Archive News
Latex gloves the answer to security at airports
Date Published: {J}
Bertie Ahern gave us his personal assurance that George Bush had given him his personal assurance that prisoners were not transported through Shannon on their way to being tortured.
From this we can safely deduce that . . . prisoners were transported through Shannon on their way to being tortured. It is kind of obvious.
As Amnesty succinctly put it, the same assurances were given to the British government and shown to be false. Our country played its part in the War on Human Rights because Ahern was willing to do what he was told. Does anyone else remember when we had a reputation as a small nation that cared about international justice? Now we’re famous as the small nation that will break any rule, legal or moral, for money. You know, all that money we have.
Speaking of the comforts of air travel, I was depressed by the Saturday Show. In general of course, but in particular when Twink got a big round of applause when she spoke in favour of body scanners that can see your skin beneath your clothes. She really had the crowd going for safety at the price of privacy.
On the other hand, perhaps this is a healthy change. I doubt if Twink or any media figure in Ireland would have come out in favour of public nudity ten years ago. Perhaps we’re getting more relaxed.
As I discovered last year in the traditional saunas of Finland, being naked in public is not a nightmare situation if everyone else is doing it too. Hell, if we think this through we could save a lot of money and hassle by checking our garments as baggage.
I guarantee you’ll get to like it. Clothes after all are really just a commentary on your body. When you take them off, you give up trying to explain yourself.
But hold on now, we’re seriously talking about introducing these scanners. Even though the one attempt to smuggle a bomb that they might have prevented even in theory failed in a way that can only be described as ‘hilarious’. The underpants bomber achieved nothing except setting fire to his own genitals – and a shoo-in for the next Darwin Award. If we react to that with electronic strip-searching, how are we going to respond to the first idiot with a bomb up his bum?
There is no technical reason not to bury one in the fundament, it is only the delicate sensibilities of mass-murderers that have prevented it happening so far. They may be willing to eviscerate children and burn the faces off random strangers, but they would never do something that . . . unmanly. For now that is. When they finally decide that there is no other option, they will shove bombs up there with relish.
So what to do? The scanners won’t see these beauties beneath the skin. You can’t X-ray the bottom area because that’s where people keep their gonads. Really there is only one way to be completely sure of everyone boarding a plane. The good news is that it’s cheaper than you might have expected, costing nothing more than a single disposable elbow-length latex glove.
Then at last we’ll all be truly free.
Richard.Chapman@Gmail.com
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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