Money is an attention-magnet. If you’re in a restaurant, say, and a man walks by your table, you may or may not pay attention to him. But if somebody mentions that he’s a hugely rich man, worth many millions, however spiritual you are, you’ll swivel and gawk at him like everybody else.
Philip O’Doherty is an immensely rich man. He’s from Derry and he has been declared NEI’s richest man, worth something over £2 billion. Among other things he’s Derry City FC’s chairman. He comes from the Creggan area of Derry, not the richest part of that city.
Derry does seem to produce remarkable people. Nobel prize winners John Hume and Seamus Heaney, Feargal Sharkey and the Undertones, Phil Coulter – you could probably add to the list.
Like most of those listed above Philip O’Doherty attended St Columb’s College in Derry (as I did myself).
But let’s just focus a moment on wealth, of which Mr O’Doherty has a head-spinning amount,and ain’t he lucky. The Rich List is also an attention-magnet and gets published in all sorts of papers. Me, I’m looking forward to the day when a newspaper publishes the Poor list – the ten most destitute people in our stateen. They could tell us how they got to be so poor, what school they went to, what daily life is like for them. It might even expose some of the apparatus in the stateen that allow one man to make billions and another to wonder how he’ll feed his family.
When I attended St Columb’s, the floor in the porch of the main entrance was a coloured mosaic. Quaerite Primum Regnum Dei, it read – Seek Ye First the Kingdom of God. Funny how the school’s motto gets pushed out of sight when we’re assessing the worth of the people who studied there.
Was your school a bit like that?
Fair play to him. He obviously worked hard to get where he is, unlike some so called wealthy people who had riches handed to them. Yes, that’s you mister Trump. Some people are biased against poor people (conservatives) some people are biased against rich people (socialists) but I think the answer is to treat every person the same, rich or poor. Christ spent time with each and if it’s good enough for Him…..
Should that not be ‘if I were’?
If I were a poor man..de dee de dee de dee….