Sidelines

News snippets from around the Globe

Gregory Campbell’s watching TG4

AFTER looking like he’s endorsing an ‘all-Ireland’ approach to commemorations, it now seems that DUP MP Gregory Campbell has now taken to his native language with a vengeance.

This came to light after Campbell vented his fury over the first episode of ‘Mná an IRA’ documentary series. The first episode featured long-time An Phoblacht contributor and Dublin Sinn Féin activist Rose Dugdale. The programme went out on Irish-language station TG4 on 5 January and followed the extraordinary story of Dr Dugdale, who went from being a debutante in British aristocratic circles to becoming a Volunteer soldier in ‘The People’s Army’, the IRA.

Whingeing in a letter to Dáil Communications Minister Pat Rabbitte TD about the programme’s content (another example of the unionist warhorse embracing an all-Ireland approach), Gregory obviously displayed a decent grasp of the Irish language. Has he secretly enrolled in Líofa 2015?

Google Translate not good

Eagle-eyed Cork Sinn Féin Councillor Chris O’Leary was out and about downtown when he spotted a number of rather curious signs for the local English Market. The signs, five in all —put up in an attempt to capitalise on the visit to the market by Elizabeth Windsor last year — direct people to the “Béarla sa Mhargadh — English Market”.

“Béarla sa Mhargadh” translates though as “English Language in the Market”.

It appears that a council employee simply used the Google Translate application for the pointless signage. Council chiefs have said they will replace the signs.

Thatcher and Young Fine Gael

MARGARET THATCHER, war criminal and friend of General Pinochet, will shuffle off this mortal coil without at least one embarrassing stain on her character - membership of Young Fine Gael.

The Young Fine Gael branch at University College Cork held a debate on 18 January entitled “Should Margaret Thatcher be made an honorary member of UCC YFG?” Some of the young Blueshirts put forward spirited arguments in favour of granting membership to the international tyrant even though ‘The Iron Lady’ humiliated their own beloved former leader, Garret FitzGerald, in November 1984 during a conference to discuss solutions to the conflict in the North by telling him his three proposals were “Out, out, out!”

There was fury vented on the UCC branch’s Facebook page over the issue, with one well-known Fine Gael Parliamentary Assistant apologising on behalf of the youth wing for what he described as “moronic stuff”. Members of the cumann retorted claiming he had no right to apologise on their behalf!

When it came to the crunch, though, the baby Blueshirts pulled back from the brink and the motion was lost.

Britannia waves the rules

MICHAEL GOVE, Westminster Education Minister and Conservative MP for oh-so-suburban Surrey, thinks that Queen Elizabeth should get a new luxury yacht to celebrate her diamond jubilee this year. And Gove wants austerity-stricken taxpayers to stump up the £60million for the vanity project in his sucking up to one of the richest rulers in the world.

Commentator Mark Steel, writing in London daily The Independent, mused: “I expect readers from Haiti are enclosing cheques, with a note saying, ‘Since the earthquake, my family has been living in a sewage pipe but when we saw you had to hold a banquet for the King of Morocco in a palace without the option of bobbling about on a yacht, it put my trifles into perspective.’”

Joe Duffy says sorry to Sinn Féin shock

PERMANENTLY angst-ridden RTÉ Liveline host Joe Duffy had to bite his tongue (and probably almost swallowed it) when he had to apologise to Sinn Féin live on national radio on Monday 16 January after he ‘mistakenly’ and repeatedly claimed that Sinn Féin on Dublin City Council had voted in favour of the privatisation of the household bins service.

In fact, it was the votes of Fine Gael and the Labour Party that brought in the privatisation of waste collection of the City Council service (which had been provided for more than a century) ended on 13 January.