What passes for a newspaper
This is what passes for a newspaper: the Sunday Independent of 22 January 2006- News
Huge majority oppose celibacy, back Fr Mossie
[Front page lead story]
"More than three quarters of those polled by the Sunday Independent in a nationwide poll yesterday opposed celibacy and half supported 73-year-old Fr Mossie Dillane who fathered a child with a 31-year-old woman".
What poll, how was it conducted, how many people interviewed, how was the sample chosen, what credibility should be attached to the poll? Answer to the latter question: none. This is another piece of fabrication.
- Sex on the first date can be the start and not the end of a beautiful affair
By Carol Hunt [saucy picture]
"Call me sexually naive. (Go on, I dare you.) But I have never understood the fuss about sleeping with someone on a first date. Unless of course there's frigidity or impotence involved... Keeping yourself 'virgo intacta' until your wedding night is surely a very bad idea. What if you just don't fit each other?"
This article appeared in the "news" section.
- Lasting trauma of long locks shorn
"Victoria Mary Clarke wonders why so many women's self-esteem is so closely linked with how good their hair looks... An older female relative took it upon herself to take me and my sister to the hairdresser and get our lovely locks cut off into nice neat page-boy pudding bowls… I was both horrified and devastated. I howled and howled, for ever, it seemed, until I could grow it back again. Because no longer could I be the floaty princess of my imagination".
- Waifs out, let's be proud to be plump
"Even stick insects have fat-ass days. Yippee says Siobhan O'Connor as she tucks into leftover mince pies" [PHOTO]
-The day I faced the thugs who held a city to ransom
By Willie O'Dea
Willie was not talking of rendition flights through Shannon, he was talking about his constituents.
- Analysis: Leave the Constitution to the political trainspotters
By Eilis O'Hanlon
"The best thing to do is to ignore the Constitution as far as possible ... and just get on with our lives. It was once said that life is too short for long books. It's much too short for long Constitutions too."
Apparently our public discourse is now so degraded that the basis upon which the State rests, the Constitution, is no longer of consequence.
- Harris
[Column by Eoghan Harris]
"Councillor Garry Keegan, unlike Chris Andrews, was elected in the local government elections. He does not hesitate to give a hard time to Sinn Féin on the ground. He is the sort of fearless fighter that Fianna Fáil needs in Dáil Éireann. He is the man most likely to mop up the Moby Dick voters concerned about crime and community values. If Fianna Fáil nominates Chris Andrews over Gary Keegan it will show it prefers a plummy accent to real ability. And Moby Dick will conclude that Fianna Fáil, like the old British army, prefers a toff in an officer's uniform to a man who wins promotion on the battlefield. So will I."
Harris might be expected to know a little about battlefield and officers' uniforms
- Relationships: Far too many skinny people at the gym
By Eleanor Goggin
"Looking at [a woman who'd done 35 minutes on a treadmill] from the back, I saw she was in all-over good shape. But she turned around when she was finished and, sweet Jesus, she looked at least 90 years of age. By comparison, I looked like an overfed spring chicken. I think I'll keep my exercise to fluttering my eyelashes from now on".
- The big story: The real passions of Sexy Sven
Caption: "Swede dreams are made of this: England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson, who in his years with long-term girlfriend Nancy Dell-Olio has had a fling with Ulrika Jonsson and also hit the headlines for an affair with FA secretary Faria Alam. There is, however, a view that the person he is closest to is David Beckham."
- When a father becomes a dad
By Brendan O'Connor
"The church has now decided that matters between a man and a woman who is otherwise committed, are none of its business. This represents a huge move forward for the church and we welcome the new hands-off approach..."
- Lowrys separate to get on with life
[Photo of Michael Lowry]
"A close friend of the controversial TD did have this to say, however: 'Michael has been through the mill over the past 10 years since he had to resign from John Bruton's government, and his wife and family have had enough shit in the media'".
- Property
Let the games begin... the competition for Dubai is on
By John O'Keefe
[Lead story in Property section]
"Would you like an apartment in Dubai? For nothing? As my mother used to say when chasing me round the kitchen with a wooden spoon, 'you'll get nothing for nothing, in this life John' – a little unfair considering I was 34 at the time."
"When the apartments are completed the yield is expected to be between 12.7 per cent and 14.8 per cent. [The Developer's estate agent says] 'market prices will be considerably higher this time next year than they are today. Possibly 40 per cent higher'. Direct flights to Dubai with Aer Lingus begin on the 26th March and I'm on that plane baby, The question is, are you?"
An ad in the main newspaper reveals that the Sunday Independent is not just reporting on this on the cover of its Property section but is actually a (presumably commercial) partner of the developer in giving away the apartment.
- Mozart's 250th anniversary
Wolfgang Mozart, who died in penury 215 years ago, will earn billions for his promoters in 2006, the year of the 250th anniversary of his birth (born on 27 January 1756). He is quite simply the most revered, most renowned, musical genius of all time and his works are likely to be performed a thousand years from now, generating countless billions for concert and opera promoters and record companies.
Happiness for some, but for Mozart he probably did not have much happiness in his life, aside from his apparently very happy marriage.
He probably had a miserable childhood, His father, Leopold, also a composer and a musician, recognised Wolfgang's extraordinary talents by the time he was four (the only survivor among his six siblings, his sister, was also a child prodigy) and pushed his son from around the age of five, when he began composing.
He was brought around all the major music centers in Europe before he was aged 11 – to London, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Milan, Munich – and although all his family travelled with him he was terribly homesick. By his late teens he was writing operas, symphonies, sonatas, string quartets and concertos. He went to Paris with his mother when he was 23. The time there was not a success, made miserable by the death there of his mother.
He was patronised for a while by the Prince-Archbishop of his native Salzburg but thereafter he lived on his wits, earning very little.
By the age of 30 he had written 15 piano concertos. At 30 he also started to write the operas for which is the most famous: 'The Marriage of Figaro', 'Don Giovanni' and 'The Magic Flute'.
He composed 56 symphonies, 21 operas, 97 pieces of chamber music, 76 pieces for the piano, 53 arias (aside from the operas), 17 church sonatas, 18 masses, 46 songs, arias and scenes for voices and orchestras: 50 concertos and much more.
He died at the age of 35, which is perhaps as well for his reputation and the endurance of his fans.
- Dermot Ahern supported decision upholding right to seize aircraft involved in human rights abuses
In a bold statement last September, Dermot Ahern rejected in a decision of the European Court of Human Rights upholding the entitlement of the Irish government to seize an airplane that was suspected of being involved in human rights abuses.
He said: "The unanimous verdict by the European Court of Human Rights strikes a careful balance between the need to prevent mass violations of human rights… and the property rights of particular individuals." This concerned the impounding of a Yugoslav-owned aircraft in 1993.
- IRA announces massive redundancies
Outsourcing, globalisation and increased cost of knee-capping blamed by regional IRA commanders. 'A disaster for the community', says murky, balaclava-wearing figure
The IRA today announced several hundred lay-offs, effective from tomorrow morning 9 am. The shocking move comes at the end of a period of intense market speculation: speculation which has focused on the organisations' ability to compete in the new 'Global terrorism market'.
The economy of the European Union has been in a period of transition: with the inclusion of the ten new member states, the axis of power has shifted. The associated economic impact has been felt globally and, at a local level, made it increasingly more and more difficult for the Army to makes ends meet.
"We simply can't compete" said an IRA spokesman, yesterday. "The cost of doing business (pushes glasses up nose) is becoming prohibitive in Ireland now. The market has been flooded by cheap Eastern-European labour. These guys will do four times the work at one quarter of the going market rate".
Knee-cappings, racketeering, maiming, intimidation and battering drug-dealers senseless have always been the portfolio of a home-grown workforce, but now former Eastern-block countries are offering an abundance of experienced, talented terrorists who will do the same job, for a fraction of the price.
"Add to this, the salient (and all too-often overlooked) fact that there are a small army of scum-bags south of the border willing to off your mother for the price of a Ryanair flight to Alicante, and you can begin to appreciate the situation. Market erosion had been a steady and ever-present factor on the business landscape since the mid 1980s, but now we find ourselves under siege" said a large, tattooed man that we met in a Belfast car-park.
And it's not just the Republicans who have had to make cuts. High-labour costs and strictly enforced union rules have meant that the UDA have been forced to make radical changes to their employment structures. "Basically, these Polack lads will come in, hack an arm off, kick a head in, shit on you and throw you in a bog for roughly one third of the cost that one of our lads will do it for. We can't compete against that. We just can't," said another random man.
"Throw in the fact that they have some serious muscle behind them and well, I dunno; let's just say that things don't look good for us right now…" he informed us with leaden solemnity.
Looking forward, it's hard to see how paramilitary organisations will cope. In the wake of this news, it has been suggested by several prominent economic observers and cross-border Government shit-tanks, that the only solution may be a drastic one: make all staff immediately redundant and re-register the organisations in an entirely different country, where management can take advantage of a more favourable tax regime and the cheaper cost of labour. Like Colombia.
- From: www.blather.net (Posted by damien); Retire now!
A friend in America has sent me the following information about retirement.
The pension funds in many large corporations (eg, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, AT&T, Lucent Technologies, etc) have been "Over Funded" because many "late retirees" who keep-on working into their old age and retire late after the age of 65 tend to die within two years after their retirements. The following chart was done on an actuarial study of retirees of Boeing Aerospace.
If you are now 60 and if you plan to work three more years, you will die 7.5 years sooner. If you retire now, you will enjoy 10.5 more years of retirement, compared to retiring at 63.