Floating Voter

I was talking to my Senegalese friend Fred about the recent Presidential elections in his country and which he was decrying as fixed (outgoing president Abdoulaye Wade being re-elected). I have to take him on his word for want of any real knowledge about Senegalese politics, but I was impressed by the fact that he was able to vote from Paris, as, presumably tens of thousands of other Senegalese living abroad can too (or at least those that have their foreign residencies regularised). Which is more than I can do from here; once again if I want to vote in May's General Election - assuming it doesn't arrive before then - it will be with the help of Ryanair that I do so, and given that I'm already taking a week off work that month for my brother's wedding in Andalusia, that may not be too feasible.

People have been arguing for votes for emigrants for a long time and successive governments, nervous at the prospect of facing a section of the electorate that might have a negative view of the political status quo, have resisted all such calls. Pundits such as the late Jonathan Philibin Bowman used to argue that allowing emigrants the vote would result in large electoral gains for Sinn Féin, which was a specious point of view as most people that emigrated from Ireland in the 1980s were no more inclined to support the Provos than those that were fortunate enough to stay at home. And even if the Shinners did enjoy a certain surge in popularity, get with it; if they were not banned from contesting the elections, people should not have been excluded from voting simply because they might have voted for them. It's called democracy, and pace Dev's infamous line, the People do have the right to do wrong.

Of course, the question of how long one should retain one's right to vote after leaving one's country is a valid one and I myself see a vote in France as possibly more pertinent given that I am unlikely to live in Ireland under the next government, whatever hue it might be. But I cannot do that without taking up French citizenship, which even if I were that bothered about doing (at the moment I don't see the point) I cannot for another three years at least. As we are now living in a Europe where we have the right to work wherever we want, and are taxed accordingly, shouldn't there be a trans-European accord to allow EU citizens living in another member state for, say, a minimum of two years, to vote in more than simply municipal and European elections? The French Communist Party, in its election manifesto, pledges to allow all immigrants, even illegal ones, to vote, though few people are banking on Marie-Georges Buffet inhabiting the Palais de l'Elysée come May. It seems absurd that in an era where Ireland is closer than ever before to the outside world, and Europe in particular, that Irish people living abroad should be stuck in an electoral no-man's land. Serves us right for leaving in the first place, I suppose.

There, But For the Grace of Rob, Sligo

Sligo Rovers have suffered the pain of being jilted at the altar, just before the beginning of the Eircom League season, by English cad and bounder Rob McDonald, a man whose serial obscurity and one-time failure at Newcastle United did not prevent him from gracing the same field as the likes of Johann Cruyff, Arnold Muhren, Ruud Gullit and Marco van Basten when he played for PSV Eindhoven in the 1980s. Nor did it prevent him from being offered the managers' job at the Showgrounds upon Sean Connors' departure late last year. Rob has already managed to encourage many of the club's better local part-timers to leave due to his new full-time policy, implemented at a time when many Irish clubs are in serious danger of going to the wall. Rob even managed to provoke mild-mannered RTÉ Northern correspondent and Bit o'Red fan Tommie Gorman to pen an impassioned article in the Sligo Champion before Christmas calling on him to resign before he destroyed the club. Well, now he has. Poor Rovers must feel like a gullible ageing spinster bride left in the lurch. Heartbroken, I tell you.

Rocker e i suo Fratellis

A brief note on music; I am currently enjoying the Fratelli's Costello Music, which is culpably catchy, proof yet again of the Scots' greater aptitude for rock than us Irish. The glam stormers, 'Henrietta' and 'Chelsea Dagger' are stand-out tracks but there are very few weak ones on the album as a whole. And the lyrics aren't bad either. Meanwhile, the best that Ireland can throw us is Humanzi - even the name is awful.

Damon Albarn's new supergroup The Good, the Bad and the Queen are perplexing after his detours into hip-hop with Gorillaz. There is something wilfully obscure about this slow burner of an album that features heavy artillery on all instruments: Tony Allen on drums (asking the king of Afro-Beat drumming to play on a rock album is a bit like putting Ronaldinho in a holding role, but he doesn't get too bored here), Paul Simenon on bass, Simon Tong of the Verve on guitar, as well as couldn't-be-more-in-demand producer Dangermouse at the mixing desk. All the songs sound similar, if not quite the same, and there are few of them that can be called catchy but even as the thing plods along, the languid cut and mix slowly beguiles. He can't sit still that Albarn lad.

And there's a lot of Country too, listening to the likes of John Prine, Gram Parsons, Blanche and Merle Haggard while walking the streets of Paris is possibly the most incongruous musical experience imaginable. As the great John Hartford once sang: 'So its goodbye to the sunshine, goodbye to the dew/Goodbye to the flowers, and goodbye to you/I'm off to the subway. I must not be late/I'm going to work in tall buildings.'

Copywriting the Peace Process

While flicking through the London Times the other day I came across an ad, placed by the British Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, calling for tenders, not for the design of a new stadium on the site of the former Maze/Long Kesh prison, but for the right to have it named after one's company, one's brand, or if you're feeling particularly extravagant, oneself. The planning of the new stadium is to be overseen by Mott McDonald HOK, whose previous portfolio includes Croke Park, the Emirates Stadium and the impending Lansdowne Road rehaul.

While I am not so cynical that I cannot hail a peace, however fragile, finally settling on the troubled northern corner of our island, there is a wearisome recourse to vacuous jargon and rhetoric in the text of the ad:

'The vision of the future of Northern Ireland is for a peaceful, inclusive, prosperous, stable and fair society firmly founded on the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance and mutual trust.

'The proposed development of the Maze/Long Kesh former prison site is planned to provide a physical expression of the ongoing transformation from conflict to peace and to provide an inclusive and shared resource for the whole community.'

That's a lot of positive language in two short paragraphs, but, given its recent history, Northern Ireland can be forgiven for engaging in 'wouldn't it be great if it could be like this all the time' wistfulness, even when the wilful politeness of this New Labour-honed prose does seem to protest too much. What I find ultimately depressing however is the final clunker dropped at the end of the ad, which calls for the wonderful opportunity to brand this symbol of peace and prosperity:

'We are seeking a sponsor who supports the ethos of the Shared Future for Northern Ireland [note all those block capitals] and who appreciates the mutual commercial benefits to be gained by being associated with the international branding of this iconic proposal.'

When George Best shuffled off this mortal coil eighteen months ago, many pointed out that he was probably the only Irishman for centuries to have been viewed with the same favour of all his compatriots both north and south. If one were to be permitted to be sentimental, might one not suggest that he might be a better choice to bear the name of the stadium, rather than have it be yet another Allianz Arena, a Budweiser Bowl or Vodafone Park? Admittedly there is not much money to be made from Bestie, now that the after-dinner speech circuit is closed to him, but it is hard to share the Strategic Investment Board's enthusiasm for a project that is always going to symbolise more the reach of a multinational conglomerate than any putative spirit of peace and reconciliation.

On a Swiss Roll

A cracker of a news story here that I first discovered this morning in France's only Sunday newspaper, the snappily-titled Le Journal du dimanche, and which has since been confirmed by the New York Times. Swiss military personnel, whilst on manoeuvres earlier this week, got lost and accidentally invaded their tiny eastern neighbour Lichtenstein, an infraction made doubly embarrassing by the fact that the army of this most neutral of countries is barred by law from operating outside of Swiss territory. The Lichtensteiners, who possess no army of their own, are not unduly worried by the mistake, though a similar thing did happen in 1989, when adverse weather conditions caused shells launched by the Swiss as part of a training routine to land down on a section of forest in Lichtenstein. So much for the famed Swiss precision.

The Return of Lars von Trier

There are many contemporary filmmakers that I admire but there are few that are as consistently brilliant as the Dane Lars Von Trier. He started off in the 1980s with a string of interesting though ultimately dull films such as The Element of Crime and Europa, and it was only with his mid-nineties TV series The Kingdom that he came into remarkable form, which has continued ever since, with Breaking the Waves, The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark, and Dogville. Only the second part of the Dogville trilogy, Manderlay has proven to be a disappointment. Von Trier is disliked by many, and has been ever since his earliest days as a film student; the aristocratic partitive 'von' dates from a nickname given to him because of his pompousness back in the early 80s. His modus operandi is provocation though on a highly complex, conceptual scale. He is vilified for misogyny, especially in Breaking the Waves, though that film is more an examination of how good people bend over backwards to accommodate the wishes of those around them, at great risk to themselves. Saintliness is the matter of the film and it is not pleasant to watch. Once von Trier realised that he could get such a reaction from his portrayal of women, he has since regularly tortured saintly female leads, most famously Björk in Dancer in the Dark and Nicole Kidman in Dogville. And the Dogville trilogy has of course riled many Americans as it is a work ostensibly examining American society, even though von Trier has never set foot in the country. This is the greatest dummy that he has sold though few people realise it. As with most of his films, von Trier, in Dogville diagnosed the willingness of people to close their minds according to political convenience. In this way he is similar to the Brecht of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui (another American-set work written by somebody who had never at the time visited the country). The greatest villain in Dogville is the Clintonian liberal, Thomas Edison (played by Paul Bettany) who compromises himself again and again without ever renouncing his actual convictions. The narrative of Dogville is a masterpiece of withering rhetorical irony. Though it might be argued that von Trier's endemic misanthropy sometimes swings too close to nihilism, there is usually ballast enough to allow his Swiftian outrage to ring true.

The method of von Trier was best exemplified in his film of a couple of years back The Five Obstructions, where he tormented one of his heroes, the Danish filmmaker and writer Jorgen Leth, by instructing him to remake his short film The Perfect Human, a number of times with a different constraint each time. The film shows von Trier up to being an impish prick, intent on breaking any rule of decency in order to get his desired result. A humanist he certainly is not but there is something breathtaking in both the depth of his method and the roughness of his finished work; his films are masterpieces but usually roughly-hewn ones.

Latest up from von Trier is The Boss of it All, a Danish-language, Copenhagen-set film about the trendy owner of an IT company who has always hidden his real ownership of the company from his employees, and who hires an unemployed actor to do the dirty work and lay off those same workers when the time comes to sell the company. Not surprisingly the unfortunate actor, played by Jens Albinus, who was one of the principles in The Idiots, is subjected to the worst abuse by the disgruntled workers. But there are a number of twists effected by the devilish von Trier, which once again displays his interest in the tendency of people to submit themselves unthinkingly to a prevailing truth. Ever the master of the red herring (this is after all, the man who concocted the Dogme hype just to facilitate his own part in it, namely The Idiots, which remains the only indisputably great film to be made under the Dogme strictures) von Trier apologises throughout for the modesty of his enterprise, as if it were one of those 'entertainments' that Graham Greene used to alternate his more serious works with. But we know better than that; everything that takes place onscreen is of the utmost serious, even when it provokes laughter, and much of it is very funny.

I also saw Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal, an adaptation of Zoe Heller's novel, which I had a bad feeling about, expecting it to be the standard TV film offered up by a British filmmaker. But I was pleasantly surprised by this difficult, distasteful film, if that is not all a bit too contradictory to absorb. Cate Blanchett, who Seanachie has been slagging off a bit of late, mainly because of her performance in The Good German is excellent as the teacher who has a fling with one of her teenage students and Judi Dench's performance as the lonely, deluded older teacher, is astounding, disturbing and sad in equal amounts. A lot of people will recognise bits of themselves in her, which is a von Trieresque achievement in itself.

Brit National Anthem Disrespected by Some - Shock!

The Ireland-England rugby game took place last Saturday but the Irish media, obviously embittered at its inability to foresee a civilised reception of the Bruddish national anthem, has since decided to do a post-mortem on those unsporting types that dared to slag the Brits off the minute their national dirge floated across the airwaves. Apparently some wag in 'rugby great' Peter Clohessy's Limerick boozer had the idea to play the Wolfe Tones' 'God Save Ireland' while the lads in white were beating out their submission to their monarch live on screen. Those present at the time seemed to be sufficiently amused (and Seanachie would see it as a typically provincial, but funny joke). But, since a bit of bad publicity for 'the Claw' is unwelcome, Clohessy has vowed to discipline those staff members with a sense of humour. A similar thing happened in Seanachie's homestead of Ballymote, Co. Sligo, whose local website deplores one pub that dared to turn the volume down as 'Gawd Loves a Queen' was played. I can guess what pub it was but I am not really disturbed that the reaction was a muting of the dirge in question; to be honest, I would have expected a bit of lusty jeering.

These acts of insubordination are, no doubt, boorish in the extreme but the Irish have long been that way to each other without having had the opportunity to be so on such a mediatised scale towards the British. I fail to see the big story here as it is obvious that the fabled event of 'God Gave the Queen' being played at Croker did not spark off a renewed wave of anglophobia. But there was no real surprise there. Barring a few unfortunate exceptions, English people are generously welcomed in Ireland these days, and the perception of the Irish in England has seen a corresponding improvement. That does not, however, mean that we should be forbidden from engaging in a bit of banter whenever it need be; I have yet to start cheering for England in football and my English friends accept this with resigned laughter, but that does not translate into racism or an insult to our neighbours. The Irish should not be forced into apologising for their past any more than the English should be, and in any case, the foreigners at the brunt of most hostility and disgraceful abuse in Ireland these days are certainly not English. I will leave you all with Langerland's very funny 'What did the Brits ever do for us?'. Or does that make me a racist too? (I wish to point out that neither Seanachie nor Underachievement plc. endorses criticism of the British crown, the Windsor (né Hanover) family nor any or its dependencies by reproduction of this cartoon).

'So, the Stasis, Are They the Good Guys or the Bad Guys?'

The Lives of Others, the excellent German Stasi thriller, which has just won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film is reportedly going to suffer the Hollywood remake treatment, effected by middle-brow maestros Anthony Minghella and Sidney Pollack for Miramax. It probably hasn't crossed anybody's mind that a German-themed film might be better conducted in German, as that it what they still, to this day, speak in Germany. Yes, it looks promising already, Cate Blanchett, William H. Macy and Jude Law with their guttural Teutonic accents. 'Don't you vurry, mein Excellency he vill tock, haff no doubt about that.' At this rate The Simpsons, like Tom Lehrer before them, might give up satire because of unfair competition from real life.

Conserving the Truth

Fed up with the 'Liberal bias' of Wikipedia, a bunch of God-fearing American Christians have teamed up to offer us Conservapedia, (yes, it does sound like an invention of Ned Flanders', doesn't it?). Confusingly using the same interface as Wickedpedia, the new website lists among examples of bias in Wikipedia 'not giving Christianity enough credit for the Renaissance' (obviously Wikipedia are giving the Muslims or the Commies all the plaudits for this one) and also the use of British spelling. Booh hoo. I'm sure an online encyclopaedia run by right-wing creationists and Bible-bashers is going to a model of objectivity.

Fear And Loathing in Kampala

I bought my brother Giles Foden's novel The Last King of Scotland for Christmas a good few years back and I resolved to read it almost as soon as he had unwrapped it; I never did, though I did find it lying around the house back home this Christmas but forgot to bring it back to Paris with me. But anyway the film is here now, so, like there's no need to bother reading the buke, is there? I have since read a lot of Foden's print journalism (and he has a brief cameo as a British hack needling Idi Amin in a press conference) in The Guardian; after 9/11 he was regularly solicited to write about Islamic fundamentalism, as his third novel Zanzibar deals with the Dar-es-Salaam and Nairobi bombings of 1998.

I feared for the film, expecting it to be yet another Western film with a mission to present its troubled conscience to the world. Africa has featured in Western/Hollywood cinema a lot of late (and, let's be honest, The Last King of Scotland belongs to the Hollywood system every bit as much as Lord of War or Blood Diamond do) and the result is not always terribly satisfactory to my mind. While the wars and genocides of the continent should get as much exposure as possible in the developed world (whose audiences, are sadly unlikely to prove to be any more willing to do anything about them, once they have exited the other side of the cathartic experience that films such as these offer) they do also reinforce images of African society as one big cesspool of murder, poverty and disease. True, these images do not come from nowhere but neither do they tell the whole picture, where Europeans (I won't even mention Americans) are only too willing to lump Senegal in with Sierra Leone, Cameroon in with Somalia, Botswana in with Rwanda and so on. And then there are those apartheid nostalgists, such as the many that swamped this comment forum in yesterday's Guardian, who are convinced that the entire continent is riven by tribal hatred that necessitated the stamp of European authority to impose some order on the wogs in the first place.

The fact that Foden's novel, and Kevin MacDonald's adaptation of it, is narrated through a young Scottish doctor Nicholas Garrigan, makes it all the more suspect, even if a Western-made film about Africa is going to find it difficult to avoid using a white face as an anchor. Garrigan is also a fictional character though Foden based him on the ex-British soldier, Bob Astles, who was widely perceived to be Amin's closest advisors. Garrigan escapes his dull Scottish life as a medical graduate to volunteer in Uganda, a country he chooses by chance. After a chance meeting with the recently installed General Amin, he becomes the new president's personal physician. There is a long tradition of physicians of powerful leaders and tyrants being ambivalent figures, from Alexander the Great to Enver Hoxha, whose former doctor Sali Berisha lead the pro-democracy campaign in Albania after his death and who is today serving his second term as Prime Minister. But young Garrigan is clearly in over his head and after some foolish gossipping to Amin causes the disappearance of the Minister for Health he wakes up to the reality of the regime. None of this is terribly convincing, particularly the scene where Garrigan flippantly expresses his 'concerns' to the leader, and one is reminded of Ken Loach's Carla's Song where Robert Caryle's Glasgow bus driver is planted by the director into the midst of the Contra terror in Nicaragua, only to demonstrate how little he knows about it all.

But what is lost in dramatic virisimilitude (and there's a good bit more lost, which I won't divulge, as it will give a lot away) is made up for in the commitment to presenting the era and Ugandan society without the usual clichés and prejudices. There is a bit of an over-emphasis on the Afro-Beat glamour of Amin's boozy parties, but, by most accounts, it was actually like that before the slaughter began. MacDonald, like Foden has a sympathy for those around Amin, and perhaps even a perverse regard for the monster himself, who, in Forest Whittaker's barnstorming performance, is part-avuncular bumbler, part-charming sadist. There is little psychological insight into what turned him into such a paranoid ball of terror but that is probably beyond the scope of most fiction involving public figures. What is most impressive and frightening is the sense of menace that pervades the film, which reminds one of Alan Bullock's answer to a question about the two tyrants he portrayed in Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives; when asked which of them he would have preferred to spend the weekend with he said "Hitler, because at least with him you might be sure that you would come back on Sunday night".

A consequent flaw is that the film lacks political background, though the complicity of the British in the coup that brought Amin to power is acknowledged. There will still be many that leave the film with their view of Africans-as-victims reinforced, despite the best efforts of MacDonald. And it is unfortunate that the closing title that mentions Amin's fall from power in 1979 fails to add that it was neighbouring Tanzania that overthrew him, a rare instance of a war in Africa having been fought to honourable ends. The film looks great with the bleached grain of the visual texture rendered brilliantly by Dogme technician Anthony Dod Mantle, giving it an eerily period air, and for all the horror on show, is gripping throughout. A film about a man who slaughtered 300,000 people makes for dubious entertainment but The Last King of Scotland still compares well with most other films made about Africa by non-Africans. It would be great if the interest that these films have fostered in the continent would in turn result in a rise in interest in indigenous African cinema, which often shows a side other than famine, war and disease. But, somehow I doubt it.

Montceau Far So Good

Another heartwarming story, albeit one on a more modest scale; French part-timers Montceau, languishing in the CFA (B) division (think French fourth division) tonight defeated second-in-the-league Lens 1-0 to advance to the quarter-finals of the French Cup, following their defeat of Bordeaux in the last round. It has been a bad week for Lens - who last week heard Manchester United call for their Stade Félix-Bollaert (which holds more people than the population of Lens itself) to be closed to European football, and now this. To add to the fun, holders Paris Saint-Germain bowed out 2-1 to Sochaux. I shouldn't laugh but I'll permit myself a little snigger.

¡Viva la Presidenta!

Michèle Bachelet, the first female president of Chile, put her training as a paediatrician to good use on a visit to a Santiago primary school, when an eight-year-old fell faint as a result of a dizzy spell. Señora Bachelet administered first aid and then remarked that it was probably just the late summer heat that affected the wee fella. It might seem a bit crass to point out the contrast between Bachelet and one of her predecessors, who had a penchant for dark glasses and throwing his political opponents out of helicopters (and who had a hand in the murder of her own father) but that Chile has a head of state these days whom you feel you could trust your children with is surely heartening.

Airbust

Big news here in France is the decision by Airbus to cut 10,000 jobs across Europe, 4,500 of them in la Hexagone. It may also have an effect, albeit a slim enough one, on Seanachie's employment. Many of my students these days are people involved in aviation, from unemployed airline pilots to air-traffic controllers to numerous people from Corsair who are hell-bent on using their training entitlements to learn English (or 'Globish', as I prefer to call the dialect they learn) and get a job elsewhere. Then there is the young aeronautical engineering student, who is also an aspiring pilot, who is currently taking classes in order to pass a job interview (held, surprisingly in English) to get a year-long internship with the company. Whether he will be still up for an interview after today is questionable. I'll find out tomorrow. But then again it's hardly as if cutting interns is going to be a huge cost saving measure.

Bugs, Belgians and Germans

Short of time so a quick resumé of a number of films I saw in the past week. There was William Friedkin's Bug, a film I went to see only because of a number of glowing reviews it received in the French media (Friedkin is one of those faded Brat Packers who the French still revere). Based on a play by Tracy Letts (and boy do its stage origins show) it is a diverting if not exactly memorable paranoia thriller about an AWOL marine who is convinced that he has had a colony of ravenous bugs implanted in his body by the CIA on behalf of a wider global conspiracy. Sounds like great fun already and joining Michael Shannon, who plays the paranoid marine, are nineties next-big-thing Ashley Judd and former Sinatra seatwarmer Harry Connick Jr., who is very good indeed, if largely superfluous. And there is also Irish actor Brian F. O'Byrne as a, well, shifty CIA doctor. It has one of the nastiest tooth extraction scenes in cinema history and should do a far trade on the DVD rental market.

There was also Steven Soderberg's The Good German, an anaemic and uninvolving espionage drama set in post-WWII Berlin. Soderberg makes films with such regularity that there are some that slip through the net; personally I think he is at his best with his less serious efforts, such as Schizopolis, Out of Sight and Ocean's 11. This is one to file alongside dull pedantic efforts such as The Limey and Solaris. I posted on Carol Reed and Graham Greene's The Third Man recently and it is striking how much fresher it is than this clunking beast that is let down as badly by Soderberg's own hamfisted monochrome photography as it is by the earnestness of the performances (Cate Blanchett Lili von Stupp-like Jewish whore is particularly culpable).

Better than these two is the Belgian film Nue Propriété, directed by Joachim Lafosse and which stars as Isabelle Huppert as a forty-something divorced mother of two spoiled brothers, played by real-life brothers Yannick and Jérémie Regnier - the latter of whom was in both the Dardenne brothers' La Promesse and L'Enfant. The film is a quiet, well-observed drama detailing the falling-out of the family as Huppert attempts to sell the family home, which the boys, and their estranged father, see as theirs, in an effort to open up a restaurant with her new beau. Nothing of note happens until the final twenty minutes but Lafosse has an impressive eye for detail and when the drama does arrive it is abrupt and unexpected. Huppert is excellent as the beleagured mother and even better is Patrick Descamps as her ex-husband, a great actor who has been a regular in the films of Lucas Belvaux. A worthy addition to the canon of bleak Belgian cinema.

Oscarcised

It's a long time since I watched the Oscars, surely one the most unwatchable three hours of television this side of North Korea, and it's as long since I took them seriously as a barometer of cinematic quality. It was inevitable that Martin Scorsese, a filmmaker who has been in decline for some time and who persists in ploughing the same farrow, would eventually get compensated for his previous losses at the hands of far inferior hacks for Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and GoodFellas. I reviewed The Departed, winner of four Oscars last night, a few months back and I wasn't too complimentary though it is a marked improvement on last year's Best Picture winner, the unspeakably bad Crash. While the film settles down to become a passable crime film its overweening pretentiousness in the opening hour and the ridiculously over-the-top performances prevent it from being a worthy addition to Scorsese's better work. It is a fittingly mediocre Oscar winner. I have seen only two of the other films that were nominated for Best Picture: Babel, which I was pleasantly surprised with though I can see how others thought it was unnecessarily high-minded and overly-serious, and Little Miss Sunshine, a film that I was forgiving enough of as a piece of silly fluff, until people like the Academy, and the French Césars, who awarded it Best Foreign Film on Saturday night, started to treat it like a quality comedy. Woody Allen or Wes Anderson it certainly isn't. Other than that I missed The Queen when it came out in the autumn and I have yet to see Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo-Jima. Some of the other films that were rewarded, such as Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and Kevin MacDonald's The Last King of Scotland, I have also yet to see. I can however congratulate the Academy on rewarding a worthy film in the Best Foreign Film category: Stasi thriller The Lives of Others, one of a number of enthralling German films to have been released in the past year.

A Defence of Footballers

I hadn't intended pouring cold water on Ireland's historic win against England yesterday but a quote from an Ireland rugby fan in today's L'Équipe resurrected a few of my pet peeves. He said that God Save the Queen was never going to be booed because 'Irish rugby has always set itself apart from politics. If it were a football match, it would have been a completely different matter.' I said as much on my posting earlier on today. However I didn't intend to say that rugby was morally superior in this matter, as that person obviously did. Once again I am sick to the back teeth of rugby being compared favourably to football.

I have no animus for the Irish rugby team; their performance yesterday looked superb (I only saw the last twenty minutes) and rugby is a sport, like cricket, that I can say I admire without being really that bothered about it. But this valorisation of rugby players at the expense of 'overpaid' footballers is something that I cannot stand. Every time I hear this lauding of the moral virtues of rugby players vis à vis footballers, usually enunciated every time there is a tabloid-friendly spit-roasting scandal, it makes me sick. Such pundits make it sound like the choice between football and rugby was something that was made for games in 1st year at Belvo or Wesley. Or between Geography and German for Junior Cert. Never is there any reference to the social background of the various principles involved. The reason that God Save the Queen was thankfully not booed yesterday was not because rugby folk are more decent than footballing people but simply because their sport is for the most part divorced from many social realities. Rugby is followed in places like Donnybrook, the Malone Road and other well-heeled areas of Irish towns (yes, I know about Limerick, but this exception has been wheeled out far too many times for it to be relevant anymore); there aren't many hardcore Republicans in those parts. And so be it, I'm not hoping for a surge in support for Republican Sinn Féin in Dublin South East any more than I am for one for the PDs.

But this is the case for rugby with regard to football the world over. The rugby World Cup later this year will feature twenty countries, when one would be hard pushed to find half that amount where most people know they even have a rugby team representing them. Rugby is a minority sport (and even in Ireland this is very much the case) whereas football is not. By that information alone one might glean that professional footballers are drawn from a wider pool than professional rugby players, and therefore might be spared the condescending stereotypes that they are subjected to.

Rugby players generally benefit from a better education and more privileged upbringing than the majority of footballers do, and I don't begrudge them that, and neither am I salivating for the downfall of Brian O'Driscoll or Paul O'Connell in a tabloid sting. But I would like a bit of balance when comparing the two sports. When one hears rugby being lauded at the expense of football one hears the ugly resonance of class prejudice. Rugby and football are not rival sports; there is scarcely an overlap in personnel between the two. It is Gaelic football and 'soccer' that scramble for the talent, the two most popular sports in the country (yes, sorry, hurling is an exotic curiosity confined to the southern part of the island); and that, rather than anti-English bigotry, was the real reason for the GAA's infamous bans.

There are not many Irish sportswriters who have pointed out that the Irish rugby team is an irrelevancy for most Irish people, though Paul Howard, creator of the hilarious Ross O'Carroll-Kelly is one, as is my fellow Sligo man Eamonn Sweeney, who has this great piece in the Sindo today about Craig Bellamy. Not saying that I agree with him about Bellamy but he sums up what I've been saying; don't damn all footballers on the strength of a few muppets.

Robbery on the High Seas

I remember at the time of the Irish Ferries strike a couple of years, a few right-wing lapdogs in the Irish media tried to tar the protesting Unions as xenophobic because they were opposed to foreigners taking jobs from Irish people. SIPTU and other unions at the time pointed out that they were opposed, not to foreign labour being used, but to wages being cut to under the minimum wage by registering companies and vessels abroad. Now, according to a report in yesterday's Examiner, shipping employees are being paid as little as €1.31 per hour. We've come a long way in Ireland, haven't we? Well, it's not technically slavery.

Anthemic

No postings in the past few days, even the Croke Park/God Save the Queen 'controversy' didn't tempt me into the ring. I found the story a bit fatuous, especially as the Irish rugby fraternity has rarely been home to hardcore Republicans. It was to be expected that Republican Sinn Féin would muster a gaggle of protesters but I don't really see what the problem was there. This issue was decided long ago when the GAA voted to allow football and rugby into Croker; they debated it then and the outcome was that having the British monarchy's anthem played at a rugby match was not going to unduly bother them, especially with the prospect of two and a half million euros to soften the blow. The incident would have been a lot more fraught had the match been a soccer international - rugby fans are such polite sorts that it would be hard to imagine them booing anybody's national anthem - but I still think that God Save the Queen would have been respected by the Irish soccer crowd, though this respect would have been leavened by an appropriate amount of slagging too.

Anyway both Amhran na bhFiann and God Save the Queen are god-awful dirges when examined from a musical point of view and the previous should be replaced (not because of its violent lyrics - listen to the Marseillaise or dozens of other anthems for that matter) but because it is a drearily unmotivating piece of music. And, no Ireland's Call is not a suitable replacement (only the rugby shower could concoct a palliative as dull and unimaginative as this one), nor is The Fields of Athenry, a piece of plastic Paddywhackery that best symbolises the Irish people's loss of any remaining connection with genuine Irish culture. But given what passes for 'Civic' songwriting in Ireland these days any possible replacement would no doubt be something like John Waters and Tommy Moran's composition which will represent Ireland at this year's Eurovision. This piece of pan-European piffle demonstrates how truly toothless the Castlerea autodidact really is. When Slovenia gained its independence in 1991 it chose for its national anthem a verse of 'Zdravljica', a celebrated poem by national poet, the 19th century Romantic, France Prešeren, which begins with the most generous line: 'God's blessing on all nations'. The verse had already been set to music by Stanko Premerl, there presumably being no Slovene equivalent of Phil Coulter. It is a national anthem to envy, one that bears comparison with the best, such as the Marseillais, Brazil's and the Russian/former Soviet one. Ireland's choice would no doubt be selected by a Louis Walsh-chaired phone-in contest. It really doesn't bear thinking about. Better the devil you know.

Sensitive Galacticos

News from Spain: UEFA are investigating the 'up-yours' gesture of Marc van Bommel after scoring against Real Madrid for Bayern Munich last night. I saw this on TVE's evening news tonight and it was also carried by El País. Van Bommel is a charmless bugger at the best of times and his gesture might rightfully be punished by UEFA. However the bleating of Real and the Spanish media - who are as indignant that the Dutchman is a former Barcelona player as they are at the gesture itself - is a bit rich, coming from a club, and a country, that often explains away monkey chants by its fans as 'all part of the game, mate.'

Did Someone Say Scrotum?

Every so often things happen in the US that have good, sensible Americans crouching in strained embarrassment, such as the recent objections, led by 'conservative' crackpot librarian Dana Nilsson, of Durango, Colorado, to the use of the word 'scrotum' in the Newbery Medal-winning children's book The Higher Power of Lucky, by the much more level-headed librarian Susan Patron. Ms Nilsson believes that words such as scrotum have no place in 'quality literature'; I wonder what she would have made of Joyce's use of 'bilvalve' as imagery for the female pudendum (later stolen by Saul Bellow). I first learned the word 'scrotum' from one Billy Connolly, when I was about ten, though I admit I was not really part of the target audience. Last chicken in Sainsbury's was how Connolly introduced it to us, and for a couple of years we probably pronounced it only with a rolled Scots 'r'. I can understand how 10-year-olds should be protected from certain words, but is scrotum really so nefarious? And Dana Nilsson might be a bit shocked to discover that many kids that age already know what penises and vaginas are, without having had abusive experiences.

Champions' League

Celtic's 0-0 draw against Milan last night was a creditable enough result in a game that was entertaining for a scoreless draw, but the gulf in class was clear, and though the visitors did not really create that many openings, it looks like things will be difficult in two weeks time in the San Siro. Controversy in Lens where Lille were beaten by a cheeky Ryan Giggs goal. When I first saw the goal I thought, like the hosts, that the goal was an invalid one, the referee not having whistled. But according to the Guardian's match report, it is sufficient for the free-taker merely to say they are ready to take it. Either way, Lille can feel hard done by, though I don't think UEFA will be too sympathetic to their appeal. Interestingly there is far more coverage of the near-disaster involving Man U supporters in the British press than in France, a brief mention in L'Équipe being all I could find. No surprises on the overreaction from the CRS - the French riot police - to the crush, though they aren't really used to taking their displeasure out on white folk.

Shels of Their Former Selves

Have a look at this: National League Champions Shelbourne have been relegated to Division One of the league for failing to pay the wages of seventeen of its players since the end of last season. Seanachie is no fan of Shels but the news brings no pleasure as it is yet another sorry tale of the financial and administrative disarray Irish domestic football is in at the moment, following the demise of Dublin City last summer, the failure of Dundalk to be admitted to the Premier League and the withdrawal of a license from Limerick FC. While the European results of the likes of Derry, Drogheda and Cork City have been impressive, off the field, too many teams are struggling. I am a bit worried about Sligo Rovers' intention to field a full-time professional team following the troubles that the most country's most successful team has had.

Good Money after Bad

The episode I recounted last week of a visit from a rival Internet Service Provider has become even more alarming since as Noos, the ISP in question, has been given six weeks by the government regulatory body to deal with a backlog of about sixty thousand customer complaints. I think I'll be staying put for the time being.

As if that weren't enough French institutional hell for one week, I then discover that my bank, for some reason did not clear my direct debit rent last month, despite there being ample funds therein for it to do so. Which resulted in me spending a lot of money that was not mine to spend. And now I'm overdrawn. Admittedly I should have checked my balance a bit more attentively along the way, a mistake I will not be making in future.

Substitute

Last year I mentioned Vikash Dhorasoo's film project on his time spent at the World Cup with the French squad and also his subsequent dismissal by the dastardly Paris Saint-Germain. The film has now arrived and though it is not quite up to the majesty of Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parrano's film about his French teammate Zinedine Zidane, it is a likeable enough stab at a first film by the footballer.

Working with singer/songwriter and journalist Fred Poulet (yes, his name does mean 'Fred Chicken'), Dhorasoo documents mainly his own daily life during the tournament at the team's base in a chateau near Hanover. Despite playing in all the qualifying games, Dhorasoo found himself a fringe player at the tournament itself due to the arrival of wonder kid Franck Ribéry, whom, it is believed was imposed on the team, just as Fabien Barthez, was, by an insistent Zidane. Dhorasoo played only a total of eighteen minutes in the first two games against Switzerland and South Korea, when the performances of the French side were alarmingly bad. As Dhorasoo's World Cup got gradually spoiled - he admits on film to not really having that much interest in the team if he's not playing - the filmed project became one about alienation and the dejection of an adventure gone awry.

Poulet and Dhorasoo shoot on Super-8 and communicate mainly by phone, with the only sound recording emanating from Poulet's side, which records the games from the stands and the streets of Germany. The Super-8 lends a pleasing retro air, simultaneously mystifying and banalising a sport that enjoys such a huge, yet highly selective media coverage. There is however much of the clichéd confessional and mirror shots familiar from countless video diaries, though one can forgive Dhorasoo a bit of conceptual awkwardness given that he was not there primarily to film after all. The film's biggest disappointment is that it focusses a little too much on Dhorasoo himself. The man is an interesting character and he comes across as a highly amiable and witty sort, though I would have liked to have seen a little more of the rest of the team, for example to spy on the tensions between Zidane and Thierry Henry. That would have been a real fly-on-the-wall documentary though it is hard to imagine that any of the players would have consented to that, even had Dhorasoo the time to film them 24/7.

So we are left with one shot of Lilian Thuram signing autographs at Munich airport, being told to smile by a much more relaxed Dhorasoo. The final ten minutes of the film have the best moments, such as a brief glimpse of the defeated French dressing room and an even briefer cheeky glance into the Italian one. And then when Dhorasoo arrives back to his Parisian flat after the trip, he has to make three trips up two flights of stairs to haul his luggage up, before sitting down to deal with a month's worth of mail. It's a great scene that comes closest in the film to breaking down the mediatised barrier between public and professional footballer. Dhorasoo may yet branch further into film and this smart and curious autodidact would be a welcome addition to French cinema.

Spit On Me, Sarko

While sitting at the bar in the Bottle Shop last night I noticed, ordering a pitcher of beer at the far end of the bar, a young fellow that bore an uncanny resemblance to Nicolas Sarkozy (and was dressed in much the same standard French preppy way, though he was about two inches taller than the current Minister for the Interior (pictured)). It was an early enough hour of the evening and my judgement was not as yet impaired, and two friends of mine confirmed that he did indeed look just like Sarko. I can't imagine the young man enjoys going out much in the resolutely left-leaning 11th arrondissement if this similarity is so striking. But then again, just as with Thatcher back in the eighties and Fianna Fail in more recent years, Sarkozy is incredibly popular even though you never meet anyone that actually admits to supporting him. They're all around us...

One, Look for a Safe Place...

A New York state lawmaker is attempting to make it illegal to cross the street while listening to an iPod, or similar device, pointing to the deaths of a number of people who were run over while humming along to Mos Def or the Dixie Chicks. Has it crossed the Senator, one Karl Kruger, that those people's downfall might rather have been not looking where they going, or a wholesale ignorance of the Safe-Cross Code, or whatever its Yank equivalent is? Strangely, Kruger's proposed law would apply only to cities of one million people or more, as if pedestrians don't get involved in accidents in small cities.

Meanwhile, the Onion has this funny take on Apple's follow-up to the iPhone.

Limerick, You're No Lady

The Cork, sorry 'Irish', Examiner, proves itself to have got the hang of the news story of national importance with this beauty from its RSS feeds. The standfirst itself is a classic of its kind, and was not, I presume committed to copy with anything resembling a straight face: 'A Valentine's Day heartbreak warning went out in Limerick last night - but it had nothing to do with romance'.

It seems that some cad from Stab City is going around purloining valuables from dancing ladies; is nothing sacred? Can Shannonside slappers not dance around their handbags in peace without fear of losing their very soul? I thought the city had changed since Angela's Ashes...

A Noos Around My Neck

Last night I got a knock on the door, and answered to find a salesman from Noos, the rival ISP to my own, who told me that seeing as Free (my current provider) is due to be taken over (at the cost of €5 billion) by Noos, I am being offered an advance promotion opportunity to avail of Noos' new 3G broadband package. He assured me that I was best to do it, as Free, due to its over-reliance on a near saturated France Telecom network, will have ceased offering its current service by the end of the year. The new package is considerably less attractive than the one I currently enjoy, offering no unlimited calls to landlines in 25 countries (only in France, chez Noos), and the asking price is going to be €40 per month instead of the present €30. They are softening the blow by offering the first three months at €20 with a clutch of movie channels thrown in for free on trial. But I can't help that I am being ripped off without having any real choice in the matter. I did a bit of online research and the imminent takeover appears to be genuine, though it has caught French bloggers by surprise too, especially as Free, which has been the big French business success story of the last few years, would rather be expected to effect any takeover among Internet Service Providers. To add insult to injury, signing up with Noos is going to cost €75 up front for installation. I still have time to shop around elsewhere but if this is the promotion that Noos are offering, what will the bog standard packages be like?

Off to the Jacks

Music of the moment is provided by Just Jack, whose single 'Writer's Block' caught my attention late last year, and who have just released their second album 'Overtones'. The group is effectively a one-man operation, being 24-year-old Jack Allsop, a Camden boy who grew up listening to a lot of soul, funk and hip-hop. There is a lot of that in the mix and among recent British music there is a similarity too to Hot Chip's electro-groove though JJ has a greater predilection for live instruments. More notably, his lyrics are sharp and hilarious, sort of Woody Allen crossed with Ian Dury, and he more than makes up for the blotting of Mike Skinner's copybook with last year's nigh-unlistenable 'The Hardest Way to Make an Easy Living'. A savvy observer of contemporary life, with more of an analytic bent than Skinner, he chronicles the ills of consumer-driven emptiness and the wan disappointments of boomtime Britain. He has little time for metrosexuals: 'I'm not a young man anymore/But I've got the face of a nineteen-year-old' and 'It's a face he knows well, although it should look less abused/With all these moisturisers and skin products he's used' and he has a pessimistic outlook on his own prospects for growing old and keeping his life together, without worrying about cash and his status.

Allsop has already even done his own track about the ills of fame, through the sprightly dancefloor pop of 'Starz in their Eyes' and the brilliant current single (which is likely to be one of the most memorable tracks of the year) 'I Talk too Much' speaks for all garullous, self-assured men with unsatistactory relationships: 'Sometimes I don't say the right things to make you/Love me even more than you do'. And despite Allsop's manifest discontent, he does at least know the virtue of a good bassline and a jangly funk guitar lick. Much of the rest of the album is less likely to fill the dancefloor, being more of a laidback nu-soul variant with sometimes ungainly rapping from Allsop, who says that he raps mainly because 'he can fit more words in that way'. But there are few weak tracks on the album, and it is refreshing to see a subversive wit at work in British music, that largely-barren terrain peopled by dull beardless youths with third-class arts degrees. Best album of the year so far, and that includes the mighty 'The Good, the Bad and the Queen', of which more later.

You're Entering a World of Pain, Smokey

Has there ever been a worse goal conceded in international football? Count the Ireland players getting nowhere near either the ball or a stumbling San Marino forward.

Plugs

Seanachie has written before of his love for Last.fm, a great way of discovering new music. He does like the traditional wireless too, even if he usually listens to it online. A radio station that he has long loved is the French Radio Nova, which is the one that most serves his catholic tastes (that was a small 'c', I'll point out). One of the great thing about its online service is that it lists all the songs played in the past forty-five minutes, as well as links to buy them, should you wish. And Radio France's FIP is pretty good too.

If They Can Do It In Portugal...

The people of Portugal voted yesterday to legalize abortion, by a margin of almost 20%, despite a low turnout in the referendum. This now leaves among those EU countries that still outlaw abortion, Malta, Poland...and Ireland. I wonder is there going to be a public representative with the balls to table a motion calling on the government to offer the nation another referendum, which will this time unequivocally offer the choice of legalizing it, without any of the cop-outs that have previously been thrown up, pleasing nobody but successive governments terrified of losing the support of one Christian fundamentalist TD?

One of the people interviewed before the Portugal poll predicted a victory for the 'Yes' vote because, in their opinion, Portugal is a 'soft' Catholic country. I would say the same thing about Ireland; even in the days of a nation turning blind eyes to the Magdalen laundries, sexual abuse in Catholic institutions and rolling the red carpet out for the Pope, Irish Catholicism was always driven less by conviction than by docility and cowardice. A ban on abortion was always an easy sell for the minority of Catholic fundamentalists, armed with their plastic, made-in-Taiwan foetuses and abhorrent Holocaust parallels. The majority of people in Ireland, in the main people who had no need for abortions, nor any suspicions that people in their own families possibly did, were quite willing to support a ban on it, and would even go to a polling station to do so.

That has changed however and the defeated referendum of five years ago, which attempted to tighten the screw even more on the already nigh-impossible conditions for termination of pregnancy, lost simply because the only people that were sufficiently mobilised were the pro-choice camp. There was a low turnout, just as there was in Portugal yesterday, because the majority of people do not see it as something to bother moving their arses to vote on anymore. This does not necessarily mean that, were a referendum on legalisation to be held tomorrow, the 'yes' vote would win, but there would be a far greater opportunity than in the past. I don't expect any pro-choice candidates in this year's election to touch the subject with a barge-pole on the hustings but, should any of them get into government, hopefully they will show some backbone and endeavour to consign this hypocritical and inhumane law to history. And, making the morning-after pill available over the counter would be a nice way of introducing the 21st century to Ireland too, lads and lassies.

Mea Culpa, Saviola

A slight modification to my post on the France-Argentina game the other night; though I still feel the match was as bad as I originally thought, having watched Javier Saviola's goal again, I have to salute the passing mastery that brought it about, particularly Saviola's own backheeled one-two with Zanetti that opened up the space. When it happened we were still standing up, disputing our seats. Here it is in its full glory. Enjoy. A shame the Argies spent the rest of the game booting the ball up the field.

Vienna Cafés

Vienna still retains many of the old cafés that it was famous for in the Imperial era. The most famous one of these is Café Central, on Herrengasse, which has been a meeting place for intellectuals and politicians since the early 19th century, being located a stone's throw from the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. It is an impressively plush café divided into two rooms, one of which has a large glass cupola above it that floods the room with natural light. The place is surprisingly comfortable and welcoming for a café of such vaunted reputation and, unlike Parisian cafés of similar renown, is not absurdly expensive. Leon Trotsky, during his pre-revolutionary exile, used to spend a lot of time on the café's red banquettes, chatting about art and literature (but, never, I imagine about politics) under the assumed name Bronstein. According to Claudio Magris, whose section on Vienna in Danube is a superb tour guide to the city, when a Habsburg cabinet minister was informed of the imminent revolution in Russia, he answered: 'And who is going to carry out this revolution? I suppose you're going to tell me that Bronstein, who sits all day in Café Central, is plotting it?'

Café Hawelka, on Dorotheegasse, right up the street from the Dorotheeum, a famous old upmarket pawn shop, is renowned for its intellectual millieu of the 1950s and 1960s. It appeared briefly in the video for Kraftwerk's 'Trans-Europe Express' but according to Martin, a Viennese photographer, whom my friend Ashley put me in touch with, it is overrun with tourists these days. I found this strange as I seemed to be the only non-German speaker there on the two occasions I popped in for a beer, but then I realised that they were German tourists. Apparently the place's cachet across the border is still presitigious. In any case I found it charming, down-at-heel yet fastidious - people in Dublin might think Mulligans crossed with Bewley's - with the waiters all dressed in red evening jackets and it had that most civilised feature of Central European cafés: the newspaper rack with about a dozen papers, in all the major Western European languages. Though Vienna is not the city it was, it still has a hearteningly cosmopolitan outlook.

Last and best of all is the beautiful smokey little Kleine Café, which Ashley, who lived here last year, tipped me off about. Located on Franziskanerplatz, opposite the Franciscan Church, the place is a grubby little comfortable den, with cheap beer and wine, a great place for a drink on a cold night.

The Third Man and Vienna

The Third Man is a cruel tale, not least because the Romantic anti-hero at its centre, Harry Lime, is a far more interesting and more colourful character than his good but undistinguished friend Holly Martins. In a way it is much the same as Graham Greene's other famous tale of beguiling criminality of that era, Brighton Rock, where the hapless reporter Kolly Kibber bears little comparison to the sadistic baby-faced Pinkie Smith. The Third Man is increasingly cruel for Lime's opening narration, delivered from beyond the grave, without a hint of regret and remorse, which sets his poor friend Martins up for an adventure of heartbreaking deception.

Walking around Vienna looking for the various locations of the film, one is struck at how close most of them are to one another; other than the trip out to the Zentralfriedhof (or Central Cemetery) for the two funerals and to the Ferris Wheel on the Prater Stern, the scene of Lime's famous 'cuckoo clock' speech, most of the action takes place in the Innere Stadt. Martins first arrives at Lime's apartment at 5, Josefsplatz, right beside the Spanish Riding School. The building is a neo-classical edifice called the Palais Pallavicini, dating from 1784, the portal of which is flanked by four enormous caryatids. As can be seen in the picture above, the door looks a bit unimpressive at the moment, having been temporarily replaced by a piece of plywood. That Lime should have landed such impressive digs in post-war Vienna is proof of the success of his black-market racketeering, though one imagines that the location was chosen by director Carol Reed as much for its ease of filming as for its impressiveness. The equestrian statue on the square in front is the location for Lime's putative death.

Just around the corner is the Hotel Sacher, behind the Staatsoper, where the Allied command was then stationed, and where Martins meets Trevor Howard's cynical and brusque Captain Calloway, who endeavours to open his eyes to the seamier side of Lime's character. Then a little further north on Nieurmarkt is the café terrace where Martins meets Kurtz, the Romanian confrère of Lime, who says that he may be identified by his 'holding a copy of your [Martin's] book'.

When Lime is chased down by the Military Police in the final reel, he descends into the sewers through a kiosk on Am Hof, which is about half a kilometer west of this; Lime's run through the sewers is not a long one, as he surfaces - or attempts to do so - on Minoritenplatzen, where his fingers slip from the bars of a man-hole grille, as he dies. I have to point out though in extremely nerdy fashion that the grilles on the square today are a lot thicker than the ones that Lime's fingers slip from. It's one of those things you can't help noticing. Thanks to this link for the information.

A Wretched Spectacle at the Stade de France

A trip out to St. Denis last night to watch France host Argentina in a friendly international, their first meeting since March 1986, when the French, minus Michel Platini beat the future world champions, captained by Diego Maradona, 2-0 at the Parc des Princes. A combination of delayed RER trains and a deep-felt conviction amongst our number that we had time for one last drink on the way to the stadium (I was the only Irish person there, I must point out) resulted in our being ten minutes late. Our seats had by then been occupied by other people whose own places had in turn been nabbed. As the game was already in full swing I was happy enough to take the ten contiguous places too rows up but a Canadian friend was having none of it - 'it wouldn't happen in hockey', he muttered disapprovingly. As it happened, we got our rightful seats back at half-time, which were, in my opinion, not as good as the other ones.

The match itself was a wretched spectacle, served up by two of the best teams in the world at the moment. Argentina went ahead after fifteen minutes when Javier Saviola pounced on a ball that had been parried by Grégory Coupet and thereafter they were happy to hoof the ball up to Crespo - or sometimes just up in the air. When an Argentinian team's best passer is their goalkeeper - Roberto Abbondanzieri, you feel like asking for your money back. As for France, they were surprisingly short of ideas and had very little way past a well-marshalled Argentine defence. Despite the industry of Franck Ribéry, the French game was route one, balls spread out to an overlapping Willy Sagnol followed by a hopeful cross into the six-yard-box. Awful stuff.

Out...Stan...Ding

There are no easy games in international football anymore, especially for Steve Staunton's hapless Republic of Ireland outfit, who are forever finding creative ways of making hard work of games that should be won comfortably. The 5-2 defeat to Cyprus in October was a nadir in the history of the Irish game (though we had previously thought that the ragged 1-0 win over the same opposition a year before represented the same) but only managing to beat San Marino with a Steven Ireland goal eight seconds from the final whistle is possibly lower still. Stan doesn't even have the excuse that he was banned from the sideline, as he was in Nicosia. I didn't watch this game (did anyone bother?) but the distinct impression given off by the Irish camp is that no one has a clue what is going on. He has to go. Bring Brian Kerr back for the Wales and Slovakia games. Please. He was never this bad. How far we have fallen.

Sligo's Gift to Central Europe

A man from my beloved Ballymote Eduard Taaffe was twice Prime Minister for the Hapsburgs in the late 19th century. To be completely accurate he was a descendant of the Ballymote Taaffes though he did retain the title Baron of Ballymote, without ever really exercising power in his fief. He was a man whose political liberalism compared very well with other statesmen of that century, particularly with regard to the extension of suffrage and his policies on the Slavic minorities. His ancestor Nicholas Taaffe, the 6th Viscount, who was born in Ballymote, is credited with introducing the potato to Silesia in 1763. Who would have thought that a Sligoman should be indirectly responsible for that staple of Central European cuisine: the potato dumpling?

Viennetta

I was warned not to expect too much craic in Vienna and it does not have the most obvious allure of a party town. In fact it is literally the quietest city I've ever been; even on Saturday afternoons while walking among dozens of people in the city centre the predominant sound is one of trams gently humming as they make their way along the Rings. The scale of the city is also a big excessive, or at least for its present situation. The grandeur and pomp of Vienna dates from a time when it was the capital of an Empire that stretched from what is now northern Italy to the Black Sea. Vienna was the centre of it all and that grandeur far better suited such a large trans-national Empire than it does a relatively small modern-day Central European republic. In this way it is similar to Trieste, its former chief port, which I visited last year, and which also lost its significance after the break-up of the Empire in 1918. If Vienna were a company it would have downsized; if it were a stately home it would have opened its doors to the rabble of the general public. Though, then again, Vienna has done that; it is effectively a museum city, most of the huge buildings that it has inherited from the Hapsburg era no longer as vital as they once were. The adverts on the U-Bahn for the Museum of the Imperial Palace (pictured) state 'We don't have aristocrats, just their jewels', which carries a faint note of regret as well as impudence.

But the Austrians are not unduly nostalgic for the Empire, one which was probably the most tolerant and enlightened of the European empires (Joseph Roth prophesied correctly that the protection the Jews enjoyed under the Hapsburgs, would soon crumble as the old hatreds of Europeans gentiles were again unleashed). Compared to the Turks and the Spanish (or at least the right wing in those countries) there is no infantile breast-beating about the long-lost historical might of the Austrian Empire. They are content with their modest, extremely well-administered Republic yet the street names are all the same from Imperial times, and there is no iconoclastic bent among present-day Austrians. Some people argue that the country has yet to come clean on its support for the Nazis, which may be true, but its Imperial past is something to be much less ashamed of.

Public Grub

I have long known about Mario Rosenstock's Gift Grub but it is only in the past couple of years, since I've left Ireland again, ironically, that I've begun listening to it regularly. The quality sometimes lags, as it must on a show that is produced daily and its recent regular spot of Ben Dunne and Ronan Keating telling jokes that are, given their unedited American terminology, whiskery old specimens, smacks of a certain desperation. Then there its gentle mocking of Bertie Ahern, which is possibly the greatest boon to the old crook ever granted. Ahern is a consummate politician and is only too happy to be lampooned regularly on the airwaves, which makes his managing of his job appear all the more remarkable. To be sure, to be sure. Dermot Morgan would have been a lot more unforgiving and it is noteworthy that the last of Scrap Saturday should have coincided with the maiden broadcast of TodayFM's forerunner Radio Ireland on St. Patrick's Day 1997. And Bertie was Morgan's emerging butt of jokes at the time. Not as funny as Gift Grub but probably more damaging.

But anyway Rosenstock's impersonation and writing is fantastic and his satire of football is unequalled anywhere in the English-speaking world. Latest is his piss-take of the Irish football team getting lost on the way to San Marino, and having to be rescued by Roy Keane, who negotiates business class seats - in Cork-accented German - for the players, while leaving the sozzled FAI executive in 'der sheisse seats' where they belong. Along the way there is Robbie Keane asking Stan if he can use the Internet ('I promise not to go on Bebo'), Damien Duff aghast at the FAI blazers' herculean boozing and Bobby Robson fearing that the events depicted in the movie Alive might reproduce themselves among the boys in green. Brilliant in all five of its episodes. Those that have not heard it yet can download it for free from iTunes Ireland (under Podcasts). And it's best subscribing for the gems that come from time to time.

Meanwhile back at Merrion Square, the muppets at number 80, in a press release regarding ticketing for the first games at Croke Park, refer to visiting fans being accommodated on the 'North Terrace'. Come on lads, get those pokers from out of yer arses, repeat after me: 'Hill...six...teen...Rail...way...end'. Some day you might even have your own stadium whose north terrace you can christen the 'north terrace'.

The Wit and Wisdom of Gordon Strachan

Even this Celtic fan tired of his team's ineptitude away from home in Europe and their equally worrying slackness in the Scottish Premiership, which results in them having to rescue matches far too often in the last twenty minutes, cannot but admire Gordon Strachan telling it like it is in the traditional Scottish manager fashion. When asked if he was concerned about Celtic's Champion's League last-16 meeting with Milan being postponed because of the Italian government's recent suspension of all domestic football, he replied that he was sure that
'the games will be played. It has always been shown that money outweighs anything else in football, especially just now. There is so much to look into but football will always turn towards the money.' A euphemism for saying to said hack: 'feck off with your stupid questions, will ya?'

Strachan a few months back laid into Walter Smith's fabled new method for building morale among the Scottish national team's members by having a few pints; he said (I paraphrase, because I read the words originally in French) that 'you say any old shite when you're drinking, you even claim that the person next to you is your best friend. What good is that?' Wally has since proven his commitment to morale-building by flying the coop for more cash at Ibrox. Football will always turn towards the money, as Strachan says. The wee man's piss-take attempt at hurdling the Camel hoarding after scoring against West Germany in the 1986 World Cup (in a tournament where every goalscorer was for some reason jumping over the same hoarding) now looks like premeditated comic genius.

Sheisse-poope

I find the Germanic toilet disturbing, as I'm sure do many others; rather than collecting one's stuff under a water seal as is common elsewhere, the Deutscher-toilet has a shelf that takes up most of the surface area of the commode, and on which one's deposit is retained, until flushing, as if you were, erm, pawning it. Lest I betray an unhealthy fascination with the subject by going on any further I will hand it over to the great Slavoj Žižek for this analysis, which first surfaced a few years back in his book The Fragile Absolute but which he has since taken great pleasure in recycling a few times. Masterly, though I don't really see any fundamental difference between the French toilet and the 'Anglo-Saxon' one (or certainly not the Irish one, which is, of course, racially and culturally different from the Yank-British model):

"In a famous scene from Buñuel's Phantom of Liberty, the roles of eating and excreting are inverted: people sit at toilets around a table, chatting pleasantly, and when they want to eat, sneak away to a small room. So, as a supplement to Lévi-Strauss, one is tempted to propose that shit can also serve as a matière-à-penser: the three basic types of toilet form an excremental correlative-counterpoint to the Lévi-Straussian triangle of cooking (the raw, the cooked and the rotten). In a traditional German toilet, the hole into which shit disappears after we flush is right at the front, so that shit is first laid out for us to sniff and inspect for traces of illness. In the typical French toilet, on the contrary, the hole is at the back, i.e. shit is supposed to disappear as quickly as possible. Finally, the American (Anglo-Saxon) toilet presents a synthesis, a mediation between these opposites: the toilet basin is full of water, so that the shit floats in it, visible, but not to be inspected. No wonder that in the famous discussion of European toilets at the beginning of her half-forgotten Fear of Flying, Erica Jong mockingly claims that 'German toilets are really the key to the horrors of the Third Reich. People who can build toilets like this are capable of anything.' It is clear that none of these versions can be accounted for in purely utilitarian terms: each involves a certain ideological perception of how the subject should relate to excrement.

"Hegel was among the first to see in the geographical triad of Germany, France and England an expression of three different existential attitudes: reflective thoroughness (German), revolutionary hastiness (French), utilitarian pragmatism (English). In political terms, this triad can be read as German conservatism, French revolutionary radicalism and English liberalism. In terms of the predominance of one sphere of social life, it is German metaphysics and poetry versus French politics and English economics. The point about toilets is that they enable us not only to discern this triad in the most intimate domain, but also to identify its underlying mechanism in the three different attitudes towards excremental excess: an ambiguous contemplative fascination; a wish to get rid of it as fast as possible; a pragmatic decision to treat it as ordinary and dispose of it in an appropriate way. It is easy for an academic at a round table to claim that we live in a post-ideological universe, but the moment he visits the lavatory after the heated discussion, he is again knee-deep in ideology."

The full article can be viewed here. Austrian Railways, I am pleased to report (but was dismayed to discover) employs the same useless spindle dispensers of powdered hand soap that have been Iarnród Éireann's hallmark for the last thirty years. But their rolling stock is better; I suppose, unlike Ireland, Austria's rail gauge has correspondents other than South Korea, thereby increasing the sources of its material.

Handballs

Another sporting event that was big news in Central Europe (and was here in France too) was the World Handball Championships, though most cursory observers would notice that the competitors in this tournament are generally the same as of the European Handball Championships (just like in Dodgeball, the World Federation is probably the World Handball Association of the World). For a long time I was confused as to why the sport has an English name but nobody in the English-speaking world plays it; and then I realised that handball is the German for handball. Go figure. In any case it is one of the world's most ridiculous games, a sport of dulling repetition and predictability and which does not even have the bonus interest of being low scoring. I know people that have played international handball for France (ladies) and Iceland (mens) but even they have failed to convince of me of the game's worth. It just looks too fast, too easy and too boring. Even Yankball, which saw its centrepiece won by the Indianapolis Colts last night, is at least comprehensible, if boring in the extreme. For handball stick with the Duxie Walsh version; Miles na gCopaleen used to scorn less brilliant Gaeilgeoirí as 'amadains with their bicycle clips and their handball medals'. Maybe they weren't so mediocre after all if they actually won medals at handball. Liathróid laimhe of course.

Skis with Guns

Just back from Vienna and unfortunately I don't have time to go into detail on the weekend just yet. So I think it might be best to remain silent on the city itself until I get such a chance. The World Skiing Championships are taking place all over the place at the moment, everywhere from Davos, in Switzerland (more famous for gatherings of filthy capitalists) to Are, in Sweden. In a devilish piece of deception, the Alpine events are taking place in Sweden and the Nordic ones in Switzerland. And they're both neutral countries too, which makes it all the more confusing. Anyway it was big news in Austria and most of the German-language Eurosport coverage was devoted to it, though they did have a bit of time for the Malta Cup snooker tournament.

I was particularly interested by the biathlon, which, on first reflection seems like a bizarre sport, involving a combination of skiing and shooting. But of course, that is where the origins of skiing lie, in hunting. I was also reminded of those tales I learned in history class in National School of the plucky Finns who held out for months against the Red Army in 1940 using ski-marksmen as their prime weapon. So I was a bit disheartened when I discovered that the shooting was all done at still targets just off the piste; surely a more interesting sport would be having the competitors shoot at one another, if even in a non-fatal, paintball-type way. Anything that might bring the leisure-industry cachet of skiing down a bit would be welcome. Give it back to the mountain-men and women.

This Week's Movies

Pressures of time prevent me from going into detail about four films I saw in the past week and liked (as most people who know me would aver, this is an unprecedented phenomenon) but I will list them anyway, three of them are German: Matthias Luthardt's film-school graduation piece Pingpong, about a poor cousin cuckoo's presence in his rich uncle's family nest. Icily gripping and wonderfully edited. Then there is the Stasi thriller The Lives of Others that, despite some rickety characterisation, is great entertainment, and the main Stasi guy is the spitting image of Colm Tóibín.

A friend of mine in Dublin warned me off Philip Gröning's three-hour documentary on the silent Carthusian monks of La Grande Chartreuse in Grenoble, Into Great Silence. This friend goes on Buddhist retreats and Unitarian services and Tridentine masses while managing to be both gay and left-wing, but found three hours about monks intolerably boring. So the omens were not good but I found it engaging for the most part and a fascinating look at people that use utensils everyday that are usually only found these days in movie prop departments. Like ewers and so on. Mind you, the core audience for films like this is getting on a bit, when I finally got to see it after seeing it sold out twice, I was one of only about five people in the audience under the age of sixty. Last was the Catalan director Marc Recha's August Days, a road movie starring Recha and his brother David as themselves as they drive their camper van along the Ebro during a heatwave. I loved Recha's debut feature Tree of Cherries, which I saw in the Dublin Film Festival a long time ago and this film has the same balmy magnificence even though the difficulties putting a plot together is at times too obvious. But he more than makes up for that in the filming and the pacing.

I also finally got to see Robert Altman's Nashville on DVD, which is probably the best of all the Altman's I've seen. Most amazing is the music, which as well as being brilliant, was entirely written and performed by the cast. That's all for this week though. I'm off to Vienna for the weekend and I'm leaving the laptop at home. More next week.

Les Clopes get the Chop

France yesterday implemented the first stage of its workplace smoking ban, which will cover all offices, retail outlets, factories etc and will be followed in twelve months by a ban on smoking in bars and restaurants. The news has been big outside of France where the clichéd image of the Gauloise-smoking Left Bank existentialist still holds some sway. The fact that the French smoke a lot less than most of their European neighbours (and their percentage of smokers is slightly less than the EU average) is something that armchair editorialists prefer to ignore. The previous Evin laws of 1991 - as Anglophone news sources have repeated tiresomely this week - were the most restrictive of their kind but were largely ignored, or at least in restaurants. The effect of the ban yesterday was difficult to gauge because, as in many other Western countries, most office workers have for a long time been forced to step outside for a puff anyway. The only people other than catering staff that could usually be seen smoking at work were less conscientious shop-owners.

The French claim that they will flaunt the ban (or at least the one in a year's time which will be more critical) just as the Irish did three years ago but, in reality the French are no more rebellious than we are when it comes to standing up to authority. It's true that collectively they can be formidable - if at times maddening - but on the individual level they are as conservative and docile as anyone else. Some of my students recently, upon being asked to sum up the French character, used the word 'individualist', at which I couldn't repress a smile. Well, maybe, in the words of Graham Chapman in The Life of Brian, they are all individuals. The well-known French attribute of je-m'en-foutisme (translated as 'I-couldn't-give-a-shite-ism') is less an expression of rebelliousness than a self-suiting creed of rudeness that is quickly abandoned when the user's self-preservation is threatened by it.

As for myself, I don't smoke and never have, though I have never banned it chez moi and many of my friends smoke as have a number of girlfriends. But I support smoking bans from a purely pragmatic point of view. With regard to smoking in pubs as a right, it ranks somewhere below picking one's nose in public as one I would be willing to fight to conserve. Vive la différence, as any lazy Anglophone hack writing about France would say.