Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Cool or cool?

Irish Times (online), 27/09/11

How cool is that?

This teaser just shows how language can change, or how old Subs never die.

"Cool" is used here in the older sense of "reluctant" or "not in favour of".

To the young modern reader the headline would mean that Enda had no problem with lifting the salary cap.

The full teaser is below which clarifies the meaning a bit.


And the full piece is here.


Naked Truth?

Irish Independent (online), 26/09/11

Not sure that the juxtaposition of the headline and the picture itself are consistent.

Maybe it's just me?



Sunday, September 11, 2011

Native cuisine ...?

Seen recently in Galway

Food for thought for our Australian brethern sistern.



Thanks to Barry Crowley and Vivion Mulcahy for passing it on. The title of the post is Barry's.

I decided to chase it up and this photo appears to have come from Ronan Ryan originally.
Thanks Ronan.


And the experience is not unique, in fact it seems to be quite common and worldwide, and Pennsylvania University are keeping an eye on it. Thanks to Stan Carey for that link.


Saturday, September 10, 2011

Oops!

What have I done?
(See previous post)


Clicked on Taoiseach's Department at www.gov.ie.


Was told they had moved. So clicked on here.


And found they didn't exist anymore.

I suppose that's the Vatican gone too?

How in hell do you reverse this antimatter thing?

I should have left well enough alone. Or not?



Civitas Dei?

Obedientia civium urbis felicitas.

The antimatter version of the Vatican.

And you know what happens when matter meets antimatter.


Thursday, September 08, 2011

View from Parlon Country


A Parlon Country child's view of the Dáil, in the run up to the 2007 general election, in which Tom Parlon lost his seat.

It is very revealing. Despite the twice asserted national ownership, the building has all the characteristics of the Big House. And not satisfied with a mere Merc, this child has our hero step from a flashy stretch limo onto the red carpet to be whisked inside to join our native betters.

Welcome to Parlon Country



Jesus, phone home


The phone company Phones 4u have been ticked off by the UK Advertising Standards Authority for using the above illustration in an ad released over a Christian holiday period.

The ad has been withdrawn and so far no fatwas have issued either from the Vatican or from Canterbury.

My favourite, legitimate, use of Jesus on the phone is the notice at the entrance to the Roman Catholic church in Birr, Co. Offaly, Ireland, below.


The message is clear from these two examples. If you're not advertising for Jesus, just leave him alone. Or to quote what once used to be one of the pillars of good journalism "When in doubt, leave out".




Wednesday, September 07, 2011

A different kind of Jersey


Elections to the States (parliament) of Jersey, a British Crown Dependency are due on 19 October next and nomination meetings are currently under way. The election promises to be an interesting one and some of the candidates are already out of the traps, as illustrated by the above comments on yesterday's nomination meetings for Senator.

The above illustration is taken from the blog of Ex-Senator Stuart Syvret, who will be contesting the election. The Ex-Senator's history is too long to go into here. Suffice it to say that he was sacked as Health Minister for attempting to open the can of worms that is the cover up of child sex abuse in Jersey. He is now dragging the present administration through the courts en route to Strasbourg.


Previous post.



Update

Ex-Senator Syvret has now published the evidence which the court had declared inadmissable in the course of his "public interest" defence against the charge of having illegally and publicly named a male nurse who was suspected of being a serial killer and who may have murdered a number of the Ex-Senator's former constituents.

The States of Jersey claimed that the "public interest" disclosure provision in the legislation did not apply in this case because the enquiry (1999) into the behaviour of the nurse in question had been complete and matter was closed. Syvret's naming of the nurse was therefore an offence under the data protection legislation.

When Syvret then obtained disclosure of relevant documentation which showed that the enquiry had been anything but complete and appeared to have been prematurely wound up, the authorities declared the disclosed material and Syvret's expert's report thereon, inadmissable in evidence. The local Jersey court upheld this bizarre view.

The evidence clearly blew the authorities' case out of the water, which is why they could not afford to have it admitted in court. So why did they disclose it to Syvret in the first place. Simple, they handed it over without having read it. Then they panicked.

So Syvret had no choice but to abandon the corrupt local court system and head for London. He didn't have much success there, due to the close links between the UK and Jersey establishments and because the UK judicial and political system was frightened to death of opening up a can of Jersey worms which, inter alia, could ultimately have serious implications for a significant element of the UK financial sector. Not to mention the reluctance of Jack Straw, the responsible UK minister, to do his duty and take a stand for justice.

The Jersey administration then used Syvret's flight to London to smear him for having "abandoned his constituents". They have now accused him of being responsible for some £400,000 of Jersey taxpayers' money which THEY spent in what can only be described as a campaign of harassment and defamation.

The pace is clearly quickening in the run up to the forthcoming October election in Jersey.

You can read the disclosure evidence here.

Update
27/1/2012

You can see a very succint summary of the present position in this comment. It is also worth reading the post to which it applies. It follows revelations which blow a complete hole in the Establishment's supposed justification for the sacking (suspending) of the Chief of Police, the subsequent maligning of his retired Deputy, and the earlier sacking of the Health Minister - all in an effort to avoid and subsequently cover-up exposure of institutional child sex abuse.

Just to remind you also that Ex-Senator Syvret, the former Health Minister, has just emerged from serving a two month prison sentence which effectively arose out of his efforts to expose the ongoing cover-up, though technically imposed for other reasons.

Previous post.


In the soup


The impact of the full-page ad nearly made me drop my hardcopy of the Irish Independent into my soup. Good Lord, I thought, why have I been avoiding playing sports all these years? Sad.


So I checked it out. The advice (above) is even more startling, even if the order is a bit muddled.

None of this is designed to help you concentrate on researching something as relatively boring as your own family tree.

Anyway, seeing as how it's early in the morning, and some of you are limited to the online edition of the paper, I'll leave you with the image below to send you on your way. If you're a collector of football cards you can go to the source. [Sadly the site is no longer online. Just as well I nicked the images at the time.]

Tuesday, September 06, 2011

As good as it gets

Great Denmark Street then

Nice to see a bit of grammar accompanying the move.

In moving from 16 Great Denmark Street to 54 Lower Dorset Street, Fay's has picked up an apostrophe.

Great, I said to myself. You can't beat a bit of old fashioned education.

Then I wondered was the change simply an indication of reduced family size.

Still, there should have been an apostrophe somewhere on Great Denmark Street.

Lower Dorset Street now


Monday, September 05, 2011

Vertical Strip Postering

Click for larger image

Not as easy as it looks, is it?


Vertical Apostrophe


Now there's a man who knows where to put it and not let go of it.

A rare vertical apostrophe, in Hill St, Dublin.

A medal for grammatical accuracy, visual consistency, and sheer bloody mindedness?

And rumour has it that the pint's not bad either.


Saturday, September 03, 2011

John Joe Mahockey


I was looking through some old photos and came across this one which Jack Cruise (1915-1979) gave me in 1954. He even inscribed it personally on the reverse. I was only 10 and the thrill was enormous.

Jack and his "troupe" used to "do" Butlins for the summer season at the time. Butlins was great. You paid (well your parents paid) up front at the beginning of the holiday and then everything was "free" after that, treasure hunts, paddle boats, competitions of all sorts, all under the strict but friendly supervision of the Red Coats.

Jack's shows were ideal. They were funny and they were cleaner than clean.

Butlins was magic. The only disappointment in my time there was Hopalong Cassidy. The actor William Boyd had become completely identified in young minds with this fictional cowboy character. Boyd was Hopalong Cassidy. So when he was scheduled to appear at a campfire in Butlins, during his short visit to Ireland, we were ecstatic.

On the appointed night, we waited, and waited, and waited. But he never appeared. There were rumours of an excess of hospitality at a Croke Park function earlier in the day. A hero utterly destroyed for ever in the eyes of those eager young campers.

But back to Jack.

In later life, a stage director told me that Jack was a ruthless performer. He claimed the stage as his own and dare one of his troupe, even inadvertently, upstage him, even for a moment...

But none of that was evident to this young camper at the time. And Jack turned up every night and the show went on and it was a great show.