On the 23rd August 2011 I wrote a posting entitled Questions To Be Answered a quizzical look at an almost anonymous priest of the Salford Diocese and on the 30th April 2012 I followed it up with an allegorical look at the same question, How Not To Sew Seed: An Allegory as to whether Monsignor Duggan, one time Rector of St Bede’s College in Manchester and the plague of approximately 2500 young boys in his tenure and who died of an aortic aneurism in 1968 was in the tertiary stage of syphilis which caused this aneurism.

Just recently I have read the recently published, fantastically well written historical novel by Sarah Dunant, a specialist in this genre, called Blood and Beauty, the rise of the Valencian,Spanish Borgia family to the heights of Power and Papacy in Rome in the 1490s.  As Sarah explained in a full length piece in yesterday’s, 18th May 2013 Guardian Review, the turning point for her in the planning of the book, was the discovery of the outbreak of “malaise francaise” in Naples in 1495 after Charles VIII’s army had conquered the Neapolitan kingdom with his army of 38,000 men drawn from the backwaters of Southern Europe.  Some of whom were returned sailors from Christopher Columbus’s second voyage of discovery in the Carribbean.

Sarah in her piece in the Guardian reccommended and thanked Deborah Hayden for her massively well researched book on the Pox which swept Europe for the first time at the end of the 15th century and turned the disease into a killer of populations.  A secret disease that nobody talked about or understood but became a death sentence on sexual contact with somebody who had the spirochete parasite within them.  The big problem with the disease, once it had entered its secondary and tertiary stages was that it mimicked so many other diseases it was missed by many doctors who treated what they saw and not what was very apparent.  It took the mind of a detective in doctors to assemble all the clues and finally analyse the root cause of a patient’s symptoms.

This book by Deborah Hayden The Pox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis examines the history of the disease and how it raged virtually unchecked for 450 years throughout the world before a highly successful cure was found in penicillin in 1945 which destroyed most of the damage the disease could do to the human body.  Before 1945 doctors messed about with a myriad supposed cures, which often caused as much harm as the disease itself, feeding poisons like mercury and arsenic into the body in various quantities, like modern day chemotherapy.  So for 250 years doctors recognised the disease, knew its consequences but could do very little to ease its devastating effect on human life.

One of their main problems, knowing its social impact, was how to inform or treat those closest to the victim.  This was a conundrum that defied the medical profession but eventually brought about this much vaunted doctor/patient confidentiality credo that is so strong today.  Wives, children, families all caught up in this silence, not knowing what caused all their terrible symptoms and sufferings.  I would advise everybody to read Deborah Hayden’s book for the very necessary insight into a disease that nearly stopped the world but is very rarely seen nowadays in its untreated form.  For a look at how the Church operated in those days and how the Pox invaded the powers of the papacy read Sarah Dunant’s excellent book on the Borgias and do read my two blog postings mentioned above.

To return to Thomas Duggan’s life, there are one or two periods and one or two circumstances that do not add up and can very easily be fitted into the footprint of a syphilitic.  He was born in 1906 in the textile village of Oswaldthwistle, of Tipperary Irish stock once removed from the Famine, conceived out of wedlock and showed signs at an early age of high intelligence.  He was educated at St Bede’s College in Manchester, leaving in 1923 for Rome where he studied for the priesthood and was ordained in 1930.  Already his life pattern can see a mind with no chance of emotional development having been captured at the age of 11 by the Church.  After further studies in Rome he came back to the Salford Diocese and was allocated a place at Bede’s teaching English, where after three years his talents were spotted by Bishop Thomas Henshaw, who made him his Private Secretary in 1936.  This post of Private Secretary is very important, it means he had been picked out for higher episcopal duties.  The Private Secretary knows all the secrets of the Bishop and the Diocese and confidentiality is undoubtedly required.

Henshaw died in September 1938 and Duggan continued in his role, unmanaged until Henry Vincent Marshall was appointed Bishop in September 1939 and Duggan continued his role under Marshall.  The Diocese had been without a Bishop for a year and Duggan, a young priest of 32/33 years of age must have been given loads of responsibility and without a doubt lots of freedom.  Marshall kept him for a year then unloaded him back to Bede’s in September 1940.  It is in this period, late 1938 to early 1940, the first question lies.

On a tour of duty taking a very famous American priest round the Salford Diocese in the summer of 2011 and filling him in with details of Duggan’s career, he became very interested in this period.  He could not understand the retrogressive step to Duggan from Private Secretary to the Bishop to schoolteacher.  Immediately he knew something had happened, something drastic to warrant this fall from grace.  Private Secretary’s go up not down.

It is not a giant leap of the imagination to suggest that in this unattended year of 1939 Duggan, like thousands of priests before him, had contracted syphilis and had ridden out the primary stages of the disease, the growth of an ornate chancre on his penis, without any senior management knowledge.  After a year and during the early months of Marshall’s bishopric, the secondary stages of syphilis would have appeared, high fevers, agonising pains in the limbs, rosaceas appearing on his body, none of which could be hidden from a third party.  Marshall was not daft, he knew the signs, he had seen it so often before but he was not without empathy.  Duggan could no longer go upward, it was five years before the cure, penicillin, was discovered.  So Marshall hid him away in the teaching staff of St Bede’s, away from parishioners and prying eyes and that is where he stayed for ten years, entering after a few years the latent stage of the disease, where contagion disappears and symptoms remain dormant.

After ten years and with his natural talents coming to the fore and seemingly disease free, Marshall appointed him Rector in 1950, a high post but again relatively distant from the outside world.  From this time Duggan’s natural tendencies brought on by immature emotional development had a free reign and he started to abuse the quiet good looking boys he was attracted to, reaching a peak in the late 1950s.  It is in this part of the latent stage of the disease 15 to 25 years after contraction, the medical profession say that the tertiary stage of syphilis is reached.  This becomes apparent in various ways with all kinds of dramatic illnesses which doctors could never fully put their finger on but it also brought on neurosyphilis which portrayed itself in all manner of outlandish mannerisms giving the victims feeling of euphoria, grandiosity, irritability and outlandish rages, leading eventually and in most cases to paresis and aortic aneurism and death.  Certainly by about 1963 Duggan’s sexual urges had died off but his behaviour was becoming more bizarre, his grandiose appearances and his unexplained rages were there for all to see along with alarming dilation of the pupils of both eyes.  Geoffrey Burke, the headmaster, Duggan’s now only contact with the outside world and praetorian guardian, kept as much as he could in check but not it all.  Outbursts at passing members of staff were terrible to witness and according to one very aimiable and talented teacher nearly led him to have a nervous breakdown.

By 1965 the staff were in revolt, Burke was helpless to contain the problem but would not openly report it.  The priests on the staff led, by the diminutive but strong and outraged John Groarke, headed a deputation to the Vicar General, the then Bishop Holland’s deputy.  They explained their dismay and expected the diocese to respond.  They did and by Christmas 1965 Duggan laid low by an outbreak of the disease was on his way out.  It did not become apparent while he recovered but by the Summer of 1966 he had been farmed out to Langho, a little community in North Lancashire where he died two years later.  On his death and for all his troubles Geoffrey Burke was appointed Auxilliary Bishop of Salford where he remained trouble free except for the odd rebellious priest of which there were many in Salford, post Vatican II.

Whilst researching this piece I read that posting of mine of August 2011 which contained the powerful poem by Mike Harding, Dead Man In Langho, Lancashire, where he had the line let us not forget the powder for your shining dome as children we always remarked on this but could never understood this powder he used to coat his face and head in but now I know it was to cover and hide the rosaceas that appear on the skin during the secondary stages of syphilis and break out intermittently in the latent stage.

God we were a blessed generation of young Catholic boys.

Well certainly it does but there are circumstances where it definitely shouldn’t and the tale I am about to tell is one of these circumstances.

“Caritas Internationalis is a confederation of 164 Roman Catholic relief, development and social service organizations operating in over 200 countries and territories worldwide.  Collectively and individually their mission is to work to build a better world, especially for the poor and oppressed”.

That is the Caritas definition according to Wikipedia and a truly inspiring mission statement if ever there was one.  A well run charitable organization with a wonderful management system in place caring for Catholics and all “poor and oppressed” christians and not so christian people worldwide.  I know St Bede’s College in Manchester used to pride itself on the help and the very generous donations, garnered by the pupils, it gave to this wonderful charity every year.

But what happens when an organization offering such altruism suffers from arrythmia, when its backside does not know what its mouth had for breakfast.  Take the case of a venerable old Bedian alumnus, down on his luck, nowhere to go, after serving four and a half years of a prison sentence.  What would you do?  And the only honest christian answer would be to open your arms, invite him into the fold, let his fall from grace be as gentle as possible.  That person needs all the help he can get to smooth his passage into this now horrible big wide world in which we all live.

That was the mouth speaking but this is what the backside says.  Well this poor old alumnus needs help definitely but he is a paedophile, it is not easy for paedophiles to re-enter the big wide world but what we will do, to make it easy on him, we will put him up at our cosy little house which is just down the road from the site of his many foul misdeeds.  That will make him more comfortable knowing how close he is to home, so close to so many, lovely for him, memories.  So that is what good old Caritas did, they put our vulnerable old alumnus into a house only a stone’s throw from his old House of Horrors (for pupils not him).

Our man, our alumnus, the poor man trying his best is none other than William Green, once teacher of religion at St Bede’s College but now and unfortunately for ever a convicted paedophile after running amok at St Bede’s for nearly 20 years.  A convicted paedophile, newly released from his six year prison sentence leveled on him in October 2008 after serving just over four and a half years.

Here is the yet unpublished comment I received on my blog yesterday.  The posting on which it was lodged I wrote last September and was quaintly named The Honesty Of The Catholic Church????????.  I have kept the name of the writer anonymous for obvious reasons but I know him.

“Until April I was living in a house in Moss Side that is managed by Caritas.  Myself and another resident found out that a third resident was William Green.  The Catholic Church had rehoused him in a property less than one mile from St Bede’s.

When we confronted the manager about this, we were eventually forced out of the property.  I have been told that this would be investigated by the safeguarding commission on the 16th May.  After what I have read (on your Blog) I have little confidence in their own enquiry”

Bedian parents please note you have a paedophile in your children’s midst once again, of course there might be hundreds of paedophiles scattered about Moss Side and Whalley Range but none with such an ignominious and local history as Green’s.  The man is now 72 years old but old paedophiles like old cowboys always die with their boots on.  They cannot be cured of their itch and the Church have known this to be fact for over 50 years.

The above, unpublished as yet, comment leaves a very nasty taste in the mouth.  For a start why put a convicted paedophile back in his old happy hunting grounds and why , oh why, persecute upright people for asking honest questions.  Why were these men excluded from their accommodation?  Did they not need Caritas as much as Green?  And is the commentator not right in suspecting the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese or any other diocese for that matter?  My own experience of these people, led in Salford by the very able but shifty lawyer Michael Devlin, showed them to be an obfuscating, duplicitous, uncaring bunch of skunks as you would ever likely meet.  I do hope that the LADO lady from Rochdale, who became its Coordinator 18 months ago is making a better fist of it than her predecessor, Fr Barry O’Sullivan, who was consigned to Strangeways Prison after frigging up the whole ethos of the Commission for more than ten years but I doubt it.  This case in point is a good example of same old, same old!!

It is early days in this particular circumstance and their is still a lot to learn but I would ask every good Catholic and especially every parent with a pupil at the College to start asking big questions of Mr Daniel Kearney and his florid room mate Monsignor Michael Quinlan and the Bishop of Salford, Terence Brain.  I know their answer, “well we did not know, we are not Caritas”.  Well our answer to them is “well you should have, Paul Malpas bloody well knew and neither is he”.  I apologise for my tone this morning but I am so bloody angry.  If ever there was a red flag to a bull situation, this is it.

Now that the court cases are lining up against the Salford Diocese and St. Bede’s College, news has come through how one school in New York has found a way of dealing with the problem of child sexual abuse.  One of the city’s most prestigious private schools, The Horace Mann School, in the Bronx borough of New York has apologised for more than three decades of abuse committed by teachers and administrators at the school.

A letter on its website apologises for the abuse between 1960 and 1996.  “We sincerely apologise for the harm that was caused by the teachers and administrators who abused anyone during their years at Horace Mann School” board chairman, Steven Friedman and headmaster Thomas Kelly said in a three page letter.  “These unconscionable betrayals of trust should never have happened”

In the letter Mr Friedman and Mr Kelly said the school had hired a private mediation firm which presented the trustees with impact statements from 31 people who described their abuse.  Settlements have been reached with the great majority.

They also said that the school board would eliminate a position of trustee emeritus and create an advisory board on pupil safety, which may include a victim of sexual abuse.

Now that is the kind of response I wanted from the Salford Diocese and St Bede’s College in Manchester when I took up the cudgel against decades of abuse at St. Bede’s in early 2010 and all I got in reply was denial, obfuscation, threats and eventually non-recognition.  As the ignorant, foul-mouthed priest and Coordinator of the Salford Diocese Safeguarding Commission, Barry O’Sullivan, said to me in October 2010.  “Because I cannot see you, I cannot talk to you and therefore cannot negotiate with you” after he barred me from the process of what I hoped would be reconciliation.

However my argument persisted but all I received was the article in the Manchester Evening News on March 15th 2011 which included what the Bishop, Terence Brain, called an apology but what I and most people considered to be a loose jumble of words meaning absolutely nothing, cobbled together by some clerk in a solicitors office.

Rather than admit the obvious, wholeheartedly apologise and offer help to deal with these broken men, the victims of abuse at St Bede’s, the Bishop chose to line the pockets of already rich lawyers in trying to defend the indefensible.

That was three years ago, we have a lot more than the 31 victims that were at the Horace Mann School in New York, our case is now a lot stronger thanks to the hard work of some dedicated lawyers I was forced to use after that snivelling acceptance by the Bishop and I think the time for loading money into rich men’s pockets should be over.  I think the school and the Bishop should stand up to the plate, be men and accept their culpability, openly, honestly and sincerely and do something for this trail of destroyed lives that was their doing.

Stand up Daniel Kearney, stand up Florid Quinlan, stand up Terence Brain, for once in your lives consider yourselves men and stop hiding behind shadows, stop spurting out lies, live up to the precepts of your religion and not the vile Vatican verbiage we have all come to hate.

Over the last week I have experienced some exhilarating highs but also some terrible bone shattering lows after helping to put on a play for the Gathering here in Boyle.  I explained the play in a fair amount of detail in my posting of 30th April last under the heading of Our Play For The Gathering so I will not go into that.

I want to concentrate on all the massive highs, the man made depressing lows are now not worth considering hardly but the perpetrators of all the hurdles know who they are and I hope they reap their just reward.  They have Common Purpose written all over them and for anybody who does not understand that term, let them google it and research the dastardly ways of these new leaders of men.  First of all you need a warped intelligence, attracted by power and be noticed by those in command, you then take a crash course in how to make as many mistakes as you can in as shorter time as possible and you become a leader, qualified to make a balls of whatever responsibility you are given.

The highs and there were so many of them started with the privilege of working with the writer of the play, Neil Richardson, a man of 28 years of age with two published books under his belt and a third on the way.  A most knowledgeable man on military history and a sincere and affable chap with the right amount of seriousness about him to make you listen when he talks.  The director Caroline Barry, a gregarious, appealing lady with  enough  of steel in her bones to make actors sit up and concentrate.  A warm loving, intelligent girl, who easily conveyed the message she was putting over and who remained calm under intense enemy fire.  An absolute pleasure to work with.

The actors, Dave Fleming from Dublin who played Michael Curley, Paul Fleming from Moate in Westmeath who played Jack West and Paul Fox from Manor Hamilton in Leitrim who played the young soldier, Eddie O’Hara, all displayed good manners, a healthy disrespect for everything and everyone, a sociability that is uncommon in their age group and a real zest for life.  Their determination, confidence, zeal and ability in their profession, amazed me.  I suppose the three of them have known each other for several years because the respect they showed each other was obvious and very warming.

Paddy Jo Malpas, my daughter, who played Agnes Curly, Michael’s wife, bred in Manchester but matured in Dublin, displayed as good a Westmeath accent as a native.  I had to keep looking at her to convince myself of our relationship.  Every time I see her on stage she impresses me and that is not her father speaking but a stern critic.  Her performance was as perfect as the three lads, I was so proud of her.  The four of them have had praise heaped on them in e-mails that are still wafting in over the ether two days after the event.

As a lover of live theatre, I never really knew or understood what went on backstage but the physical and vocal exercises these thespians put themselves through before each performance is something to be admired.  I watched it , listened to it and was totally impressed.  Four very decent, hard working, very, very talented individuals.  Their tangents contained by that lovely and lovable mother hen of a director, Caroline Barry.

Whilst all this wonderful relationship business was going on, people were booking tickets over the phone, cancelling bookings and generally being hare-brained and keen at the same time.  Lighting sets were breaking down and then repairing themselves.  The Council staff were one minute saying you can do this and the next minute saying you cannot do that.  Everybody and everything designed to turn you into a gibbering idiot, whilst at the same time experiencing tremendous highs with the experience of bringing a live stage production to fruition.

The day of the first performance arrived, we had a large amount of tickets ordered to be picked up on the night, the actors were buzzing, the director fussing, the writer frantic, everything was going to be great.  Eventually the lighting and sound systems were doing what lighting and sound sets are supposed to do, the hall was ready.  Five minutes to go, introductory speech ready, 20 people who ordered tickets did not show, nobody walked in off the street, a thought of profit was now a loss, the speech a stuttering shambles, a fantastic performance by the cast.  The end of a roller coaster day, rain came down in buckets.  Everybody soaked.  A glass of wine, an appraisal of the day, to bed exhausted.

Early rise, prepare the venue once more, the start of the second day, the last performance.  We had been shunted into a Monday show, not a good night at all to attract people out, ticket sales were poor, forecast bad.  Willie Beirne, our Treasurer, embarrassed with his town’s response to the previous night set up his row-de-dow-dow and soon had a load of volunteers wanting to buy tickets.  The best day’s ticket sales yet, everything is fine, knackered after last night, two hours sleep in the afternoon, refreshed, it’s looking good.  Lighting set not working, Neil now frantic, Caroline calm, the people flocking in.

One minute to go, the Council lad did something, he still does not know what, the lights came on, introductory speech went well, another superb performance by the cast.  The audience full of praise after their experience, beaming faces, tears flowing from the pathos of the words and action.  Top of the mountain emotion after the depths of the valley feeling.  Shaking of warm hands, everybody hugging Caroline and Paddy Jo.  The intensity of heart and feeling was tangible.  A celebratory drink needed, a private party organised, food and drink in equal and massive measures.  Six hours later dawn breaking, walking home, the birds twittering in a dawn chorus as the cast led the world in Young Willie McBride and the band played waltzing Matilda as we sauntered past the Garda Barracks illuminated by the first rays of sun.  Fantastic, unbelievable and I am 67 but never seen this.

Four hours later awake and stumbling to clear up the venue, wash the glasses, move the stage.  Writer, director and props on the way home, cast to the railway station.  Farewells.  Nothing, dead flat, exhausted.  Myself and Willie decide to count the money, worried, bleary eyed but wanting to know.  A small loss but the experience was worth a couple of grand, the emotion was worth plenty more.  At this game you can never lose.

I think I will set myself up as a personnel consultant specialising in the priests of the Salford Diocese.  I more than anyone know the abilities and more the inabilities of this august body of venerable old men, having researched their every foible for the last three years.  Take for example the police force, if they wanted to know the qualities of a potential witness, victim or criminal residing within the diocesan ranks, all they need to do is come to me and I would be able to tell them in very short sentences, the various shortcomings of the cleric being investigated.

Take the case of Barry O’Sullivan, once the man who gave the Safeguarding Commission of the Salford Diocese a bad name after shuffling paedophiles around for 10 years whilst acting as Coordinator of the Commission and giving out lies and general obfuscation to deny the many complainants who reported clerical abuse in the diocese.  I have written about him often in the past relating his many un-sacerdotal actions, I know Barry like I know the back of my hand.

However two years ago his lack of talent was eventually realised by our dingbat bishop, Terence Brain and he was moved off the paedophile prairie and now grazes in more mundane pastures as the prison chaplain at HMP Manchester, Strangeways to me and you.  Here using his unbelievable skills as part time therapist come psychoanalyst, learnt from his hours training his two little lovable terriers, he sits and chats to housebreakers and lads who cannot pay fines about their straying partners and the general detritus of life you collect when you are not there to deal with it personally.  It was banal, boring work with only the odd GBH case to brighten Barry’s day.  He was slowly sinking into the morass that is ideal for people of Barry’s abilities but he always felt he was a super star and wanted better.

The day arrived, our learned therapissed cum part-time psychoanalyst once protector of vulnerable people in the Salford Diocese got himself a real life, honest to goodness, fully depraved child murderer.  Everything was up Bazza’s street as he dived into Mark Bridger’s cell on his first evening in detention.

Bridger, from mid-Wales had been arrested for the abduction, possible sexual assault and murder of a five year old girl in Machynlleth, a Welsh coastal town, a lovely spot for such a dark deed.  The problem was the police could not find the poor girl’s body, so Barry jumped in with two booted feet and using all his voodoo skills broke the offending murderer, Bridger, in minutes, without realising that Bridger was a lying deceitful rogue.  Barry was delighted when Bridger under intense O’Sullivan interrogation broke down and said “fair cop Barry, old son, I threw the body in the river but I cannot remember where”.  Barry, fired up with his god given ability, ran off and told PC Plod of the body’s whereabouts and this valuable tit-bit sparked off the biggest body hunt known to British policing, up and down the Dyfi River for months.  Police now know using their own sleuthing powers which were put on hold with Barry’s revelations, that Bridger cut up the body into minute pieces and dispersed of them over a wide area.

Now my point is that if the police had come to me in the first instance and said “hey Paul, what do you think of this O’Sullivan shrink, is he kosher or what?” and I would have, within seconds, without looking at my files, been able to tell them that old Bazza was the biggest blithering idiot that I had ever met.  Not only illiterate but not really part of this world.  He cannot remember even where he parks his car, reporting it stolen and then letting the police find it for him.

Let the police and any other interested party beware, Fr Barry O’Sullivan is a danger to the living and the dead.  He is in the best place for a man of his ilk, HMP Manchester.  But before I finish what about this vow of secrecy between priest and confessee, therapist and patient.  It seems to have been forgotten about fairly easily in this instant when Barry’s only thoughts were for his name in the papers and instant glory.  It must put the fear of God into prisoner and confessee alike when he knows Old Barry will be telling the parish of his confessional secrets within minutes of learning of them.

Not a nice man, not a good man but one disgusting, deceitful, stupid priest is Fr Barry O’Sullivan.

Having written this article my thoughts go out to the poor parents of the murdered girl.  In no way do I want to belittle their own grevious loss.  Hopefully Bridger will go down for life and a short life it could well be when the prison laws of justice come into play.

Just back from a rhapsodic week in rural France, ensconced in a 300 year old, three storey mill, surrounded by sun, sheep, donkeys, cattle, birds (including large woodpeckers), flies, ants, snakes, mice, the odd rat, a turgid stream, unlimited supplies of wine, champagne, delicious bread and andouillettes, which you all know is a appetising sausage made from the small intestine of pigs and which, if it does not smell strongly of shite, is not worth eating.

The news which I am about to relate is all over the front pages of French, Italian and German newspapers and will make your toes curl with delight.  This tit-bit, so I am told is also in the Russian and Israeli press but that is only hearsay as I could not translate their stuff.  So wait for it…..

The reason for the urgent government meeting a week ago, that had been called by our lovely, fluffy David Cameron, was because his best mate and Cambridge buddy BoJo, Boris Johnson the Lord Mayor of London, has been waving, prodding and yes, inserting his magic and over-used wand into David’s beloved Samantha.  Not once during a coke-filled weekend at a country house party, not twice in a fit of exuberance after a satanic ritual they had both attended but on and off for about five years and according to the continental papers it has been more on than off.  Samantha has been a busy girl, working overtime because it is well known that Dave likes his bit of nooky as often as possible.  In the foreign press there is talk of a love child and they seem certain that their is film footage of the two non-contracted lovelies going hell for leather for the whole world to watch and judge on style and technique.  They say the Mossad and the KGB both have copies and are urging Dave to come to heel instead of thinking the odd independent thought he is known to have occasionally.

It has been known for years about Samantha and her liking for coke and S & M sessions and obviously when she flashed those long slender legs at poor Boris, he had no option but to suffer the whip and the lash and offer his large, oversized phallic digit for Samantha’s devourment.  So be it, it seems some kind of D Notice has been slapped on the whole scene in England and we decent underbaked Brits will never read of it, while the whole world quakes with mirth at the happiness of it all, the chatter of cafe society from Moscow to Messina, from Vancouver to Volvograd.

Enough of the absurd, I was trying to write this blog last week whilst sunning myself in Ruritanian France but some bastard(s) hacked my blog, for the fourth time no less and by the time I had alerted my technical people and they had righted the wrong, my window on the French computer system had been lost.  So pardon me if what I am about to relate is old hat but it does need saying for the odd eejit connected to St Bede’s College in Manchester who still does not keep his ear to the ground in the present climate.

One of my whistleblowers who I am convinced lives in Danny Kearney’s back-pocket has sent me significant and highly disturbing news of recent events at Bede’s.  The triumvirate of Quinlan, Kearney and Pike have become a quadripartite, the three having co-opted no less a power than Andy Dando, Director of Studies into their midst.  Now Andy Dandy was dead against the bias towards which Bede’s was tending and was offering his obviously very bright young lad for adoption at the local comprehensive.  Now that he has joined the club, having thrown his boy in as a bargaining tool and presumably getting free education for his mite, he is responding mightily to the new Bedian vision of QuinKearnike education.

They made a unilateral four-sided decision to create the middle school without referring to the parents; those bonkers who pay the piper.  They met great resistance from Mrs Carr Deed, who had been working wonders at the Prep in her short time in charge.  Her Prep has been thriving whilst the College is failing.  They have appointed a Head of Middle School and side-lined Mrs CD, who has been left as a nursery manager.  Her position has become untenable and she has resigned.  Kearney, Pike and Dandy Boy are putting out false signals saying the root cause of the College’s failure in attracting new pupils is because of the Prep’s inabilities.  The Prep and Mrs CD are the fall guys.  Shades of Michael Barber’s removal; same instigators, same modus operandi.

The teachers all know of this horrible intrigue but are unable to deal with it.  I have said before and it has happened before, faced with machiavellian opposition teaching staff disintegrate.  It is not in their being to be strong, they are just sheep leading lambs.  The great hope in this scenario is that a strong-minded parent, there must be one or two knocking about, takes up the cudgel and faces this quartet and asks the question WHY?  Why are we paying £9,000 plus per year for sending our kids to an under-achieving institution?  You will have the massive majority of the staff on your side who will then work out ways of removing the total bollocks that are now in charge.  Unfortunately all the half-decent governors have now resigned, they will have no help from that clergy poxed group.  The task for this latter-day Jeanne d’Arc is massive but it desperately needs doing.  The ship has been torpedoed, is listing badly.  It is all down to thee.

My third point to day is even older news, news that happened a week ago and as we know even yesterday’s news is boring but my point has to be made.

Last Sunday as I relaxed in rural France surfing the net, sipping cold dry wine in a balmy 23C which was cooled by a soft westerly breeze, I laughed and chuckled whilst reading the long interviews Barry O’Sullivan, Catholic priest of the Salford Diocese, had given to the national press.  The idiot Bazza sensing his great moment had arrived gave it hook, line and sinker to the assembled hacks of the main stream media.  His whole life story, his experiences with child safeguarding, his depth of understanding as a therapissed, what total rubbish.  A heavy blanket of lies spread over a rickety framework of life.  His best move would have been to say nothing like any self-respecting priest or therapist but he was lured by the golden apple of fame and made a complete balls of it.

I know and Barry himself knows that he had no more concern for victims of clerical child abuse than the man in the moon.  The sole purpose of his job during his 10 year tenure in the Safeguarding Commission was to act as long stop.  Not to let any claim against the Salford Diocese gain legs, except of course when the claim was reported to the police first as with William Green’s case.  I could write a book about his antics and when I think about it I probably have, with all the blog postings I have dedicated to his memory.

His record as a therapissed bears out his utter uselessness.  How could he not spot that the child murderer, Mark Bridger, was not an inveterate liar after 20 odd sessions of therapy.  Barry is one total nincompoop and that is why the press gave him hundreds of column inches so that he could sink his already dirty feet into the midden.  The Mail on Line mischieviously put Bazza’s photo alongside that of the murderer and as my lovely wife of 40 years said “They look like a pair of twins”.

Poor old Barry he has completely lost his way, not that he knew he had a way to lose in the first place.  What is it about the Catholic Church and especially the Salford Diocese and St Bede’s College, that they cannot see the utter balls they make of every action they take.  Nero and his fiddle and Rome come to mind.

As regular readers of my blog will know, I had the absolute privilege of helping to put on a couple of live performances of a play From the Shannon to the Somme written by Neil Richardson which in a quiet way showed the changing face of Ireland in the years 1914-1918.  The play tells the story of a couple of Connaught Rangers, a great regiment of the British Army since 1790, stuck in a war they hated but worried about the Ireland they had to return to.  The heroes of 1914 becoming mainly enemies of 1918.  Men who had fought for England, who by 1918 had become a hated controller of Ireland, were not welcome back on their own soil.

Many writers recently have written about this volte-face, notably Sebastian Barry and Alan Monaghan but the nationalist movement from 1920 onwards propagated this feeling until in the minds of the people of Ireland, the First War was forgotten about and the people who fought in it were ignored.  This led to families who had heroes in their midst, keeping their heads down and burying the evidence of their families military past.

However has history has proved time and again you cannot bury the truth forever and from about 1990 their has been a gradual renaissance of interest in these old men, all now gone.  Their present families more and more interested in that great sacrifice of 100 years ago.  The Mayo   Peace Park in Castlebar in Mayo being a great example of this reawakening brought about by a committee of earnest historians.

I am General Secretary of the Connaught Rangers Association, an organisation with members living all over the world, formed 11 years ago to remember those soldiers who served with such distinction for their regiment, their country and for their fellow soldiers.  It is our absolute pleasure to help these enquiring relatives relive the lives of their forgotten ancestors by delving into the massive data base, the product of one man’s determination to bring the Connaught Rangers regiment to the fore of people’s minds.  Oliver Fallon, our archivist has built up this massive piece of work over the last ten years and it must now be the largest private collection of military records of one regiment in the British Isles and Ireland.  There are two lifetimes work in it, with another two lifetimes to go and his conundrum is, what happens to it when he dies.  It is too important a work for it to be buried with him, but that’s for another day.

I would now like to enclose the text of my introductory address prior to the plays performance, which tries to take you back those 100 years to enable one to feel for these men that we need to remember..

We in the Connaught Rangers Association are committed to remembering the thousands of men from the proud Connaught Rangers regiment who died nearly 100 years ago.  We are realising with each successive day how the people of Ireland and the present day relatives of these soldiers scattered all over the world, are becoming more and more aware of the sacrifices and brave deeds of their great grandfathers, grandfathers, fathers and grand uncles and all who served during the Great War of 1914-1918.  We as an Association spend much of our time helping people who contact us, to trace relatives that history, both national and familial, for one reason or another, has chosen to forget.

The play tonight opens in 1913 more or less 100 years ago tonight and Ireland 100 years ago was part of England, as much part of England, as Lancashire and Yorkshire are today.  The Land Wars forgotten, the Irish tenant farmer owned his own land at last, there was an air of well-being throughout the country and except for the bigoted Carson in Belfast, peace and calm ruled.  But there was still unmitigated poverty, not always but especially in the populated cities still recovering from the devastating general strikes that racked their existences in 1913 and continued into the early part of 1914.

However there was hope in the air, the 4th Home Rule Bill was a certainty.  Ireland was going to be Irish for the first time in 700 years and their was a whiff of nationalism in the air.  Unfortunately war broke out in August 1914 and to soften the political process and also has a route out of abject poverty, Irishmen in their hundreds of thousands enlisted in the British Army

Our town of Boyle, traditionally a military town, was no different than any town in Ireland.   Young men who were not already in the Army enlisted; there was no conscription.  You have to remember that the British Army had been the biggest single employer of men, certainly in the West of Ireland, for over 100 years and the Army in the form of the Connaught Rangers had had an imposing barracks in the town, at King House here, which gave the local merchants a raison d’etre.  Boyle was not a big town, you could walk around it in five minutes and it has hardly changed since then.  It had a population of about 2000 but 120 men plus from Boyle were killed in this conflict.  Going off military statistics that suggested that there were at least 500 seriously wounded.  Think what that burden must have had on the remaining population of this small town of ours.  20% of the males in the 20-40 age group killed and most of the rest injured or in need of long term care.  The responsibility that was put on the old folk, women and children was enormous and is not generally realised.

Tonight two medals will be presented to our chairman, Mr Gary Egan, two original medals, donated by Mr Alan Deane of Boyle and a Kildare man, Mr Chris Nolan of Athy, which will be displayed in our museum here in King House.  These medals were awarded to two Boyle men, a grand uncle of Mr Deane’s, Private Patrick Sharkey who fought from Day 1 and survived the war and Private John Daly, the first man from Boyle To be killed in the war, he survived for five days.  Both men lived on Green Street in Boyle only 100 yards from where we are tonight, a street that lost at least 12 men in this terrible conflict.

So as I have explained before, the play went off perfectly, great acting, great direction, great writing and a great response from the audience who travelled from all over Ireland to watch this historic performance of a play about Connaught Rangers performed in the historic home of the Connaught Rangers.  90% of the audience travelled more than 50 miles to attend  What did surprise me was the poor response in attendance from the people of Boyle.  This renaissance I spoke of does not seem to have arrived in Boyle, the burghers of the town do not yet seem to have  confronted the truth.   Except for a handful of locals, Boyle was not represented at all but our thanks go out to Frank Feighan, our TD and The Mayor of Roscommon, Tom Crosby and two town councillors who gave up their time to attend. Local County Councillors were indeed apparent by their absence but they were probably down the county on important business.  Seeing as most families in the town could trace in their ancestry a lost soldier, I can only presume theatre going is not the forte of most and perhaps it is a little early for some, still swaddled with twaddle from De Valera’s management of the country.

Can I refer the reader to Sean Carr’s comments in my posting of 9th June Cameron, St Bede’s, O’Sullivan And Much, Much More.  Sean in his first comment quoted verbatim the note issued to all parents at St Bede’s and dated 10th June 2011 which I included in my posting of 19th July 2011 The Ejection Of Mr Barber.

Sean rightly pointed out the lies told to parents by the florid Quinlan in this note.  Quinlan said that Mr Barber had said that he would like to return to teaching.  In fact Barber was deposed in a Night of the Long Knives with Quinlan, Kearney and Pike the daggers that had him doomed.  Barber was naturally distraught but the quality of the man was recognised immediately by St Edmond’s, Ware  bringing him into their fold as Deputy Head.  St Edmond’s, with a clutch of martyrs as their alumni, instead of Bede’s wizened collection of faded rock stars, comedians and the odd politician, is, as Sean said, ten times the school that Bede’s could ever dream of being.

This dismissal was followed by more lies from the then triumvirate (Florid, Baldy and Fishface) that Barber was stressed out, not able to cope and he was leading a failing school.  Well, by God, if the College was failing in 2011 with its record A Level results, it has now gone past the point of no return under the trio’s haphazard and woeful management.

This same policy, an absolute unchristian policy of spreading lies and discontent is the same that made Mrs Carr Deed, another excellent educationalist, hand in her resignation letter two weeks ago.  Another fine teacher ruined by lies, innuendo and spiteful gossip.

Why is it in this supposedly Catholic ethos supporting establishment have the senior management had to revert to this barrage of malicious lies to ensure their work, their malevolent policies are carried out.  It is a scene redolent of the lower reaches of the political world than that of a supposedly top class educational institution.

Only a few weeks ago I had a barrage of parents and pupils telling me what a bad man I was for telling the truth.  I understood it from the pupils who had obviously been coached in their wayward attacks on my blog and it did make most people realise the poor quality of the pupils that were doing the slanging.  What was harder to overcome was the attacks by parents or should I say parents stupid enough not to know better when this sinking ship was already listing beyond the point of no return.

But the tide has changed, I am no longer receiving this kind of hate mail in comments and e-mails, people are now realising that what I have been saying for two years is correct.  Florid Quinlan, glabrous Kearney and piscine Pike have been put there to run the school into the ground.

Well that is all very well, let management do what management does but an awful lot of innocent people are caught up in this Machiavellian game of snakes and ladders that the Salford Diocese are determined to play.  I have pity for the pupils or at least those serious enough about their future lives to want to succeed with their examination but they have youth on their side and those that fail will bounce back given an extra year in fresh air.  I pity the parents to the extent that they are paying out lots of hard earned monies to keep this Titanic afloat.  However they should have seen and understood the runic symbols held up by the creepy lot in charge.  They should have started the process of child extraction as soon as Kearney’s name was mentioned in preference to Barber.  Those parents that have not gone this extra mile are nearly now stuck in steerage with no lifeboats left to ease their passage.

However those that I have most pity for are the vast majority of the teachers, those that are still trying to bale  the ship out of trouble, that are still trying to educate pupils in their charge.  It is not their lot to rebel, nor to stand up and be counted but they should before it is too late.  These people can only move on at their own pace, they become mortified, petrified when the pace quickens.  They have to break out of this paradigm and enter a brave new world.  I know that will be difficult but for their own sanity it needs doing.

They, I must admit, have choices.  They can resign and move on: difficult in two ways, their natural inclination to stay put and the difficulty of finding somewhere more suitable for their talents.  They could leave in the correct manner and sue the school for constructive dismissal for those with more than two years service but they have to prove that and it is sometimes difficult in the employment tribunal process.  Or they can soldier on into crassness and morbidity and eventually go for redundancy but by then their mental strength might have been diminished.  It is a sad outlook for able, gifted people.

The big downside to all of this is that the Salford Diocese now totally control  the school.  The Board of Governors is bereft of lay people who had some say in the past.  The scary hands of ancient priests have a grip on everything and as the Church fails it will drag institutions like St Bede’s College down with it.  I have it in my power to quicken that process but for legal reasons I am hamstrung.  If we all knew as much about Bede’s as I do we would all be trampled underfoot by stampeding parents, teachers and children but one day and it might not be far off, I might throw off my shackles, shout “bugger it” and let fly with both barrels.  The College is one stinking, putrefying corpse and needs something or somebody to make a Lazarus out of it.

Today I received a comment from an Old Bedian, Paul Taylor from North Manchester.  Paul is not as old and wizened as I but he was at the College, his years there straddled the Duggan and Riley eras.  His experiences of the two cultures are in a way unique.  We have never met but he has been a major commentator on my blog.  Just read his comment of today which appeared on my last posting.  I append it below and commend it for its perspicacity and clarity.

Paul Taylor – An Old Bedians Thoughts.

Well, in the words of Bjork, it’s all gone quiet. No bad thing considering the last two months of mayhem, during which Mr Malpas has asked many reasonable questions, to be greeted in some cases with verbal abuse, but in most cases no rational answers have been forthcoming, and in some cases, some of the answers have been downright lies. The truth seems to have been in very short supply, I’ve observed.

Any institution which conducts itself in the way Bede’s has over the last 60 years, with no sign whatever of learning from previous mistakes, is doomed to failure. The recent act of almost the complete removal of lay members on the Board of Governors can mean only one thing – the drawbridge has been drawn up, the hatches battened down, awaiting the onslaught of the lawyers regarding the case of abuse – to try and defend to the last by admitting either ignorance or nothing.

I’m glad I’m not in the shoes of the College defending this one, as to why there were allegedly not only two serial abusers, but several more whose names will come to light in the court case, but absolutely nothing was done about it. The fact it happened is terrible enough, the undoubted fact there was a concerted campaign to cover up what had happened is to me truly unforgivable. The defence lawyers, by their strategy of instructing the college to adopt a policy of almost continual denial, have painted both the clients and themselves into a legal corner.

Legally, to a limited extent, they’ve already admitted Tommy Duggan’s misdemeanours, they now have to explain their extent of suppressing any other attempts at covering up the abuse. The fact that from 1950 to 1990, with very little if any breaks in ‘service’, they had a paedophile lurking around the hallowed corridors of the Alma Mater. The place became virtually licensed for a pervert to operate, knowing there was little if any chance of being caught. I fear for the College’s already damaged reputation, I sincerely do.

On a more up to date note, matters haven’t been improved by the ‘overthrow’, which is a polite way of putting it, of the Head Mr Barber two years ago. What kind of institution kicks out the head, then without any consultation, installs one of the alleged perpetrators of said putsch? Why was the position of Head, and also Deputy Head, not advertised following Mr Barber’s defenestration? A reasonable question to answer, the best reply was Barber was apparently useless at his job, but unfortunately, a la politician-speak, it’s not the answer to the question. Other than the current Care Quality Commission, I can think of very few organisations that would operate in such a cavalier manner. Burying one’s head in the sand, the current stance of the College, doesn’t seem to be working either.

The future for the College does not bode well, its struggle to achieve decent OFSTED ratings alone means a problem of recruiting fee-paying pupils. A description of the current status quo could fairly be described as dysfunctional. Throw in the abuse case and the City Apprentices, googling t’Internet and seeing St Bede’s Abuse Cases located prominently, when the whole thing is put together, I’m surprised anyone would pay good money to send their child there, when clearly there are other more tempting options available. People clearly have voted with their feet.

Apologies for the length of this posting, whereas no doubt people may completely disagree with some or all of what I’ve said, I deem myself a fairly logical person, by not believing what people say, but what they do. I base my posting on this, I do not claim to be omniscient, but I defend the main argument I have put forward, which is backed by admittedly only partial evidence, no doubt someone with irrefutable proof may correct me where I am wrong. In the coming months, actions, not words, will determine the way forward for the College. I live in hope the right course may be chosen. Personally, given the previous track record, I have severe doubts.

Today I received a comment from a concerned parent, Marsha Jones.  I thought it and my answer were too important to leave in an addendum to a posting I wrote nearly two months ago entitled St. Bede’s: Situation Desperate, The Natives Are Fighting Back, which has garnered 50 odd comments and which subjected myself to a torrent of uneducated abuse from pupils which I considered was probably orchestrated by somebody in the school.  I was not of course distracted by this torrent, if you stand up these days and go against the grain, you have to expect it.  However Marsha Says:-

Paul, we do follow your blog, we have two children at St Bede’s and whilst we are not happy with certain aspects of the College, cards on the table, where are you coming from, why are you so insistent on running the College down?  A number of parents are leaving the College and going elsewhere but is it not the case we should be unified and address the failings and shortcomings of the College and as parents move it forward?

Marsha, you seem like the voice of reason and possibly the voice of strength.  You say you are not happy with certain aspects of the College.  If I knew what they were I could probably address your problem better but it is only by people like you willing to engage in discussion will St Bede’s survive.

I will therefore put my cards on the table.  I went to Bede’s 1957-1963 but was unceremoniously dumped out at the end of my first year in 6th Form by the infamous Duggan.  I did reasonably well in this world and sent four of my children there, the first in 1986, with the last leaving in 2006 when we came to Ireland.  They all had a good education, going on to Oxford, London, Liverpool and Dublin universities but in all that time I was a little unhappy about the emphases Byrne placed on certain aspects of a Bedian education, it was too narrow, too confined, not enough of the personal, not enough of the pastoral care often spouted but rarely given.  But it worked for him, he got the results that the school can only dream about these days by having decent ambitious staff who offered him hard work and longevity of service.  I kept my mouth shut, I did not react to certain rumours but I certainly would do now.  My present educated self is certainly a lot different to the hard working parent with both feet on the treadmill that I was 20 years ago.

In 2009 given the time only people of my age have got, I started writing naively about the sexual, physical and mental abuse we Bedians of the 1950s and 60s suffered under the aegis of Monsignor Thomas Duggan.  I thought my friend Michael, who was later, in his 50s, found dead in a crack house in Gorton, was the only person who had been sexually abused by Duggan at Bede’s.  Before I knew it I had a full blown campaign on my hands with ex-pupils writing in from all corners of the world explaining in a lot of cases their heartrending experiences at the school and it was not only Duggan, there were a good number of clerical staff complained about, too many to be ignored and not just in Duggan’s time but eventually I had complaints stretching from 1950 through to the present century and only one man ever brought to book, William Green, who had spent nearly 20 years at the College with rumours abounding.  He would have got away with it as well if it was not for a chance occurrence in Glasgow which eventually led to conviction because Scottish Police had become involved.

This abuse campaign has been rolling along now for four years and some of it will eventually come to court but certainly not because of the good offices of the Salford Diocese who are wriggling and squirming to every initiative put forward, using all the delaying tactics they and their lawyers can possibly think of but knowing full well that their priests or some of them were as guilty as hell of making men, Old Bedians in this case, live a lifetime of horror.  Even then I was not happy with the way the present school had handled this abuse issue, it had not been confronted but it had a new head in Michael Barber who I thought was a decent man and given time with some years under his belt I judged him the type of man able to address the problem and clear out the stables of this Augean accumulation.

However when I saw the damage the ousting of Michael Barber would do to this process, I reacted but not realising at that time in June 2011 how bad that decision was likely to be.  So I started writing about the new situation Bede’s found itself in, just like in the abuse scenario, people started writing in complaining about the new regime.  The blog is a useful and powerful tool in that regard but it is not my work that is making parents leave the school or not go near it in the first place, it is the erratic thought and deeds of the senior management, Quinlan, Kearney and Pike.  All elected on a wink and a nod and not with due diligence and correct procedure.

This crassness of management has led eventually to the Board of Governors being reduced to a coven of clerics with no idea at all of how to run a multi-million pound business and this has now led to where we are now.  In two years and because of total ineptitude the College is reduced to its present state.

I have been suggesting for weeks that to save the College, the parents and the disaffected staff which is probably 90% of them, need to rise up, bite the bullet and try to save this lamentable situation.  Unfortunately there does not seem to be any parent group to my knowledge strong enough and I think the teachers are incapable of becoming rebels, they are just leaving or at least those of them that can.  Perhaps you , Marsha, might have it in you to take up the cudgel with some friends and fight for what is right.  You are paying the fees.  A concerted effort by parents could certainly make a difference.  Start off by paying your fees into a new account which the school can access if the Diocese remove the present management and with proper process employ creditable people.  Unless somebody acts quickly the school will reach a point of no return, which will mean the end of the school in its present state.

With my involvement in the abuse process at Bede’s, I have studied the situation in America with some thoroughness.  Schools in America were going through this problem 20 years ago.  Faced with a failing Church and thus failing institutions all the American episcopacy did was close down their structures.  They had no emotion about it, Boston is a good example.  The Church is there to make money so that the hierarchy can live in total luxury.  Failing businesses do not achieve this so let them go.

St. Bede’s College although a charitable status company in its own right is totally owned by the Salford Diocese and in particular by the Bishop of Salford.  He and the Trustees of the Diocese have no care for the college’s marvellous academic past, they can only see the slur that it has had and is making on the Diocese’s present good name and coupled with the fact that the school footprint on Alexander Road and its playing fields on Brantingham Road must be the finest piece of real estate in Manchester, makes the decision easy for them.  This lack of emotion from the Diocese and its Trustees tells me that it would be in their interests for them to take the money and run.

So to answer your question Marsha, I am not insistent on running the College down, in a lot of respects I hold the College dear.  what I am insistent on his changing the management before it’s too late.  Quinlan, Kearney and Pike must go and possibly that Judas Andy Dandy whose head was turned by a bag of coins.

The two main thing you have in spades in retirement is dwindling money resources and plenty of time.  Dwindling money resources, what with bankers, government and markets all joining up to rob you of all your hard earned that you had put by for a rainy day and plenty of time in which to enable yourself to catch up with 21st century living but because of the aforesaid dwindling resources you have to decide on the most economic way of spending that plethora of time.  As there is no room to earn, your time is therefore spent volunteering for various causes but also being canny and picking the cheapest form of volunteering.  There is no point in volunteering to sweep floors in pubs, the distraction would be too great.  Before you know it the volunteering would turn into social entertainment with all its costs.

No something quiet, away from everything is required and that is why I am at the start of a trial period.  For three hours a day, three or four days a week I will sit in the Room of Remembrance in King House , here in Boyle and wait and write.  I am waiting for visitors to the House enquiring about the Connaught Rangers who were a famous regiment in the British army.  I am the General Secretary of the Connaught Rangers Association and so have every right to lie in wait.

King House is a Palladian mansion built in the mid 17th century by the King family, the plantation family bequeathed to Boyle by Queen Elizabeth I of England in reward for their services rendered.  They took over the historic lands of the McDermot clan who had ranched the lands round where Boyle finds itself now for the previous 700 years.  As with most things owned by the rich and famous the Kings realised as soon as they built this imposing edifice that they did not wish to live there and so moved up the road a few miles to Loch Ce and built themselves another imposing pile which unfortunately did not stand the test of time and they sold King House to the British army who in turn installed the newly formed Connaught Rangers who used it has one of their military barracks.  That was in about 1790 and the Rangers in the form of their reserve battalion, the Roscommon Militia which eventually morphed into the 4th Reserve Battalion which trained soldiers for the two regular fighting battalions who served overseas wherever the going was rough.  By the time of the First World War four battalions of Connaught Rangers had been raised and were provided with drafts when needed from the 3rd and 4th reserve battalions.  The barracks at King House used to hold about 15 officers and about 250 soldiers in very reasonable accommodation considering the military barracks of the time.

So King House has some claim to fame as well as being a very fine example of 17th century architecture it was also a military barracks of the British army for about 130 years and brought the town of Boyle up from a few mud huts to the town we know today giving employment and business to civilian entrepreneurs attracted to the town.  This all changed in 1921 when Ireland gained its Independence and in May 1922 the Connaught Rangers, along with five other regiments from Southern Ireland were disbanded.  After a brief spell of excitement during the Civil War in 1923 when a shell fired by irregular forces landed on the roof of King House the Irish Army took over the barracks and used it until the end of the Emergency which is what Ireland quaintly calls the Second World War.

For 40 odd years it lay empty, slowly wandering into dereliction and finally ending up as a fuel store before it was posted for demolition in the early 1990s in order to form a car park.  However a bunch of high-minded citizens got together, stopped the demolition process and persuaded Roscommon County Council of the glory that was in the building and how refurbishment with all its costs was far superior to a mundane car park.  RosCoCo took up the challenge, found the wherewithal and reinstated it to its former glory.  That was some 15 years ago and it is now the jewel in the crown of Boyle.  A splendid example of what can be done with dilapidated history.

The Connaught Rangers Association with some help from RosCoCo have set up a small museum of Connaught Rangers memorabilia which is growing in size by the year as the centenary of the commencement of the War comes near.  People are donating medals won by their ancestors, a chalice from a lady in Donegal that was used throughout the war by a Rangers chaplain and a relative of her’s.  Only yesterday Doncaster Museum in Yorkshire donated  a Ranger’s cap badge that was surplus to their requirements.  A lovely reminder of the 350 men from that area who enlisted in the Yorkshire and Lancashire Regiment in 1914 only to be attached to the recently formed 5th Battalion Connaught Rangers who were building up to full strength in readiness for their inclusion in the disastrous Gallipoli campaign in 1915 where they were decimated.

People come from all over the world to visit King House and walk round its galleries.  In the last few months we have had visitors from Australia, America, Canada, India, Germany, England, Scotland, Wales and all over Ireland.  Most come for one purpose, the Connaught Rangers.  With the Irish diaspora over the last 100 years many relatives are journeying to their spiritual home to search out long forgotten relatives who served in the Connaught Rangers mainly during the Boer War and the First World War.  I receive at least 20 e-mails a week from people enquiring and asking for information.

My self appointed task is to meet and greet these people, answer their queries and follow up their requests for more intimate information on these forgotten lives by contacting our archivist, Mr Oliver Fallon, which he keeps on a massive data-base concerning the regiment.  The excitement this service gives people is palpable, the emotion for us and them is real.  I think we do an excellent job and from the comments we get, so do they.  The beauty of what I am doing is two-fold, besides helping these earnest people, I can sit, write and research or wander round the galleries which also contain the Boyle Civic Art Collection, as well as our museum, as I wait for the expectant tourist.  It is unpaid but wonderful, time consuming and a cheap way of filling my retired life.

It is 11 days since my last posting, 11 days of mind searching, trying to think of another subject for posting on my blog.  It becomes demoralising sitting here at my desk at 4.30am trying to summon up a subject and find there is nothing.  I had overdosed on Bede’s and its mismanagement and wanted to give Messrs Quinlan and Kearney a rest for the summer.  My mind has been one lousy blank, just a few e-mails and comments on the blog to respond to, by 5.00am I was climbing the walls looking at a blank screen and not a word or a subject in my head.  I have put it down to the fluoride infused water that the Irish government force us to drink, the mind numbing concoction that only an Irish politician could dream up.  The Irish now all have a lovely set of gnashers but they are all dying of cancer  before they can draw their pension.  It is the only way out of the financial quagmire that poor old Mr Kenny, our senior politico can think of.  Eugenics at its best.

But sod all that, I am not here today to criticise Ireland, it is a lovely place to live, if only we could rid ourselves of the greedy, robbing bankers, politicians, developers and lawyers and 50% of the rest of the population who seem to exist for their own benefit and not for the good of others.

Today is the 7th July, a month of birthdays for those conceived when the year is closing down and there ain’t that much else to particularly do.  My brother Kevin was 66 last Friday, 5th July; my eldest grandchild, Joseph will be nine in 10 days time on the 17th, and my mother would have been 91 if she had lived and not been ploughed into eternity by a driver of a car one murky, dark November evening in 1988, a driver who had had a quiet drink on the way home from work.

But again sod all that, the lady driver will have been living that moment for the last 25 years and I would not wish to extend her torture.  July is a month of sunshine or so I remember as a child, unfortunately although we have been promised barbecue weather all week, as I look out of the window I see a fine misty rain soaking the already well watered green sward at the front of the house.  The temperature this morning is a cool 12C with a promise of 16C this afternoon.  The omnipresent cloud which seems to live in Roscommon is still sitting morbidly over our heads and refusing to move either by wind or orbit.

However never fear, the Ashes Tests are upon us, Wednesday at Nottingham marks the first day of five, five-day encounters with the old enemy.  A sporting festival not to be missed and it is my absolute privilege in 23 days time to be wending my way over to Manchester, courtesy of Ryanair, for the start of the 3rd Test Match on August 1st.  I have not looked forward to a sporting event like this in years and I hope at least that the sun shines at that time.

I have been honoured this year with a magnificent gesture by daughter number 3 and her prospective husband, they are to be tied in matrimony later the same month and they thought it best to get me on their side before the big day.  I am truly grateful for this gift and I just hope the month of July flies by and that I enjoy my day in tropical Manchester.  Of course my day of cricket is only an excuse, the real reason for my visit is to see my new or not so new grandchild, he has just had his first birthday and here is a photo of him yesterday enjoying the weather I will be enjoying in three weeks time.

To try and make you understand what this day’s cricket means to me is really letting you, my dear reader, examine my rather narrow life.  Cricket for me was and is my being and I tried to fit in getting married and fathering six children and working for 43 years into the lunch time interval and the break for tea at 4.15pm.

In my childhood and my youth I played the game, never successfully but always enthusiastically, for my Junior School, St Robert’s in Longsight, for my secondary school, St Bede’s College, for a succession of league clubs, Swinton, East Levenshulme and Longsight in the Lancashire and Cheshire league and for Tewkesbury in Gloucestershire whilst helping to push the M5 Motorway through the outskirts of the town in the late 1960s and for a host of scratch teams assembled for social occasions and summer cricket tours.  From the age of eight until I was 30, I did nothing but play cricket and drink.  My education, friendships and family went by the board until I eventually copped myself on and started to respect other things and other people.

My mother took me to watch an hour of a Roses match at Old Trafford in about 1954 when I was eight.  The club used to let you in for nothing in the last hour, we were just biding time before we walked down to MetroPolitan Vickers in Trafford Park and waited for my Dad and 25,000 of his workmates to finish work.  But on that fleeting visit I watched Johnny Wardle, the Yorkshire all-rounder hitting 6s for fun off the Lancashire bowling attack.  So much so that I modelled my batting on his style which was very much to my later detriment.  Three years later I was at Old Trafford for the Laker Test Match in July 1957 when Jim Laker took 19 wickets in the match.  All I saw was Peter Richardson and Colin Cowdrey piling on the runs for England on that first day and I saw no Laker wickets at all. In 1971 I watched in amazement when Gloucester came to Old Trafford, again in July, for a semi-final of the Gillette Cup and David Hughes came out to bat for Lancashire with the street lights on at about 9.00pm at night needing 25 to win and hit 24 off his first over.  The packed crowd was gobsmacked.  I also remember the bad times as well, when Lock, Laker and the fast bowler Gibson of Surrey bowled Lancashire out for 27 in May 1958 and the times it lashed with rain as we sat undercover in the Ladies Stand being Junior Members of the club and when I went to watch the Australians play Lancashire one day in June 1963 instead of doing games and was discovered when games were cancelled and they did a roll call back at school and my absence was noted and Duggan excommunicated me the following morning and then my cricketing life really started.

I played with some of the best but was never good enough myself and all that quality never made me learn.  I was always getting into scrapes with either authority or fellows rather larger than myself.  I suppose my lack of talent made me needle these chaps and that nobody likes.  I retired from the game whilst I still had a life to lead.  But in my dotage I can still remember the great days and I hope this forthcoming day will give me more happy moments.

I was going to let the onslaught on the piss poor management at St Bede’s College in Manchester have a rest for the summer and let old DK and Florid have some breathing space to think up some more hare-brained schemes to make us despair even further during the forthcoming Christmas Term starting in September but Sean Carr’s comment today in my posting of 25th June 2013 entitled Comment From A Bedian Parent intrigued me.

Sean tells us that there are a recalcitrant bunch of parents who have come together.  Parents who are not at all happy with the way things are going, not at all happy with the quality they are getting for the hard earned fees they have to cough up every term.  These parents it seems are demanding something better than what Kearney and Florid are willing to give them, although all they are asking for is what it says on the packet.

Kearney seems to be ignoring them and calling them a bunch of ingrates.  Surely he, it would appear, is best suited to know what quality and type of education to give to the children of these renegades.  What do they know, after all, they are only parents, as thick as pig shit most of them and I, Mr Daniel Kearney, Headmaster of St Bede’s College in Manchester, am the professional with God and might on my side.  But we will see, because Danny, these parents are the people who pay you, the piper, to play their tune.

Now it seems that these disaffected parents are determined but are meeting complete disdain from the management and I am suggesting and it is only a suggestion, that they widen their scope and use this forum as a means of advertising their cause.  For it is better to let all parents understand the arguments and points of view that you pioneers are putting forward.  There are many disaffected fee payers out there with no apparent ear to listen to their worries and fears and it just might help everyone, if you brave people who at this moment are doing all the running, open up, advertise your cause and let others in to help, because very shortly you few could well become many.

Without meaning to blow any trumpets, it is this medium and as far as I can gather nobody or nothing else has brought the atrocious management of the College to everyone’s eyes and ears.  It is this medium which has been shouting for months for parent power to come to the fore, I doubted whether it was possible, I doubted whether anybody had the spunk to stand up to these destroyers of history and quality but I am bloody glad that a few of you had the bravery and determination to stand up to the plate when it mattered.  So it would be appropriate for you small bunch of pathfinders to come on board and make Kearney et al realise you absolutely mean business.  This blog, I understand, is DK’s favoured matinal devourment even before he starts the crossword in the Opus Dei Chronicle.  He prefers to get most of the bad news over with first.

So please you pioneers of parent action, tell me your aims, publicise your reasons for disaffection.  Get it all out in the open.  Behind closed doors and non-transparency are the tools of the Church, the Diocese and the Governors, they should not be your tools.   You can contact me privately on malpas46@eircom.net or comment publicly on the blog if you wish.

And before I go, I would just like to comment on Sean Carr’s other point in his comment this morning about Mr Berry’s and Mr Loader’s leaving mass last Friday evening in the College and the obvious absence of DK and Florid from same.  Excuses will not do for their non-appearance.  It was a flagrant lack of respect to two men who had given the greater part of their lives to the College and who had carried out their duties and care with aplomb.  No matter how much the florid cleric and the miserable headmaster might have thought of their two underlings, last Friday evening was building bridges time.  They failed in this simple task, just as they have failed in every task put tothem in the last few years.

One reader of this blog has recently commented why on earth would a headmaster be put in charge of a school to run it into the ground, it does not make sense.  Well here is your answer dear reader, DK and Quinlan are slowly edging the College along the road to perdition.  Beware Mr Kearney you are at the gates of hell there is no going back for you I’m afraid.

 I refer the reader back to my posting of May 21^st this year entitled Does Charity Begin At Home where I discussed the merits of the Catholic charity, Caritas, and its total naivety in allowing the recently released clerical paedophile, William Green, to live so close to his old happy hunting ground of St Bede’s College on Alexandra Road in Manchester.

I have now been informed that on his early release from his six year prison sentence in February of this year, his sovereign master Brainless, the Bishop of Salford, gave him over to Caritas Diocese of Salford, a charity used to housing asylum seekers, the homeless and those without benefits who would normally have to live on the streets.  Mr Mark Wiggins, the Caritas CEO, in consultation with Angela Shannon, the Caritas Property Manager decided to house him in a hostel owned by the Hogben Family Trust but utilised by Caritas in Moss Side at 17 Beveridge Street, off Upper Lloyd Street, M14 7NN.

Beveridge Street unfortunately is only yards off Princess Road and about a kilometre across Alexandra Park from St Bede’s College, a park where we as pupils used to congregate every dinner time.  Beveridge Street is less than a kilometre from William Hulme School and within spitting distance of about eight other educational  establishments for young children.  As daft as I am and if I was in charge of Caritas, I would no more think of placing William Green in that neighbourhood as I would think of housing a thief in a bank.   Green although living in sparse conditions was coddled by Caritas staff having his own meals on wheels service bringing him food from Cornerstone, a charitable adjunct of Caritas.  Other residents had to go to Cornerstone and queue up if they needed sustenance.  He was also provided with a new television set to save him watching  the set in the communal area of the hostel.  He lived an unsupervised life, able to come and go as he pleased with only registered visits of a probation officer keeping check on him.

At the hostel Green originally kept himself aloof of the others spending most of his time in his attic apartment but he was introduced to the residents as Mr Green.  Probably indicating that Caritas thought him laicised although the Diocese of Salford think differently.  This whole area of dealing with convicted priests is fraught with controversy.  Lord Nolan in his report of 2002 said that convicted priests with a sentence of over 12 months should be automatically laicised and the Bishops of England and Wales agreed but they have now gone back on that agreement and decided to keep these people within the flock.  That kind of thinking does not work in principle because these men are left to wander freely without any constraints but it does allow them to live a reasonably comfortable life with money provided to them from the collections at Sunday mass

When confronted with the fears of Green’s fellow residents who thought that the hostel was not the best location for a paedophile, the Property Manager, Ms Shannon told them not to be stupid as he would not offend again as his probation conditions forbade this sort of behaviour.  This onus has not stopped many a paedophile in the past and it is hard to think it would put off a determined  William Green.  Ms. Shannon finished up her admonishment of the residents saying that if they did not like the arrangement they could leave but eventually offered two of them hotel accommodation which one of them refused.  This man was told a couple of days later that he had to leave and all the locks in the hostel were changed – he had been evicted.  So much for Christian charity.

My informant now homeless tells me he was determined to make a fuss over this deliberate act of injustice and contacted a top-dog in the field of the care of children who had written at length on the Church’s reaction to convicted priests and their acts of non-laicisation.  This top-dog contacted the Caritas CEO, Mark Wiggins, who wrote back on three separate occasions denying that Green was living in the area or even that he was under the Caritas banner, shortly after this Green was moved on.  Wiggins the crafty sod stated categorically that Green was not living in a Caritas owned property, which indeed he was not as Beveridge Street is owned by the Hogben Family Trust.  Our top-dog also contacted Greater Manchester Police and the Probation Service who told him that he had moved out of one area into another but would not say where, perhaps back to his half way house at Walmsley Road in Bury or possibly to somewhere in Blackley that he said he preferred or perhaps the devious bastards have sent him back to Beveridge Street now that the heat has gone out of the situation.

Dawn Lundergren, the coordinator of the Safeguarding Commission was contacted, she said she would look into the matter but in true Safeguarding Commission style never came back.  When it comes to investigating these matters in the Catholic Church you are met with blank faces and negativity.  There is no openness and transparency about the way the Church deals with its dirty washing.

It is a shame really for Caritas to be involved in this argument because without doubt it is a most Christian-like organisation and the volunteers at the bottom who keep the charity on the road must be of the highest sort.  The trouble is when you start to climb the salaried ladder of its hierarchy you are faced with the same lies and deceit you begin to expect from the clergy.  It is this layer of duplicitousness and untruth that is ruining the present day Church.  I have copies of Mr Wiggins letters to our top-dog and you would wonder why he needs to tell such blatant lies, he must be like the rest of the ecclesiastical morass, a person of low intellect.

So Mr Green is living in some other Caritas hostel, presumably in the Salford Diocese now known only to, GMP and Caritas and presumably the Probation Services.   It is not ideal but I suppose it will have to do until the next whistle blower comes on the scene.    Would it not be better for the Salford Diocese to cut the ropes that tie, laicise him, let him free to sink or swim for that is what happens to us lay folk if we stray from the righteous path.  I am sure Green wants to be free.  That hostel existence must not be good, he must be in his pits, so why not leave him there to stew.

Certainly let nobody have pity on him, charity should not be offered.  If you have to think good thoughts then only think of Green’ victims and the suffering of their pitiful lives which is still going on 20 and 30 years after the abuse they suffered as children and which they will continue to suffer from for the rest of their lives.  And God blast Mr Low Intellect Wiggins and his acolyte Shannon and all the rest of the duplicitous nonsense creatures who call themselves the Salford Diocese.

As we sit through these languid, warm and showery days of August 2013 realising there is work to do, putting a coat of varnish on the windows or clearing out the garage after a winter’s misuse, I wonder whether I am relaxing too much but sod it, I have had a lifetime of timetables, deadlines and doing.  I am 67 years old, if I cannot take my foot off the pedal now, whenever will I be able to.  The future is full of happenings, the present is still.  I will enjoy the maintenant.

My daughter’s wedding is fast approaching, I have my speech, for want of a better word, written.  I am looking forward to a day full of nice people and I just hope I am nice as well.  Stuck out here in God’s own country, you tend to disregard the silky social charms you learnt as a a boy and then working man in England, social skills for which I was famous for.  Out here you tend to think freely and act freely with no responsibilities, no pressures to act in a civilised manner, no reason at all not to call a spade, a shovel.  If you want to piss at the bottom of the garden you can do, if you feel like an extra potato with your dinner you can do, a slice of bread, no problem.  Let us hope I remember to be good on the day, if only for my dear daughter’s sake.

For the last two months I, along with the scattered female side of my children, have been on a fairly strict diet in readiness for the day, relying on wonderful e-mails to keep our heads above water as temptation threatens.  The women are doing it because they want to fit into hastily bought dresses, deliberately purchased a size or two too small and I, to look a tad more presentable and as the proposed bride said this week, less intimidating.  The women are doing nicely, my wife of over 40 years is looking a picture, I for my part have lost 12 kilograms, a shade under two stone and destined to lose another four or five kilos before the big day, but as I look at my naked state in the mirror at 4.30am each morning, I notice no difference, as slim and lithe as ever but next time you go to the super-market just pick up 12 bags of sugar.  I was carrying the equivalent round with me 24/7.  I can now put my socks on with ease and I tie my shoe laces without a thought and do the 1001 things around the house that my wife of over 40 years asks me to do without the historic grumble of the last few years.  Most of these 1001 things do not really need doing but I do them all the same.  It keeps her sweet and I no longer break sweat in carrying them out.

The diet is relatively easy and within a few days you get into the swing of it.  No oil in the cooking, no carbohydrates at all.  I found potatoes easy but good bread and a little rice with a curry difficult but plenty of fruit, greens and a modicum of lean meat.  Wine at the weekend and a necessary large aperitif most nights.  Exercise although helpful is not necessary.  I am now as light as I was 40 years ago but perhaps not as nimble.

However all this good work could easily come unstuck as the wedding approaches, with celebration dinners on most nights prior to the big day, plus a night celebrating an old school master’s longevity which I am really looking forward to.  I must retain my iron will, think lettuce but I have a few doubts.  Que sera.

Anyway outside of my little world things are beginning to move along apace.  England have tightened their grip on fragile Australia in the Ashes series with only two or three of the English team actually sustaining their undoubted talents.  If they could all click together there ain’t a team in the world to touch them.

On a more sombre note, Deacon Morris of St Ambrose’s in Altrincham appears in court tomorrow, to be told or not told that indeed he did abuse boys at that school 20 years ago.  There are lots of witnesses and my money is on a guilty verdict and another black mark against the Christian Brothers who have shown a trail of destruction through the education system of Ireland and America for many a year.  A little like the Benedictines have done in the UK at Downside, Ampleforth, Ealing and now Fort Augustus in Scotland.  When will these abusers and their controllers ever learn.

Our case at St Bede’s College in Manchester seems to be a long time coming to the starting blocks.  I used to be in the loop but the furtive lawyers have gathered their gowns about themselves, stuffed their wigs into their sometime loquacious gobs and will not let any information out.  Perhaps they like this cloak and dagger stuff but it does not help the gang of witnesses who are sitting there in trepidation as they think of their days in court before these same unfurled and coiffed pettifoggers in order to spew out evidence of the vileness thrust upon them by Monsignor Thomas Duggan and his cohort of abusers at the school.  However with this wholesale sexual abuse of man and womankind by a few famous faces being the topic of the week, month and year in the main stream media, there are probably easier and richer fish to fry.  We as the decent underbelly of civilisation have learnt patience, our time will come.  We might be all dead by then but at least patience is one of the virtues we learnt at these misguided abuser’s knees and it ain’t easily forgotten.

So enough of that Catholic Church desecration and allow me to think of my lovely grandchildren, seven in all and not one of them tainted by the Pope and his loose zipped minions.  Let us hope that this contamination never crosses their dreamy minds like it has done in my generation, unspoken, evil and soul-destroying for countless decent people.  Praise and glory to a beautiful future.

Margaret Heffernan is a strong woman, with her fingers in a lot of pies, gifted, with an unbelievable ease in public speaking and a god given gift for getting her message across, a true teacher.  Her latest book Wilful Blindness published in 2011 explains in great detail why 85% of people who witness a wrong doing do not or are not willing or are too scared to react, to put their hand up and announce publicly that a wrong has been committed.  That is wilful blindness, it is a legal concept and has criminal elements if proven.  Here is a link, listen to her talk on the subject in Budapest this year.
http://www.ted.com/talks/margaret_heffernan_the_dangers_of_willful_blindness.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2013-08-24&utm_campaign=newsletter_weekly&utm_medium=email&utm_content=bottom_right_image

We see episodes of wilful blindness all around us with banks lending money on property at sometimes over 100% of its true value and then manipulating interest rates to their own advantage.  For years we have seen the Catholic Church cover up the signs of the sexual abuse of young children by particular clerics and their brother clerics standing by and ignoring the wrong and the damage it was doing to these children.  These priests either too scared or unwilling to turn their fellow priests in.  We saw it with the Iraq war when everybody knew that those two power mad jerks, Bush and Blair, were forcing their will on their own people and the world in general, to wage a war on a weak and troubled country in order to avail of future oil revenues.  We all knew it was wrong but so few of us stood up and said so.  Most people thought that what was the point, we cannot change an order from above, let’s forget about it and hope the problem goes away.  So few politicians stood against this absolutely illegal and unjust war perhaps  Robin Cook, the most senior, and he was found suspiciously dead on a Scottish mountain some months later.  There was also Clare Short who resigned from Blair’s cabinet in protest and who was later squeezed out of Parliament saying she was ashamed of Blair and was not willing to work under his leadership.  So it is understandable that wilful blindness exists and that fear is a big factor in its make-up.

A week ago I was briefed on a disaster of massive proportion.  A disaster that must be the largest man-made ecological catastrophe ever to have hit Ireland and only one man has put up his hand and said this is wrong.  Only one man has had the bravery to try and tell the country and the rest of the world that what was happening was a tragedy and he has been doing this for 13 years whilst politicians, government agencies and civil servants stood by and for whatever reason ignored or were wilfully blind to the calamity that was being played out before them.

The River Shannon is Ireland’s greatest river, arguably its greatest feature.  It more or less splits the country in half and the Shannon corridor 15 years ago was alive with small businesses feeding off the attraction the river had for hundreds of thousands of visitors who each came to fish, sail or holiday on its banks.  For years businesses in the tourist industry had thrived on the success of the river.  It was known as the finest coarse fishing river in Europe, unspoilt by degeneration from industrial necessity.  It was Ireland’s gem.  The towns of Dromod, Rooskey, Tarmonbarry and Lanesboro were thriving little enclaves basking in the reflected glow of the river but have now become ghost towns and Loughs Boderg, Bolin, Forbes and the greatest of them all, Lough Ree, have become chemical cess pits.  Why, what is it you might ask, what has caused this catastrophe?

Well it is because a company owned by an international conglomerate in America, after years of breaking every environmental law in the book was eventually hounded out of its native state of Texas and in particular Mendocino County after dreadfully contaminating the surrounding land and the Russian River which flowed through it by disposing into the atmosphere and onto the land massive deposits of sodium hydroxide, ethylene dichloride, acrolein, methanol and toluene amongst many other poisons which were a large part of the effluent resulting from its process.

 This company hawked its way round Europe in the early 1990s looking for a new location and were refused by every nation until eventually in about 1995 the gullible and probably uninformed Fianna Fail government with the promise of 750 jobs told them to build their new plant on the banks of the beautiful Shannon River on the understanding that they would abide by all environmental laws regarding effluent disposal but like idiots, they allowed this company self-regulation of this critical phase of their process, which meant that the Environmental Protection Agency had no responsibility and only ever made fleeting visits and did not involve themselves in the day to day business of waste disposal.  The American company sucked hundreds of thousands of gallons out of the river on a daily basis, put it through their production process and then fed it through their joke of an effluent plant and straight back into the river again.

The factory started production in 1998 and by the following year the fish in the Shannon were dying in their thousands.  The promised jobs never materialised, at its peak it employed 350, today it is less than 90.  Yet the river was full of dead and dying fish.  Anglers wept at the devastation as dead fish by the tonne swept over the weir at Rooskey on a daily basis and the banks on both sides of the river were lined with a white foam about one metre in height until the factory eventually dispersed it with another highly toxic de-foaming agent.

The anglers from all over the world stopped coming, businesses failed for lack of custom and the government lost millions from these small time entrepreneurs.  A 100 million euro per year input into the local economy disappeared but the Celtic Tiger in Dublin was roaring and nobody paid one bit of interest to an area the Celtic Tiger never visited.  Politicians did not want to know, they were scared of America and its bulging muscles, the Environmental Protection Agency visited the area but hardly ever the complex, preferring lunch in the local hotel and a swift retreat back to Dublin, their suits undoubtedly padded with brown envelopes.  Inland Fisheries Ireland looked the other way and directed people to other waterways, too scared or worried about confrontation.  Waterways Ireland just pass the problem back to IFI and their website more or less tells you to fish in Lough Allen, upriver of this disaster or go below Lough Ree.

The big reason that this is an ecological disaster of immense proportion is because of its insidiousness and the way it affects not only the fish but the whole flora, fauna and insect life of the river and the slow economic strangulation of companies and small family businesses.  From a country abounding with exuberant people, rivers alive with fish, ducks and all avian life, it has become a desert, stippled by a few ghost towns.

The local people themselves have not been unaffected by this dreadful company.  The twin smoke stacks rising high over the Shannon and Gortinty Lake, blow out gasses and other undesirable fibres, the prevailing south westerly winds blow this shit over the nearby town of Mohill and funnily enough I have been informed off the record by good medical opinion that incidents of cancer in this little town in Leitrim has risen unaccountably over the last few years.  The large town of Longford, which draws its water from Loch Forbes has people increasingly suffering from digestive ailments and bowel complaints, everywhere the nasal passages of folk, the eyes and throats are under continual bombardment.

This is not imagination, this is real, this is suffering of both a high emotional and physical degree.  Wilful blindness has to stop.  Politicians, government agencies, civil servants have to stop looking the other way, they have to stand up to the plate, become empowered and listen to the lone voice of this man who has been campaigning to no avail for years.

Well I have just arrived back in Ireland after a hectic week full of celebratory meals and too much alcohol, as we enjoyed the high spot, the wedding of my third daughter, Louise.

The trip commenced with a visit to see my old chum, Howard Skelton at Southport Cricket Club.  Avid readers will remember Howard from the starring role he played in my blog posting of 24th May 2010 entitled A Case of Mistaken Identity.   This posting has just recently done the rounds of the cricketing world and now Howard is a celebrity in the making.  We had only just made contact after over 40 years and he had invited me down to the first days play at Birkdale of the four day game, Lancashire v Hampshire.  It was a lovely day and Howard and myself had a lot of catching up to do.  40 years of stories and photographs from a time I loved so much takes a lot of getting through and it was just after lunch before we wandered down to the ground, only a few minutes walk from his comfortable flat.  Lancashire were 100 and odd for two and the Hampshire quickies and a good slow bowler had Lancashire tied down for most of the afternoon.  Invited into the pavilion, I met some really nice people especially the Chairman of the Club, Tony Elwood and the President Ken Standring of Lancashire fame.  Howard is on the selection committee and so there was lots to talk about with the success of some of the teams and the distress of others.  The ground was in fair nick and over the four days 1500 runs were scored and on the same wicket that weekend, the 2nd XI won in a game of over 500 runs.  An amazing tribute to the groundstaff and the cricketing committee.

I had to tear myself away; I had to get back to Manchester as most of the family were meeting up that evening for the first celebratory meal which was held at the Rose Garden on Burton Road in West Didsbury.  Burton Road has changed so much since my courting days and is now the Mecca for eating out in south Manchester and without fear of contradiction, the Rose Garden is at the top end of this culinary hot-spot.  It is just a shame that the front of house man on the night did not fill you with the same enthusiasm as did the produce of the kitchen.  A young waitress did her damndest to make our visit pleasant but this bearded maitre d’ did nothing to add to our obvious gaiety.

The following night it was back to Burton Road again where the situation was reversed.  We ate at a place called Bistro 165 where an English man and a Dutch girl worked their socks off to ensure a welcome under some serious provocation from one member of our party.  The cooking was clumsy, overdone and uninviting and not at all what you would have expected for the price, although my starter of squid was fairly good.  The place was noisy and could have done with some decoration.  How it has lasted for over 10 years as the blurb says, is incredible but it does go to show the popularity of the area when I saw both restaurants turning away customers on a Wednesday and Thursday night because they were fully booked out.

The meal in Bistro 165 however was to celebrate the 82nd year of the finest teacher to ever have the distinct pleasure of teaching me at St Bede’s College in Manchester.  Tony “Spike” Martin introduced us youth to serious reading and I have never forgotten his shining light beaming out of the darkness of Bedian gloom.  His gentility and humour again shone through the evening and the geniality of our MC, Mr David Smith once of Oldham, Lancashire but for the last 50 years of Wellington, New Zealand kept the occasion on even keel throughout.  The males present were from the 1957 intake, leaving in 1964, unfortunately some had not improved their social skills in all that time, however the positives far exceeded the negatives and I hope Spike enjoyed the night.  He is a joy to speak with.

It was a Dim Sum lunch in the Tai Pan on Upper Brook Street the next day, as we gathered up our thoughts and plans for the next day’s celebrations and we scoffed 13 or 14 courses of these delicious oriental tit-bits.  A few bottles of wine and some tasty nibbles in the evening rounded off an excellent day at my 2nd daughter’s house in Woodford.

Should I?

The wedding day started early, with 12 in the house, washing up was a conveyor  belt activity and one I enjoy because I can moan away and nobody takes any notice.  Then it was off to the Cheshire Smokehouse in Wilmslow for bread for the festivities but not before dropping daughter number four, Paddy Jo, off at the staging post for bride and bridesmaids, the Didsbury House Hotel, where Michelle, the hair dresser and a beautician were flat out making five beautiful women even more alluring than God had originally made them.  The suite was littered with champagne bottles, make-up, brushes,combs,knickers and bras, I did not stay long out of decency’s sake.  Kerry, ex-Longsight but now Melbourne, Emily from London, Jenni from Levenshulme but ex-Bolton and Paddy Jo from Dublin but ex-Chorlton and Heaton Moor were the most gorgeous quartet I had ever slapped my eyes on and I wept at the beauty of the bride, Louise.

OK then…

Louise and Boz, her husband, real name Richard but for some historical reason claimed the derivitive, had picked out a Unitarian Chapel in Wilmslow, a comfortably sparse, mid-18th century prayer house with an excellent and enthusiastic pastor, Jeff Gould from Massachusetts.  The service, lovely in its delivery, was speckled with seriousness, laughter and singing, the guests on a high with expectation of forthcoming events.  I wept once more as I handed Louise over to man mountain, Boz Berry, a rather tall chap from Withington, the son of a retired headmaster and a teacher of music.  We Malpi are going up in the world marrying into such academia: the Berrys however have one massive failing and it brings them all down to our level.  They are all City supporters, poor sods.

Team talk

A few photos and then off to the wedding breakfast which was scheduled for 5.00pm.  We were all famished but champagne and wine and beer served as pre-prandials soon diverted our appetites and it was in merry mood that we all sat down to eat in the Hall at Woodford Community Centre that had been made over into a marquee.  The food which had a middle eastern influence was excellent, the service great, the wine was more than quaffable.  I stumbled through my speech, once more overcome with emotion at the thought of losing my beautiful daughter to a City supporter and we all withdrew to the far reaches of the marquee as they prepared the space for dancing.

The music was from a fantastic band called Ofay from Burnley way playing jazzy, hip hop stuff.  Their music was improved even further by two of my grandchildren jumping on stage without a qualm in the world and dancing for over an hour to the strident rythm of the band.  Joe and Polly could well make their mark in the terpsichorean hall of fame and I for my part was honoured by a lovely girl from Gatley, Debbie Higham, who granted me three dances and said some nice words as she threw me round the floor with gay abandon.  There is not many women who can cope with my clumsiness on the floor but she persevered.

We all staggered home at well gone midnight, the 100 metre walk for me seemed more like two mile but we all made it and settled down in the kitchen for a night cap and a post mortem on a wonderful day.  Louise still enchanting me with her beauty and Boz with his steadfastness, a lovely pair already made complete with the attendance of young Ernest, their one year old child who was the star of the show.

Waking in the horrors of drink the following morning and trying to will life into shattered limbs, eating what one could find the easiest and then going round to the hall to clear up.  This attempt at labour soon invigorated the almost corpse but the day was flat and heavy as the body thought of last nights excesses and today’s langour and an early night was much appreciated by one and all.  Monday dawned and still a physical wreck, old age and excess are never good chums but I will never learn.  However action soon lifted the doldrums and it was off to the in-laws for a last celebration and to wave the married pair off for a few days in Paris.  The “do” was finished, we flew back to Boyle and dreamed again of a lovely occasion.

My thanks go to the Berrys and Louise, Mark and Katy for looking after us and for Mark’s chauffering abilities on the day, with his leather cap and expensive suit, he had been voted best dressed servant.  I want to thank all our grandchildren who for some reason or other show enormous amounts of love for Helen and myself, they were all so good and ably attended by Lindsay, their nanny, who made sure they put their best foot forward on the day.  I want to thank the bridesmaids for looking lovely and travelling many a mile to be there on the day and also Jamie Hallahan for having the temerity of coming out of West Cork to face a gang of cut-throats he had never met before.  Also my thanks go to Dave “Kiwi” Smith for organising Spike’s party and for telling some atrocious antipodean gags and Howard Skelton for whipping through the last 40 years since we last met and feeding me delicious chicken sandwiches.  My biggest thanks have to go to Helen, my wife of all those 40 years, for guiding me through the jungle of life and to every guest at the wedding, who pulled out all the stops to make it such a fantastic day.  My thoughts are with you all and may we meet many more times to celebrate whatever is in store and the memories of one hell of a week.

As regular readers will know, I do not have a television set and I do not watch television in the pub or anywhere else these infernal machines are situated.  Why because it’s full of crap and lies.  You do not mind the crap but I detest paying for it in licence fees and electricity bills and it is a highly soporific tonic for the vast majority of people who cannot think and understand.  What I object to are the lies that the BBC, ITV and Sky spew out on government insistence to make us all feel good or terrified, whichever is the theme of the moment.

So with no television you receive no lies and your head is clear to understand the truth.  The truth is what you get from cherry-picking the alternative media and with no television, you have the time necessary to think and reassemble and eventually, and it may take a long time, but eventually you come up with the kernel that is the truth.

The main truth is that whatever we read or learn from an approved source is normally a lie and if you persevere with that idea first and foremost, you can eventually arrive at the correct meaning or knowledge of a particular event or circumstance.

Take for example the subject of my posting two days ago, 9/11 and the Destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York.  If you rule out the US government take on what happened and start to study the photographs and the alternative expert view on things, you eventually come up with the truth.  I am a thick sod and it has probably taken  me a dozen years to realise, other more perceptive people realised within weeks that this horrible incident was not caused by a bunch of crazy muslims but was indubitably caused by government agencies.  They are the only people who had the know-how and capability to produce such a highly technical show.

So now we start to realise that the people ruling the world are a highly corrupt, sadistic bunch who cannot be trusted and believed with anything they say or do.  So that everything they deny is the truth and everything they say is a lie.

However when you start to realise this you have to go the whole hog, you cannot disbelieve them sometimes, then believe them on other occasions, their integrity, it has to be understood, is non-existent.  Everything fed to the public eye and ears is a sham.

There are some people who believe that 9/11 was a hoax, a terrible tragic hoax and then the next minute they believe the official line on another subject.  Take for another example the case of Hollie Greig, the poor Downes Syndrome girl in Scotland who was repeatedly raped and abused by a gang of high ranking Aberdeen paedophiles over a number of years. The bent, putrefying Grampian Procurator Fiscal Angiolini covered up and said there was no case to answer without even interviewing any of the protagonists, the empty vessel of a Scottish parliament accepted what its vassal had said and so did the English government who were also up to their necks in similar paedophile mire any how.  Most of the people who bothered to make themselves aware of this awful situation accepted the government line including lots and lots of people who were beginning to realise the falsehood of 9/11.

These people who accept some of the lies but not others are the cause of the predicament we are in and that is why the ruling powers get away with what they do.  Once they divide, they conquer, as the vast majority of the people, the non-thinkers, the dumb fuckers are on their side already.

So please all you intellectual minority start to disbelieve everything that emanates from a government source.

Another thing that came out of recent comments on the blog was the supposed superiority of independent schools because they  allow more freedom of thought but unfortunately they take the same syllabus as state schools and are marked by the same examiners who are mostly part of the dumb fucker set anyway.  The pupils at independent schools might be more intelligent in their thoughts and ideas but only because they come from that sector of society where these gifts are more generally abundant.

Which brings me onto another subject close to my heart, why is it that secular independent schools are thriving whilst those aligned to a particular religious ethos are failing.  Let us take the example of St Bede’s College in Manchester, once a must go to establishment but now unable to attract monied parents into sending their children into its protective arms.  Some argue that people cannot now afford the £9,000 per annum fees (secular independents thrive), others look at its falling exam results (clerics and semi-clerics with not an ounce of spark reign).  The real reason of course is that the school is run by the Catholic episcopacy, the parents want their kids educated without the fear of sexual abuse.  All religious educational establishments have had their fair share of sexual abuse but none will stand up, admit to past failings and say that strictures are now in place for this never to happen again.  But they will not, they will not even accept their past has been smeared, they just ignore the obvious like a bad smell, hoping it will drift away in time.  Unfortunately not before inordinate damage has been done.  Parents have drifted, have withdrawn, have refused to take part in this religious charade and opted for the secular version.  Any parents left who send their kids to such a school are unfortunately the poor dumb fuckers I was referring to before but dumb fuckers who are able to afford, which makes them twice as dumb, who cannot see, cannot think, watch television most nights and read all the good newspapers.

Yes and before you ask, I also was a poor dumb fucker once, but I had a Damascene moment when I came head to head with the Salford Diocese and witnessed their intransigency and then moved on to question all forms of authority.  I am now a free man and I have to say one hell of a happy man.