Unilever’s campaign for real profits continues. A full page advertisement appears in the women’s supplement to Gazeta Wyborcza. It includes a picture of the masterminds of this operation. In case the irony is not abundantly clear, I’ll put “masterminds” in inverted commas. These are in fact the Polish drones, acting on instructions from Higher Up, […]
Recently I was driving down Dublin quays, from Parkgate Street on to O'Connell Street. Fortunately, it's not a route I need to take often, so I gawked at my surroundings a bit more than usual. Whereas there's been a lot coverage of the Dublin Boardwalk–and the drug addicts who tend to frighten the office workers […]
A marble bust of Kevin Myarse’s senatorial features deserves to be placed in Pseuds Corner in honour of the hack’s paean to Manchester United’s thumping of Roma during the week. Having gone through the formality of establishing his Decline-of-the-West credentials (“ I don’t particularly like modern soccer players, with their culture of overpaid celebrity, extravagant […]
I seem to be one of the few people in my circle of friends and family not to be a fan of the Channel 4 programme, Grand Designs. Sure, it’s a cut above the usual celebrations of real-estate avarice, such as Property Ladder and the noisome Location, Location, Location (or is it now Relocation, Relocation, […]
It’s always been a matter of some surprise to me that I have never been busted for tax evasion. I’ve worked in a dozen countries under a kaleidoscopically variegated set of tax systems (Poland alone has at least three different kinds of employment contract) – none of which I have ever understood. A snotty letter […]
From Saturday’s Irish Times review of Susan Sontag’s final collection of essays: “Sontag incurred disproportionate approbrium for her initial reaction to the events of September 11, 2001” I suppose it would also be disproportionate to ask the sub-editor who overlooked a howler like “approbrium” (opprobrium + approbation?) to submit to a yakuza-style yubitsume ritual? These, […]
They have this TV station here called TVN 24 – yes it is original, isn’t it? – devoted to news only. I happened to catch sight of it over the tremendously boring Easter holidays here. As befits a creative industry, they have copied the western habit of having a ticker tape at the bottom of […]
I sometimes mutter to myself when some bewigged windbag is described “as one of the finest legal minds of his generation.” Given the absence of any real benchmarks for performance at the Irish bar, such a description can be charitably interpreted as describing a barrister who loses less than 50% of his or her cases. […]
Some thing I have thought about, like , in the past fortnight: 1. The low standard of Irish politicians is merely the product of the low standards of the electorate. From last week’s Western People: “Mayo, it seems, remains loyal and steadfast in it’s [sic] support of the Flynn Dynasty, as Independent Beverly looks odds […]
In the wake of Ireland’s astonishingly unexpected win over Pakistan in the Cricket World Cup, drawls can be heard throughout the bosky suburbs of Dublin proclaiming “You know, I could delivery a pretty mean googly before the rugger took up all my time.”Meanwhile, the angst of Pakistan’s defeat has been compounded by the death of […]
