23 October 2025

The negative campaign run by FG and its chorus of smear-leaders in the media (the Sindo especially) does not suggest much confidence in HH’s positive attributes. See below for reasons why.

Picasso at the National Gallery of Ireland

The Picasso: From the Studio exhibition just opened at the National Gallery of Ireland (NGI) is surely one of the most significant exhibitions to grace that institution. It’s the first time the NGI has devoted a show to Picasso, and the first time in over 50 years that Irish art lovers have a chance to view his work on home soil. The exhibition is a survey across his career, embracing work made in various studios around France, including Paris, Juan les Pins, Boisgeloup, and Vallauris. In addition to the cubist paintings that most people associate him with, there are gorgeous ceramic works, bronzes with attitude (see Head of a Woman above) and etchings. There is also the added bonuses of a film, the only TV interview he ever did and many photographs of the man at work and leisure. Have fun comparing the old satyr’s loving portrait of Marie-Therese Walter with that of a scowling Dora Maar. Truly a fascinating show and worth a few visits.

Heather Humphrey’s Deviations from Perfection

Given the relentless negative campaigning by FFG and its cheer-leaders (the Indo and the Sindo being especially hysterical), I thought it fair to make a small contribution to redressing the balance. So let’s have a look at Heather’s misdemeanours.

1. Her involvement in an egregious animal cruelty case where she passed a letter from a third party (a prominent fox hunter) to the Department of Agriculture interceding on behalf of the serial offender. The farm where the stricken and emaciated cattle were detected is adjacent to Humphrey’s farm in Monaghan. The case was dropped.

2. She has declared herself quite happy to participate in Orange parades, but when Minister responsible for the Gaeltacht, she didn’t bother her arse learning Irish. Even the new British Ambassador has made the effort. She also declined to meet various prominent language organisations including Conradh na Gaeilge.

3. Her contribution as Minister for Culture included putting on the board of IMMA an FG buddy who wouldn’t know his Arp from his Escher – all the better to promote him for the Seanad.

4. Her inactivity and poor attendance at planning meetings for the Year of Centenaries is noted in Oireachtas records. They suggest that she rarely attended or spoke at meetings and sometimes did not even send apologies for her absence. This and her lack of interest in preserving an historic site on Moore Street doesn’t suggest much concern for the history of the Republic.

5. Her insensitive proposals involving means-tests and tiered payments for people with disabilities was only dropped when a political backlash occurred.

6. She was a prominent member of an FFG government that consistently favours business interests over the plain people of Ireland (see recent budget) and whose continuing (10 years on) failure to provide housing has presided over a lost generation. Young adults who had to choose between being infantilised by living at home or heading for Australia and the UK.

7. Her implicit suggestion that the Aras is a rest home. When she retired she stated: “As I get older, my health and energy levels are not what they were.”

Let’s give her a rest back on her farm.

Musical Interlude

No Leonard Cohen yet in this slot - disgraceful. His concert (in the rain) at IMMA in 2008 was one of the best I’ve ever seen. I could pick many better songs, but I love the rueful biography of this number.

Chelsea Hotel #2 by Leonard Cohen

Sporting Highlight of the Week

I sat down last Saturday to watch the Munster/Leinster match at Croke Park with a sense of impending doom. The Munster team was barely recognisable there were so many new names and the absence of Craig Casey (with Murray gone too) seemed particularly ominous. Leinster on the other hand seemed fully locked and loaded and would hardly miss Keenan and Doris such was the quality of their replacements. So what happened? Three major things: Munster seemed way more motivated and played throughout with a savage intensity; Leinster’s returning star players seemed seriously under-cooked in terms of match fitness and made countless mistakes (Gibson-Park’s intercepted pass just one egregious example); Jack Crowley played the game of his life in both attack and defence and made Prendergast look like an inept boy. The latter’s body language suggests to me that he’s currently going though a crisis of confidence. He’ll be back. The moment of the match came when Crowley’s perfectly timed kick into space was flicked away from the Leinster defender (O’Brien?) by the flying Tom Farrell who then gathered it and cantered in under the posts. Leinster huffed and puffed and its pack dominated the set pieces (a worrying issue for Munster going forward), but could not break through until Osborne’s consolation try at the end. A motivating factor for Munster, not to be ignored, was the imbalance of its presence in the Irish squad for New Zealand - four to Leinster’s 21. Although that may change with some recent injuries. I see Farrell has been belatedly added to the squad.

A Morsel of Memoir

The race course at the Curragh was another favourite haunt. My mother had the gumption to take me to the Irish Derby there in 1953 – the infamous occasion when Vincent O’Brien’s Chamier got the race after the disqualification of the English challenger Premonition, trained by the formidable Sir Cecil Charles Boyd-Rochfort. Chamier was ridden by Bill Rickaby – a name I would become familiar with in the years that followed along with Scobie Breasley, Doug Smith, Joe Sime and all my other racing heroes. The disqualification, which Boyd-Rochford deemed a home-town decision, resulted in him boycotting Irish racing for many years afterwards. All that of course went over my head at the time. What I remember was winning eight shillings on the event - my mother put a shilling each-way on for me. I must have been a sanctimonious little prick back then as I spent the money on plaster statues of The Sacred Heart and the Blessed Virgin. These statues adorned my mantelpieces over the years, initially as tokens of my piety, and latterly as ironic reminders of the little saint I had once been. They had over time become, like myself, chipped and grubby. My mother was an avid racing fan and liked to gamble – albeit in a restrained way. These are traits I inherited or perhaps, more likely, the seed was sown on that day in 1953. I have been betting on horses ever since - and derive much pleasure from the game.

Poetry Corner

On the subject of poets maudit (see last week), how about our own James Clarence Mangan. His woes included depression, alcohol and opium addiction. He was infamous from his eccentric dress, favouring cloaks, witch’s hats and apparently large green spectacles. Best know perhaps for My Dark Rosaleen, I prefer his more expressive side, exemplified by Siberia.

Siberia

IN Siberia’s wastes
The ice-wind’s breath
Woundeth like the toothed steel;
Lost Siberia doth reveal
Only blight and death.

Blight and death alone.
No Summer shines.
Night is interblent with Day.
In Siberia’s wastes alway
The blood blackens, the heart pines.

In Siberia’s wastes
No tears are shed,
For they freeze within the brain.
Nought is felt but dullest pain,
Pain acute, yet dead;

Pain as in a dream,
When years go by
Funeral-paced, yet fugitive,
When man lives, and doth not live.
Doth not live — nor die.

In Siberia’s wastes
Are sands and rocks
Nothing blooms of green or soft,
But the snow-peaks rise aloft
And the gaunt ice-blocks.

And the exile there
Is one with those;
They are part, and lie is part,
For the sands are in his heart,
And the killing snows.

Therefore, in those wastes
None curse the Czar.
Each man’s tongue is cloven by
The North Blast, that heweth nigh
With sharp scymitar.

And such doom each sees,
Till, hunger-gnawn,
And cold-slain, he at length sinks there,
Yet scarce more a corpse than ere
His last breath was drawn.