All's well in FF land

If you want an antidote to all the bad news in the media, pay a visit to the Fianna Fáil website. It will put your mind at ease to know that we have a caring, hard-working, government which delivers high quality services in a timely and efficient manner. Your heart will be glad when you learn that you live in a country where rail links grow up from the weeds in the path of oncoming trains; sheep farmers attend their flocks in the hills, happy knowing that the red tape between them and their subsidies has melted away; children look on in delight as new schools drop from the sky like snowflakes. The rivers run wild with salmon and trout as Ireland makes top grade in environmental care. Met Éireann is to close, having announced a future of perpetual sunshine. Doctors amble into wards to ask smiling patients if they're feeling better. Factories and office towers condense from the morning mists in the Donegal Gaeltacht, where native tongues wag and laughing workers tell wonderful tales of Fionn and the Fianna.

Oh, what a pity to have to log off and leave this serene and blessed valley, oh how distressing to leave this exalted kingdom and face the real Ireland - clogged and unequal and frustrating and rich and, today at least, bloody cold.

Ciarán Mac Aonghusa, Churchtown, Dublin 14