Susan Hated Literature

I am totally fed up with a lot of the comments about Mary Harney. I realise that as a politician she is fair game. And as a politician who is in charge of the Health Service at a time when it is scandal after scandal after horrendous error she deserves a hell of a lot of criticism.

But I’m fed up about the cheap shots about her appearance and her weight.^[1]

What fucking difference does that make to anything?

To be honest I’ve no clue as to what is going on in the Health service, other than to know it is fucked up, but I do think that Harney should resign. She is the Minister for Health. She is ultimately responsible.

Course the same could be said of Bertie and his shenanigans. It just isn’t something that Irish politicians seem to do, is it? Shower of tossers.

Nevertheless cheap jibes about her physical appearance are just crap and annoying and pointless. What possible difference does it make to how she does her job? If she were stick-thin and anorexic would that make her handling of it any better?

Is it a form of sexism, cause you don’t really see the same amount of jokes being made about overweight male politicians?

Title from this excellent post

An asylum seeker who came to Ireland in 2000, Mr Adebari mused that while he was now Portlaoise’s first citizen, he was not yet an Irish citizen.

“Are you telling us you’re not legal,” Mr Aird interrupted, at which the whole public gallery erupted in laughter.

Okay, so on one hand this is good news. But is it really such good news that we have to point it out as though saying see, look, no racism here?

Bloody^[1] asylum seekers, coming here, bewitching our electorate, getting voted into office, and where are the brown envelopes huh? Where is the corruption? What, no money for favours? What sort of Irish politician is he? Or maybe he is just too much of a cute hoor to be caught out yet.

And also, a voting pact between Fine Gael and Sinn Fein?

Looks like we got ourselves a gubermint. FF in coalition with the Greens.

Newsflash via Damien

So the voting is over, and the counting is over, and bloody FF got in again^[1] Friday morning was not a good time to be around de mudder as the meeja were all saying that FF would get in with an overall majority.

Luckily that turned out to be not the case, they’ll still need someone’s help, maybe Labour, maybe the Greens. Who knows.

B #1 voted FF. But everyone else in de family went for the others, and wasn’t there much rejoicing^[2] when Michael McDowell wasn’t elected.

Remember when I may possibly have aided and abetted a mouse murder?^[3] Well on Sunday I may have done enough to redress the balance. Whiney cat came racing towards the house, pursued by two thrushes and carrying a third in his mouth. We’d've ignored the drama outside but then spotted that thrush #3 was still alive. A wee baby bird. Well, not too much of a baby, it had feathers and could flutter a little. So I nabbed the cat and brought him inside while we waited to see if the parents would return. Whiney cat was not at all impressed by this development, and he wanted everyone in the world to know. Whiney doesn’t even come into it, he moaned and demanded to be let out for half an hour, running from one window to the the next and then to the door.

Eventually, as we couldn’t spot the bird we let him out. Can you guess what happened next? Yeah, he caught it again, and once more dragged it towards the house, again being chased by the parentals. So we said we’d give it one more chance. And put up with the non-stop griping from the cat. It may have worked this second time as there was no sign of the bird after that, and on his next trip outside there was plenty of searching but no finding.

Course, one of the neighbouring cats could have got the bird either. But you know, I think we deserve marks for effort.

The cat has now also been collared and belled. Though what difference that’ll make is hard to say.

Oh, and I’ve also installed a plugin thingy that’ll publish these posts across on the livejournal as well. Because, sure I might as well.

Cause look, Paige has nominated me for a Thinking Blog Award.

I’d write an acceptance speech of such wit and wonder that it’d astonish you all, but I wouldn’t want you all to feel bad that you couldn’t write something equally as wonderful, so instead I won’t.

Okay, so according to PickYourParty I should be voting Green as they matched me in 4 issues, others that matched were, Labour(1), Fine Gael(1),and Fianna Fáil (1). Via GUBU. And I do tend to vote Green. And Independent. But Labour and Fine Gael are alright. I have voted FF, once, for my neighbour, which is I know a terrible reason for voting for someone. But it wasn’t a first preference vote, so it may not have counted. See, we use PR: STD^[1] so you can fill in as many numbers as you want and it may count.

But enough of politics, let us return to the primary reason for this post, my award. Only now I’ve got to nominate 5 other blogs. Five other blogs that make me think…

There were more I could have listed, but they were already nominated, so I’m going to go with:

1. Heather Anne Hogan - She writes the bestest posts, evah
2. Ten Miles Beyond The City - We do need a Boudacious Tuneage update, but still deserving.
3. Zero Sum Mind - I’ve only recently started reading this one, but some great posts, I especially liked the lolcats entry.
4. Stainless Steel Droppings - Especially for Carl’s wonderful Friday favourites posts.
5. Kelly Well - Yes, she has posted again, so I’m quite happy to assume that this’ll be a regular occurance again
6. Something Under The Bed Is Drooling - I know, this is six, but I could esily have listed ten more, so shaddup yer face. Despite the fact that Anne seems to have disappeared^[2] I just couldn’t not nominate her.

Now you all gotta play along with the rules and nominate 5 more:
1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote (There is an alternative silver version if gold doesn’t fit your blog).

And the Intelligence Operations of Michael Collins
Author: T.Ryle Dwyer
ISBN: 1856354695
DDC: 941.5082
See also: Library Thing; Google Scholar; The Bureau of Military History

Michael Collins is frequently cited as the originator of modern urban terrorism. The British characterised his Squad as ‘the murder gang’ and had they knowingly captured members of of the Squad they would almost certainly have exectued them.

Irish history is full of revolutionaries and failed rebellions, of informers giving information to the English, and spies infiltrating Irish organisations. Michael Collins recognised the importance of the intelligence network and so in 1919 he formulated a plan to blind the eyes of Dublin Castle by ensuring that the police force were as terrorised and demoralised as possible.

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Histories, Identities, Issues
ISBN: 190455833X
Ed: Alan Bairner
Essays by: Thomas Carter, Paul Darby, Gareth Fulton, Neal Garnham, David Hassan, Tom Hunt, Katie Liston, Jonathan Magee, Paul Rouse, Louise Ryan, Peter Shirlow, John Sugden, Jason Tuck
DDC: 301.57

Although the word ’sport’ was used commonly in Ireland long before the period that is covered by any of the essays in this collection, it normally referred to hunting, fishing and other such activities enjoyed by the Irish gentleman. In addition were the games played by ‘ordinary’ people and rumoured to have their origins in Ireland’s historic and mythic past.

Another book that I picked up at work, although this is much more readable than the last. That was on the film industry in Ireland, and I didn’t finish it because of its overly academic wordiness. Despite being a sociological look at sport in Ireland, this book, Sport and the Irish doesn’t suffer from that problem.

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