Blowing the whistle on 'Strasbourg Friday'

Radio Review: Hans-Peter Martin isn't the sort of co-worker you ask to clock in for you or help you pull a sickie. The Austrian MEP has spotted that the EU is one great big gravy train and he's on a mission to pull up the tracks.

Martin explained on Liveline (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) that it's possible for MEPs to trouser up to €100,000 in expenses (a lot of it without receipts) and that's on top of their already generous salaries. When Fine Gael MEP John Cushnahan came on the line it all developed into a right ding-dong and callers to the programme certainly felt the whistle-blowing Austrian was the victor.

One of the nice little earners open to MEPs that Martin is particularly exercised about is "Strasbourg Friday". The parliament doesn't sit on Friday, so there's no need for anyone to be there, but for years that didn't stop nearly 150 MEPs from signing in early in the morning, getting their €262 daily allowance and legging it. Since Martin and his derailing buddies got on the case, including being there with cameras to video those MEPs signing in, the number is down to 30 people.

"On that Friday you signed in at 7.14 a.m., then you got into a taxi," said Martin to Cushnahan. His forensic detailing of what goes on - all perfectly legally - was fascinating and sickening at the same time. Then, he said, Cushnahan took a 235- kilometre taxi ride to a low-cost airport.

"How does he expect me to get to Limerick? Am I going to do a Doctor Spock?" responded Cushnahan, who made Limerick sound about as easy to get to as Pluto. Then it got really nasty.

"He's a liar," shouted Cushnahan, who during the programme made much of his role as a global peacemaker, "an absolute liar . . . and a malicious, twisted individual."

"I feel sorry for you that you use these words," said the ever-rational Martin, in the icy voice of a man who feels sure he's got it right.

The stray comments usually heard on Paddy Gorman's programmes are usually of the "and then the community centre burnt down variety", not "oh look, there's a camel", but in Look at the Camels (RTÉ Radio 1, Wednesday) the man with the hat was in the United Arab Emirates interviewing members of the Irish community. He left his usual arsenal of questions ("And how long have you been separated?"; "And is that lonely?") at home, but the results, bar one interview with 91-year-old Mike Daly, were equally depressing.

One Irish guy in Abu Dhabi unwittingly summed up why expat living in a money-motivated bubble sounds soulless to anyone other than the expats themselves. At lunchtime he sits down with all nationalities, he said, his voice genuinely brimming with enthusiasm, and it's great because "we all have the same things to talk about: pensions, currency conversion and our next trips away from here".

"The lifestyle is brilliant, ladies drink free," two young women teachers chirped. Apparently, women get free drinks in bars to encourage the men in - like live bait - not that this pair, who would doubtless consider the abaya-wearing native women oppressed, seemed to see it that way.

Mike Daly had a much more interesting story to tell. Driving around in his Jag - "I got a driver this year, I thought at 91 it was time to stop driving" - he pointed out his sheik pal's houses in an accent as north Cork as the day he left. He arrived in the Gulf 48 years ago when there was nothing there but wide-open desert and he set himself up as building contractor, laying pipes, bringing in water, building the new city. That was after being run out of Ireland in 1935 for his Blueshirt connections, a stint in the Palestine police force, and several other colourful derring-do type jobs. He was worth an entire programme to himself.

On Thursday, Marian Finucane (RTÉ Radio 1, weekdays) had an item on another subject we're all about to get overheated about: electronic voting. In his report, Fergus Sweeney made it sound about as interesting as a boiled potato, but it wasn't the first report on the subject this week.

On This Week (RTÉ Radio 1, Sunday), an Indian journalist gave the story a bit of perspective. Indian voters, all 670 million of them, have had absolutely no difficulty changing over to electronic voting. What it means is that the sub-continent will get election results in a couple of days instead of weeks. Before push-button voting, some count centres had to wait for elephants to arrive from remote areas to deliver ballot boxes, but Indians aren't whining about losing out on such picturesque happenings, unlike our own tally men, who bang on about the loss of draughty count centres. Though maybe after all those revelations about how darn lucrative it is to be an MEP, European election voters will have more on their minds in the coming weeks than the technology of the thing.