Wigmore - Brian Farrell, Michael Mills and Gay Mitchell

Gay Mitchell:  FOLLOWING his superb performance during the Papal visit, Brian Farrell again rose to poetic heights in his commentary on the Presidential inauguration. Herewith some short pieces from Decem ber 3.
You can see the members of the local authorities in their gowns and chains and the members of the judiciary in their gowns and their wigs and the members of the academic community also in their full academicals.

The measured pace of this piece cuts right through to the inner meaning of the ceremony. But Farrell is also excellent at externals. Witness his State Apartments, awash as it is with the splendour of the occasion.

These glorious lustrous apartments they glow they always glow and on a morning like this even more so.

But best of all was his political poem, Shurely shome mishtake, which has echoes of Brecht's insight and Nicanor Parra's sensitivity.

With simple words the President concludes a simple ceremony as befits a republic like ours it's appropriate that a man chosen by the people for the people should do so.

The only aspect of the ceremony more moving than Mr Farrell's poetry was when the President strode forward to inspect our brave soldiers, their young faces lined with sudden experience, and they just back from strangling turkeys on the Monaghan front. Oh, Ireland, you ask much of your sons.

* * *

MICHAEL MILLS, our Ombudsmannto-be, has by now received plaudits and congratulations from just about everyone in sight, including Wigmore, which is as it should be. Now, no one

knows better than Michael that honeymoon periods don't last very long these days. It's the old set'emmup-knock-tern-down syndrome. Just when you're getting the seat warm, journalists start asking critical quesstions, probing, knocking - and noobody better at it than Mick.

Now. Since Michael has just reeceived a whacking great four grand increase in salary, to pu t on top of his £27,000 - before he even starts the job - we can expect the honeyymoon period to be shorter still. He doesn't start until January 3, but if he can take the smooth - and £31,000 is silky indeed - then he can expect the rough.

* * *

MICHAEL MILLS is a lousy Ombudssman. He is the thin veneer of plausiibility on an inefficient and corrupt bureaucracy. The appointment of an Ombudsman would make sense if the role of such a person was merely to adjudicate on the inevitable conflicts which would arise even in an efficient and honest system. When it is used as a figleaf to cover the disgustingly deformed apparatus of state - instead of rooting out the inefficiencies and exposing the corruption - then its role is not to protect us from the wrath of that bureaucracy but vice versa.

It's about time Michael Mills resigned.

* * *

SETTING the record straight: in our last issue we said that the cost to the taxpayer for secretarial services to TDs averages out at over £8,000 per TD per year. This is true. However, we have been asked to point out that this is the cost to us - the actual salary the secretaries receive is more like six thousand. And, unlike the TDs, the secretaries pay tax on the full whack.

* * *

IT REALLY is time Gay Mitchell was put back in his box. This unpleasant man (who sends his constituents copies of Desiderata: "Go placidly amid the noise and haste ... " Ugh!) is wont to explode with venom from time to time.

His latest blathering is an attack on Gay Byrne. Byrne, it appears, raised his eyebrows at the way in which TDs are pandered to. We can take Mr Byrne or leave him (if he's with Hal Roach we prefer to leave him) but unlike some people we could menntion (i.e. the pinch-mouthed Mr Mitchell) Byrne's contribution to public life in recent decades has been worthwhile. He did the job that fell to him.

Now. The other Gay - Mitchell - is not one of those TDs who never speaks in the Dail. Unfortunately. He is forever talking. Nonsense. On one occasion he ranted on at great length about the failure of the press to give proper respect to politicians and the Dail. At which point this reporter leaned over the press gallery and counted six TDs in the Chamber.

If Gay Byrne had not been around, and if no one else had filled his role in the Sixties, it is probable that Ireland would be in an even worse state than it is. If Gay Mitchell, his Dail seat and

his loud mouth, disappeared tomorrow we wouldn't notice. Six column inches on this page will be provided free of charge next month to Mr Mitchell, to tell us what great value we're getting for the thousands of pounds we have paid him. Mind you, he won't get the space just to blather about how he gets phone problems sorted out. Six inches of achievements, please.

Mind you, Mitchell's brother Jim is a pleasant enough chap. There should be some rule abou tone TD per family.

WE PRINT this photograph as a service to history. It is of little releevance now to the voters of Du blin Central, whose interests are henceforth to be represented by the startling figure of Tom Leonard. However, we have a duty to those who come after us - we may leave them little else, but let us at least give them some innsight into how the country went the way it did.

She cares.

In years to come, if there are any, let them know that this was the poliitical slogan on which Mary Banotti fought a by-election in 1983. This is how low politics had sunk. God be with the days when we had such stirrring slogans as "Back Jack". Now, there's politics for you. "Let Lemass Lead On" sounds positively reeking with ideology compared with the later crop. When Dev fought an election while in jail the slogan "Put him in

to get him out" at least asked you to take a stand on an issue.

She cares.

There was the Labour Party slogan:

"Socialism is the answer". The poster didn't say what the question was but it was probably something like: "What wouldn't the Labour Party touch with a ten foot pole?"

She cares.

Let our descendants know that at this time there are 200,000 on the dole. Week by week the firms crash. Among certain definable social groups the habit of heroin is rampant, with all that follows from that. Let them know that no party has produced a single policy document on unemployment which is not greeted with derision. Let them know that there was in power a group which believed that mathematics and economics were sciences which could be manipulated in an abstract way, divorced from their social content.

She cares.

Let them know that our political parties did not offer alternative poliicies, did not offer any policies. Fianna Fail didn't even have a slogan on their posters, just LEONARD - vote for him, the party calls, show your frusstration. And Fine Gael offered a supplication to trust.

She cares.

We don't. Gene Kerrigan