Archive for the ‘Humour’ Category
Doctor Matt Barrett saves a little of Ireland’s honour at the absurd coronation of a British King called Charles III
The French socialist Jean-Luc Melenchon spoke for many when he branded the coronation of the new English king Charles III “nauseating”.
A Dublin cardiologist, Matt Barrett, is the partner of an Irish politician Leo Varadkar (currently the Fine Gael Taoiseach, Prime Minister). Matt had to attend the recent coronation of an English king called Charles. While Varadkar and other attending Irish forelock-tuggers (such as President Michael D Higgins and the Sinn Féin leaders Mary Lou McDonald and Michelle O’Neill) dutifully swallowed the nauseating royal guff, Matt broke ranks.
Ten out of Ten to Matt Barrett! :
“Varadkar’s partner, Matt Barrett, however, did not get the memo. In the VIP motorcade and in Westminster Abbey, he posted a series of irreverent comments on Instagram to his private group of more than 350 followers.
“Holy shit I think I’m accidentally crowned king of England,” he posted from the taoiseach’s car as they approached the abbey on 6 May.
The posts, reported in the Irish Times on Saturday, have embarrassed the government and landed Varadkar in a fresh diplomatic blunder.
Once inside the abbey, Barrett, a consultant cardiologist, ignored an injunction in the order-of-service booklet to switch off his phone and posted jokes and observations on the ceremony.
A paragraph from page 38 in the booklet caught his eye. “The queen’s sceptre and rod are brought from the altar by the Right Rev and Right Hon the Lord Chartres GCVO and the Right Rev Rose Hudson Wilkin CD MBE, Bishop of Dover. The queen touches them in turn,” it said.
Barrett posted a photo of it with a green line around the last sentence. “Sounds like the script to a good night out, tbh,” he said.
In the list of participants, he noted the Right Rev James Newcome, who has the title Clerk of the Closet. Barrett highlighted this, saying: “Had this job until my early 20s.”
Later he posted a photograph of Charles wearing his crown and compared it to the sorting hat in the Harry Potter books. “Was genuinely half expecting it to shout ‘GRYFFINDOR,’” he wrote.”
The source is the Guardian, a British newspaper.
In Ireland, beside the famous “You Are Now Entering Free Derry Wall”, the English king is not welcome :

‘An Historic May Day in London: New Days in Old England’ by Thomas J. O’Flaherty from the Daily Worker Saturday Supplement. Vol. 3 No. 134. June 19, 1926.
Tomás Ó Flatharta, inspiration of this blog, was a talented writer. This is an example of his work, full of interesting personal and political insights.
Source : Revolution’s NewsStand : https://revolutionsnewsstand.com/2023/05/01/an-historic-may-day-in-london-new-days-in-old-england-by-thomas-j-oflaherty-from-the-daily-worker-saturday-supplement-vol-3-no-134-june-19-1926/

May Day in London’s Hyde Park, 1926.
T.J. O’Flaherty travels from Dublin to London to participate in the May Day celebrations during that year’s General Strike and penned this wonderful essay on the day’s events.
‘An Historic May Day in London: New Days in Old England’ by Thomas J. O’Flaherty from the Daily Worker Saturday Supplement. Vol. 3 No. 134. June 19, 1926.
I LEFT the usually turbulent but now comparatively peaceful Dublin on the evening of the 30th of April, bound for London. Dublin is not an easy place to leave—particularly for those with a thirst for the dramatic.
But May Day in London in 1926 with 1,000,000 coal miners out of the pits! And with a general strike threatened! This was something that many men and women would sacrifice years of ordinary existence to experience. So I resisted the temporary invitation of friends to spend a week shooting curlews in the heather-clad mountains of Wicklow, or discussing the futility of things in general with the cynical intelligentsia of Dublin who survived the gats of Black and Tans, Regular and Irregular Republicans and Free States.
Oh Ah, Up the Ra “One Song Two Reactions – Why is it different when the rugby boys sing Celtic Symphony?” – Joe Brolly, Derry All-Ireland Winner, Gaelic Athletic Association
This story assesses three sporting activities in Ireland – Gaelic Games, Soccer, and Rugby. It shines a light on a misogynous (woman-hating) West-British media culture.
Thanks to the Dublin Council of Trade Unions for bringing this story to our attention.

Joe Brolly in the Sunday Independent, January 8 2023 :
Read the rest of this entry »France : Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (NPA -New Anticapitalist Party) Divides Down the Middle
The congress of the Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste (New Anticapitalist Party) took place on 9-10-11 December. It resulted in a separation of the party. The first statement published was adopted by the platform winning 48.5% of the votes. The second by the platform obtaining 45.5% of the votes.
Read the rest of this entry »Anyone But England
This ‘Anyone But England’ mentality is petty and reflects badly on us as a nation, and it’s about time we merci d’ignorer le début de ce tweet et de soutenir nos héroïques français contre les anglais.
Source :
Ce soir. Allez Les Bleus. Allez, allez, allez.
Ni dieu, ni maitre. Ni patrie ni patron.
Aux armes citoyens!
Formez vos bataillons!
Postscript by a correspondent :
What’s all the grumbling with the referee about? He gave England two penalties. Was he meant to allow Harry Kane retake them until he scored too? Or was he supposed to give 3 because he missed one? 4 maybe? Weird.
James Doyle
“If you hate the royal family clap your hands”
You can’t fool Celtic Soccer Fans :
Celtic fans disrupt minute’s applause for Queen Elizabeth II with anti-Royal chanting and banner.

From CNN :
“CNN
—
Supporters of Glasgow-based football team Celtic FC chanted anti-royal sentiments during a planned minute’s applause for Queen Elizabeth II ahead of the team’s match against St. Mirren in Paisley, Scotland, on Sunday.
The minute’s applause had been organized after the home team, St. Mirren, chose to pay tribute to the late monarch, but Celtic fans unfurled a banner reading “If you hate the royal family clap your hands” and chanted the same words throughout the planned homage.
The Scottish FA said in a statement on Monday that “as a mark of respect and in keeping with the period of National Mourning, home clubs may wish to hold a period of silence and/or play the National Anthem just ahead of kick-off, and players may wish to wear black armbands.”
Sky, who was broadcasting the match, confirmed to CNN that it turned down the stadium microphones to limit the audibility of the chants during its broadcast of the minute’s applause.
After the applause ended, commentator Ian Crocker said, “Apologies if you were offended by anything you might have heard. Most people showed respect, some did not.”
It is the second time this week that groups of Celtic fans have expressed anti-royal feelings, with the club currently subject to an investigation by European football’s governing body UEFA after displaying a banner reading “F**k the crown” during Wednesday’s Champions League match against Shakhtar Donetsk.
CNN has reached out to the Scottish Professional Football League and Celtic FC for comment but did not immediately get a response.
Though Celtic is based in Scotland, its traditions are intertwined with those of anti-monarchist Irish republicans since it was founded with the aim of alleviating poverty in Glasgow’s Irish Catholic immigrant population in the 1880s.
Its crosstown rival Rangers, meanwhile, is traditionally more aligned with Protestantism and royalist unionism, heightening the antagonism between the two sides.
The Scottish FA, the governing body for football in the country, said to CNN that it didn’t have “any jurisdiction over fan behaviour at league matches.”
Booing during the minute’s silence was also audible in other matches held in the Scottish Premiership this weekend.
Dundee United released a statement, acknowledging that “a small section of the crowd chose to not respect the minute’s silence” ahead of its match against Rangers at Ibrox on Saturday.”
English Queen Kicks Bucket : Loyal Mass Media Bans Joke: “the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes” – London Forelock-Tugging Mocked
American Columbia Journalism Review retaliates – reporting the Sky multinational media corporation
removed jokes including a reference to the Queen’s passing as “the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes.”
New York based Irish-American Correspondent Joan McKiernan circulates real news :
These are just some of the things that have been canceled—or stopped, or banned, or discouraged, or quietened, or postponed, or revoked—somewhere in the UK since the Queen died last week, out of respect or to facilitate other people paying theirs. (When the British network Sky rebroadcast the latest episode of Oliver’s US late-night show, it removed jokes including a reference to the Queen’s passing as “the shocking death of a 96-year-old woman from natural causes.” Sky declined to comment to Deadline about the changes.) Beside those that have affected the media directly, all the cancellations have provided the press with a running storyline this week, alongside a packed calendar of official mourning. They have occasioned much comment on social media, too. A Twitter account called @GrieveWatch has grown in popularity, highlighting not only cancellations but overbaked expressions of public grief. Currently pinned to the top of its feed is a video posted by a prominent right-wing commentator—who once mocked Meghan and Harry for attending a “personal” remembrance event with a photographer present—showing him engaging in some “quiet reflection” outside Buckingham Palace. “The important thing is that you filmed it,” @GrieveWatch wrote.
Correspondent Jon Allsop decided to sacrifice 12 hours of his life – the things some people must do to earn a crust – life is often cruel :



“A banner in the Celtic end stated “F*** the Crown” while another one said “Sorry for your loss Michael Fagan”, a reference to the intruder who broke into the Queen’s Buckingham Palace bedroom in 1982.
Early in the match, there was a chant of “If you hate the Royal Family, clap your hands” but the Celtic fans quickly had some positive play to get behind as their team took a 10th-minute lead before being pegged back.”
Of course, the packed calendar of official mourning has been themajor storyline this past week across major news organizations. It’s been a huge deal globally, including in the US, with networks dispatching staff to London, cutting into programming to broadcast the latest ceremony, marveling at British “pomp and circumstances” (sic), and lining up plummy-voiced royal commentators straight from British-stereotype central casting. But British news outlets, as is only right and proper, have shown the way.
Yesterday, I settled in at 8am local time with the intention of watching twelve consecutive hours of British TV news coverage; the mourning calendar was relatively empty—King Charles III took the day off—but Britain’s mourning period still had days to run, and I was curious to see if major networks had run out of things to say yet. Reader, I did not quite make it twelve hours, though I gave it my best shot. I started on the BBC, where news from the outside world (the war in Ukraine, the retirement of the tennis great Roger Federer) occasionally punched through, but where the biggest story, to begin with at least, was the real-time progress of a line—soon known to Brits simply as The Queue—that snaked for miles through central London as mourners waited hours for the chance to observe the Queen’s casket lying in state. (The BBC is also livestreaming footage of the casket, “for people who want to pay their respects virtually.”) Reporters queued up themselves to interview people in The Queue. Some particularly intrepid journalists joined it themselves and reported back, including a science correspondent at The Times of London, who was the twenty-second person in line. His boss had decided there was “nothing happening in science,” he wrote. Nothing at all.
Back on the BBC, a reporter was talking to two women who had brought loved ones’ ashes to see the Queen. Half an hour later, the Archbishop of Canterbury appeared on-screen in a high-vis jacket and started to interview people in The Queue as a reporter tried to interview him. At 10:47am or so, the BBC cut away from The Queue for a video interview with a man who edits a newsletter called Our Corgi World. The man batted away concerns that the Queen’s death could tank the popularity of corgis as pets while shoveling treats into his own dogs’ mouths. “Edward, Mungo & Barney, corgis,” the on-screen chyron read. After that, I cut away from the BBC to watch Sky News, which was also interviewing people in The Queue: a woman with a net over her face in tribute to the Queen’s love of horse-riding; a man who was born on the same day as King Charles and claimed he’d received extra milk rations and similar “goodies” from the palace as a result. “There’s been a royal vein through my life from day one,” the man said. If he seemed happy to talk at length, the same couldn’t be said for interviewees in a different, faster-moving section of The Queue, with a reporter having to gallop to keep pace with them as if she were staking out a recalcitrant politician. (Talk about queue anon.)

Reader, if you can bear it, click the source for more :
Marriage Advice for Young Ladies – From a Suffragette – 1918 – Reflections on Bloomsday 2022
“ Marriage advice for young ladies from a suffragette, 1918. The pamphlet is on display at the Pontypridd Museum in Wales. The suffragette is unknown.”
Source : Bernadette McAliskey’s fb page :

This is Bloomsday 2022 :
A favourite married man is fictional : Dublin’s “Everyman” Leopold Bloom, who had some roots in Hungary, the (anti) hero of James Joyce’s Ulysses, a tale of Baile Átha Cliath in one day.
Read the rest of this entry »Improving Science Literacy – And Supporting Mass Vaccination to Fight CoVid-19
This blog offers two very good quotations and an illustration to act as a helpful political and personal guide. Origin of the quotations? I do not personally know the authors. I wish to thank a Greek comrade, Kostas Skordoulis, who started the relevant Facebook discussion. The cartoon is just brilliant.
No. Most lay people don’t have the tools to “question the science”. They are just deluding themselves. Just look at any flat earther video. The emphasis should be on improving science literacy so people can learn to identify media misrepresentation of studies, or how to spot weak or obviously flawed studies, or to follow trustworthy sources, instead of thinking they are some modern day Galileo.