Discussion: rogues, crooks and gombeen men

What was the book? A supposedly-fictional "The Taoiseach", by Peter Cunnigham (I think), which I have read, not great literature but a close to true and fairly gripping story, or something from the non-fiction section? Fianna Fail have been a horribly corrupt party for all of my lifetime. At least some of the current crop of ministers have been through college, but it's still party before morals...

People still like Charlie and Bertie. I can't think of anyone caught up in a tax-evasion or corruption scandal who hasn't been re-elected (sometimes top of the pollls) in the following elections. It's not just FF either, there's Michael Lowry, ex-Fine Gael... sometimes I'm happy I emigrated...

PS look up the speeches of Plunkitt of Tammany Hall, if you don't know them already. They're beautifully honest:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2810

It's 'Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change 1970-2000' by Roy Foster. I'm halfway through it but already have the distinct impression that he doesn't like Charles Haughey very much.

Ok, The People still like Charlie. People with any integrity don't.

I can recommend the non-fictional "Haughey's Millions" by Colm Keena, or "Thanks a million, big fella" by Sam Smyth, or "This great little nation" by Gene Kerrigan. I don't think a fictional account could really do justice to the complex web Haughey wove through many decades of fooling most of the people, most of the time.

...there's plenty more I could recommend...having spent a lot of my childhood in Ireland i finally took to reading to understand the changes i saw. The more you read, the more rediculous the country's history seems! Still, it's come a long, long way since 10 years ago

I thought it would make interesting reading because I knew an awful lot would have changed since my visit there - 20 years ago this week - and wanted to find out more about the background to this.

That visit was actually quite eye-opening in some unexpected ways; I arrived in the country on the day the Guildford Four were released, and the fact that they returned as national heroes was an indicator that there were perspectives on the conflict in Northern Ireland that you definitely didn't get through the (strongly British-influenced) Australian media.

(It was also memorable for fronting up to an event and discovering I had two left shoes, and for discovering that there is an upper limit to the strength of a wind that it is possible to run into, and 150 km/h is beyond it).

Yes, ridiculous place. Still, the British could get the Guildford Four sent to jail, but c/wouldn't get a conviction against the torturers and fraudsters that concocted the case.

What did the Aussies think of it? An inconsequential mistake?