Note: This letter was written in 2007…
To: lettersed@irish-times.ie
Sent: Mon, 26 Nov 2007 6:55 pm
Subject: WONDERFUL WORLD
Madam
Reading the Irish Times frequently transports me to a wonderful world.
A Wonderful World, in the sense of the old song by Sam Cooke which starts with the line “Don’t know much about history” and continues to confess levels of ignorance for which schoolboys were once caned or leathered.
Your paper has recently declared that the Ford Motor Company’s first factory outside America was in Cork, despite the fact that Ford had factories in Old Trafford some six years before and in Bordeaux four years before arriving in Cork in 1917.
Your political editor maintains that Labour is the oldest party in Dail Eireann despite the fact that the party, founded in 1912′ did not contest the 1918 or 1921 General Elections and thus had no deputies in the First or Second Dail. Sinn Fein, through whose agency the Dail was founded,had Councillors, such as Sean T O Ceallaigh on Dublin Corporation from 1906 and W T Cosgrave from 1909. Might I ask your political Editor, in the words of Noel Coward “Whatever happened to them?” The two largest parties in today’s Dail have their origin in Sinn Fein and distinguished members of other parties cut their political teeth or sowed their wild oats under its umbrella. Besides, Sinn Fein hasn’t gone way. Or doesn’t your Political Editor know?
Your occasional correspondent David Adams, writes of the Pearson Family, presumably in the 1920s, receiving derisory compensation of £7,000. That sum in 1923 would have bought 20 three-bedroom semi-detached houses in North London. Today one would need £8,000,000 pounds for those same
properties. I believe house inflation in Dublin has been even greater.
It would help also, when told that Trinity College Dublin and UCD both are listed in the top 200 Universities (or University Colleges) in the world to know how many hundred or how many thousand comparable institutions rank behind them.
That way readers might hope to be better informed and have a better sense of proportion than Sam Cooke’s juvenile lovesick swain.
Yours faithfully
Donal Kennedy
London
PS Houses in North London have doubled in value since the above was sent to THE IRISH TIMES.
Great article, put a smile on my face.
The brazenness of publishing such demonstrably false information simply amazes me! They truly have no shame, like virtually all of the Dublin media!
Good God! they took their time about publishing it, Donal. Nearly ten years – the oul snail mail would have been a lot faster. Still, nice to be reminded of the Madam of the Tara Street Brothel. She ignored many a literary gem of my own too.