Vote Haskins!

You may or may not be aware but Ireland is in the middle of a general election campaign. One thing is for sure if you do live there it is inescapable. Every lamp post and I mean every one is like the one above.s. I like this a lot... it gives you a chance judge people purely on a aesthetic basis. My vote on this criteria would go to the spooky, young looking Dylan Haskins. He definitely has world domination aspirations. 


These placards can vary in their success though.  

Cllr Kevin Humphreys and his campaign team should have used flesh coloured ties to attach it to the lamp posts. Amazingly, they were all like this. It reminded me of something I had seen before but I couldn't remember what......


I would like to say though that the election is being  held in a far better way than the one we had here in Britain. Politicians seem to express themselves better and are punished less by the press for expressing opinions. They appear on popular radio and TV programs and answer frankly and sometimes with great humor.  They are allowed to answer questions they are asked by interviewers and debates are respectful. That is not to say they get an easy time because they don't. The biggest difference is Ireland seems very used to coalition governments (currently Fina Fail and Greens likely to be replaced by Fina Gael and Labour). In fact most people I have chatted to about it distrust single party governments altogether. No one can see understand the fuss we are making about it. 


I guess that a smaller population will have something to do with this but the Irish seem to have a greater sense of connection with the election process. It seems to be an acceptable topic of conversation and I get the sense  it has less of the tribalism of British politics. The recession has, is and will continue to hit the country hard but far from anger people seem to feel a certain responsibility for the way the government has handled the situation. I can't say we  have showed that here.  


So far nothing has taught me more about Ireland and the Irish. 


I remembered Cllr Kevin's placard reminded me of...It was a picture I saw in the National Portrait Gallery in London

English social reformer Sir John Fielding by Nathaniel Hone. 

Pushing Literary Boundries

The view of Landsdown Road from the end of my new road. 










Weekend in Dublin. Had Friday to myself so decided to wander the city, ignoring all suggestions about where to go. I quickly realised I had no idea where to go or what to do and I soon sought refuge in the tourist information center. Now armed with the cultural map of Dublin I preceded to independently 'discover' all the places that had been kindly suggested earlier. I spent a good 2 hours in the Chester Beattie Library. Once private collection, now donated too the state, it is basically a huge collection of old religious texts. Don't let this fool you though, it is great and well worth a visit.


Other News:


I finished reading Engleby by Sebastian Faulks. I am not great at receiving recommendations so I am reluctant to write reviews of the books I read. I think I might just be really brief and leave it up to you.

Engleby-
I enjoyed it.
Disturbing without being gross.
Especially interesting if you went to Cambridge (I didn't).


Just started reading Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts. It is ruddy huge so you won't have to suffer another review for a while. 


I bought a push up app for my phone. Push ups are a Evo weakness and I think it may be genetic as Evo Snr is hopeless at them too. You program in how many you want to be able to do continuously and how many you can do now and it puts a program together. You do it every other day and it times the breaks in between. I have been doing it for a week and today's session was 6-7-8-6 -6 with 60 seconds in between each set. It hurts. 


 I will keep you posted.