My aching sides

I could have trailed through this Business Post article about the Belfast Giants pulling apart the absolute nonsense which it alleges of established sports in Northern Ireland (you know, the ones that people from here actually compete in). I could have pointed out the vastly overblown claims which it makes for the NIO’s almost erstwhile ice hockey team and the fact that it was nothing but a passing craze which has gone out of fashion. Luckily I don’t have to, because this paragraph is more effective (and hilarious) than any ridicule which I could pour upon either the article or the Belfast Giants.

“Jim Gillespie, who has poured $3 million (€2.2 million) of his own money into the Belfast Giants ice hockey team, said the survival of his team was essential for the long-term stability of the peace process.”

Comments

Anonymous said…
Are you against the peace process Chekov? Is that it? Your dislike of ice hockey is just a subtle critique of the constitutional settlement.

Shame on you
15 December 2008 at 12:06
Owen Polley said…
I'm against peace full-stop Ignited. I'm into war fomenting sports. Like football and rugby. ;-)
15 December 2008 at 13:43
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Football fever in Russia

Russia Blog is getting excited about Euro 2008. Indeed it is drawing parallels between Guus Hiddink and Peter the Great in terms of successful Russo-Dutch exchanges of expertise. Meanwhile, in Moscow, fans have been taking to the streets in order to celebrate the national team’s achievements.
Read more

Stormont might not collapse but paramilitaries continue to disfigure Northern Ireland

Image
The devolved institutions in Northern Ireland are supposedly ‘teetering on the brink’ of collapse yet again.  After repeated failures to agree a balanced budget or implement welfare reform created months of uncertainty, the Executive’s future is now in doubt because the PSNI believes members of the IRA were involved in murdering a republican hit man.  Despite its apparent seriousness, this particular predicament is unlikely to bring the shaky edifice at Stormont crashing down. The IRA was supposed to have disbanded its military ‘structures’ and decommissioned its entire arsenal of weapons back in 2005.  It was on the basis of this understanding that power-sharing resumed in 2007 and the DUP entered government with Sinn Féin.  From the outset it was a fairly flimsy pretext.   Less than a year after John de Chastelain, the retired Canadian general, oversaw decommissioning, the Independent Monitoring Commission reported that the IRA retained a substantial haul of arms.
Read more

Walker loada rubbish

Former BBC employee Brian Walker has overrun Slugger O’Toole lately with countless poorly structured, poorly written posts. It is possible quickly to recognize and avoid these by subjecting each Slugger piece to a cursory inspection and identifying those which feature characteristic lack of paragraphing and a tenuous grasp on the technicalities of linking source articles. Although I generally evade Walker’s posts by this method, occasionally (and unfortunately) I have persevered and found that their content is as unrewarding as the style in which they are written. Today, for instance, I inflicted upon myself Brian’s thoughts on a mooted Fianna Fail / SDLP merger . In actual fact, he is right to welcome news that the Southern Irish party has dropped this proposal from its agenda; however, the logic by which he arrives at this conclusion is parochial nonsense. To summarise, Walker believes that pursuing realignment with larger parties, whether they are from the rest of the UK or fro
Read more