What will we all do now that the Olympics are over? Was the closing ceremony as tedious as the opening one? And should the south spend €500 million on training athletes for the next Games?
Stephen Collins in the Irish Times has a column today where he links Sinn Féin with Hugo Chavez of Brazil and promises that the Shinners will visit chaos on the Irish economy. You’d nearly think there was a general election on the horizon.
Finally, we each recommend a book. Do you read to escape from or learn more about the real world?
It’s all in there. Click the button….
Hi Jude, just listened to you and Pat discuss the matter of government funding for sports after this Olympics.
Firstly, with regards, to your comment about people should not get carried away with ourselves regarding Irelands actual performance. It might be good to consider the net results of the medals table, where out of something like 148 competing countries, Ireland came in 16th in the medals table, and thats excluding the couple of medals of Irish people who performed for the Britain. why then would you say to anyone in Ireland that they shouldn’t get carried away with themselves.
Secondly, when it came to the matter of the proposed government funding of €500 million for the further development of sport here and your apparent caution against that, while asking if that money might be better spent on health, education, infrastructure etc, you ironically didn’t notice that you borrowed the very same argument of the Unionists who opposed public money being spent on Casement Park.
I know you were just playing devils advocate in the discussion, but I could just as easily been listening to Jim Allister or Sammy Wilson there.
I found both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies tedious but stuck with them.
The most impressive feature was the joy of the contestants, young smiling and beautiful
faces of all races and nations. A pity Russia was not there. I’m sure they would have won
many medals. The US, with a population of over 300 million tooh 40 Gold.
Team Ireland took 4 and Irish contestants in Team GB a further 2.
The All-Ireland Hurling and Gaelic Football finals this year were amazing.
The country can well afford to spend 500 Million Euro on sport in the next 4 years.
It will promote good health, education and social peace and go a long way to eliminating
bigotry and racism.
In THE IRISH TIMES Breda O’Brien takes apart the blasphemous parody of the Last Supper,
the scurrilous lies levelled at Marie Antoinette, who was accused of child abuse and lesbianism
and the delay of the egalitarian French in giving women the vote.
France waited until 1948 to give women the vote. Three years earlier, following Hitler’s Suicide,
France, together with other European Imperialists re-imposed their tyranny on non-European
peoples.
Breda O’Brien’s critique is a brilliant put-down of the noxious nonsense in the Olympic
opening ceremony.