Woe is me!

national | environment | other press Tuesday February 03, 2009 01:26 by Green Gobshite - Twee Greens

Man, I ain't green enough!

Oh Shell, how often must I venture into the wilds of Erris???

I arrived in the Broadhaven Bay Hotel at 11.30 today in good time for the Funny Forum. The day did not begin well. The first thing that assaulted my sensitive soul was this dreadful piece of social art called 'Shell's Begging Bowl' which uses a REAL toilet bowl attached to a 'Vote Fianna Fáil' poster with Dara Calleary on the back of it.

The first person I saw when I sidled into the hotel foyer was that Maura Harrington creature; she did not look kindly on me - but then she hasn't since I dropped the Rossport Five poster. She doesn't seem to appreciate the political difficulty of being a Fianna Fáil greenhorn. When I tried to present a friendly green face, she told me I had 'neither guts, balls nor integrity'. That was not a nice comment. She then went on to talk about playing 'hardball' with Shell - how can I when I don't have any - oooh!

The day continued to go downhill. I waited an hour for Joe Brosnan to arrive, then we waited for Ó Cuiv who turned up about 1-ish. We had eats and started the Funny Forum around 2.30pm where we bored the pants off each other with presentations by ourselves, NPWS, MCC, Royal Dutch - all the usual suspects with nobody to greenwash. No Shell to Sea, no Pobal Chill Chomáin, no Pobal le Chéile - nobody but a stray quarry owner and a female 'from the Parish' looking for money for a soccer club. The terrible interminableness went on to 6pm when I escaped - and there was that dreadful Begging Bowl again! As I scuttled out of the hotel, one of the natives was singing a dirge in that delightful language that Shell doesn't speak - the only words I could catch myself were 'Shell' and 'airgead'.

I really don't know how much more of this I can take - my cabinet colleagues laugh and point at me, teling me to 'sort it out'; the indigenes are revolting; the AG tells me I can do sweet FA; Shell kicks my ass ...

The only thing I can do I suppose is rubberstamp whatever's left - Shell's '2009 Environment Management Plan' (same as last year which didn't happen). I've already 'done a Frank Fahey' in exempting the landfall installation from planning so, if I rubberstamp everything, I need never go back there - BLISS!

Then those scary policepeople in epaulettes who were in the room today can liaise with the former head policeperson in Mayo, John Carey - who now works for Shell - and they can call in the navy (again), the army and Shell's private security goons to do whatever it takes to secure Shell's beach-head and I can stay within the Pale uttering twee green things about climate change.

And I need never go back to Erris ever again. It wouldn't be a nice cycling destination anyway with nasty petrochemical complexes upsetting ones greenness. Not nice, but really, nothing to do wth me.

Inisboffin is much nicer ...