This week it’s all about Barbie, bombs and a load of old bullion

DID you get to do the Barbienheimer thing yet? Despite the strikes in Hollywood at the moment, the film industry seems to have stumbled upon its first proper big hit since Covid, with patrons flooding to the cinemas dressed either in pink for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie or in porkpie hats for Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. 

True to form, I opted for the three-hour psycho-nuclear epic about the scientist responsible for the Manhattan Project. It was a bit exhausting. The whole movie is almost overwhelming in its scale and feels like a relentless three-hour advert for the best TV series never made. I found it hard to settle into the characters or really find myself investing in the story, in a real emotional way. 

Despite my pretensions, maybe it’s time to admit that I’m just more of a Barbie man, deep down. 

Reserving judgement

I HAD to double-take, then triple-take, during the week when I saw the breaking story about the far-right National Party and their gold reserves. The party released a statement saying a ‘considerable quantity in gold’ was removed from their safe vault in Dublin and gardaí were investigating the issue.

It seems that gold forms the main bulk of the Party’s reserves in the event of ‘a collapse in the value of the fiat currency’. 

And I thought I was being cautious throwing a few quid in the credit union!

These guys seem to be ready for the end of days, which is hardly surprising, I suppose, given their take on the world in general. Maybe they’ve been watching too many three-hour epics about atom bombs. 

You’d think they’d be able to win a few more electoral seats based on their little stash, however. 

Still, a highly unusual affair and almost hard to believe when you first read about it. ‘Is this actually true or just a load of bullion?’ I found myself asking. 

Listen to the locals

I’M sure I’m not the only one who was utterly shocked to hear about the absolutely mindless and brutal assault on the American tourist Stephen Termini on Dublin’s Talbot Street last week. 

My first reaction to it was fairly typical I’d imagine – one of absolute rage. Who are these little scumbags, I thought to myself? Lock them up and throw away the key! And lock up the parents too, while you’re at it.

This is what I call the ‘drivetime radio texter phase’ of my reaction to any news story. It’s the ‘fight or flight’ part of my brain that needs to be allowed to go through what it needs to go through before the rational, civilised part of me kicks in to take over. Most of the time, anyway. It’s the reason we give kids things called time-outs.

The problem these days is that we have social media to immediately take these moments of anger and amplify them. You send out a tweet in rage and your own anger fuels the hatred of others, and on and on, until the Earth is a smouldering husk and Elon Musk is the only human being left, sitting there in a post-apocalyptic desert drawing pointless Xs into the dust.

There are many things you can say about the assault on Stephen Termini. 

It’s true that this is an absolutely disgraceful thing to happen to a man who came to this country in peace to visit the land of his ancestors for the first time. 

It’s true that it’s absolutely shocking that a group of young kids would carry out such an act, completely unprovoked. It’s true that there has been a new edge in Dublin’s city centre, and in many of our towns, since Covid, and that there are simply not enough gardaí on the streets to deal with the epidemic of anti-social activity.

But it’s not true to say that sending in a load of cops heavy-handedly is going to suddenly transform the north inner city into downtown Dalkey. 

I’ve lived close to this part of town for around twenty years and have seen all the good and bad elements of it. In recent years, there has been a process of gentrification going on where hipsters and rich technology workers have moved into communities that have been overlooked for generations. 

And the communities themselves are feeling more and more disenfranchised.

I have thought about this a lot recently. When I was a kid growing up in Clonakilty, all students in the community college had a more or less equal chance at getting a decent education and being ambitious about their lives, whether they were the kids of lawyers or the kids who happened to grow up in council houses. Simplistic, perhaps, but this is more or less true. This is the social contract we grew up with and it’s absolutely vital in a functioning democracy. 

I live about a 10-minute walk from where this attack took place. I don’t feel unsafe walking the streets. But if anything like this happened close to my house, the community here would rally to demand change from those in institutional power. We simply wouldn’t stand for it. 

It’s clear that communities like those in the north inner city don’t feel that this contract applies to them. They need more official support, from both the government and the council; a more empathetic approach that begins to sow the seeds of self-respect that these kids clearly lack. 

As well as proper policing, local communities need to be empowered, supported and listened to. That’s hard work. It’s slow, unglamorous and not necessarily popular but it’s what we need to do. Only then can we start to feel safe on our own streets.