10.29.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:04 pm by
Blogging
I’m too depressed to blog. As my pregnancy progresses I become more tuned into a universal spirit and all I detect is suffering. Mainly caused by men. Margaret Hassan, the people in Falujah, the starving in Africa all haunt me. Not to mention the failure to buy shares in Google. And the struggle to pick curtain material for my new house. And the fear that my child will be a girl and I will inflict my ideals upon her and ruin her life. And the nagging self doubt that I’ll never summon sufficient motivation to demand my own column in a newspaper. I’m thinking of resorting to Shen therapy.
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10.27.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:59 pm by
Leave them to Darwin I say
The current storm has been predicted for the last 24 hours. Therefore this guy should have been left to his own devices on grounds of utter stupidity.Our taxes pay to save him?? What was he doing there??
“A man was airlifted to safety by a Coast Guard helicopter after he became stranded on the Great South Wall at the entrance to Dublin Port today.”
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Posted in Uncategorized at 9:52 pm by
McCreevy and the Commission
As Barosso withdraws his team, I love this quote from Jim Higgins which says that Charlie will be alright:
“He is 100 per cent safe. He impressed the Commission and had unanimous support from all groups except the communists, which is to be expected,” Mr Higgins said.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 4:40 pm by
Lever Brothers Lie
It’s ridiculous. I interchange with all the major brands; persil, aeriel, daz, surf, bold. It’s all crap. None of them can remove food stains at 40 degrees, even 60. I’ve had to resort to Super Concentrated Vanish Oxi Action Gel Fabric Stain Remover. Will have to report on its success or failure in a few days. Even their little soap applied prior to a wash doesn’t work. In the face of the blatant lies told minute after minute on TV ads, perhaps I should resort to the Advertising Standards Authority. It’s really irritating putting up with those over smiling stunned supposed housewives propagating such untruths. And then Biddy from Glenroe says they’ll give you your money back. Sure.
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10.21.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 10:46 am by
Dunsink
Love this letter in today’s IT
Madam, – After recent confrontations between gardaà and Travellers, and damage caused to greens on a Fingal County Council golf course, gardaà have been searching Dunsink Lane for implements used in these disturbances.
Do they have reason to believe they will find weapons of grass destruction? – Yours, etc., tee hee
On the substantive issue of Dunsink, on balance, I have lost sympathy with the travellers. True, Fingal Co. Council completely mismanaged the situation. Putting a halting site beside a dump was unfair in the first place. I have no time for the middle classes using their clout to stop halting sites in nicer areas and I think there should be far more sites BUT the travellers simply do not help their own case by engaging in criminal activities. Aside from illegal dumping, fireworks, theiving of all kinds (like what exactly was the purpose of that guy’s visit to the house in Mayo last week and why was his son at the back door when he was at the front door…) there is also the issue of the fact that they pay no taxes even when they are engaged in legitimate business.
The conditions in which they live are appalling and the mortality rate among children is shocking. The councils should be providing better facilities but ultimately traveller families do choose to live in those conditions as ’settled’ housing is available to them. And I don’t buy the line that they have some inalienable right to their lifestyle (ie living in a caravan on the side of the road – governments weren’t providing halting sites for them 50 years ago). Generations ago there was a living to be made in itinerant seasonal labour. As a child I remember them coming around to pick potatoes etc. But that work is gone and therefore that life is gone. In the same way that many farmers have been forced to leave the land due to changing lifestyles so too will travellers have to accept that their way of life is over and now they have a simple choice. Raise their children in a safe environment or demand the right to raise them in squalor. Why any mother would choose the latter is beyond me.
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10.19.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:41 pm by
Bush and Faith
If you want to be freaked, follow PO’Neill’s links to the NYT magazine article on Bush and faith. Here’s my favourite so far (only on page2)
In the Oval Office in December 2002, the president met with a few ranking senators and members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats. In those days, there were high hopes that the United States-sponsored ”road map” for the Israelis and Palestinians would be a pathway to peace, and the discussion that wintry day was, in part, about countries providing peacekeeping forces in the region. The problem, everyone agreed, was that a number of European countries, like France and Germany, had armies that were not trusted by either the Israelis or Palestinians. One congressman — the Hungarian-born Tom Lantos, a Democrat from California and the only Holocaust survivor in Congress — mentioned that the Scandinavian countries were viewed more positively. Lantos went on to describe for the president how the Swedish Army might be an ideal candidate to anchor a small peacekeeping force on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Sweden has a well-trained force of about 25,000. The president looked at him appraisingly, several people in the room recall.
”I don’t know why you’re talking about Sweden,” Bush said. ”They’re the neutral one. They don’t have an army.”
Lantos paused, a little shocked, and offered a gentlemanly reply: ”Mr. President, you may have thought that I said Switzerland. They’re the ones that are historically neutral, without an army.” Then Lantos mentioned, in a gracious aside, that the Swiss do have a tough national guard to protect the country in the event of invasion.
Bush held to his view. ”No, no, it’s Sweden that has no army.”
The room went silent, until someone changed the subject.
A few weeks later, members of Congress and their spouses gathered with administration officials and other dignitaries for the White House Christmas party. The president saw Lantos and grabbed him by the shoulder. ”You were right,” he said, with bonhomie. ”Sweden does have an army.”
or this one
And for those who don’t get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ”You think he’s an idiot, don’t you?” I said, no, I didn’t. ”No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don’t care. You see, you’re outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don’t read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it’s good for us. Because you know what those folks don’t like? They don’t like you!” In this instance, the final ”you,” of course, meant the entire reality-based community. (PO’Neill explains the RBC reference) (which I now think I will adopt has my identity – I’m a proud member of the RBC)
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Posted in Irish Politics at 9:26 pm by
Restless
One of the weird things about pregnancy are the energy swings. At 5pm today I practically collapsed into bed. I didn’t sleep but needed about 30 mins of completely not moving. Now I’m pacing around doing unnecessary housework. M. told me to go and pray or something. I thought I should blog and I keep feeling guilty about not blogging about poor Bigley. That one really got to me and the only reason Blair shouldn’t have to resign is because it would give ‘comfort’ as they call it to the terrorists. But other than that Bigley’s death is on his conscience. But the other weird thing is that every time I think about poor Bigley I can’t help but remember that Bigley was also Jane Bennett’s suitor in Pride And Prejudice and a bit of a buffoon.
Anyway, American readers, are you ashamed that your elections should really have international supervision because you are incapable of running them properly?
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Posted in Uncategorized at 10:54 am by
Leon and the chinese
Regular readers may recall my trip avec Leon to Dublin’s “chinatown”. (see last paragraph). Today’s IT provides a new twist.
“A Chinese restaurant in Moore Street, Dublin, has been closed down by High Court order after complaints by a food safety officer that it represented a “grave danger” to public health.”
This better not be the one he brought me to.
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10.18.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:14 am by
Conor Lenihan
Conor was appointed as Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs last week. He’s in charge of the Overseas Aid Budget which Bertie Ahern at the UN as part of our lick-arse campaign to get on the Security Council promised would be 0.7% of our GNP. Bertie forgot that this wasn’t some typical Irish style election promise which no one in their wildest dreams would expect him to keep. So when Conor arrived in his new office last week and stated the blindingly obvious, which was that there was no way the budget would make the 0.7 and might stick at 0.4, he got himself into a lot of trouble. The weird thing is that by stating it in such a blunt fashion, such a row was created that now the government will actually be forced into keeping the commitment. If he had shut-up and said nothing, the target would simply have been allowed to quietly fail. The question is: Is that what he intended? It’s impossible to tell, particularly as the Drapier column described Conor on Saturday in these terms:
“Conor, it should be said, is almost universally regarded in Leinster House as affable but mad – not raving loony mad but certainly well short of a full Meccano set.
He has a fluency which would grace any mart in the west of Ireland. He is chirpy, jovial and committed. You wouldn’t hesitate to put him in charge of the best of kiddies’ parties. You could easily imagine him as the MC in a better-than-average circus.
Bertie, of course did neither of the above. Instead, he chose to put Conor in charge of our relationship with the Third World.
Shortly after Conor’s appointment Pat Rabbitte spoke eloquently in the Dáil about the reverberations which the appointment would cause the length and breadth of sub-Saharan Africa.
But even the prescient Pat could never have imagined that within a week Conor would be condemned by all the aid agencies bar none, rebuked by the Tánaiste and provoked the diplomatic equivalent of an RPG from the secretary general of the United Nations.”
I know Conor and the above description is quite accurate. But how hilarious that it should be stated so in our paper of record. I hope Conor wasn’t hurt.
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10.13.04
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:46 pm by
Soccer match
Faroe Islands, not Faro.
Roy Keane did play.
Key words: hollow victory; lack of discipline; poor second half; indulgent passing
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