Oh my. Google’s automatic face-blurring technology might have got a bit over-zealous:

Unfortunately they’ve fixed it now. Thanks to Google Sightseeing for the spot.

Here’s a great way you can get your hands on a brand new Ferrari…

I was chatting to an Irish girl at a barbecue here the other day and she asked if I spoke Irish, and I was slightly embarrassed to say that I don’t. Part of the reason came back to me when I read this post by Maria over at Crooked Timber:

it’s Monday today, so my thoughts turn inevitably to the Teileagoir. (Irish for slide projector, a term I only learnt as an an adult, and pronounced “tel-a-gor”). Every Monday, the Teleagoir would be loaded with a new set of slides in Irish, something along the lines of ‘Mammy and Daddy and Sean and Maire go to the cinema’. Each slide would have a picture of the scene and maybe some vocabulary to prompt us. For each one, we memorised a sentence of the story. We would do a couple of new slides every day, and at the end of the week we would recite the whole thing as a group without the pictures. How this might ever have translated into being able to speak Irish, I’m not sure. But I do remember the gut-clenching boredom that set in around Wednesday as we went through the slides for the 20th time. There wasn’t much a teacher could do with the Teileagoir.

From the sounds of it Maria finished primary school in the late 1970s or early 80s, but I can vouch for the continued use of the Teilagoir and its deadly dull slides through to the end of the 80s. Thanks to the crappy teaching methods used back then I will always have a ready-made excuse for why I don’t speak Irish, handy for deflecting blame from what in retrospect was clearly incipient West Britishness.

Here’s the new Tánaiste, Mary Coughlan, in a picture I found infinitely depressing.

And if that arms-aloft, shoulder-raising, parish flag-waving doesn’t get you down, how about this from the accompanying report:

Thousands poured on to the streets in Bundoran, Ballyshannon, Ballintra, Laghey and Donegal town as victory rallies were held in each before the Tánaiste, who is also Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, reached her destination…

Why, what could be less creepy than a victory rally held when no-one has won anything?

She pledged: “I’ll be doing my best for the people of the northwest, particularly my own county.”

Oh… I see. As you were, Donegal.

‘ChancerWeb‘:

All great Irish satirical publications tend to live short, spectacular lives - think The Slate, Blogorrah (koff koff koff) or The Sunday Independent. Add the that list seminal and sorrily missed Irish humour blog The Evil Gerald, MIA for many moons now. An off-shoot of UCD’s College Tribune, Gerald wasn’t exactly ground-breaking - if the ‘auld Onion template ‘aint broke, etc - but it was funny. Hit and miss, for sure, but who is The Chancer to take the comedic high ground? The Evil Gerald gave us headlines like ‘JJ72/Met Eireann feud escalates’, ‘Pub conversation just like something out of Seinfeld’, ‘NI runs out of ugly, bitter women’ and the unforgettable ‘Church to replace Holy Water with Kombucha’… And for that we remain eternally grateful. Waste some time perusing their achives today, and know this: Irish satire is dead. With possible exception of TV3’s Exposé.

Blimey, this got a bit scrappy, didn’t it?

CHAIRMAN: You are a former chairman of the Bar Council. You should have, if you had views about the tribunal counsel that you are suggesting that you have, that is unprofessional conduct on their part. And the proper course was for you to make a complaint to the Bar Council. You know what those rules are better than perhaps anyone in this room. You should have gone to the High Court long ago and said this tribunal is engaged in an agenda.

It’s a most - it’s the most - of all of the allegations that have ever been made against us, and many have been made, that is the most serious allegation because it is the one which, if it was established as being true, would completely undermine the work of the tribunal.

MR MAGUIRE: Now, chairman, you have magnified out of all proportion what my submissions to you were . . . I am making an application to you about a matter which is in contention between us and the tribunal counsel that one side of the argument has an access to you.

Now, you have used emotive words to describe what that means. I am not going to use whose words. And I haven’t used them. And I know that you are doing the best that you can in all of the circumstances. But unfortunately it’s the situation that we find ourselves here in, is that when there is controversy and you are the person that makes the decision, one person, one side of the argument has access to you and the other doesn’t.

Now, that cannot in any sense of the word be fair and reasonable or be fair and equal treatment.

CHAIRMAN: The substance of what you are suggesting to the tribunal, is that in some way we are influenced to a degree that the decision that is we make are dictated by our counsel. They are not. And we exercise, we exercise absolute independence and we are most careful that we do that . . .

What I absolutely deplore is this constant theme that we have from you, that in some way we are on some sort of a twisted illegal corrupt frolic. We are not conducting an agenda.

MR MAGUIRE: I did not say that, chairman.

The New York Times is interested in Ireland’s plastic bag tax. The story shows up in a Google search under the marvellous headline ‘With Irish Tax, Plastic Bags Go the Way of the Snakes‘, but the page itself is more mundane. This bit struck me as a bit odd, though:

In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. And then something happened that was bigger than the sum of these parts.

Within weeks, plastic bag use dropped 94 percent. Within a year, nearly everyone had bought reusable cloth bags, keeping them in offices and in the backs of cars. Plastic bags were not outlawed, but carrying them became socially unacceptable — on a par with wearing a fur coat or not cleaning up after one’s dog.

“When my roommate brings one in the flat it annoys the hell out of me,” said Edel Egan, a photographer, carrying groceries last week in a red backpack.

Hmm, I’d be surprised if she really said “roommate”. Isn’t the NYT meant to be scrupulous about not fabricating stuff these days? Also, the reporter (Elisabeth Rosenthal) also says that “the environment minister [unnamed] told shopkeepers that if they changed from plastic to paper, he would tax those bags, too”. Is that right? I thought paper bags were exempt, and that this was considered by some a weakness of the policy?

Headline from the ‘Breaking News’ section of today’s Irish Times, 20th December 2007:

Tribunal to question Ahern over payments

I do wonder how we have not all gone insane or dead.

The German ambassador has spoken openly about the tragic hell of life in modern Ireland. Gay Mitchell, member of Ireland’s largest opposition party, wants nothing to do with it.

During his address, the ambassador referred to Ireland’s wealth, saying Ministers of State earn more that the German chancellor, and 20 per cent of the population were public servants.

In a reference to negotiations over hospital consultant contracts, he said doctors who were offered salaries of €200,000 a year had described the salary as “Mickey Mouse money”. Mr Mitchell said last night they were the only words the ambassador said in English and that the audience laughed at the comments.

They laughed! Oh, now they’re laughing at us! Who were these “audience” and why was no-one taking names?

Mr Mitchell said Mr Pauls also criticised the Government’s immigration policy, saying Ireland learned nothing from Germany’s experiences. He told a story about attending the National Concert Hall when an announcement was made for the owner of a 93D-registered car to move it. He said no one moved as all Irish cars are ‘06 and ‘07.

He said that US visitors had stopped coming to Ireland because of the heavy traffic and that Ireland has a bleak time in the past due to the Famine and had a history “sadder than Poland”. Mr Pauls said a house had sold in Clontarf for over €20 million and one could buy a skyscraper for that in Frankfurt.

“Sadder than Poland”? Nicely glossed, Mr Ambassador.

Of course it will all blow over, because Pauls regrets… any misunderstanding that might have arisen from his words.

The audience in question, members of the ZGV (German Federation of Buying and Marketing Groups), was far more diplomatic in reporting the ambassador’s remarks on its own website. Read in German here or roughly:

[The ambassador], to his audience’s surprise, dispensed with the usual diplomatic attitude and gave an unexpectedly critical account of the social, political and economic developments in Ireland. In particular, he slammed the “fatally congested” traffic situation, a healthcare system that devoured money, and exceptionally high house prices.

First rule of Ceann-Comhairling, just like teaching, is don’t let the little bastards see they can wind you up.

Loving some of the comments on YouTube:

I will remind the Deputy, I will remind the Deputy, I will remind the Deputy, I will remind the Deputy, I will remind the Deputy…

Stick a dance beat behind that and you’ll have a dead cert for number 1 on your hands…

Jesus that was intense

Cecil Rhodes, Robert Mugabe - your boys took one hell of a draw-ing! Porterfield, Langford-Smith, Botha - these are names to live long in the annals of Irish sporting history alongside the likes of Cascarino and Charlton.

I’ve uploaded a bit of a Flann O’Brien rarity as a picture on Flickr: it’s a map of “An Domhan Mór” drawn by Seán O Sullivan for An Béal Bocht (but not included in its translation as The Poor Mouth, apparently) which I think I scanned from UCD Library’s copy about ten years ago. It’s a great illustration of the unique world-view Flann / Myles was describing in the book, with Chorca Dorcha pretty big, Sligo Jail a prominent landmark and special care taken to describe the location of money order offices, poteen deposits, the Buoys of Wexford, and George Bernard Shaw. The far-flung Gaelic diaspora is also well represented in its two principle homes, De Odar Saighd and Thar Lear.

As of quarter to 11 tonight, the Wikipedia page on Stephen Staunton reads:

Stephen Staunton (born 19 January 1969 in Drogheda, Republic of Ireland) was a professional footballer who enjoyed a distinguished career with Liverpool and Aston Villa, he also became the Republic of Ireland’s most capped player. He is currently the Republic of Ireland manager.It was considered to be a strange decison as it is regarded that Staunton couldn’t organise a piss up in a brewery. He was only hired because he was a drinking mate with the chief executive of the FAI John Delaney. He just doesn’t have clue. He should go back to coaching fucking Walsall.

Great discussion of Irish Public Service TV ads over at Crooked Timber. The one that really sticks in my mind is described by commenter shane h:

A seemingly harmless family dog turns into a bloodthirsty killer after dark. Joins a roving gang of similarly un-tethered dogs for a sheep-killing rampage. I can still picture the field full of sheep lying with their throats torn out. I think it left quite an impression on anyone who was young at the time!

You can say that again. It was fucking terrifying, and I don’t think I’ve ever trusted a dog since.

The Irish National Lottery last year awarded advertising contracts worth some €20 million to two agencies, DDFH&B and Carat Ireland, to develop “advertising, media and promotional materials” for the lottery.

The result is a campaign on web and TV featuring three semi-adorable fuzzy bears created by Brown Bag Films. Bears which, er, bear more than a passing resemblance to those previously created by Matt Clark and Matt Everitt (two friends of my housemate Ian) which were used in animations for Ricky Gervais’s site.

For the sake of comparison, in the stills below, the bears created by the two Matts are top and the ones from the Lotto ads bottom.

Oh and here’s a page from the wonderfully named youthoughtwewouldntnotice.com with videos just in case there was any doubt left that the Lotto ads were fairly directly inspired by the Matts’ work.

Some of the people on creativeireland.com noticed the resemblance too, and the ensuing discussion brought up the following:

I know two other post houses that pitched on it, the bears were a definite reference as part of the brief but no one wanted to directly rip them off. Any time different character designs were presented though, they kept being brought back to the bear designs by the agency

This really does look like the most blatant ripping off of someone else’s work. The two Matts seem to be taking it rather better than I would, but I hope they end up getting more out of it than sympathy.

This is part of a press release put out by the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, in October last year.

Greens Must Come Clean on their Proposals to Tax Fuel
Dick has called on the Green party to stop prevaricating and started telling the truth about their proposals to put additional tax on petrol, diesel & home heating oil through their proposed carbon taxes.
On a number of occasions over the last week Green party spokespersons have tried to dodge the issue when asked directly precisely how much their carbon tax proposals would cost consumers … Fine Gael & the Labour Party should also make it clear whether they endorsed the madcap Green Party policies. The people have the right to know! Minister Roche said.

But yesterday this appeared on breakingnews.ie.

Minister for the Environment Dick Roche has said he would be in favour of changing the car tax system to one based on emissions rather than engine size.
Yesterday, a major British government report warned consumers would have to accept new green taxes on travel if climate change was to be tackled in the coming decades.
Asked about the matter in Dublin this morning, Mr Roche said he accepted that changes were needed.
“If we actually change the taxation system so that you’re taxing vehicles on the basis of the emissions rather than necessarily on the basis of the cubic capacity of the engine, you can encourage and incentivise people to use, for example, bio-diesel, to use renewable energy sources and to use lower carbon producing sources,” he said.

Dick wouldn’t be advocating some kind of crazy “tax” on “carbon emissions”, or, as some crazy people have called it, a “carbon tax”, would he?

What a madcap policy!

Apart from that, there’s some real gold on the Wicklow Fianna Fail TD’s website including press releases entitled “Fergus O’Dowd discovers he’s FG spokesman on the Environment” and “Dick Hails Groundbreaking Shannon Callows Agreement”.

The Ryder Cup opening ceremony has gotten underway at the K Club. Let’s just take a look at the latest satellite weather map.

Brilliant.

Poor thing beached in Sligo

Interesting article here about MCD taking legal action against boards.ie because a poster there allegedly made a defamatory statement about the Oxegen festival, which MCD consider a roaring success despite several tent fires, brawls and the like. It seems a tad unfair that boards.ie is liable for anything and everything its users choose to post, but that seems unlikely to change so it may become a victim of its own fairly amazing success (70,000 users at last count, apparently). This would make me a bit more hesitant to set up a bulletin board for UCD students / Tribune readers, too (and appropriately enough, the Sunday Times article is written by none other than Richard Oakley).

Dundalk singer Jinx Lennon is my hero right now, and his new album, Know Your Station Gouger Nation!!!, bogwashes Damien Rice with the one paw while administering Damien Dempsey a wedgie with the other.

The previous, thirtysomthing-track album had such gems as The Balaclava Boys and The Next Sad Song You Hear May Leave You Pregnant, but the new CD is more coherent and with better music and backing vocals too.
What more needs to be said about a song that goes:

Will you stop giving out about Nigerians

Ciunas hold your whist look how red your face is

Said your son applied for a council house

And got stabbed in the back

And the only way he’ll get one now is if the colour is black

Well the reason that you didn’t get a house for your son

Was your son was a bollocks from day numero one

Guitar = Magicwand is another rant against singer songwriters, but City Of Styrofoam Cups was, I found, quite upsetting, although maybe I’m just not a morning person.

Occastionally he takes his cue a bit too much from what the latest shock talking point is in the media: too much boozing, speeding ‘Northern pups’, people wittering about house prices, drugs rampant in the Midlands, racism, but if he was from England there’d be memories of ‘66 and £1,000-a-plate suppers with Billy Bragg.

The thing about Jinx is, you have to get over the delivery, which is halfway between The Streets and Christy Moore, in a Dundalk accent. But you soon grow to love it (well, I did. What? WHAT?), and this release on Septic Tiger records deserves more coverage than it’s getting, which is not very much.
So

I know it’s really hard

but if you don’t forgive the cnts

you’ll never find the peace inside you want

But

Ah for God’s sake!

Why did you look outside the window?

They’re after seeing you

There’s going to be crap now

Why did you do that?

The enemy is at the gate

We are the Eloy

The Morlocks are coming

http://www.jinxlennon.com/video.htm#

Hmmm, I’m getting a bit carried away with this youtube thing, but here’s another goody: the Virgin Prunes on the Late Late Show in 1979. Enjoyable not so much for the music but for the stage show and Uncle Gaybo pretending to be amused when the Prunes start distributing presents to the audience at the end.

Link via Stunned

… something ”borrowed” from a warehouse full of unliquidated stock?

Yes, nothing quite celebrates the collective dignity of womankind like a mob of baying brides breaking into a warehouse to knock off their own wedding dresses. Last week Cork boutique The Wedding Dress Ltd. went into liquidation, and lo! it was a great opportunity for everyone to have a snigger at photos of women blubbing and panicking outside its locked doors, their special day now in the lap of the liquidators.  

But it looks like the crazy bitches will have the last laugh. In what surely will be a contender for the second happiest day of their lives, they stormed the warehouse storing the dresses and reduced the boutique’s solicitor to what I imagine was a hoarsely croaked, abject appeal:

There was a bit of mayhem on Thursday and over 25 dresses were sequestered by people who should not have them. We got some of them back and we are appealing to people who have wedding dresses which are clearly not their wedding dresses: would they for God’s sake return them.  

The Community At Large, which just won one of these things, is a big Irish group blog which anyone can join and post to with interesting links, news, funneh videos and the like, which they do with such frequency that you’ll never want to work again and the economy will collapse and before you know it we’ll all be eating moss, thank you very much Mr Internet.

Anyway, one of the million or so items of interest today is this amazing Flash game, Flow. Oh, and a link to Six Shooter, the Irish short film what just won an Oscar.

I reckon this means we will now have nuclear power even though we don’t have nuclear power

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqid=12398-qqqx=1.asp

Weather stations and roadside stations once again recorded Birr, Co Offaly, as the coldest place in the country.

 From Roundstone, Co. Galway (via Crooked Timber).

We have certainly have had our ups and downs in the village this year what with somebody falling off the village wall, thank god not killed, and then in the wee hours of Saturday morning, a car goes into the Harbour, with a young man at the wheel, the car landed upside down and if it was not for the vigilance Mary King who alerted Sean de Courcey, Sean fair play to him pulled this man out of the car, which was nearly totally submerged in the tide and pulled him to safety, what ever way you look at it, Sean saved his life, yet again another near fatal accident, and then I suppose on the slightly humorous side and to add insult to injury, a tow truck was called out to pull the car out, now get this, the truck fell in while trying to lift the car, no don’t worry there was no one in it, it was remote controlled, but the machine was not heavier enough to lift the car out, therefore, a proper professional machine had to be called in, and the job was done, no loss of life, what was interesting the amount of people that came to have a look at this task you would think we had another social event going on.

 If that isn’t self-explanatory, the pictures are here.

I’ve been reading the latest Ross O’Carroll-Kelly Book, The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Nightdress, and loving it. I seem to remember a couple of years ago Ross kept having attacks of something resembling conscience, but so far this latest volume reads more like “Irish Psycho”, as he’s spent most of time basically focking people over. The constant stream of genius slang is still the best thing about it - like, Ross variously describeing the, eh, working class parts of the city where his son lives as Pram Springs, Knackeragua and, my favourite, The Fleck Republic.

I don’t have anything in particular to say here, so I’ll leave you with:

Chin-stroking analysis bit: Ross O’Carroll-Kelly represents the debasement of Ireland’s rich heritage of cultural and linguistic creativity into the habit of thinking up ever crueller (but funnier) names for people you don’t like. Discuss.

Surely-too-good-to-be-true Wikipedia extract:

Ross O’Carroll-Kelly is something of a cultural phenomenon within Ireland, and his name has become a byword for all that is perceived to be wrong in Celtic Tiger Ireland. Though it is largely viewed as satire, there are those who view Ross O’Carroll-Kelly as a role model and an idol. For example, some people have imitated Ross’ pastime of driving through disadvantaged areas in expensive cars, shouting “Affluence!” at passersby.

RTE’s Daragh Moloney today:

Football isnt rocket surgery, you know.

Ah, Irish politicians. See Mary O’Rourke’s finest moment here, about 1:20 in.

A couple of weeks ago, The Belfast Telegraph carried a ‘story‘ saying that the Irish Government was going to stop the US army landing at Shannon Airport from 2008. Despite having their mistake pointed out to them by someone on Indymedia.ie, the Telegraph still haven’t changed their page at the time of writing.

They’ve confused the issue of the compulsory Shannon transatlantic stopover for civilian aircraft which has been ‘being phased out’ for as long as my memory stretches, which is about 20 years. It is a purely economic device designed to wring a few extra dollars or euro or axe heads out of frazzled travellers by making them make an otherwise unnecessary stop for an hour and a half in the hope that some of them might get so pissed off that they decide not to reboard and instead take themselves off for a nice little overpriced holidiay in the Burren. All of which is at great cost to the environment in the jet fuel used in take-off and landing.

But now that we have about 300,000 US troops a year flying through our version of Vladivostok on a brisk January morning, this isn’t so important, which is why I started this post (sorry if it took a while to get to this point).

Not only are the troops there, the airport is also likely being used as a staging post for US extraordinary renditions (ie, torture in Egypt, Syria, Limerick, God knows where) of prisoners and bringing them to and from Guantanamo Bay which bizarrely is in Cuba. No doubt the prisoners would be more than happy to avoid the inconvenient stopover too.

Two weeks ago, Defence Minister Willie O’Dea, who as well as posing with guns likes to sport a one of the world’s last great moustaches, went mad over what ‘radical’ Muslim lawyer Anjem Choudary said at a college debate:

If you are going to allow your country to be used to refuel a US plane which is going on a bombing raid, what do you expect our reaction to be? This is not neutrality […] A US pilot is no different from the Irish person who allows the plane to land. They are collaborators […] It is better for the Muslim to tell you this reality so we can change this and to make sure what is taking place in other countries will not happen in Ireland.

While Justice Minister Michael McDowell now has the perfect opportunity to bring in draconian press control laws on the back of what the worst paper in the world did to the dead Liam Lawlor, O’Dea has also promised to somehow crack down on freedom of speech while not infringing on freedom of speech:

Mr O’Dea said the existing legislation could be “calibrated or refined” to deal with issues such as Mr Choudary’s remarks. He said he did not believe that any such amended legislation would infringe on freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech had to be balanced by security considerations. Mr O’Dea said US forces had been using Shannon for over 50 years and that there had been no change in policy in this regard. He also stressed that Ireland was not part of any military alliance.
“How dare anybody come here to stir up these groups to do something like what happened in Madrid”, he said.
The Minister made his comments in the Curragh Camp at a demonstration of hostage rescue and anti-terrorist capabilities by the Army Rangers Wing.
As part of the display Army Rangers - who are the elite special forces unit in the Defence Forces - abseiled from helicopters, stormed a house using explosives to blow a hole in a wall, and carried out a mock rescue of a “captured UN official”.

Captured UN official my hole.

Stating the obvious that Ireland is not neutral on the Iraq and Afghan wars is mild by Choudary’s standards. In 2002 he organised a conference on “the positive outcomes of September 11″ (there have to be some, right?) and he said Britain was also to blame for the July 7, 2005, London bombs.

I’m sure he’s a horrible man, or maybe he makes killer banana daquiris and tells a mean two-suicide-bombers-walk-into-a-hotel joke, but probably not.

So what’s the difference between what Choudry said and what Richard Boyd Barret of the Socialist Workers Party wrote in August in The Irish Times?:
“By allowing US troops to travel through Shannon to Iraq this country is linked to the occupation. To suggest there is no risk is a lie.”
(Btw, the SWP always advocate censorship of speakers such as Nazi apologist David Irving, with their ‘no platform’ policy, ie threatening the organisers until they cancel).

Or what’s the difference between Choudry’s statement and what Kevin Myers wrote in March 04:
“We - rightly - allowed Shannon to be used to assist in the military operations against the criminal and despotic regime in Iraq, and our Islamic fascist enemies will try to make us pay the price.”?

Or what Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny said in the Dail in February 03:
“Three weeks ago it became clear that Shannon would become a centre for protest and a target for protesters and-or terrorists.”?

Or what umpteen people have said again and again? They, like Choudary, are just stating the bloody obvious.

The difference is that Enda Kenny probably wouldn’t have too much in common with people who believe the September 11 bombers were only marvellous, unless perhaps they also believed in compensating shareholders who lose money on the stock market.

What Choudary says in public is irrelevant. It’s what he says to his mates that matters, and if Shannon is going to be bombed it’s too late to stop the bombers from deciding that. They probably decided one way or another a long time ago.

But there’s another problem: last week, in response to Liz O’Donnell’s grandstanding on ‘phone calls between All Hallows and Government buildings’ we learned that our Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, doesn’t believe in interfering in the affairs of the Church. Does that include mosques?

That was way too long.

Help! Am I Richard Littlejohn or Nigella Lawson?