Sociologists believe that we all need a “worldview”.
A basic scheme for how things work.  This theory believes that once in place the worldview is very powerful within the human mind.
Moreover, people tend to ignore evidence that conflicts with their worldview.
The role of the intellectual is to pick up the discarded evidence and shake it in your face and make you pay attention. Finally you have to admit that your worldview is wrong. This is, sometimes, a painful and, always, a disorientating process to go thru.
Part of my worldview was that the reformation had carved a fault line thru Europe apropos public life and the ways that governments work.
Perhaps, it could be argued that the Reformation merely put a theological edge on deeper cultural differences that had already existed for centuries, but that is another debate.
My worldview of Europe north and south went something like this.
Northern Europe, the polity will be democratic   and generally well run with a minimum of corruption. The electorate will be literate and informed and act as a watch guard against government exce3ss.

Southern Europe the polity will tend to be undemocratic-the last dictatorships to exist in Western Europe being in Iberia.
Even where democratic the system of government will be chaotic and wracked with corruption-Italy anyone.

So much for my view of politics across Europe.
In the south set against corrupt public servants and politicians on the take the pace of lifer is agreeably slow and nothing much is expected of you.

In the North of the continent if you are after bonhomie then Denmark might not be the place.
Everything-as they say-has a cost.

I had viewed the Anglo-Irish difficulties thru such a north south prism.
The Brits were clearly part of Northern Europe whereas the Irish seemed to have the Southern European mentality.
Laid back friendly, agreeable people culturally Catholic but especially in public life, prone to backhanders and not driven by a work ethic.

I had often remarked to fellow journalists in Ireland that there was a different code of conduct in the way that the Irish and the Brits “do” politics.
Resigning on a matter of honour-for example.
There is simply no tradition of someone standing up in Dail Eireann ala Robin Cook during the run up to the Iraq War and making a statement to the house that he cannot remain in government on a matter of principle.
Moreover when Jack Profumo was caught lying to the House of Commons over the Christine Keeler affair he resigned. It was-and everyone who heard is speech-knew this was the end of his public life.

In recent eyars I have noted that the resignation speec in the House of Commons need not mean the end of a politican’s career as it once did.
I have actually lost count of the times that Peter Mandelson has resigned over some scandal or other only to be allowed  back into the government.
What was once exile for life from the mother of parliaments has become something akin to a sin bin for polticians  when those  evil hacks catch them out.
A naughty step for careless cabinet ministers.
I was instrumental in a cabinet minister losing his ministerial Merc in 2002 when I broke the story of Dr. James McDaid Td had made an outburst that those who take their lives by suicide were “selfish bastards”.
Actually he was quoting the mother of a young man who had died by suicide but he said that he agreed with her assessment of her dead son that he was indeed a “selfish bastard”.
He was demoted to junior minister for transport from the far sexier portfolio of Sport and tourism. A re-shuffle later he was out. He declared on national radio that he had been “sacked”.
There was been no way back for him.
If this Mandelson and McDaid wobbled my worldview a little my entire working model of this planet has been shattered by Hazel Blears, Keith Vaz and Dr. John Reid.
That well know scourge of the British establishment the Daily Telegraph has probably destroyed the credibility of an entire generation of British politicians with few exceptions.
Like all disasters-and this IS a disaster for the3 British political class.
There were fatal pathogens on the disaster scenario, but they had to come into alignment.
Sometimes the most telling is utterly prosaic.
Twenty years ago such a heroic act of whist blowing would have been physically almost impossible.
In the age of paper records this would have involved photocopying the contents of many filing cabinets-perhaps scores of them.
Then there would be the delicate matter of transporting-undetected-boxes and boxes of paper out of the palace of Westminster.
Now a simple computer disc is all that it took to destroy the credibility of an entire political class.
The last months of the John Major government the word “sleaze” was sued to gr3eat effect by Blair’s government in waiting.
The implication, of course, was that lot- i.e. the government-had their snouts in the trough, but we-the opposition-are clean and ethical.
What makes the Telegraph’s revelations so explosive is that they aren’t editing for party political advantage.
They started-quite fairly in my opinion-with the cabinet.
They have then moved to the shadow     cabinet and other leading Tories.
The scale of corruption is staggering.
What is all the more jaw dropping is that Mps could enrich themselves into property millionaires at the taxpayers expense while “staying within the rules”.
These rules on parliamentary allowances were, of course, written by the people who benefit from them.
Not all British MPs have indulged them4reslevs.
Cabinet Minister Hilary Benn billed the taxpayer in one year for the hefty sum of £147. He provided receipts apparent even though under the rules an MP doesn’t have to provide a receipt for anything under £249.
He could, of course, made a statement under parliamentary privilege and blown the whole thing out of the water-he would not have had the fine details-but he would-surely have known some of it.
This was-I think-is better, much much better.
We know-we KNOW-that the entire British political class with every very few exceptions are corrupt, grasping and venal to an extent that no one had heretofore suspected.
This is what history feels like.
If the British people continue to vote for the likes for Hazel Blears, Geoff Hoon, Keith Vaz and Eric Pickles then we will know that the Brits-like the irish-dont mind if their politicians are corrupt.
I had once argued to colleagues here in Ireland that there was no British equivalent of Charles Haughey, Ray Bourke or Liam Lawlor.
Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!
All worldviews must be susceptible to evidence.
Worldviews, which ignore such a mountain of forensic details, stops being a worldview and simply becomes the mindset of a bigot.
British politicians are, as a group, prone to corruption.
Hear that?
That was a worldview shattering on the floor.
Now I need a new way to look at the world that includes those corrupt Brits.

It is a precarious business this making predictions, but it is part and parcel of the op ed/blogging world.
I had recently written about the defeat and retreat of the British from Basra in Iraq.
I noted that the victors usually write history.
However in this case most if the victors are illiterate.
So the losers-backed up by the BBC- get to explain away their second prise into a magnificent victory of a job well done.
What I had not expected was for the operation in Afghanistan to be marked down for closure so swiftly.
Michael Smith of the Sunday Times broke the story that the treasury had vetoed the British Army’s request for 2,000 extra troops.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article6211080.ece
The plan now is for the British to hand over combat operations in Helmand province to the USA. The British will reduce their presence to three battalions. Two for training and one as an emergency reserve for the Afghan army.
This is-effectively-the same story as Basra.

I had predicted-erroneously-that the UK would be in combat operations in their bit of Afghanistan fro the decades it will take to deafeat that insurgency.

Now-thanks to Michael Smith’s scoop-we know that the British are preparing to leave the field of battle.
The three battalions will be held up as evidence of a significant and continuing British deployment in Helmand at present.
The UK current has 8, 300 the new plan will see that reduced to around 2,000.
No one is seriously suggesting that the security situation in Helmand is improving.
Quite simply the British government has decided to pull out of Afghanistan as much as it can possibly do so at the moment.
Some time in 2010 or 2011 the training job will be deemed to be done and those spiffing chaps in the Afghan national army will not require the emergency reserve battalion.
This will, of course, all be tosh.
Britain’s power play in this part of the world-where the British army fought never ending battles with the Pasthun tribesmen and blocked the march south of the Czar’s forces to give the Russians the warm water port they craved was styled “the great game”.
Only great powers could play the Great Game.
What is clear now is that Britain, post Blair, can no longer afford to take part in this game.
The retreat from empire had been long.
No amount of victory parades through British towns will disguise the reality of British defeat and British inability to pay the price in such foreign operations.
Since the formation of the British state the army has played pivotal role in shaping the society.
The British Army also was a dominant feature in Irish life in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

As I write this another British soldier has died from an IED blast in Helmand province.
He was a member of what remains of the Black watch.
The Black Watch is Britain’s last truly tribal regiment.
In previous generations the battalions of “Pontius Pilate’s bodyguard” raised from around Perth were as clannish as the Pasthun.
The British Army is heading-under new defence cuts-to have a regular strength of under 100,000.
At this stage the British army starts to lose critical mass.
The garrison in Basra airfield towards the end wasn’t large enough to defend itself, but it didn’t need to.
Firstly, they had cut a deal with the Shia militias to leave them in peace in Basra airbase while the Mehdi army boys got on with the serious job of beheading women for wearing short skirts.
Then the US Marines and the Iraqi Army came down from Baghdad and re-took the city while the British hunkered down in the airbase.
As the British army starts to look only fit for home defence most of the UK’s defence budget over the next twenty years will go on two aircraft carriers and the replacement for trident.
The aircraft carriers will have no planes or escort ships and the successor to Trident wont
Have any targets to fire at.

None of this makes any sense-which is probably the most disconcerting aspect of this entire sad story.

The British army’s next war-which may last as long as the Northern war-will be the Yorkshirestan insurgency
I keep coming back to American philosopher Will Durrant’s observation that:

“Before great civilisations are destroyed from without they first destroy themselves from within.”
The current treatment of Gurkha veterans smacks of political elite that has lost its moral compass.

I was born two years after Suez the final wake up call that the UK was now part of a wider American imperium.
A mere fifty years later and the reality of Britain’s atrophied armed forces cannot be hidden by the acquisition of two aircrafts carriers (aircraft not included) or a ballistic missile system which is effectively controlled by the Americans.
Pakistan has an independent nuclear deterrent Britain does not.
Britain now struggles to permanently deploy a force of 10,000.
At the end of the Great War Britain fielded an army of seven million men.
These are uncomfortable realities for people reared to have a warm fuzzy feeling about the certainty of British military power.
The days of Westminster being able to  independently deliver major violence on the battlefield are gone.
That is a brutal truth and no amount of new labour spin or marching around Ibrox by the Royal Marines will conceal the fact that Britain is no longer a player in the top league.
Now that is a prediction I am confident to make.

Exclusive

By Phil Mac Giolla Bhain

Donegal TD Joe McHugh has welcomed news that the  ‘Show racism the red card’ has indicated its intention to focus on stamping out anti-Irish racism, which is currently a feature of Scottish football.

“Last winter Hamilton FC player James McCarthy was a victim of anti-Irish abuse at a number of SPL football grounds, including at Ibrox where the famine song was directed at him during two Rangers v Hamilton FC fixtures.” Said Deputy McHugh who had raised the issue of the Irish international Aiden McGeady of Glasgow Celtic has also been a victim of some anti-Irish racism on the terraces. Deputy McHugh submitted a question to Foreign Affairs Minister Micheál Martin TD and with Sports Minister Martin Cullen TD on a number of occasions over the course of this season.

“I am pleased that the charity ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ has decided to prioritise tackling anti-Irish racism on Scottish terraces.”

“Ged Grebby of ‘Show Racism the Red Card’ is to be commended for taking this courageous step. What is unfortunate, however, is that the Irish government did not see fit to act on this matter more promptly last winter.” Said the Donegal TD.

“Aiden McGeady is one of the important players on Giovanni Trappatoni’s Irish side, and he will be a key player for us in South Africa if we qualify for World Cup 2010. James McCarthy will be an important player for us in the coming years, and we have a duty to protect them”said McHugh.

The new campaign  by SRTRC was also welcomed by the FAI.

A spokesman for the FAI stated today that “This is a very positive development and we commend Show Racism the Red Card for leading the way in combating anti-Irish racism in Scottish soccer. We have an excellent working relationship with the organisation and we have every confidence that they will be successful in this campaign.”

SRTRC national director Ged Grebby will be attending his first Old Firm match this Saturday at Ibrox to see the scale of the problem as first hand.

Exclusive

By Phil Mac Giolla Bhain

Ged Grebby the national director of “Show racism The Red card” today hit out at the fact that a CD containing the racist “Famine song” was on sale on Ebay.

In an exclusive interview Grebby stated that:

“Show Racism the Red Card condemns the famine song as racist and we call on Ebay to stop the distribution of this song of hate.”

Grebby also revealed that anti-Irish racism in Scottish soccer would be receiving a greater level of attention from the organisation in the future. Grebby also revealed that SRTRC would be embarking on a consultation process with experts and stakeholders to best ascertain the most productive way forward in tackling Anti-Irish racism in Scottish soccer.

This statement comes on the heels of criticism levelled at SRTRC for their apparent lack of activity on this issue by ex-ROI U21 international and former SRTRC employee Kieron Brady.

Brady, who played for Sunderland in the 1990s is Glasgow born but had declared for the Republic, called on James McCarthy and Aidan McGeady to have nothing to do with SRTRC.

Brady stated that, in his opinion, SRTRC had, effectively, done nothing on the issue of anti-Irish racism in Scottish soccer.

I contacted Brady in the wake of this new development. Brady was unequivocal in his welcoming of SRTRC’s new approach to Anti-Irish racism in Scottish Soccer.

“It is most welcome if SRTRC are intimating a desire to highlight the racist abuse of both players and by extension the Irish community in Scotland. James and Aiden have every legal and moral right to self-identify and it is encouraging if the body remitted to confront such issues are showing a preparedness to support and sympathise with the players and what they have been compelled to endure. Both players are ‘home’ they are not ‘in the wrong fucking country’; they like so many others have the right to see themselves as Irish, irrespective of where they were born.

People throughout the globe have a national identity or duality that is a fusion of factors and if steps can be taken to oppose the profound opposition of many in Scotland regarding the Irish community then it can only be beneficial in assisting to eradicate those who are enveloped with such hostility. I would hope that throughout the close season SRTRC can liase with clubs, supporters groups and the footballing authorities to endeavour to impress upon them that James and Aiden are replicating what hundreds of footballers globally have done, by opting to play for a country that is outwith their nation of birth and that these players can operate within their working environment free from anti-Irish racism. Hopefully such dialogue can lead to there being more of a general acceptance of people and communities being permitted to be overtly and openly proud about any aspect of their identity.”