Múinteoir Connolly takes the p**s with election leaflets

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

It’s the end of August, and it’s back-to-school time for primary and secondary school children. Election time is looming, too, and judging by the standard of election literature being produced, some of the candidates would be advised to go back to school as well.

The biggest offender we’ve encountered so far has to be John Connolly, the Fianna Fáil general election candidate in Galway West.

A former city councillor, Connolly is joining Galway county councillor Mary Hoade and sitting TD, Éamon Ó Cuív on the party’s ticket.

A GAA man through and through, the Bearna native who is living in Rahoon has an obvious affinity with the Irish language and would have the ‘cúpla focal’.

John has put leaflets through letterboxes in Knocknacarra, announcing his candidacy, introducing himself to voters and listing some of his priorities if he gets elected.

Fair play to him, like a true Gaeilgeoir, the cards are bilingual, in Irish and English.

A rival candidate is not so happy, however. So unhappy is the rival candidate, in fact, that their ‘camp’ has been in touch to point out a few mistakes in the Irish.

Some mistakes are minor . . .  and only the purest of pure Irish speakers would have a gripe about misplaced fadas, or absent fadas, or small grammatical mistakes. We’ll give him those.

But there is one howler.

The paragraph reads: “Tá mé ag múnadh i Scoil Aibhthinn Naofa, Ros Cathail”.

It – presumably – should read: “Tá mé ag múineadh i Scoil Aibhthinn Naofa, Ros Cathail”.

No big deal says you.

Except the first one translates as “I am urinating in St Annin’s National School in Rosscahill”.

We’re pretty sure he means he’s teaching there, rather than p**sing.  And as a teacher with a decent fluency in Irish, you’d think he’d know better.

Or is there an alternative curriculum in North Connemara that we don’t know about?

City Hall biting the hands that feed it

Have they lost the plot in City Hall?

Galway built its reputation for the arts, partly on the highly-creative Macnas parades.

It was strange to hear, then, that a directive was issued from on high at College Road that the recent Macnas parade as part of the new Galway Whiskey Trail wasn’t to go ahead.

The organisers of the trail had permission for a spectacle at Spanish Arch, involving fireworks, pyrotechnics and drummers. It was excellent apparently.

They hadn’t permission to begin the spectacle – or trail – from up town and wander down through the city streets of the Latin Quarter with drummers and men on stilts.

Officials were concerned about any possible advertisement/sponsorship of alcohol element to the event – it was a whiskey trail, after all.

But in that great old tradition of believing it better to ask for forgiveness than permission, the organisers evidently ignored the party-poopers and paraded regardless.

They argued that the parade wasn’t a parade, just a few lads in costumes on stilts and drummers walking down the street; and so the parade-that-wasn’t-a-parade defied officialdom and paraded in the non-parade anyway.

Anyone who saw it said it was great, particularly visitors who thought what a lovely artistic and creative bunch we all are in Galway.

But why the party-pooper directive from Galway City Council?

This being an organisation that will be using Macnas, and their famous parades, in its bid to win the Capital of Culture 2020; a bid that, incidentally, has the backing of the Latin Quarter, and Whiskey Trail businesses, who, incidentally, also fund the Council through rates.

‘Tis a bit short-sighted of officials.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.