Is there not the scent of hypocrisy wafting around the Solidarity party and its hang-up with the Dáil prayer? The radical left in Leinster House always strikes me as people who don’t do b******t. What is likeable about them is how they don’t do the funeral circuit to win votes. Disruption is all the rage. Disruption is the theme of almost every conference you go to now. And that definition of disruption certainly applies to the radical lefts’ approach to Parliament.

They might be perpetually against everything – including good weather, if they thought it was a government proposal! But at least they say it as it is. And regardless of your political opinion, the emergence of all the different shades of red has refreshed politics and helped expose a lot of corruption and wrongs at the top of society.

Clare Daly doesn’t suffer fools and, whatever you think of her politics, she has been a very effective politician, who has gotten to the root of many issues other politicians would just flip flop around.

She, Mick Wallace, Gino Kenny and a few others could certainly do with a bit of a fashion makeover. But they don’t care and (despite the fact I think that the way you dress for an occasion mirrors proportionately the respect you have for such an occasion, or person or place), I admire their ballsy attitude. It is like they are saying, “We have bigger things to be worried about in this country.” Yes we do.

So why then are they kicking up such a fuss about the Dáil prayer – or silence, or whatever it is – that has been agreed to mark the beginning of each sitting? Talk about bold children.

If they are so offended about this affront to their atheism, would they not just wait until the prayer has been said and the silence has been observed before entering the chamber?

A simple, grown-up solution, really – which you think they would be into, seeing that they like to present themselves as more grown- up than the fellas in the suits.

But hold on a bell. Did I just commend them there for not doing funerals, like their country cousins? Ah, sure now that I think of it, aren’t they just as bad! By angrily attacking the church at every turn – including stubbornly sitting through the Dáil prayer – aren’t they just the same as their political foes: shamelessly looking for populist attention from the grassroot non-believers that, more than likely, populate the working-class constituencies they represent as much as the run of the mill mass-goers populate the rural ones?

Indeed. So whether it’s Brid Smyth or Mattie McGrath, they both know on what side their bread is buttered! CL

The pre-internet & pre-mobile days

I came across an old business card the other day from my Shannonside/Northern Sound days. Not only was email not invented back then, I hadn’t even got a mobile phone number for the card. How did we survive?!

It reminds me of a wonderful story told by my good friend Ray Ryan, formerly of the Irish Examiner, about the trials and tribulations of reporting in the pre-internet, pre-mobile phone days. A sports reporter covering a Northern Ireland soccer match behind the “Iron Curtain” was up against a deadline, but had to wait several hours before being put through on a dodgy landline to the copy taker in Belfast. At last he got linked up and began dictating his precious copy. After the opening paragraph, he continued down the phone with the words “By now, the match was ...”

But when he said “By now” to the copytaker, she replied “Bye now” and hung up!