Events, dear boy events

I had piece ready to go about a theory I have relating to Waterford and telly watching, when sitting in my house in Waterford watching the telly I decided against it.  Even before someone sprayed green dye in my hair on Main Street in Tramore, Paddy’s Day 2011 was a big news day.  Still trying to come to terms with whatever it is that’s happened in Japan, we have the decision of the UN to intervene in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and that followed by Gaddafi’s ceasefire.  In the middle of that, we had a very different Saint Patrick’s Day in Washington.  I’m not going to pretend to have a handle on what’s going on in Japan, there’s quite enough people pretending to have a handle on that.  We were told at the start of the week that it wasn’t another Chernobyl and everything should be okay.  Now that reassurance has been downgraded to it’s not another Chernobyl and we don’t know what’s going to happen next. I wish the brave men and women tackling Fukushima well.  It has opened up the whole debate on nuclear power again, just a time when a strange self-styled pragmatic environmentalism has seen a number of states re-engage with nuclear power as an attractive alternative to oil. The polemicists have rushed in to pass judgement, with environmentalists declaring the nuclear argument to be dead.  I noticed Kelvin MacKenzie on Question Time last night dismissing this contention (he reckons British Nuclear facilities are much better than Japanese ones, true to form the former editor of the Sun thinks Britain is the best at everything except when it’s the worst) and Kevin Myers in today’s Independent, and many others I’m sure. We do need energy and in the absence of a comprehensive Green solution, if we don’t go nuclear then we have to turn to that more stable, reliable energy source: oil.  Which brings us to Libya.  That a UN Security Council which includes the People’s Republic of (“don’t mention  It not as though we built a nuclear plant on a fault line and mowed down a peaceful protest. Tiananmen Square”) China voted a resolution calling for military action against a dictator engaged in very public, bloody and perhaps crucially only partially successful repression of his people is genuinely astonishing.  Of course Libya’s oil and gas wealth is a factor in this intervention, Britain and France may have an often unhappy history of jointly policing the Middle East but they may believe that having backed the rebels when success seemed a good bet they now have to get rid of Gaddafi to ensure they will remain doing business in the country.  That’s the cynical view, but it’s also true that the West has to support these spontaneous secular movements or pay the consequences in terms of revitalised dictatorships and new, more radical opposition movements.  Gaddafi’s response, to declare a ceasefire – whatever he considers that to be – opens up a whole other dilemma for the west as set out here by former RAF pilot John Nicol before the ceasefire was actually declared. It again demonstrates that while Gaddafi may be mad, he’s not stupid.  While all this was going at the UN yesterday, I wonder was the US President cursing another series world crises ruining a perfectly good party.  Relations with Ireland may not figure in this Libyan discussion – scratch that, they definitely don’t – but successive holders of the most powerful office in the world genuinely seem to enjoy our saint’s day, and having us around for the craic.  There are worse relationships you could have with the US.  And Enda Kenny came home with the big prize, a visit from the most popular US President (outside the US) since JFK. All the coverage focused on Obama of course but in an extraordinary news day, what struck me the most was the Taoiseach’s speech. It was good. It was very good. It was also confidently delivered. It was a big opportunity for the new Taoiseach and he didn’t fluff his lines. He has a long way to go of course and it won’t be pretty but while he might not be Barack Obama, it wasn’t the speech of a man half of whose frontbench didn’t trust to lead them less than a year ago. Plenty can go wrong yet though. He finished his speech with a claim – which he has to make a reality of course – that Ireland will be great again.  Sometimes you have to start saying it before you can believe it and I thought of the hands trained in Waterford that made the bowl presented to the President yesterday. We’re not completely useless are we?