Monday 12 January 2009

Gaza: Sunday Times Has a Go

Liam Fay, a Sunday Times columnist, had a pop in today's paper.

Make of it what you will. For me, it's ignorance is only matched by its childishness. A letter of reply awaits.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/ireland/article5488694.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2

Gaza plan a Looney idea

All politics is local but some local politicians must be living on another planet. In an shameless act of self-promotion evidently motivated by forthcoming council elections, Dermot Looney, a Labour candidate, has called for the twinning of his native Tallaght with Gaza city.

The Greenhills-based Looney suggested the twinning would constitute a display of “material and infrastructural support from the people of Tallaght and south Dublin council in the time ahead”. We can but hope he at least has some idea what he’s on about.

With the economy in turmoil and local authorities strapped for cash, this year’s council elections are likely to be extremely strange. Unable to make credible promises about improving services in their own wards, some of these parish-pump demagogues may well seek publicity by trying to make grandiose interventions in international events.

Think global, act local and emigrate before it’s too late.