

The supermarket gave to me

The first Christmas jingles

To drive me to insanity (OK, OK, did you expect Poet-tree?)

 

On the thirtieth day before Christmas

The postman gave to me

Bundles of junk mail advertising

Extolling the superior nature of the choice within the capitalist market economy (the ‘capitalist market economy’ isn’t made for rhyme or reason you understand)

 

On the twentieth day before Christmas

My luxury store gave to me

A 1% discount on my purchases

Over a thousand pounds for free!

 

On the tenth day before Christmas

My bank gave to me

A warning letter and a fine

For becoming a Rudolf the Red Nosed Debtee

 

On the last day before Christmas

My body gave to me

A headache and bellyache,

I was really out of my tree

 

But on the day of Christmas

My true love gave to me

A promise of undying love

And that came completely free (Say ‘Ahhhhhhhhh’)

So there we have it folks, the Sixty Days of Christmas. Hope you’re having a good run up (and not too much run down or run over) coming up to it. And I hope you and your finances survive. Happy Christmas!

Without peer
I normally shy away from the cliché that young people/children are the future, our hope/salvation etc etc. The reason is that this lets adults off the hook, and us adults don’t deserve that. However there are ways in which the cliché is true, and none more so than in preparing our young people for one of the great facts of life – conflict. There is a way, particularly in a situation like Northern Ireland, where peer mediation and the like at schools level could help to avoid bier mediation in later life (i.e. crisis mediation to stop killings within or between paramilitary groups).

So it was a pleasure to be at the launch of Jerry Tyrrell’s book "Peer Mediation – a process for primary schools" there recently in Derry, a pleasure simply for the book itself. But for the hundred and fifty or so people there it also meant much more, and there were tributes to Jerry, who died a year ago, from various people including Anne Murray, Jim O’Neill (in song), Dave Duggan, and Seamus Farrell who took Jerry’s book through to publication from the version that Jerry was working at when he died. A beautiful wee plaque with a rainbow was unveiled by Jerry’s family. If I was the Nonviolent News gossip columnist (now there’s an idea! –Ed) I would give you a run down on a number of people in the room for the launch but as I’m not I won’t but suffice it to say that it included a substantial and representative slice of Norn Iron’s peace and community sectors, plus others from England and the Republic.

By the way, Jerry’s book was mentioned in the last NN but to save you looking it up again it’s published by Souvenir Press, London at UK£12.99 / US$22.95. It’s 318 pages and the ISBN is 0 – 285 – 63601 – 4 May that area of work blossom. I look forward to the day when conflict dealing skills are something which all children automatically learn as part of their education. In possibly the last conversation I had with Jerry about peer mediation he stressed the need for it to be seen as part of a whole school approach if it was to really valuable and fulfil its potential.

Making an exhibition of ourselves
OK, last mention for some time, I promise (until next month – Ed?) of bogs and bog oak carving. I told you before about starting bog oak carving and collecting the wood. We have now completed one term and had an exhibition of class work and reception – some pretty amazing stuff which could have graced any home throughout the land and further afield. Some of our work was definitely of the primitive school but some could be considered the finest of fine art, with beauty, grace, style, ingenuity of expression and finesse of workpersonship (women made up a substantial proportion of the class).

So where am I getting to? (Exactly my thoughts –Ed) Well, a couple of things. One is not to judge someone too soon, A bog oak carving comrade, a few weeks from the end, was looking despondent because his proposed complex piece had, literally, fallen apart. He was moaning about the class. Two weeks went by and no sign of him. He has given up, I thought. But not him. The evening we had to being our work in for the exhibition he appeared; the constituent parts had been expertly mounted as a tableau, on a finely cut bed of slate, with legs, a little brass plaque, and two explanatory cards (in English and Irish as the classes were in an Irish speaking primary school). So, there was the most stylishly mounted exhibit of all. Boy, was I ever wrong. (All the time – Ed)

The second thought concerns the skills and aptitudes which we all have. We all have a hidden artist or creative person inside us waiting to get out. In some of us it’s so well hidden that getting it out might take time but it’s there. Which also has relevance to nonviolence. We all have reserves and skills which don’t see the light of day until we are challenged or put in a situation where we utilise them and develop them; empathy, true strength, tolerance and so on. In Quaker and religious language it’s also the old one about that of God in everyone. So, here’s to all of us finding ‘the bog oak carver’ (= the finder and developer of beauty) within ourselves. (Begobs, how’s that for profundity –Ed) (No it’s a pro-fun-ditty –Billy)

The Celtic Trigger
How much better off are the bulk of ordinary people in the Republic because of the economic boom over the last decade? If you already had your house bought and you were in a reasonable job, or with skills, the answer is probably a fair bit. If you are unskilled or on an average wage, or trying to get into the housing market as a first time buyer, the answer is probably little or nothing because any gains will have been far outweighed by the rapid escalation in housing costs. Even a couple with both on an average wage would find it very difficult to get a house in the greater Dublin area, and if you are a single person on anything like an average wage, forget it. The pressures have increased. And while there has been increasing expenditure on health, health and social services in general lag far behind the EU norm.

It is not that difficult to work out why. The Republic has a very low overall tax take; in 2001 Ireland’s total tax revenue was 29.2% of GDP/gross domestic product – compared to 37.4% in the UK, and "of 30 OECD countries surveyed, only three had a lower total tax-take than Ireland, i.e. Korea, Japan and Mexico." (Sean Healy, director of the CORI Justice Commission in the Irish Times of 2nd December).

Borrowing is not necessarily a great idea if it’s setting up a burden for the future (apart from getting into trouble with the EU). Conclusion: If you want the services you have to pay for them, So taxation should be increased, preferably direct taxation or on profits so that the richest pay. Otherwise the Republic will continue to be a western European country with services not at all to match. How sad that economic growth should lead to greater private affluence and ongoing public squalor. No wonder so many Irish people feel an affinity with the USA (which has a similar division of wealth)!

Oil go to war whatever anyone says
Isn’t it amazing. Even the official psychiatrist advising the USA government (an ex-CIA man himself) says that the situation in which Saddam Hussein will use any weapons of mass destruction that he has is when he has his back to the wall, fighting for survival. And some assessments say that while the mass of the population in Iraq might not shed many tears if Saddam departed, those who ‘have a share’ in the continuation of the regime know that if it falls they are going to fall hard and fast – their lives as well as their livelihoods are at stake. So there may be some fierce defence of the regime which, in say the streets of Baghdad, could mean an awful lot of lives lost.

Meanwhile Tony Blurr supports the US to the crazy hilt (an appropriate phrase as a hilt is the handle of a sword or dagger), and the Republic permits massive shipments through Shannon Airport. It’s enough to make you……puke. But the plans for the share out of Iraqi oil after ‘liberation’ (from Saddam to a US-controlled regime) show there are very direct USA oil interests and George Bush is their friend and servant.

It has been done before but seldom so well - using the oil company names to make a point. As this is a graphics-free publication (we make ten words worth a thousand pictures – Ed) it follows with the name (rather than the name and logo) of the oil company in capitals (thanks Ellen for forwarding it to me). It’s a ‘quote’ from George Bush: "We SHELL not EXXONerate Saddam Hussein for his actions. We will MOBILize to meet this threat to vital interests in the Persian GULF until an AMOCOble solution is reached. Our best strategy is to BPrepared. Failing that, we ARCOming to kick your ass."

As is my wont (Won’t do what? –Ed) (My wont is to use "wont" as well as "won’t" and I won’t stop doing it– Billy) I wish you a Happy Christmas and a Very Preposterous New Year, the second bit being the most important. And if you forget that this is a secular, oops I mean religious festival, just take to heart the farewell wish that the comedian Dave Allen made at the end of his shows – ‘May your God go with you’. I say amen to that. With a month off for good behaviour (no January issue – Ed) I won’t see you now until it’s nearly St Valentine’s Day –

Love and kisses, Billy