Sunday and other stupid media statements of this week

guestposter

Jul 31

A headline from the Sunday Independent this morning deploys the 'we' trope...

If sexual liberty is such a good thing, why are we so unhappy?

National newspaper? Serious commentary on the climate crisis? Read on.

The Greens have had cows in their sights for a long time. They bizarrely wage war on rural farmers with great relish, pinpointing dairy cows as the cause of inevitable climate Armageddon at some unspecified point in the future. The choice is simple, the Greens believe: it is a question of salvation of the planet or farting cows. We cannot have both....

In the end, the figure agreed on by the two ministers was 25 per cent, a compromise that anyone could have predicted a week ago when all of the briefings and spin began. The 'deal' is nothing but a damp squib. It will not satisfy the small minority of Green Party voters who will not, in reality, be satisfied until the entire country is signed up to veganism and dairy farming has been consigned to history.

Pat Leahy has decided talking about David Trimble that he had four special qualities: "They revolve around four themes — willingness to change, courage, leadership and political skill." Fair enough. But...

The lessons from the political life of David Trimble are especially relevant for leaders in Dublin at a time when Irish politics is changing with great rapidity, and when the challenges faced by governments — however, they are constituted — are entirely unpredictable in their scale, scope and nature. Rarely has the future looked more uncertain. Climate change, economic turbulence, global instability, threats to social coherence and the demand for the State to do ever more for its people with finite resources — these are certainties in the times ahead which will test the abilities of whomever we choose to lead us.

They do could worse than reflecting on the life of David Trimble.

Here's Newton Emerson while in the course of a piece that extols the virtues of the only Irish politician who understands Unionism, that'd be one B. Ahern, also makes this eye-watering case:

Arcane legal arguments are under way about whether the protocol really impinges on powersharing's requirement for cross-community consent. Ahern was cutting through this by stating one side cannot simply impose its wishes on the other. If there was ever a legitimate "spirit of the agreement" argument, this is it.

Except, one side clearly can impose its wishes on the other, as exemplified by Brexit itself.

All other examples welcome.

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