Andersonstown News 14 Nov 97/1 of 2 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit -- 'The Queen of Ireland' -- Man fired over banger prank: 'I didn't do it' -- BOOKSHELF by Eoghan Corry -- Tight-Lipped Top Civil Servant Dodges Quit Query ************************************************************* Andersonstown News - Thursday, 14 November 1997 ************************************************************** 'The Queen of Ireland' Ardoyne hails President Mary McAleese ROSEMARY BERMINGHAM I am not originally from Ardoyne, I am from Tyrone but I know that the people here are delighted to have one of their own become President of Ireland. I think she will make a great president. PETER MCKENNA It is great that a local girl got the Presidency. Some people say she is not from Ardoyne at all, that she lived on the front of the road. But Ardoyne or not, we are all delighted that she won the election. She and her family suffered during the Troubles so she has the same experiences as a lot of us in North Belfast. It is great that we've finally got a Northern President but I don't think the unionists are too happy about her. PATSY BRANIFF It is great to see someone from Ardoyne getting the highest position in the country. She is a very well educated woman and she speaks very well. I thought her speech was very, very good. She has been back here a few times, and let's hope she will be able to come back to Ardoyne soon - this time as President of Ireland. PETER LYNCH My mother knew her well and knew her family. It is great for people up here to have someone put their side of the story. She is like the Queen of Ireland. She might not have any power but she certainly has influence and maybe she could bring some benefits to North Belfast. Young people here in North Belfast have nowhere to go and there are very few jobs but perhaps Mary McAleese can use her influence to improve things for the area she grew up in. HANNAH DONNELLY I think she will make a very good President. I watched the inauguration on television and I thought it was lovely to see all the schoolchildren from Mercy Primary School and from St Dominic's. It was a very proud moment because a lot of people here would have known Mary or known members of her family. It's like seeing a member of your own family doing well. Mary McAleese did a lot of work in Ardoyne behind the scenes, without fear or favour, and we all look forward to welcoming her back. FRANCIS LOUGHRAN It is great that someone from here has got the highest job in the land. I hope, and I'm sure she will be, someone who will be respected by everyone. I was very impressed with her speech, and although she is not a politician she will be able to influence things. Ciad mmle failte: Ardyone residents Rosemary Bermingham, Peter McKenna, Patsy Braniff, Peter Lynch, Hannah Donnelly and Francis Loughran ******************************************************* Man fired over banger prank: 'I didn't do it' A West Belfast teenager has hit out bitterly at a local engineering firm after he claims he was wrongly sacked because of a Halloween prank on the shop floor. Turf Lodge man Pat Maguire (19) says he's been made the scapegoat after a banger was thrown during a pre-Halloween shift at the Europa Tool plant in Poleglass. Pat's doubly aggrieved because he's unable to get a hearing at an unfair dismissal tribunal because he hasn't worked at the factory for the required two years. The machine setter's nightmare began just before Halloween when a firework exploded on the shop floor at the Korean firm's premises in the Springbank Industrial Estate. The incident infuriated Europa Tool managers who saw it as a serious breach of strict safety guidelines at the factory. A number of men working in the factory at the time of the incident were hauled in and questioned about who was responsible for throwing the banger. "I told them categorically that I hadn't been involved in the incident, as did other workers who were on the shop floor when it happened," Pat said this week, "other people were interviewed about the same thing - they denied it too." But just a couple of days later Pat was called into the office and told to go home - he says he was sacked even though the firm gave him no reason why he had been singled out. "They just told me I was suspended and that was it," he said. "I asked them how on earth they could pick on me when I had nothing to do with it, but they wouldn't tell me anything. I appealed through my union but the company told me that I had been fired and there was no possibility of me getting my job back. You would think that there would be some sort of procedure that a big firm like that would go through before sacking an employee. I thought that if they were making a serious accusation like that they would require at least a bit of proof before they could act on it. But they have nothing on me because I didn't do anything and they've left me without a job because of it." Now, as a sacked worker, Pat faces a long delay before he can claim unemployment benefit and the dream job that he took up 13 months ago has been snatched from him with Christmas looming on the horizon. He also says his future in the engineering business has been jeopardised. "I'm told that seeing as I was only there 13 months I'm not able to take them to a tribunal, something I would obviously have done like a shot," said Paul. "But I'm talking to a solicitor to see if there's anything else to be done. I'm not intending to take this lying down. I'm an innocent man and I didn't deserve to lose my job over something I didn't do." A spokesperson for Europa Tool said the personnel manager dealing with the case was away from the office for a number of days and no-one else would be able to comment on the case. ******************************************************** BOOKSHELF by Eoghan Corry Pop-eyed peasantry David Lean by Kevin Brownlow (Faber & Faber). Ever wondered about the Irish accent of the school-teacher in Ryan's Daughter? Well the actor Christopher Jones was given a tape of Lord Dunraven's son six weeks before shooting. I kid you not. The most expensive film made in Ireland until that date (1968) paid that much attention to accents! It gives an insight into the thinking of film makers right down to the laughable "Far and Away" when the voice coach was flown in from New York where they really know an Irish accent. The Ryan's Daughter chapter in this comprehensive book is full of allusions to the pop-eyed peasantry from "one of the poorest parts of Europe" (Dingle is by no means the poorest part of Kerry, with the highest proportion of millionaires to the population in the whole island, and was positively well off by comparison with the rest of Ireland's west coast even in the 1950s, never mind the southern Mediterranaen countries and the east). The location manager was delighted to chose the exact beach where the IRA landed arms for 1916 (in fact Banna Strand is sixty miles from Dunquin). The story of shooting the love scene in Murreigh hall will bring a titter to anyone who has spent a summer in the Gaeltacht. The Shameful Life of Salvador Dali by Ian Gibson (Faber & Faber #30). It is a long time since Ian Gibson lectured in Spanish at Queen's University, but with his series of books and acclaimed 1992 TV series about Spain he has proven one of the finest Irish contemporary writers. The title sums up Gibson's mixed feelings about the artist we all had on our bedsit walls, Dali supported the Franco regime that Gibson detested but proved so irresistible that he agent five years researching Dahi's life. Gibson's love of Spain meant he stresses Dali's debt to landscape, in particular the Upper Emporda of his childhood. The fact he was Dublin-born no doubt helped his relationship with Dali's secretary until 1974, second generation Irishman Peter Moore. A brief encounter with Lorca triggered off Gibson's interest, but unlike Lorca, this subject was an egotist and exhibitionist, repeating his tired witticisms over and over: "the only difference between Dali and a madman is that DALI IS NOT MAD" and the extraordinary "I'm a very bad painter for the reason that I'm too intelligent to be a good painter. To be a good painter you've got to be a bit stupid." The greed that led to the blank sheets scandal in the 1970s is detailed. But Gibson finds a new dimension: shame. "Dali brings shame into the open, where it can be scrutinised. No other painter in the history of art has done this, and it may yet transpire in depicting shame, and forcing us to contemplate its sources and its agonies, Dali made one of the most important contributions to civilisation." Gibson finds evidence of this in his body of work from Le Jeu Lugubre onwards. His works executed between 1926 and 1938 are his magnificent and crowning achievement, images of horror, mental unbalance and sexual alienation when he was in the embrace of the surrealist movement and Breton, an influence he subsequently distorted. He achieved everything before he was forty. Maybe if he had died in the civil war like Gibson's hero, Lorca, posterity would have been kinder to him. Nothing Except My Genius: A celebration of the wit and wisdom of Oscar Wilde (Penguin, #3). A slim volume contains what Oscar might have thought was all you needed to know about him his sound bytes, one of a library of Wilde books to celebrate the release of the Stephen Fry movie. Wilde distilled one of the most important intellectual revolution in the history of English letters and even a hundred years later, the more you read of him, the more amazing he seems. BOOK OF THE WEEK The Trials of Oscar Wilde: Deviance, Morality and Late Victorian Society by Michael S Foldy (Yale #20). Funny that it was the three trials of Oscar Wilde that were taken as the benchmark for modern degeneracy. Should the destruction of Parnell, the highest profile politician in London next to the Prime Minister at the time, not have merited a similar description? And is it coincidental that both were Irish? Foldy explains why the hounding of Parnell was so important to the English, and the fact he was an outsider an important help. Their prevailing view was that societies were living organisms, subject to the usual human process of birth, growth, decay and death. For a late-Victorian population, acquainted with the outlines of the history of Rome, there was an ever present anxiety about the decay of the newly constructed empire (belligerent Paddies were already tweaking it) and the English nation. The language of decadence became compounded with that of degeneration, and the fears for the decline of the "English race" became conflated with "moral backsliding." Sexual inversion was seen as a proof of degeneracy. Wilde was a threat to the health of Britain and his conviction was an attempt by society to cleanse itself. Foldy goes further and examines the role of Wilde as scapegoat for a society in decline, thrown to the hounds of morality campaigners to divert attention ****************************************************** Multi-millon pound Portrush golf open benefited West Belfast - DoE TIGHT-LIPPED TOP CIVIL SERVANT DODGES QUIT QUERY The North's most senior civil servant has side-stepped enquiries regarding his future with the DoE following the #2.5m Postively Belfast controversy. Ronnie Spence, Permanent Secretary at the DoE, refused to give a direct answer when asked if he had considered resigning in response to criticisms of the DoE in last week's Auditor General's report. "My job is to give Ministers the best advice I can and to implement as effectively as possible what they decide to do," he said. "I took the necessary measures to address the weaknesses exposed initially by our own internal auditors. I have nothing further to add." The DoE supremo was speaking after a press briefing - much of it off the record - called by the Department to rebut the Auditor General's report. The main findings of the Auditor General's investigation into DoE funding for Positively Belfast were: --#2.5m was provided by the DoE for Postively Belfast in a way which was "not consistent with good administration or ensuring value for money from its activities"; --The DoE decided to fund the Senior British Open Golf Championship at Portrush at costs of up to #750,000 per year despite advice from the Department of Finance and Personnel that it was not "a legitimate call on resources". --The funding provided by DoE was made under the Social Need Order although legally this was difficult to justify and subsequently deemed irregular; --#100,000 was lost on a speedboat event on the Lagan which never took place. --Positively Belfast bills for hospitality, "even for large sums, gave no indication of who was entertained or for what purpose". Vouchers for payments for sums covering hundreds of pounds included a compliment slip, a small scrap of paper, a pencil note on a self-stick label, and a pencil note on the back of an envelope. Ronnie Spence, who says he plays golf "very badly", visited Valderama for the Ryder Cup - at his own expense - to see how other golf tournaments were organised. DoE sources said this week that they had not yet decided whether they would sponsor next year's British Golf Seniors at Portrush. A DoE source said they would argue that government isn't spending enough money on major events. "The people of West Belfast will indirectly get the benefit of this because if we get a really big golfing event for Northern Ireland, people will be staying in Belfast as well as Portrush and Newcastle. We're told that our investment of #400,000 in the British Seniors golf netted us #77m of publicity around the world. Golf is one of the most dynamic tourist catalysts into the next century. You can't take this expenditure out of context. We need to take risks for this community." The source criticised "sensationalist reporting" of the Auditor General's report and called for a "more mature debate" in the press. ******************************************************* Conor rakes over the ashes of Malachy's past life in Lenadoon New York cop and rising film-maker Conor McCourt has paid a return visit to Lenadoon to visit the flat where his grandfather Malachy - made famous in the Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Angela's Ashes by Conor's uncle, Frank McCourt - spent his final years. Conor has already scored a critical success with his first film, The McCourts of Limerick, which traced some of the family characters and visited some of the places mentioned in the book. Conor also paid a visit to Maire Bean Ui Neill, a Lenadoon neighbour of his grandfather's who knew him well and spoke revealingly of the old man and his last years in Lenadoon in a recent interview in the Andersonstown News. It's not the first time that Conor has visited the Dungloe Crescent flat his grandfather lived in. In the early 1980s he visited Belfast while Malachy was still alive and listened to some of Malachy's memories about life in Limerick, the United States and Belfast. Standing at the door of the flat with an Andersonstown News reporter, Conor was visibly moved by the memories of the last time he met his grandfather. "I knocked on the door and stood for a while, and eventually a frail hand emerged through the letterbox - I'll never forget that, I can still remember it as though it were yesterday," said Conor. Conor filmed some Lenadoon street scenes during his stay in Belfast - he's currently working on a follow-up film to his debut work and the footage of Malachy's home district in Belfast will provide a focus on the revelations that Malachy, portrayed as a drunken ne'er-do-well in his son's book, had changed considerably in his later years, regretting his past misdemeanours and seeking forgiveness from his wife and children. Before returning to the Big Apple, Conor travelled to Limerick where his uncle Frank received an honorary degree from Limerick University. Conor was on his bike back in New York, where he's a bicycle policeman, but he's hoping to be back in Ireland in the near future to interest Irish broadcast companies in his latest film. ******************************************************* continued in part 2... ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytire-11.22.97-01:49:37-2407