Black Star, wandering in the desert

A Black Star, a woman from Ghana, is wandering in the desert that is war-torn Libya. She cared for the child of a couple of Irish teachers who have now fled from the turmoil. No state plane took this Black Star out. No ship sailed from Accra to rescue her and other Ghanaians. She is not likely to get a seat on a British Petroleum plane. She is an expatriate worker, as are the Americans and the Europeans, but an African care and domestic worker will have to fend for herself. There are many other Africans working in Libya and they will seek each other out for solace and protection, as Libyan state forces wreak havoc and anti-state forces press for regime change.

A cursory glance at a map of Africa shows that the shape of Libya is wrong. Straight line borders with Egypt and Chad, slight squiggles in the borders with Niger and Algeria reveal the colonial cartographers' straight edge pressed on top of Berber cultures, Islamic overlaying, Ottoman and Italian imperial impositions, World War 2 occupation, an independent kingdom followed by the left-posturing despotism of the Gaddafi family. 

Now the Black Star finds herself seeking shelter in a violent flux, from which, once it settles, she will re-emerge, if she survives, to offer her care and expertise to the families of the American and European expatriate workers who will return. Will the Irish teachers and their child find her? Will they re-employ her or find another Black Star to meet their domestic needs?

Votes are being counted in the general election in the Republic of Ireland. A Fine Gael-Labour coalition is the likely outcome, with the historically largest party, Fianna Fáil, getting a thorough hammering. Irish people held their anger, didn't take to the streets in the way the Greeks did, and have now vented that anger in the polling booths. A form of regime change is under-way, though there is not a whisker of difference in the economic policies promulgated by out-going Fianna Fáil and incoming Fine Gael. Irish people want change but not too much. Libyan people want massive change. And to what?

Oil interests want the status quo. And if they can't have that, they want to maintain control, even as the outward political appearances of power change across North Africa and The Middle East.  Meanwhile profiteering is rife, as oil prices for industrial, domestic and vehicle users rise, even though supply is unaffected by the war in Libya. Saudi Arabia released some of its oil reserves onto the market. The UN makes noises about sanctions against Libya. Governments say they'll freeze Gaddafi family assets and remove their diplomatic immunity. Hypocrisy abounds as arms trading continued. The Black Star wanders in the desert of war. The questions remain: is she less worthy than the votes in the Republic? They count. Does she?  

Don't Frighten the Horses

Two race horses died suddenly at Newbury Racecourse (51 degrees North, 1 degree West). Almost immediately speculation arose that they had been electrocuted. They'd grown skittish and nervous. Stable hands, in the parade ring with the horses, reported sensing shocks. As the week wore on, cardiac arrest was confirmed as the cause of death in the horses. Leakages of electricity from faulty underground cables were cited as being the likely source of the deadly current.

Underground cross currents are everywhere. Here, in Derry (54 degrees North, 7 degrees West), the city which has been designated as the first ever UK City of Culture for 2013, the majority of people vote Irish nationalist and cross currents of national identity – British or Irish? - run deep. These cross currents, between the aspiration inherent in that voting pattern and the actual political circumstance, are resolved in a number of ways. In the first instance, there is the open-armed welcome for the designation from unionists. Then there is the welcome offered on the basis of the jobs and economic boost the designation supposedly promises. There is also a sort of 'between gritted teeth' welcome, coming mainly from nationalists, saying 'we are where we are and lets get on with it'. Perhaps the most widespread response is stirringly pragmatic. This says 'whatever's going -  from whatever source -  we will avail of the opportunities offered'. There is a slight 'beggars can't be choosers' tone to this approach and it connects with a duality, generally comfortably held, which accommodates national identity cross-currents as not a case of 'either-or' but as a case of 'both-and'. Of course there is also the response of dissident republicans, who threw a pipe bomb at the UK City of Culture office – a UK target, in their terms – in a ludicrous, yet successful, again in their terms, response.

Given such tensions and resolutions, language suffers. A widespread approach to the cross currents problem is simply to drop the UK from the front of the title and to continually, at times slavishly, refer to ours as 'The City of Culture.' This approach is favoured by the broadcast and print media, defended as a form of shorthand. Some consider it sleight of hand. It is as vacuous a phrase as saying ours is 'The City of Dog Mess.' Every city is both-and. Culture and Dog Mess. 

There is a specific problem with the dropping of the UK element of the designation, a problem that amplifies the cross-currents and causes confusion. It mirrors ignoring the underground cables and means people compare our city and it's designation with Cork, Liverpool and Glasgow, which were European Cities of Culture. There is no comparison and, unlike the European case, no front-end money. 

So the cross currents, permanently underground, surface. The appointment of a man with an SDLP background to lead the work in developing the year sharpened the criticism of the stewardship of the project, currently led by our city council and a development agency called ILEX, from Sinn Féin. 

There is a debate to be had, as dangerous perhaps as investigating underground cables, to explore the single-phase, two-phase, three-phase and multi-phase electricities of national identity in our city. Without the debate, we will do more than mildly shock the stable hands. We will frighten the horses and compromise all our hearts.

X-raying Sparrows

It is unlikely that the sparrow on the nut-feeder in the garden knows that the latest scare to plague our health service involves an oral medicine specialist in Belfast, mis- and/or late cancer diagnoses and the sense that nobody knows why things went wrong. The Minister for Health, Michael McGimpsey, Ulster Unionist, a stooped, almost patrician, career politician, has apologised and instituted an inquiry. His nemesis, The Minister of Finance, Sammy Wilson, Democratic Unionist Party, a stocky populist who thinks art in hospitals is a waste of money, chastises him for failing to run the health service on budget. 

In the unique form of democratic government we live under, these two ministers are in coalition together, but because they will soon be fighting an election they appear to be at each others' throats. Meanwhile, threats to the health budget are tossed about the print and broadcast media and the twin seams of journalistic gold – private pain and public fear – are carved wide open. The loud-mouth phone-in talk show radio host, Stephen Nolan,  bellows his own importance, while mining these twin seams with intrusive stories of individual crises and inane circular interviews with the two Ministers. It's enough to frighten the sparrow, pecking away on the nut-feeder.

This latest story follows on the scandal of the unreporting of 18, 000 x-ray records at our local hospital, Altnagelvin, an Anglicisation of the Irish place-name Ailt na Gealbhán, the ravine of the sparrows. Once again there have been apologies to people who were affected, including patients with late diagnoses for cancer. And yet no one seems to know what actually happened. At what point do you say, if you happen to be in charge of radiography services, perhaps we should look at this unreported x-ray issue? At 100? 1 000? 5 000? How do you not see – and not deal with – such a backlog?

The delicacy of flying machines was highlighted in the plane crash at Cork Airport. A commuter flight from Belfast, trying to land in fog, flipped over and landed on it's back. Six people died and another six people suffered various injuries. Grief and loss is wide-spread across this island.  Inquiries are under-way. Will we be able to see, forensically, into and through the event, so that we might know?

The sparrow pecks at the nuts. Such a fragile fretwork of bones, gristle and feathers. Such avid attention. Such obvious insouciance regarding oral health scares, unreported x-rays and plane crashes. 

The phone-in radio show host gulders. The sparrows vanishes. Like an ace up a conjurer's sleeve.

Braying

The noise you can hear in the background is The Law. Braying. Earlier this week in the town of Strabane, 20 km from where I live (Derry, 54.9 degrees North, 7.3 degrees West), a woman was sentenced to three weeks in prison for shoplifting a ten pounds pair of jeans. Meanwhile white collar and war criminals walk free in Ireland and Britain, safe in the knowledge that The Law, though braying, is not braying at them. It is not The Law which is an ass, but all of us.
This story deepens my sense of living in a time of parallel universes, where the logic applied in one is not applied in another, where rules and understandings regarding right and wrong are not universal, but specific and unique to whichever of these universes you occupy at this time. 
My City Council tells me that the salary of the Chief Executive must be increased by ten thousand pounds per annum in order to attract and retain the right calibre of person. At the same time, my City Council tells me that wage and job cuts for service delivery staff are essential to make the services offered more efficient. The logic of retaining the right calibre of person by increasing salaries does not apply to the jobs of swimming pool attendant, grave digger, refuse collector, community worker and other service delivery staff. There are two universes in the world of my City Council and the logic of one does not permeate the other.
Of course, we're not Egypt and are unlikely to take to our main square, Guildhall Square, and face down The President. We did gather in crowds, however, in The Guildhall Square on Sunday 30th January - estimates suggested twenty five thousand people - to mark the anniversary of the 1972 killings by state forces known as Bloody Sunday. There was a mood of muted celebration as the families who spearheaded the campaign for justice for the victims of the killings indicated that this would be the last such campaigning march. Yet the sense of living in parallel universes festered within me when I considered that though soldiers had been shown to have acted wrongly, their officers, in general and their political masters in total, escaped without censure.
Officers, political leaders and chief executives live in one universe. Foot soldiers, shoplifters, service delivery staff live in another.
And where do I live? With the ass? Braying?