Fishamble presents: Bailed Out!

bailedIf you enjoyed Colin Murphy’s excellent “Guaranteed!” which told the tale of the bank guarantee, then, like me, you’ll be looking forward to “Bailed Out!”, the story of Ireland and the Troika.

Based on official accounts and off the record interviews, Murphy sets out to tell the story of the crisis that nearly crippled the country. If it’s half as good as “Guaranteed!” we’re in for a treat.

Coming to the Pavilion Theatre from September 23rd.

Great TV: The Game

BBC gameBBC’s “The Game” by Toby Whithouse, starring Brian Cox, is a must-see if you like your spy drama closer to “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”, even though it does have its action scenes. Set in Britain in the early 1970s, the six-part series follows MI5 as they desperately attempt to prevent a KGB operation which they believe will have history changing implications for Britain.

The cast is superb, with Paul Ritter in particular standing out as the repressed deputy head of MI5. Tom Hughes plays Joe Lambe, a top MI5 operative embroiled in the case. If anything, Hughes’ male model good looks provide one of the more unbelievable parts of the show. Would MI5 really hire someone so conspicuous?  As a female friend of mine pointed out, every time he appeared on screen she couldn’t resist shouting out “You’re too good looking!” Having said that, his actual performance is just as good as the rest of the cast. No himbo he.

The show looks superb, managing to look both modern and 70s dated at the same time, with MI5’s tacky, modern and brutalist headquarters in particular of note, and the IPCRESSesque soundtrack by Daniel Pemberton is a cracker, especially the main theme.

There’s just enough hint of humour in it to endear you to the characters, and also, although it has that cynicism of all these sort of shows, the team come across as genuine patriots. The Soviet plot is big and gripping, and it is refreshing to see a spy show not bogged down by technology for once.

Seriously hope the BBC commission a second series. These are characters and a setting we’d like to see more of.

Would a real U.N.C.L.E. actually work?

man-from-uncle_poster_nws51Guy Richie’s “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” is based on the 1964-68 TV series about agents working for an international crime fighting organisation. One of the key attributes of the TV series was that the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement, even at the height of the Cold War, had Americans and Russians working together for the common good. The TV series, although not a spoof as lazy latter day TV critics would claim was nevertheless set in a world where the ideology of the US and USSR were not really alluded to. It was, in short, fantasy.

As a concept, certainly to this then teenager watching repeats in the 1980s, it was a fascinating internationalist concept, that there was far more that united us as a race than divided us. Could it have worked?

One would have to say no. There’s a telling line in the series when Robert Vaughn’s Napoleon Solo, the titular Man from U.N.C.L.E., describes THRUSH, a nasty group of international renegades that acts as the anti-U.N.C.L.E. of the series, as an organisation that “believes in the two party system: the masters and the slaves” Solo could easily be describing the Soviet government (and funder of U.N.C.L.E.) of his fellow agent Ilya Kuryakin. But more on THRUSH in a minute.

Indeed, given that U.N.C.L.E. by its own admission (via voiceover in the series) is dedicated to the maintaining of legal order anywhere in the world, that logically meant that behind the Iron Curtain U.N.C.L.E. was battling democrats and opponents of the Communist one party state. Not something one would wish to see on their TV, scenes of Solo and Kuyakin valiantly shooting people trying to hop the Berlin wall to freedom. On the flipside, what were THRUSH doing behind the Iron Curtain? Surely the United States would be quite happy with any disruption they could cause? Would it be that hard to imagine THRUSH selling its services to both sides occasionally?

If one looks at so much of the things U.N.C.L.E. could logically be expected to combat, one comes into problems. In the 1970s and 1980s the KGB funded many terrorist groups in Europe and elsewhere. They’d hardly support U.N.C.L.E. trying to undermine their efforts. Would Henry Kissinger have been pleased if U.N.C.L.E. had intervened to stop the overthrow of the (democratically elected) Communist president of Chile in 1973 as per the mandate about preserving legal order? Chances are, U.N.C.L.E. agents would have spent most of their time sitting around whilst their bosses negotiated over what they could actually investigate. They probably spend most of their time fighting copyright fraud.

We do get a glimmer in the real world of what happens when an international law enforcement organisation does operate,  and it’s not always pretty. Interpol, for example, was headquartered in Vienna in the 1930s, and was seized by the Nazis, at one stage being headed by Gestapo head Reinhard Heydrich. He was head of Interpol at the time of the notorious Wannsee conference that planned the “final solution”. There have been complaints in recent years of Interpol warrants being used by Putin’s Russia to harass political opponents of his regime. Yet there are unusual glimmers of international security cooperation. Germany, France and seven other European countries, for example, have a eurocorpscombined military unit called Eurocorps (See symbol left).

Curiously enough, the central plot of the new movie, which focusses on the US and USSR working together to stop weapons of mass destruction falling into the wrong hands is quite believable, even today. It is easy to imagine the US, Europe, Russia or China all working together to stop nuclear or biological weapons being developed by rogue nations or indeed groups, as they are with Iran. United Nuclear Control, Logistics and Enforcement, anyone?

And that’s the key to something like U.N.C.L.E. It only works if there is a common THRUSH-like enemy that the great powers feel is a threat to global stability.

As fantasy however, it makes for great TV.

Two interesting political blogs.

I’m always encouraged to see more online political debate about Irish politics, especially if it is of the rational debate of ideas as opposed to the hysterical name calling of  TheJournal.ie comment section. Here’s two  links worth a look at:

The first is www.politicalpeopleblog.com, which covers both Irish and international politics, and the second is The Arena, a weekly podcast with John O’Donovan, John McGuirk and Jonny Fallon under the need-no-introduction Slugger O’Toole label.

Have a goo.

An enjoyable book: The Dead Can Wait.

Dead can waitRobert Ryan’s “The Dead Can Wait” is the second of (so far) three novels about Sherlock Holmes’s friend Dr. John Watson in his later years, serving with British forces during the First World War. Watson is asked by a well-known and senior figure in the British government to investigate the mysterious deaths of a number of British soldiers at a top secret establishment testing a new weapon which may change the direction of the war. Assisted by an Irish secret service operative and a former nurse from the front, Watson reveals that maybe he had paid more attention around Holmes than he’d first suspected.

When I read the book, my first question was when are they going to turn it into a TV series, as it has all the prerequisites. Ryan has captured the character of Watson well, making sure to portray the cautious, empathic and decent Watson of the original novels and the Jeremy Brett series rather than the Watson as buffoon which has become the de facto portrayal up until the 1980s.  Mrs Gregson, the nurse turned mechanic turned suffragette is a wonderful foil to the older Watson’s old-school values. The two work together not dissimilar to a WWI version of The Avengers, yet another reason to make a TV show.

Ryan plays tricks with his readers with his writing style to throw a few red herrings about the place, but to his credit they’re honest twists that work by letting the reader make assumptions rather than by deliberating withholding information. It’s an enjoyable story that moves along at a solid pace.

If you’re a Sherlockian, I suspect you’ll enjoy it. And no, I’m not going to answer the obvious question. Read the book! Me, I’ll be reading the other two.

The EU needs to show more imagination with Greece.

Greek flag 2Watching a Channel Four news report during the week, I was surprised to find myself tearing up at the interview of a young Greek woman who, despite her desperate situation, passionately defended being a European citizen and wanting to be part of Europe.

Regardless of how Greece votes tomorrow, Greece isn’t going away. Regardless of its recent political history, and the Troika’s failure with regard to Greece, these are Europeans too. We can’t let Europeans go without food or medicine, indeed, if that’s the EU we’ve created even I think we should abandon it.

Syriza (and the IMF) are quite correct. The Greeks, regardless of how they created the debt, can’t pay it back, and crippling the country in an attempt to avoid admitting that is plainly immoral.

Having said that, Syriza and most of their European Left supporters are in denial about where Greece must go now. Syriza were elected on an either deluded or plain dishonest platform of pretty much restoring the old patronage and tax evasion ways. They protest that, but it is the reality.

But enough of the finger pointing: how do we now help this great people, and they are a great people, get off their knees and take their place as an economically sustainable EU nation?

Is it time to offer a compact: direct temporary control of tax collection, business regulation, labour and market reforms by Brussels, in return for direct welfare payments to Greeks to create a social floor beneath which no one will fall? We help them reform the economy, and in return either set up distribution of food, medicine, etc, or put money straight into their bank accounts.

Yes, I know, it sounds crazy. This is a sovereign democratic nation. But these are not normal times and this is not a normal crisis, and whatever about the political difficulty of selling a bail out in Germany or Finland, there are few Europeans who will begrudge us helping those at the bottom of the Greek pile.

Would such a compact need another referendum? Almost certainly. But at least we could be sure that writing off debt would be going hand in hand with putting in place the requirements to help Greece transform itself.

Greece is a beautiful country with the potential to be Europe’s holiday destination of choice. Its people are decent, compassionate and not afraid of work. But someone has to destroy the political and social structures that allowed generations of politicians to tell people economic fantasy.

This will hurt. Liberalisation causes uncertainty, and people will have to retire later, and yes, pay more tax. But there is a way out, and as part of that I’d rather some Greek grandmother look at a box of medicine with an EU flag on it, and know that Europe was more concerned with getting her medicine to her than trying to stop it.

Does the EU need to give Greeks welfare payments directly?

berlin airliftI posted this blog in February 2012, and I’ve decided to re-post because I think it is more relevant today.

“The fact is, the Greek people seem to be sleepwalking towards the election of a radical government that is going to destroy their country and effectively take them out of the euro. Not all their reasons for voting for the Syriza coalition are illogical either, given the corruption of Greek politics and the real pain that ordinary Greeks are feeling. Even right wingers like me, who support the EU/IMF and recognise the need for harsh fiscal discipline in the country, are beginning to despair at what the Greek people are going through. The fact is, if we are not careful, we will see Greeks dying, or possibly suffer third world levels of poverty as their public infrastructure collapses.

But what is the solution? To keep giving a corrupt, incompetent Greek state money, which it will squander, or use to stave off vital long-term reforms?

Instead, is it time for the EU to consider direct welfare provision, to stave off the worst excesses and protect the most vulnerable? Should the EU offer to voluntarily register individual Greek citizens and pay them a weekly amount directly? Or what about creating EU public works programmes, such as hiring thousands of unemployed college graduates to collect taxes from businesses? Would it be patronising, even colonialist? Quite possibly, but bear in mind that it was the Greek government that created this insatiable public money devouring clientelist monster, not the EU. It would be voluntary, anyway, perhaps dispersed from EU embassies, effectively the biggest direct aid programme in Europe since Marshall Aid or the Berlin Airlift.

How ever we do it, we cannot let Greeks starve. This is Europe, for Christ’s sake, and these are Europeans too. We have to offer the Greek people a realistic alternative to austerity, that is, austerity with a purpose. Maybe putting much needed euro directly into the hands of Greeks in return for complying with the reforms needed to make the Greek economy self sustaining? Will it work? I don’t know. But a chink in the eurozone accompanied by a Greek default would surely be more expensive than giving every struggling Greek  €200 a week?

Of course, when I suggest something like this there’ll be the usual Irish voices demanding that any such funds be spent in Ireland, but the reality is that Greece is in a far worse state than Ireland, and unlike Ireland, is in serious danger of a military coup. One thing is certain, and this applies to Ireland as well as Greece. Whilst you must get taxes and spending into alignment, you just cannot cut your way out of a recession.”