It’s a Saturday night in Dublin, it’s Summer, and it’s not raining. Bright and sunny all day. Gorgeous weather for a ride in the park.
Time to pop a can of Guinness in the freezer and see what’s in the Irish news.
Cross-posted from … nowhere .. honest.
There’s a surprising new Irish Times(subscription needed) opinion poll, which indicates that support for the current government is lower than support for the alternative “Rainbow” coalition. The current government is a coalition of the large Fianna Fáil and the small “liberal” Progressive Democrats (PDs). Fianna Fáil are centrist, while the PDs are right-wing, and the government has had a distinctly free-market flavour to it. The Rainbow would consist of the centrist Fine Gael and the much smaller fairly-left-of-centre Labour Party. It would be expected to have a fairly left-wing bent. I’m surprised by the opinion poll because I really don’t expect the Rainbow to have much chance at the next elections, which will probably take place next year. One of the problems is that Enda Kenny, the leader of Fine Gael, never seems to say anything I remember. In fact, I have great difficulty remembering his name. This is not a good attribute for a would-be Taoiseach (Prime Minister).
In a story that could very well turn out to be related, the long-time leader of Fianna Fáil, Charle Haughey, might be in trouble. It is being alleged that he gave political favours for cash. Haughey was notorious for living far beyond the means of an Irish Taosieach, and had a penchant for handmade French shirts and champagne. Oh, and lady journalists if I recall properly.
More punishment beatings up North. Unusual in that it’s a woman, not for any other reason.
On the economics front, home-grown (as opposed to multinational) industry isn’t having a good couple of years. It’s not surprising – we’re an expensive country to make things in, and we generally need to import all the raw materials.
The scandal of Gardaí corruption in Donegal is finally grinding to a finish. There has been a judicial investigation the Morris Tribunal looking into this for years.
All elective surgeries were cancelled last week due to a shortage of blood supplies. The shortages are due to new restrictions designed to guard against the transmission of CJD – “mad cow disease” – through blood transfusions.
Yet another scandal, this time low standards of care in nursing homes. There has been a massive expansion in this sector recently without improvement in the inspection or regulation of nursing homes. The inevitable abuses have taken place, highlighted by an RTÉ documentary – who says state-owned media is a bad thing?
The European Parliament has rejected a proposal made by Ireland and three other member states to force telecoms firms to retain the phone records of customers for three years
What on Earth were we doing making this proposal? Thanks be for the European Parliament. I’m going to have to figure out what was going on here, because I’d missed this until now.
The High Court has found that a major golf club can continue to deny women full membership.
Remember that big ambush in Iraq where the insurgents destroyed a mercenary convoy? Turns out that one of the survivors was from Co. Cork.
Hi Colman,
Interesting reading about politics and such in other places. And of course all the Gaelic(?) words/names sound very cool. Well, in print anyway, and I’m sure they do in person as well. One of the fun things being that nothing seems to sound like it looks.
How would you phonetically pronounce Taosieach, for instance?
Also…
What is this punishment for?
No idea. Could be “anti-social” behaviour, could be disloyalty to the organisation, could be having a boyfriend of the wrong religion, could be anything. We’re talking criminal organisations that think that a baseball bat is an instrument of justice.
Oh I see… it’s members of the organization who ‘stray’ are beaten up with bats instead of memos and stuff. Jeeze. I was thinking maybe they were members of a rival organization or something.
Thanks
Members of the community the organisation comes from, rather than members of the organisation.
I’m going to have to address this stuff over on EuroTrib at some stage. I don’t really want to.
Taosieach sounds a bit like TEA-shook.
As a former and perhaps future resident of Bray I appreciated this diary, too. Thanks, Colman.
I had an Irish friend when I was younger who would teach me words here and there, but only verbally. Later, when I was older and went to try and look up the ones I remembered, I could never get them to connect to the spelling, lol.
And they say learning English is difficult…
I was going to say “tea-shock”. It’s somewhere between the two.
I’ll be doing a couple of these a week on Eurotrib when it goes live.
Thanks for another view on the world. It’s always good to hear about a survivor. The mercenaries are getting terrible press right now. My son used to be special forces and has been offered a job with a “security” company in Iraq. The money is very tempting for him. Sounds like you are taking steps to deal with CJD, we’re still in denial over here. Could the proposal to keep phone records have to do with The War on Terra?
There isn’t enough money in the world to make security jobs in Iraq a good idea. That guy was one of six survivors from a force of 28.
I’d say that it’s standard issue expansion of surveillance powers stuff. The law enforcement authorities always want more powers.
It’s great to see the news from Ireland! I hope you continue to post a round-up-I’m going to follow the links after more coffee.