Jun 14 2006
Fixity of Tenure, Freedom to Sell and Fair Rent
Yesterday, at lunch I walked by An Roinn Iompair and spotted a very sorry looking tricolour; looking like it had been half blown off the flagpole a few days earlier and not been touched.
It wasn’t until much later, when I was on my way home and spotted the flag outside the court in exactly the same state that it dawned on me. They were simply at half mast, but because there was very little wind they were just hanging there, not blowing.
You’d think I would have realised it when I heard that Charlie Haughey had died. But no, obviously the brain wasn’t in gear yesterday.
But Haughey… I dunno. He was pretty much the embodiment of the cute hoor, who finally got caught out with the tribunals, but never really paid the price due to illness.
For those of you interested Crooked Timber have an interesting piece on The Boss, for those of you who couldn’t care less, we’ll move on.
[EDIT Although even if you aren't all that bothered you should still check out Auds post on Charlie and what he meant to a certain section/generation of Irish people. Is it a good thing, or a bad thing, d'you think, that we don't look up to people like that anymore. We're all just so cynical because the politicians have made us that way with their lies and corruption, so we are correct not to idealise them. But at the same time, I do believe there is something in people's nature that makes them want to believe.]
To the trouble Down Under, with Ireland’s rugby players boycotting a certain Indo journalist, leading to a mass exodus by the other media-heads[1] Supposedly this article by Dave Kelly upset some of the players, and they decided they wouldn’t talk to him. Which meant that he was forced to leave the press conferance. And in solidarity the rest of the print and photographic meeja followed suit. One out, all out, as Gerry Thornley in the Irish Times puts it.
Bloody stirring meeja, eh 
Course the very fact that the players now have no media coverage will mean that the press’s side will be reported, and theirs won’t. Maybe it is a tactic to foster unity within the squad, The team agin the world. Or maybe it is just a sense that they were hard done by in that article. Or maybe their upset over losing the first test has made other minor issues into large ones. All of the players interviewed since the first test match have described how they wanted to win more than anything, and are “gutted” because it was stupid errors that threw the victory away.
If they do manage an historic win next Saturday, what’s the bets all this is forgotten.
- are they boycotting the boycotters? ↩
