It's a Lost world. We were doing fine with it but then the series started on British TV and their media went loopy and nearly did our heads in with talk of how unrealistic it is and what a crock we've been sold. Truth is, we want to be sold a crock. Unreality is where we live. Guide price, my eye, we'll give you another million for it. Lost and all its money (it spent £6m on the first episode) puts up nothing more outrageous than life does.
'Some guy just tried to pick me up," I said incredulously to my friend Paul as we hurriedly left the Dublin Bookshop on Grafton Street.
MEDIA: The former Irish Times editor was described in last week's Village as the 'holy fool of Irish journalism'. In fact he was one of the brilliant stars of his generation. By Conor Brady
Eddie Hobbs is, by popular acclaim, the consumer's champion. He is a good-guy who is on our side. Every assertion that he makes on Rip Off Republic (RTÉ 1, Mondays, 9.30pm) has the ring of inescapable truth. As a nation, we are being fleeced and somebody should say it. So why then is Rip Off Republic among the most annoying pieces of television I've seen this year?
Micheál Ó Muircheartaigh is quite appropriately Ireland's most universally beloved broadcaster, virtually untouchable by any serious criticism. (I've thrown a few harmless cream-pies in his direction over the years, but nothing that could or would dim his fundamental brilliance.) So fair play to whoever it was that came up with a radical realisation: a Micheál match-broadcast could actually be improved if we were allowed a few gaps in the wall of Kerry-accented sound.
In the past week the British media has been saturated with coverage of leaked documents showing a significantly different account of Charles de Menezes' shooting than that given in some police briefings and leaks to the media. Yet, the previous week in Village (12-18 August) a statement we published contained many of the same revelations.
In most, if not all, the media coverage of the trial of Mayo farmer Pádraig Nally, the murder victim, John (Frog) Ward was portrayed as a violent, drug-fuelled petty criminal. Ward was already known to the gardaí, had 12 sets of convictions and was due in court to face charges for threatening a Garda with a slash hook.
The shooting dead of a Brazilian man at a London tube station and the coverage of the Padraig Nally case showed that media discrimination still exists.
National liberation struggles can have different phases. There is a time to resist, to stand up and to confront the enemy by arms if necessary. In other words there is a time for war. There is also a time to engage. To reach out. To put war behind us all.
Near the village of Rossport, in the far-flung corner of Ireland that is North Mayo, people who have never been involved in protests in their lives have mounted a 24-hour vigil outside the largest construction site in the region. Five local men are in prison for obstructing the work in the area and a couple of weeks ago one man described what was going on there as an area in open revolt against the Government and Shell.