A Different View
Ireland’s mixed messages when it comes to Old Britannia
There could be no clearer illustration of our ambivalence towards our nearest neighbours than the General Election of 1997 and the contrasting attitudes of the good people of Donegal.
Back in a time when Sky was something we all could see for free – because it was behind the clouds immediately over our heads – Thomas Gildea was a campaigner for the legalisation of ‘deflectors’, large masts which retransmitted English TV channels into rural areas.
Back at the end of the nineties, these deflectors were being dismantled because the now-legalised cable and MMDS operators wanted to stamp out cheap or free alternatives.
So Thomas took a stand and went up for election on a single issue – free English TV for the masses – and the 58 year old farmer swept into the Dail as a new Deputy for Donegal South West.
Up the road in Donegal North-East however – where the quite conceivably enjoyed an half-hour of Coronation Street the same as the next man – the latest member of the Blaney dynasty, Harry Blaney, was following in the footsteps of his late father Neil and bidding for Dail success all of his own.
Blaney senior had come up with the Independent Fianna Fail title, because the more familiar model wasn’t going far enough when it came to the issue of getting the British troops out of the six counties.
Harry Blaney – who himself passed away this week – shared his father’s nationalist believes and he too made it into the 28th Dail.
Which brings us to the point of the story – the voters of Donegal saw nothing ironic about one half of the county voting for a ‘Brits out’ candidate while the other voted for one who wanted – admittedly through the medium of television only – Brits in.
It’s an ambivalence that many others on this island also share – when it comes to football teams, three-quarters of the country pledge their allegiance to an English team; we follow their soaps, their music, their celebrities and most of all their television.
We proclaim, for the most part, to have no time for their Royal family and yet, for example, the sale of newspapers shot up when Princess Diana died; indeed she sold many papers before her death as well.
Now you wouldn’t have found many perched on high stools discussing the merits of Diana’s fashion sense over a pint, but there was a touch of the guilty pleasure about keeping an eye on her from a distance.
And all of this came back to mind when they cremated Maggie Thatcher recently – thankfully we didn’t have live RTE coverage even if there was a touch of the tugged forelock about the coverage on the news – because while there was little divide on our attitude to her, we still all knew more about her than we did about our own.
Nobody does pageantry better than the British, mainly because – in the upper echelons of their society – they are still deluded enough to see themselves as a world power.
And they rolled out the red carpet for Maggie, as though she was their first directly elected queen, instead of someone who was reviled by half of her own country and all of ours.
They cleared the streets of objectors and other traffic, and turned central London into a no-go zone, a safe place for doddering Prime Ministers from across the globe to get together for one last hurrah.
Enda Kenny played this one cleverly by not ignoring the event, but by doing the next best thing – sending Ruairi Quinn who might as easily have been mistaken for one of the Chinese mourners instead of our token gesture to the woman who still has Charlie Haughey’s tea-pot.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
The only time in your life that you should ever utter the words: “Do you know who I am?” are if you’ve just had a bang on the head or you are unfortunately suffering from dementia.
Because, otherwise, the phrase ‘do you know who I am’ only serves to make things a whole lot worse.
Normally, the phrase is unleashed towards late night door staff on a wave of alcohol – and never once in the history of time has it produced the result the utterer had intended.
The doorman may well know who you are which is often the very reason you’re not getting into the place in the first instance – or if he doesn’t know who you are, he won’t be unduly influenced when he does, unless you’re a famous movie star or his long-lost cousin.
‘Do you know where I am?’ might often be closer to the phrase you’re looking for, because that would serve you well when you’re looking for a taxi.
‘Do you know who I am?’ is a threatening phrase that in truth wouldn’t frighten the cat. But if you’re anxious to dig the hole a few shovels deeper, you should follow up with ‘I’d like to speak to your manager.’
Managers can be elusive at the best of times, but they’re normally rarer than hen’s teeth when it comes to the small hours of the morning – and even if they’re there, they are most likely watching proceedings on CCTV…just so they know who you are, in case you yourself can’t remember.
‘I’d like to speak to your manager’ suggests that you and he or she are from the one social sphere which is several strata north of the one occupied by door staff.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
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A Different View with Dave O’Connell
As it turned out, we were much closer to a Eurovision win than we could ever have imagined – not Ireland, of course, because we’ve now mastered the art of just sending cannon fodder to be blown out in the semi-final.
No, this was just two of us – myself and our eldest – who were lucky enough to be at Anfield for the Reds’ recent win over Brentford, where positioned in the seat right in front of us were four happy lads from Finland.
One of them, we now know, was Käärijä, the singer of the catchiest song at Eurovision, Cha Cha Cha.
But just a week before 7,000 people sung his catchphrase at the Eurovision Arena, he and two his mates – accompanied by an older bloke who had to be either his dad or from the national broadcaster – sat anonymously in the same corner of the lower level of Anfield’s Main Stand.
He was utterly unknown to us as well of course, and the only thing that saw him stand out was his green nail varnish. Live and let live, of course, but it still ensures that you make an impression even if it looks like you were just very late for St Patrick’s Day.
Käärijä may well be Liverpool’s greatest Scandinavian fan, although the bar for that is set fairly high, given that they invade the city in greater numbers every two weeks than the Vikings did just once during the first millennium.
Equally, he may not be a football fan at all – although, as the rest of the week proved, he sure loves a crowd.
Positioned as we were in the corner of the Main Stand, the next section to us, around the corner in the Anfield Road Stand – currently adding a top layer – was occupied by the visiting Brentford supporters.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
A Different View with Dave O’Connell
Contactless payments reached a record €17.9 billion in Ireland last year – up by 31 per cent on 2021, as people came out from under their Covid shell and appear to have left their cash behind them.
Figures from the Banking & Payments Federation found that – despite the cost-of-living increases – the Irish public made three million contactless payments a day, worth an average of €53 million in the final quarter of 2022.
Given that there are 3.8 million people in Ireland over the age of 18, that means that almost every single one of us tapped the card every day last year.
And again, on the presumption that there are a few who still prefer peeling a fifty off a wad of notes, the true figure may be even higher, as we eschew actual money every time we go into a restaurant, bar or shop.
Then comes the monthly morning of reckoning when you open your statement – electronic of course because, like paper money, banks don’t deal in paper statements anymore either – and your guilty secrets unfurl like a rap sheet before your very eyes.
Five taps of a Friday night in the local, followed by a five-ounce burger meal on the way home.
And just why did you need a family-pack of crisps when a small bag would have done? Was all that beer and wine really for a party, or a night in just for one?
Cash provided plenty of dark corners to ignore your profligacy, but there are no hiding places in the contactless world.
Worse still, until that morning of reckoning arrives, you’ve no clue how much you’ve spent, and handing over the card doesn’t hurt half as much as parting with hard cash.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App
Download the Connacht Tribune Digital Edition App to access to Galway’s best-selling newspaper.
Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
Or purchase the Digital Edition for PC, Mac or Laptop from Pagesuite HERE.
Get the Connacht Tribune Live app
The Connacht Tribune Live app is the home of everything that is happening in Galway City and county. It’s completely FREE and features all the latest news, sport and information on what’s on in your area. Click HERE to download it for iPhone and iPad from Apple’s App Store, or HERE to get the Android Version from Google Play.
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