Mary KennyClean water running from taps is a very great benefit
Whenever I hear a contentious debate about water charges, I think about a story that my cousin in Co. Galway once told me.
Back in 1947, May Mannion, (then May King) came home from teacher training college to find that a near-miracle had occurred in her family home. A tap of running water had been installed!
Running water which emerged when you turned on the tap! Amazing! Everyone in the area was thrilled with this development – and most particularly the women.
Because in that part of Connaught, until then, water was usually drawn from a common pump: and by tradition, it was the women who went to the pump to fetch the water, carrying heavy pails of the stuff back to the house. Every drop of water had to be carried, and it was a heavy, burdensome and tedious task.
Carrying water is also very bad for women’s health, because it can contribute to the prolapse of the womb. Even African women, who have the sense to carry burdens on their heads, suffer more from uterine prolapse because they are obliged to carry so much.
So, while no one actually likes having to pay a water tax – which is what the charges are – I think we should bear in mind the much higher price that women once had to pay before there was running water, from a tap, in Ireland.
Understandably, some of the clamour expressed against Irish Water is rooted in a sense of political distrust, and a resentment that the financial side seems to have been bungled – with huge sums of money spent on ‘consultants’ who handle the business.
But clean water running from taps is a very great benefit – Edwin Chadwick, the Victorian pioneer of clean drains did a fine service to humankind – and surely we should be thankful for that. Just as the people in Connemara were back in the 1940s.
Journalists’ union used to have public impartiality
If members of the National Union of Journalists (NUJ) wish to march in a pro-choice march advocating abortion – well, it’s a free country, and people are entitled to express their opinions.
But when I was a young reporter in London in the 1960s and 1970s, journalists representing the NUJ would have been reprimanded for doing so – even possibly suspended. Journalists’ organisations were supposed to maintain public impartiality on any controversial topic.
Values have changed in this respect, and the NUJ no longer even pretends to have impartiality on a range of issues.
The NUJ’s commitment to certain political and moral values is somewhat in contrast to their actual service to their members: often strong on trendy opinions, often weak on protection for journalists, reporters and writers.
The pay and condition of employment for journalists in the mainstream media have fallen considerably since the 1970s. The celebrities are paid big bucks while jobs disappear down the line. Journalists and sub-editors are let go and made redundant without much visible support from the NUJ, which is, in any case, too weak to stand up to the huge changes being wrought by technology, globalisation and the power of mighty corporations.
Arguably, the NUJ, in both Britain and Ireland, is weak because they were too busy focusing on abortion rights or Israel or some other political issue outside of their remit to grasp what was happening in their own industry.
First things first, as they say in AA. If you take your eye off your primary purpose, you lose it.
Leave it to John O'shea (and St Jude)
It was Tuesday of last week, and I was taking a taxi-ride into Dublin city. The cabbie asked me if I objected if he went on listening to “the match” (between Ireland and Germany), and I said, that’s grand. The driver was so thrilled that Ireland was holding its own against the mighty German team, and then, fell into despair as Germany scored. He was so depressed he switched off the radio – he couldn’t bear to listen any more, he said. There would now be a humiliating defeat.
As I alighted from the taxi, I said, “Why don’t you say a prayer to St Jude for the Ireland team?” “You say it,” he replied, too crestfallen. So having suggested the idea, I thought I had better follow through.
I hope the taxi-man was sufficiently comforted later on to learn that St Jude had, to some extent, delivered, and Ireland had equalised in what was considered a brilliant comeback.
Vatican synod
Disappointment has been expressed at the outcome of the Vatican synod. But come on! There’ll be another one next year. You must give big topics big time.
And Pope Francis’s continuing theme that the Church should be inclusive to all has had a wide discourse, and helped all of us to reflect on both ideals and realities.