BLACK & OTHER HUMOUR

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In 1973/4 I was working on Northern Ireland affairs, among other things, in the Southern administration.

In the course of my work I regularly got the Belfast Telegraph. While this was strictly speaking for the economic and financial news it contained, there were other aspects of the paper which caught my eye and I occasionally cut them out to keep.

You can check out a few of these below.

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While today's Belfast Telegraph has a more cosmopolitan air about it, it was in those days a very provincial paper and the headline on the above item has always seemed to me to be a very good illustration of this.

Then there was the religious stuff which we in the South took with a pinch of salt. I mean you really can't take heretics too seriously, can you now. Nevertheless we did expect a certain amount of consistency and if a fortune teller can't tell their own fortune, never mind anyone else's, well, really.

In times of adversity it is always nice to know you have the better class of reader.

This one always had a Laurel and Hardy air about it for me. Paving is one thing, but on your own initiative sounds to me a bit more like crazy paving.

This one is not funny, but it is interesting that one year's toll of smoking equals 30 years toll of troubles. Deaths in the troubles peaked in the period 1972-6, which this is slap bang in the middle of. I assume here that by Ulster they mean Northern Ireland.

Not surprising then that the hearse was in daily use at the time.

I know why I kept these, but I'd better hould me whisht for fear I'd get sued.

And, finally, things must be really going downhill when even the Information Officer bails out.



Update: 11/2/2022

I should really put this update in a separate post and call it The Full Circle.

I have been somewhat unkind above to the BelTel, of which I was once a professional reader - that is to say I read it as part of my job.

In the run up to the fiftieth anniversary of the burning of the British embassy in Dublin after Bloody Sunday, I made an appearance myself in this most distinguished publication. Not only that, there I am, gloating over the same burning.

The quirks of fate!

Before I finish, I have to point out to my European readers that I was not taking pleasure in the burning down of the embassy of an EEC/EU member state. Neither of us were yet members in 1972.