Yay or Nay, it's all deja vu to me

'Investment, Stability, Growth', 'Austerity, Debt, Unemployment', the rhetoric makes it hard to distinguish the 'yes' from the 'no' side of the argument in Thursday's upcoming Fiscal Treaty referendum. I haven't met anyone who can tell me, with any accuracy or understanding, what they're being asked to vote for or whether they understand that though they're voting for one specific thing, their decision will alter a bunch of other things in our lives.
When I decided to put my thoughts on this subject in my blog, I never thought putting my thoughts in words could be so difficult, either. In fact, I was three quarters the way through my first draft when a drop down window suggested I had 'logged out' and would I like to 'log in' again? I said 'yes', since it seemed the logical thing to do as I had no recollection of 'logging out' in the first place and simply wanted to get back to where I was. But, as these things go, opting for a 'yes' meant I lost everything I had already written.
No-one thought to consider the consequences of their actions when the so-called captains of finance and property development were riding the pig's back with our money and future prospects over the past 15 years but the democratically elected political leaders, in whom we entrusted our future well being, were quick to pledge that trust to bail out the profligate bankers when things got rough. There has even been a subtle change in language. Now 'we' are paying back 'our' debt.
I don't own a house or a car, never mind a holiday home in Croatia or Marbella. I don't have investment properties in a ghost estate in Mullingar or any other 'desirable' site in backwater Ireland. I pay my taxes, live frugally and within my meagre means.
Ireland was a sorry sight in the 1980s. The young and talented fled this country in their droves and settled, often illegally, in the suburbs of New York, San Francisco, Boston or Sydney. They came back in the '90s, lured by the promise of 'investment, stability and growth', slowly but with increasing frequency and, for a while there was growth and a surge of belief in a country that could lift itself out of the quagmire of poverty and destitution. Ireland became synonymous with ingenuity and innovation. Then the rot set in. My mother had a great phrase about people who got 'notions' about themselves. She'd say 'shit hit with a stick, flies high' and, as gravity teaches us, all things will fall.
The notion that if we're 'good' and vote 'yes', we'll be given a bag of sweets and can aspire, in some vague and distant future, to sit at the table again, with the 'big people', is anathema to me. I say, 'where's our pride?' and 'we've done it before, we can do it again.' A 'no' vote guarantees as much uncertainty in our future, I believe 'short term', prospects as a 'yes' vote pretends not to. I think a 'no' vote is more honest.

When is Truth, Fiction or Fiction, Truth?

I believe, as a writer of fiction, that whatever I write, regardless of how close an account it is to a real event, it remains, for all intents and purposes, fiction. Now that's a very broad and some might argue, indefensible statement. How can the reader discern the fact from the fiction, for example?
There is a contradiction inherent in all fiction writing. One one hand, the novice writer is encouraged to stick to what they know and are passionate about and then, write about that or, at least, draw their inspiration from that well. On the other hand, a writer must never get too close or emotional to their own writing since their task, and duty, to the reader, is to help them suspend their disbelief and doubt and find their own 'truth' in the fiction they're reading.
Fiction, the noun, according to most dictionaries, is 'literature in the form of prose, especially novels or short stories, that describes imaginary events and people.' Such a definition might exclude the 'fictional' works of half the world's greatest writers, I think. Few can doubt the fictional nature of Kurt Vonnegut Jr's Slaughterhouse Five, surely, since it relates a story of alien abduction and an alien race called The Tralfamadorians.
At the same time, the hero of the story, Billy Pilgrim, is a young American soldier who, like Vonnegut, survives the bombing of Dresden because he was working, as a POW, in an underground meat locker. Pilgrim, however, unlike the author, begins to experience life out of sequence, frequently revisiting scenes. He also meets the Tralfamadorians along the way.
Could James Joyce have conjured Leopold Bloom from his imagination or any of the other central and incidental characters who populate Ulysses or his book of short stories, Dubliners, had he not been an inhabitant and keen observer of the denizens of his own native city? I think not and I'm sure there are characters in many novels who may cause some disquiet in the lives of real people and acquaintances of the authors.

James Lee Burke, one of my all time favourite authors, frequently draws his characters from his personal experience. Burke is a multi-award winning writer of crime mysteries, best known for his novels involving Dave Robicheaux, some time deputy sheriff of New Iberia parish in Louisiana, full time recovering alcoholic and former NOPD homicide detective. He's also done series involving first, Hackberry Holland, recovering alcoholic and former Congressional candidate, Texas Ranger and public defender turned sheriff of a small, dusty town on the rim of the Tex-Mex border and then his brother, Billy Bob Holland, a public defender and environmental champion, transplanted from Texas to Montana. He's also published a number of historical novels set in the American civil war and all written from a Confederate army perspective. His observations are panoramic and insightful, always erudite and frequently painful in their honesty. Just what you'd expect from a man with an alcoholic and academic past who has worked as a teacher, a journalist, an oil worker and among down and outs in Los Angeles' skid row and who grew up in Louisiana and now lives in Montana. Read the Introduction to 'The Convict and Other Stories.' It's called Jailhouses, English Departments and Electric Chairs. It is a revelation for any aspiring writer that nothing is guaranteed or written in stone, except the writer's own unquenchable thirst to write. 'Jolie Blon's Bounce', one of Burke's most highly acclaimed and successful novels in the Dave Robicheaux series, was turned down more than 100 times before it finally found a publisher.  
I spent more than twenty years working as a journalist when the essential imperative, both legal and moral, was to ensure, as far as we could, what we wrote was factual and truthful. An author has a different objective. It may be their intention to inform; they may desire to entertain but, in my estimation, their real task is to alter the reader's point of view. I don't mean 'opinion'; I mean, literally, point of view. If a writer can give the reader the facility to see something from the point of view of a different person, of another age, another race, even another gender; then they've suspended their disbelief and achieved their own goal.
A popular novelist once told me a very personal story about himself that, while not doing anything wrong, made him look, well, gullible and human and not the worldly wise author of crime fiction he was. He was aware of my role as a journalist but he gave me the story. There was drink taken, I must admit, but the story subsequently appeared in a newspaper. The author was appalled and, frankly, outraged. He never denied it nor did he seek legal redress, as one might expect he might.
Instead, a character appeared in one of his subsequent novels, bearing my name, complete with two 'ts'. That character was a dog, a friendly, if rather dozy golden retriever, if memory serves and its owner bore the name of the third person who witnessed my conversation with the author and his revelations.
What you write becomes fiction when you set it in print, if that is your intent and design. It is the reader who must decide if it's worth reading.

A writer will find inspiration anywhere. They have to look and see, that's all. Then they have to write.

Shades of Nurembourg

Did you read the full text of Cardinal Sean Brady's defence of his position regarding his role in the investigation of Brendan Smyth's appalling record of child sex abuse? 'Only a note taker,' 'no authority over (Fr) Smyth. It all smacks of the pathetic excuses proferred by Nazi party functionaries at the Nurembourg war crime trials. 'I was only following orders,' was a popular refrain back then.
Cardinal Brady had direct knowledge of Smyth's criminal activities and abuse of children. He spoke to his victims and was given the names and addresses of many more. Smyth went on to continue his abuse, north and south of the border and even, for a while, in the United States.
Yet, despite having this knowledge, Brady hides behind lame excuses such as Canon Law, 'those were different times,' 'I was only a note taker,' and he had no power over Brendan Smyth.
Well, excuse me, Cardinal, but as I read it, you had first hand knowledge of a criminal activity and failed to bring it to the attention of the proper authorities. That makes you complicit in the same crime, as far as I can see.
And then there's the victim who did come forward and was put through the most appalling interrogation by the 'note taker' and his accomplices. How dare they put a frightened 14 year old through such an ordeal?
Those were different times, it's true. My father once told me about the first time he encountered the parish priest of a country town where he had just begun to work. The priest backed him up against a wall with his walking stick and demanded to know who he was? If a priest tried that today, he'd have the stick broken across his own back.
There was too much deference shown to the clergy in those days which allowed people like Smyth to abuse their position and the vulnerable under their care. The church's actions in the past usually involved keeping the offending cleric offside and out of the public eye. More often than not, they simply shunted them off to another parish where they'd continue their abusive practices until they were moved on, yet again.
The Nazis kept meticulous records when they filled their death trains with the Jews of Europe and then those 'note takers' had the audacity to claim they hadn't committed any crime but were simply 'following orders.'
If you were aware of a heinous crime like the abuse of children and did nothing to stop it or have the perpetrators and their criminal activities exposed to the civil authorities, the very least you should do is have the moral fibre to admit your mistake and resign your post as this nation's Catholic primate. You lead no-one. Your office is a puff of smoke.