Three jesters stood at a street litter bin, resting after the carnival parade had finished. They wore sparkly costumes, with bells hanging from their hats. They dangled ribbon batons in their hands. A family group came up to them – two grandparents, a grandson and his friend. The jesters gave the boys the batons and showed them how to twirl their ribbons into colourful spirals. Two more people joined the group. Everyone began to chat, as the boys played and passers-by smiled. It was a joyful end-of-carnival moment.
The adult conversations ranged across the parade, the spectacle, how good it was to be able to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day after the shutdowns of the pandemic, family matters, the weather and the invasion of Ukraine by military forces led by the Russian President, Vladimir Putin.
The discussion turned to the question of sanctions and the price of oil and gas. Would supplies from Russia be blocked? Would prices rise yet further? Where would supplies come from?
One man said that Saudi Arabia had executed 81 people.
A council worker, a front-liner cleaning the city’s streets, came up and refreshed the litter bin, clearing up around it.
He spoke to the group: “I heard what ye were saying. About Saudi Arabia. There’s things going on in the world the media doesn’t tell us about at all.”
He moved on, performing his role in the city’s response to the post-carnival litter.
The jesters and the others went home to the news that the ferry company P&O had summarily sacked 800 staff.
P&O is owned by DP World, based in Dubai. DP World purchased P&O, then the fourth largest ports operator in the world, for £3.9 billion. The acquisition was supported by US president George Bush. The company is headed by Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem.
Reports circulate in British and other media that government and business figures were aware of the company’s plans to use ex-military security people to run their own staff off their ships.
This was no jest. It was not part of the St. Patrick’s Day carnival. It was a poisonous act by the venomous snakes that Patrick didn’t get round to running off.
Bono wrote a poem for St. Patrick’s Day and opened a poisonous pit of Paddywhackery. US Democrat Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, read the poem on Ukraine, described, on-line, as the worst poem ever written. It is reported that the audience burst into strained laughter, as the poem finished.
It reads, in part, as
That's when saints can appear
To drive out those old snakes once again
And they struggle for us to be free
From the psycho in our human family
Ireland's sorrow and pain
Is now the Ukraine
Bono’s cover for hobnobbing with rich and powerful liars and war-mongers, including Putin, at the World Economic Forum in Davos and elsewhere, is that he is no more than a loveable jester.
An appeal to poetry is worthy, but fragile and unreliable. Ironically, on St. Patrick’s Day, the English poet Simon Armitage makes a better fist of it than the begorrahness of the Irish rock star.
But even Armitage falters.
It’s war again: the woman in black gives sunflower seeds to the soldier, insists
his marrow will nourish the national flower. In dreams
let bullets be birds, let cluster bombs burst into flocks.
The street cleaner and his colleagues are on strike this week, trying to secure a fair income for their work.
Neither Bono, Putin nor the Sultan are joining them.
There’s things going on in the world the media doesn’t tell us about at all.
Especially in the gold-lined snake-pits.
Bono's poem and reaction
Simon Armitage poem
https://www.simonarmitage.com/wp-content/uploads/Resistance-by-Simon-Armitage.pdf
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