Galway Advertiser 2006/2006_08_10/GA_1008_E1_026.pdf 

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www.galwayadvertiser.ie

August 10 2006

The Thursday Column
BY JEFF O'CONNELL

Wife withdraws complaint about husband she claimed threatened to kill her
A 31-years-old man who had been remanded in custody last week after being charged with threatening to kill his wife, was granted bail at Galway District Court this week after the woman withdrew her complaint. Patrick Ward, 7 Ard Alainn, Ballybane, Galway, was arrested at Kiltulla, Athenry, at 8.35pm on July 31 last by Garda Evelyn Ryan, and taken into custody. He was later charged with dangerous driving and drunken driving at Kiltulla on that date. Ward was further charged with contravening a Protection Order at Caherdaly, Ardrahan, earlier on the same date, and with threatening to kill Winnie Ward. In court this week, Winnie Ward gave evidence she wished to withdraw the complaint she had made to gardai on July 31 about the accused. She told Judge Conal Gibbons she had made her decision freely and without any pressure being placed on her by the accused or anyone representing him. Defence solicitor Valerie Corcoran said her client was applying for bail. Inspector Marie Skehill said she was not objecting to the bail application as the main reason the accused had been remanded in custody last week was because of the charge relating to the breach of the Protection Order and his wife had now withdrawn her complaint. Judge Conal Gibbons remanded Ward in custody with consent to bail on his own surety of 150 to appear before Harristown District Court this Friday, August 11. Bail was granted on condition he reside at 1 Camilaun Park, Galway, and sign on daily at Galway Garda Station.

Neighbourhood Bully
Bob Dylan's politics have always been a bit of a mystery. Despite having been labeled and lauded a 'folk singer' or a 'protest singer' from his early days, his overtly political songs - including 'Masters of War', "A Hard Rains A-Gonna Fall', 'With God on our Side', and, of course, 'Blowin' in the Wind' represent only a handful of the hundreds he's written throughout his long career. Dylan's subsequent political references are, in the main, oblique, ambiguous, and, after his well-known conversion to Christianity, heavily tinged with religious imagery. A song like 'Slow Train Coming' from his first 'Christian' album is 'political' only in the sense that, say, Isaiah or Jeremiah are 'political'. Like William Blake, his are the 'politics of eternity'. But in 1983, on an album called 'Infidels', he wrote a powerful and controversial political song called 'Neighbourhood Bully'. The background is worth noting before looking at the song itself. After several albums of strongly Christian material, some of it as good as anything he'd ever written, but some also containing a number of clunkingly didactic songs, he went into the studio and recorded some of the very finest songs of his entire career, including a masterpiece, 'Blind Willie McTell'. The cover of 'Infidels' tells a story too. It shows Dylan with a close-cropped beard, wearing a yarmulke, and standing at the Western, or Wailing, Wall in the old city of Jerusalem. At it turned out, he was in Jerusalem in the autumn of 1983 for the belated bar mitzvah of his son Jesse. 'Neighbourhood Bully' is a pulsating, hard-rock number that never lets up from start to finish: "Well, the neighbourhood bully, he's just one man, His enemies say he's on their land. They got him outnumbered about a million to one, He's got no place to escape to, no place to run. He's the neighbourhood bully." If you don't know what the song is about yet, the next few verses make it perfectly clear: "The neighbourhood bully just lives to survive, He's criticized and condemned just for being alive. He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin, He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in. "When he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized, Old women condemned him, said he should apologize. When he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad. The bombs were meant for him, he was supposed to feel bad. "The chances are against it, and the odds are slim That he'll live by the rules the world makes for him, 'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back And a license to kill him given out to every manic." Dylan's return to the 'protest song' genre is not only a startling and uncompromising defense of Israel against its enemies and critics, but also provides a snap-shot of Jewish history up to and including the contemporary dangers faced by the Israeli state. Music critics and many fans have either preferred to quietly ignore the song or, like Nigel Williamson in his Rough Guide to Bob Dylan, describe it as 'a stinker'. Certainly it's an uncomfortable song, perhaps even more so now then when it was first recorded. I've just finished a book by political commentator Michael Gove called Celsius 7/7 - the title is a riposte to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 - which examines the rise of radical Islamism, and the way a combination of anti-American and anti-Israel feeling on the radical and the not-so-radical left has resulted in the scapegoating of Israel and very muted criticism - if any - of those groups and states whose declared intention is its ultimate destruction. Gove writes of Israel: "Israel is ... a nation state determined to live behind secure borders at a time when the fashion, particularly among radicals, is to dismantle nation states and erect transnational structures. Israel is also prepared, in order to defend its borders, to use military force, to pursue its enemies ... with all the means at its disposal, and will not relegate the security of its people to second place behind the need to observe the sensitivities of outside judges ... or make excuses for those who plot its destruction." Dylan again: "Now his holiest books have been trampled upon, No contract he signed was worth what it was written on. He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth, Took sickness and disease and turned it into health. "What's anybody indebted to him for? Nothin', they say. He just likes to cause war ... Neighbourhood bully, standing on the hill, Running out the clock, time standing still, Neighbourhood bully." Finally, Gove: "Above all, in its desire to see its people safe and prosperous, Israel is not prepared to forfeit moral clarity to satisfy those who prefer moral relativism." These are difficult, troubled times. Maybe we do, after all, need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.

Cancer and dialysis patients top priority for HSE transport
BY MARY O'CONNOR The Health Service Executive West spent 2.8 million last year
Marques de Riscal Red Rose White

Was 10.99 N ow 8.99

Official Wine to the Ryder Cup

transporting patients to and from hospital appointments in the region. While the health authority is not under any statutory obligation to do this, it provides the service, according to a spokesperson. Due to budgetary constraints it says it has to limit this support and prioritise oncology and

dialysis patients, patients with acute lower limb injuries and transplant patients. All applicants must have a full medical card. "The support given by the National Ambulance Service in this area is already extensive. It grew from 9,422,761 in 2004 to 11,231,239 in 2005. This yearly growth in the

demand for patient transport is unsustainable and it is affecting the capacity of our services to respond to accident and emergency services which is our core and primary activity. "Depending on the availability of resources, the ambulance service does provide some support to patients

travelling to HSE facilities. This is done on a discretionary basis and can be withdrawn at any time. Examples are provision of an ambulance, provision of a taxi, a contribution towards the cost of travel either by bus or taxi and a contribution towards mileage expenses."

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