If only we country people didn't live in the country

bealtine

http://www.tribune.ie/article.tvt?_scope=TribuneFTF&id=111455&SUBCAT=&SUBCATNAME=&DT=17/02/2008%2000:00:00&keywords=eithne%20tynan&FC=

Eithne Tynan


ONE thing that mars the otherwise unadulterated bliss of rural life is that people are always taking you hostage. There you are, minding your own business in the garden of your king-size pink bungalow, innocently setting fire to your unwanted silage wrap, when some loudmouth sticks a knife to your throat and yells, "Nobody move or the bogger gets it."

No matter what the issue, it always seems to have repercussions for the countryside. In recent times, rural communities have been faced with nothing short of a firing squad of threats . . . the smoking ban; random breath testing; planning restrictions; the lack of broadband; post-office closures; hospital closures; and now pharmacy closures. It's a wonder we're still here today, twiddling noisily on our accordions and wilfully decanting our poo into the groundwater.

As luck would have it, we rural dwellers have a natural aptitude for complaining, so our piffling concerns dominate the national press and broadcast media day after day. Nothing happens in rural Ireland without everyone talking about it. (Just last weekend, for instance, an oil slick nine miles wide by six miles long was found off the Clare coast, and made the lunchtime news. Had that oil spill been near the Kish it probably wouldn't have even got a mention in the local papers. ) Complaining is one of the life skills that country children learn at the polyester-clad knees of their mothers.

We are taught few things (and sophisticated judgement is not among them), but those few are important: how to bend the ear of local politicians, how to drive while drunk, how to belt out a song without any noticeable musical ability, and how to extract money from impoverished Dublin taxpayers by means of social welfare fraud. Complaining got us where we are today . . . still regrettably visible, an embarrassment, a blight on the progressive national landscape.

Our real problem is that we refuse to accept the necessity of abiding by urban rules. If only we could be taught to understand that we shouldn't be living in the countryside in the first place. If we are not well off, then we should be living in little housing estates, like the rest of the poor people, and be thankful for it. If we are rich, then why don't we buy a nice place in town, with cast-iron fireplaces, maple floors, a Smeg fridge and French doors giving onto the garden, and then have a holiday home in the country, for heaven's sake? Lord, it's so obvious.

The countryside should be left to the enjoyment of expatriate organic farmers and well-heeled daytrippers, and to those who provide them with vital services such as open sandwiches and slideshow interpretations of natural wonders. If everyone else would only get up and leave, the Rural Problem would solve itself.

There would be no more tragic deaths on the back roads, no need for rural post offices, barely any call for regional emergency services, no pressure to unbundle the local loop, and . . . only think . . . no constituency for clientelist Fianna Fail politicians. And most important of all, it would clear thousands of hectares of land for use by oil and energy corporations.

The Green Party, tireless as ever in its campaign for enlightened, SUV-driving, city-dwelling, Chardonnay-swilling, bag-for-lifetoting, Green-voting national unity, announced another concerted effort last week to clean up the planning act. It ran scared, though, of mentioning one-off housing. Environment minister John Gormley did allow that worrisome issue to make the short journey across his thoughts, but only to say that he resents the insinuation that he has been "trying to outlaw one-off housing" and that his proposals would have no impact on existing rules in that regard.

Those rules are an irrelevance anyway: there is a way around them, a trick which I outline here for the benefit of rural dwellers.

Instead of applying for permission to build a dwelling house, about which you will find your local planning department as pernickety as a career librarian, apply instead for planning permission for a gas pipeline, wind farm or oil refinery. You might even chance a nuclear plant if you're feeling playful. That way you can skip gaily through the planning process and you might not even have to fork out the meagre price of a county councillor's integrity to get what you want.

If you don't feel up to even that much effort, what you can do instead is build your gas pipeline/wind farm/oil refinery without proper planning permission, and then apply for retention. Everybody is doing it.

There may be protests but that's why we have a police force, it has emerged. The long arm of the law will envelop you in its clammy embrace and anyone ideologically misguided enough to set up camp and oppose you will end up in court, served with an eviction notice.

An even funnier wheeze might be actually to put your new gas pipeline/wind farm/oil refinery into operation. Then you can start pumping gas from under the soles of your neighbours' wretched feet, and selling it back to them. The government is all for this and will treat you with the utmost generosity.

You needn't worry about any consequent environmental disasters such as landslides or groundwater pollution either. The fines are small beer and in any case the authorities are otherwise engaged, blaming septic tanks and incandescent light bulbs for wrecking the environment. If the worst comes to the worst, you'll find it takes years for these things to find their way to the European Court of Justice, where it will be the state that ends up paying for it anyway.

Eureka. This plan is failsafe, and should safeguard rural communities for generations to come.

Sponge Bob

bealtine wrote: »

Eureka. This plan is failsafe, and should safeguard rural communities for generations to come.

She forgot to mention that a relative of hers runs a GBS, one of the very first ones approved and one that is still with us.

clohamon

garrybennett wrote: »

I have had to rent a house in Cork in order to be able to work. Is there anything being done about this?

You can check which mobile masts are near you here:

http://www.askcomreg.ie/mobile/site_viewer.asp

By trawling around the local roads with the signal indicator on I found an area with good signal about 3kms from my house. ( Its OK if you don't mind doing your work in the car when no one else is using the mast)

EITHNETYNAN

I'm very curious to know who spongebob is, and which of my relatives he thinks owns a GBS. Explain yourself, please

Sponge Bob

Runs I said , not "owns" , but anyway its a damn fine article and all too true !

Were what I said true it would logically follow that the government no longer wants to help country people who help themselves and thats why we have this farce of a 'national' broadband scheme incoming some time next year and the centralisation of decision making into urban areas...at the expense of rural areas was evidence in the abolition of the GBS after the April 2005 round three years ago now .

In that 3 years, nothing of use has been done save where what was already there was built upon .

bealtine

EITHNETYNAN wrote: »

I

I originally posted the article as I felt it was very relevant to a thread/discussion about why culchees shouldn't get broadband or other essential services.
I mean why should those happy city folk underwrite and finance those stupid culchees, why can't they all just move to cities and large towns?


You made my point nicely with much better finesse than I could ever do...
Great article.

EITHNETYNAN

I'm really gratified that you found the article useful. I didn't think anyone had even read it - apart my mother obviously. Anyway, just to set the record straight, I don't have any relatives in the energy or exploration business, or at least none that I'm aware of. There may be a long-lost oil-baron branch of the family but if so, we don't talk to them. There is a growing wireless broadband branch however!

EITHNETYNAN

I've just realised that by GBS you weren't talking about gravity based structures, or oil rigs. Sorry, it's been a long week. Hugely embarrassed now. I'll just get my coat

Sponge Bob

Not at all, a great article about the 21st century clearances that .

dtynan

Ahem. We didn't really create a GBS, we empowered a useless, layabout rural person (ULRP) to commute to Galway every day and print out the most interesting web pages. He then returns to Muckville and types these into a computer for others to download. We, being greedy, benefit-sucking, incompetent country types cashed the Government largesse and emigrated to a third-world country in search of better healthcare and cheaper politicians.

As for my status as an oil baron, I did pester John Gormley to start taking a realistic approach to biofuels and to mandate that all new cars sold in Ireland (even rural Ireland) should be certified by the manufacturer to run on B50 or E50 at a minimum, and that we should remove the sulphur additive in diesel and replace it with a 5% mix of biofuel. This was after earlier moaning about the fact that the "polluter pays" system doesn't work when you increase car tax rather than fuel tax. Strangely enough, after months of silence, he just got back to me (through an aide) to tell me I was talking to the wrong person and I'd obviously mistaken him for a Green TD. We can consider it purely coincidental that this happened after the aforementioned sibling pointed out that in Dail Eireann, "out West" means Lucan.

cgarvey

Muckville, eh?

Anyway, if we want to discuss GBS in an IoffL context, then go ahead. If we want to discuss politics, go there.