Angeldubba

A big thanks to you, Macca! And also, slightly less enthusiastic to Nancy Pelosi, William Shatner and Henry Kissinger. This rogues’ gallery has one thing in common: they are old. Not just objectively, OK boomer old, but really old, with ages of 80,  82, 91  and 99 respectively. And look at ‘em! McCartney’s set at Glastonbury might not have been his finest musical hour, but after a ragged start  he didn’t sound too bad , and he played for two and a half hours. Take note, Barbra Streisand, Van Morrison and other famous entertainers who have left their crowds wanting more after barely a half-hour. All of these oldies are still goodies; although it might make those of us decades younger wince at the prospect of still having to deliver our professional and social contribution so much longer, they are doing fantastic work in raising the age bar for relevance.   Whereas you were on the scrapheap in your forties a few years ago (I speak from experience, more or les...

                                Photo:  chris robert  on  Unsplash TRACTORS are having their moment in the sun, or in the memes, with the artistic comedians among us trying to present a porn-y encounter between the agricultural behemoths.   And are wives and girlfriends everywhere nodding in recognition at ex-MP Neil Parish’s explanation that “he was looking for something else and the porn site popped up”, so he had a good look at that, and then a second look. Really, darling, I was trying to find electric foot massagers for your birthday!   For all of us except the Parish family the story about the MP who watched porn during a session of the House of Commons in Westminster has been rattling good entertainment. ‘Serious commentators’ have been bemoaning the disgraceful dishonouring of the Mother of All Parliaments, the precipitous low to which standards have fallen in Britain.  ...

  08 March 2022: ANXIETY   “A culture of achievement … destroys my students in terms of anxiety” – Harvard “professor of happiness” Laurie Santos, quoted in The New York Times   We must be happy. We think we should always be happy. If we’re not, something’s wrong. But this is like the illusion that led so many doctors to prescribe opioids to patients in the US, creating a situation in which  tens of thousands a year were dying of desperate addiction: there must be no pain. Pain is not to be tolerated. Life is to be painless. That’s mad, right? As mad as Vlad the Invader. Pain is part of life, unhappiness is part of life, happiness is part of life – but it’s not ALL of life. A rich tapestry, as a heartbroken reporter (failed romance) said sadly to me once back in Australia. Life is a tapestry, but that tapestry is not made up of threads of all the same colour. We are just bobbing along most of the time, sometimes we are happy and feel great, sometimes we are unha...

  Work can be a distraction from our private woes or worries. Going to the office – if you are back in the office now – can be a relief even if drudgery awaits, because it is a different setting, where you perhaps play a different role than you do on the home front. Granted, there are other anxieties here, especially if you feel the job is getting beyond you, the boss has unrealistic expectations, or you are not being promoted as fast as you deserve. But the kitchen-table concerns at least are left behind. This is one of the reasons why this fad for “bringing your whole self to work” is a bad idea. Leave the baggage at home, the cracked plates in the kitchen. I didn’t know about “bringing my whole self to work” but a piece by Douglas Murray  in the Spectator magazine  enlightened, as well as mystified, me. So this is a thing – has your organisation embraced it? There is a  2018 book  by US author Mike Robbins which spells out the idea. You should not try to supp...

  We’re very careful in our organisations these days. Due diligence and corporate governance, policies for correct behaviour in this and that, qualifications scrutinised, codes of conduct, background checks. And yet … Over in that London the talk is all of sleaze and how the current government is trying to escape scrutiny, and, basically  do what it likes to the benefit of those it likes . In Bulgaria and Romania vaccination numbers are critically low because, basically, the population doesn’t trust governments with a history of corruption. These are only a few examples.   Here in Ireland, the land of saints and scholars, we never have these problems! Although a  decade of tribunals into planning backhanders, dodgy meat sales, contaminated blood and other issues might persuade you differently.   Certainly Dublin is in the ha’penny place compared to London. It’s common knowledge that lucrative contracts for services associated with the fight against Covid went to...

I’ve been saying this for years – but you probably won’t yawn in recognition, as I’m under the radar, and don’t put every thought or wish on an internet platform.  But isn’t this the solution? What is needed is a government with the cojones to read the riot act to Mark Zuckerberg, and an appetite for shutting down a multi-billion dollar monster with literally billions of friends. Does such a government exist? Is it the US? China would no doubt be delighted, given its track record  in suppressing internet sites . But licensing is a different matter. Licensing is a way of making sure that industries which have most intense effect on people’s lives are acting at least partly in the interests of the customers. An example in architecture would be that fire safety is part of the considerations of the building design. In the US, home of Facebook, licensed industries include architecture, financial services, healthcare and pharmaceuticals. A quick look at that short list indicates the...

Nothing! Except you have to be dreaming, or living in Utopia, and Ryanair ain’t flying there yet. But this is the cheery British prime minister’s upbeat prediction for his country in the future. Boris Johnson really wants us all to think of him as the new Winston Churchill. Or rather, he wants the jolly old Brits who cherish Rule Britannia and that mostly-pink map of the world to think of him as WC reincarnated. These are the people who gave him his 80-seat majority in the British lower house of Parliament. Possibly the attack on Ivor Roberts-Jones’s wonderful statue of Winnie opposite the House of Commons in London, which happenedin June 2020, might have given him a brief pause, but only the briefest. Does Johnson’s attention focus on anything for more than goldfish-memory time, apart from the great endeavour of Making Boris Great Again, and Again, and Again … ? Waspish it sounds and waspish it is, after suffering through the insult which was BoJo’s comedy routine at the Conservative ...