The Disappointing Christmas Ad of News
This week I have, to use the newspaper parlance, been away. But not wishing to let 7 days go past uncommented, I asked my fellow Donegal scribe Kevin Ward to take charge of my ink jar for the week. Here are his assorted quillings
Crash! Bang! Schnorbitz! It's only the heart-thumping action of an EU summit where everyone's agreed beforehand that nothing will get done, but teleconferencing doesn't send out the right optics! The past week has seen another of the EU's round-table distractions on drawing up a budget for the whole shebang, and another important agreement reached to disagree until the night before the essay is due, and it's worth, like, 40% of the marks for the whole year. But soft, EU-watchers, salvation is at hand; dynamic Enda Kenny is on hand to threaten to bite the off ears of any recalcitrant member states and spit in the 'ole, once Ireland re-accedes to the EU Presidency. An Taoiseach, probably the most fervent European not to personally hail from the continental landmass since Paul Weller was in his cappuccino-sipping Style Council days, is set to inherit the dog's tasting menu at Noma that is a massive budget with some nations (Britain, Germany, The Netherlands) turning out their pockets and shrugging with others such as France saying "Come ahhhhn!" in response to the needs of the entity for the next seven years. Eurosceptics in Britain may trumpet instances of alleged misuse of funds and outright graft, but administration costs only take up 6% of the EU's overall budget. Must be all those glass bottles of water at summits, it adds up.
I have utmost faith in Mr Kenny as, like a crazed Bergerac fan, he has no qualms about grasping at Nettles. Why, only this week he showed outstanding leadership in actually legislating for something the Irish people wanted signed into law after the X Case. No, wait, BWAHAHAHAHA! As piggin' if. This particular can has been so lustily kicked down the road I'm surprised that a mule wasn't brought in for the task. In fairness to Fine Gael, they've never said anything other than that they were content to ignore the will of the people and sit on both their hands and abortion legislation. It's not their fault some poor woman had to go and die and make them look bad. Sometimes we do our politicians a disservice.
The earth's charisma wattage decreased this week with the death of Dallas diabolical Larry Hagman. His JR Ewing was the people's Daniel Plainview, a man who wouldn't let any feeble-hearted Bobby, Miss Ellie, Jock (until he died off-screen) in South America, Sue Ellen or Cliff Barnes come between him and his birthright, the oil underneath his cowboy boots. Just listen to this glorious theme tune and weep that all we get nowadays is a title card and two notes of music. It has now emerged that Larry may have had a bit of JR in him, having taken a big bag of cash for talking nice to Nicolae Ceaușescu. It's like finding out Sofie Gråbøl actually really loves weird jumpers.
I can't claim to know what's to become of the latest incarnation of Dallas, but I do know the third full Ewing brother, Gary, will not attend any onscreen funeral for his eldest brother. As Gary got a spin-off (Falcon Crest) that ran concurrently with Dallas, the 'Shower Dream' series rug-pull in 'Dallas' couldn't coherently be done in 'Falcon Crest', therefore to Gary and the rest of the Crestiverse, Bobby has been dead since the 80's. At least he never lived to see possible abortion in Ireland, that's something at least.