Republican News · Thursday 9 January 1996

[An Phoblacht]

The `Year of the Rat' ends

BY MARY NELIS

Have you ever noticed how as one year ends and another begins, the popular press engages in an astrological orgy of star-gazing? I don't mean looking at those celestial bodies in the heavens, but rather looking at the mundane bodies on earth foolish enough to believe. for example, that if they were born under the sign of the fish, Pisces, they are two-faced.

Periodically every newspaper and magazine contains pages of printed predictions of what the future holds for us in 1997. According to statistics, most readers of today's print media turn to the star pages first. This is hardly surprising, given what passes for investigative journalism , and the limitations on real news in today's world.

These ridiculous planetary predictions adorning the pages of various papers are called horoscopes and it seems those involved in this journalistic junket make loads of money. It appears the future is a multi-million pound industry. It was while pursuing some aspects of this industry that I was literally star-struck by a headline in the Daily Mail, that bastion of Tory righteousness and ruling-class moral values. It announced that a rare and special comet, with the equally rare name of Halle Bopp, is hurtling towards us. The MAIL proclaimed that this is the comet of opportunity to make peace your absolute priority for a perfect New Year. Halle Bopp couldn't have come at a better time. If there is a remote chance that John Major, himself an avid reader of the DAILY MAIL, may just get this message he may make peace in Ireland, rather than Tory survival, his priority for the New Year.

Now readers may believe that John Major, the architect of the destruction of the Peace Process in Ireland, is beyond even heavenly intervention. And you could be right. It is clear now that the policy pursued by John Major and his government from the very first hour of the IRA cease-fire, was to destroy any potential for its success.

We also know that Major used the peace process to engage in sordid underhand deals with the Unionists to save his political skin. However, no amount of shady deals with the dirty dancers of Drumcree, Paisley and Trimble, has resolved the more serious problem for Major, that posed by the enemy within - the Tory Government.

As elections and Halle Bopp hurtle towards us, it is wonderfully ironic to see John falling victim once more to the lunatic right of the Tory Party. For even as he hoisted his glib election banner of `family values', and purges on political correctness, his own administration was falling apart.

Such is the disarray within the Tory Government that Major has been forced to stop navel gazing and look upwards to the stars. For it is to the heavenly bodies that Tory spin doctors H and C Saatchi have directed part of their #7 million pre-election advertising rescue bid.

According to the DAILY MAIL, thousands of potential voters are about to receive aTory horoscope, or rather horrorscope, assuring them of a brilliant future and predicting how 1997 could turn out.

It is a sign of desperation, when stupid and corrupt men still cling to power believing that what they could not achieve by treachery and deception they are now about to win by astrological forces.

If readers stop laughing long enough, they may recall that Major is not the first political leader to put his faith in the stars. The Darth Vader of international terrorism and patron of Star Wars, Ronald Reagun, regularly consulted his personal astrologer and read his daily horoscope. Like Major, he too engaged in shady deals and secret wars. His fall from power was of meteoric proportions and astrologers throughout the world predicted tidings of great joy.

As Halle Bopp hurtles towards the earth, one can only hope that No 10 Downing Street will suddenly impede its progress. If that happens, then Halle Bopp may indeed be a comet of opportunity, and peace.

The Year of the Rat ends on 6 February.

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