It's only January 5th and already the new year has thrown up 3 over-hyped and totally underwhelming disappointments:
1. UTVIreland
2. #RebootIreland
3. Charlie
After almost a year of building us up to something new and exciting, UTVIreland landed on our screens like birdshit lands on your windscreen. Emmerdale was it's first offering. For the uninitiated, Emmerdale is a soap much like Glenroe set against the backdrop of rural Blighty. It's been running on UK TV since Jesus was a boy. Next up was a tepid hour with that young dynamic presenter, Pat Kenny. Pat droned on for a while before settling into a bland interview with some rugger bugger much the same as he has done for 100 years in his previous incarnations on RTE and on Dennis O'Brien's crapaganda Snoozetalk radio station. The highlight of UTVIreland's launch was Tom Cruise doing the worst Irish accent ever in a movie that bombed when it was first saw the light of day 23 years ago.
#RebootIreland is Lucinda Creighton's Immaculate Deception. Styling itself on UKIP and spitting venom in all directions, the party with no name has no policies, no candidates and no vision other than to harvest dosh from disaffected Fine Gael and Fianna Fail voters who are finally facing up to the realization that the imaginary difference between the parties can no longer be sustained. With snake oil specialist Eddie Hobbs by her side, it remains to be seen if they can exploit the conundrum for FG voters that a vote for FG is now also a vote for FF. Basically #RebootIreland is a reactionary anti-left party trying to squeeze into ground that is chronically overpopulated. The hard, hard right is already moving toward #RebootIreland, the xenophobes, the poor haters and the 'blame the victims' merchants are lauding Lucinda and Eddie as just the medicine Ireland needs, as if? Ultimately, Lucinda wants politicians to have free choice when it comes to denying abortion rights for everybody else. See the problem?
'Charlie' finished off the unholy trinity of bitter disappointments. The cast of LoveHate got suited and booted in the dreadful fashion of yesteryear and set about portraying the deeply corrupt and exploitative shenanigans that passed for governance during the Haughey reign. The disappointment was not in the acting or the script, it's in the fact that Charlie will not be the final nail in the FF coffin and indeed, could well herald a resurrection in their fortunes. Charlie is doing for Fianna Fail what LoveHate did for gangland drug dealing; Haughy is being rehabilitated as a lovable rogue. It's not surprising when one sees that many of Haughey's speeches have been copied and pasted into the current FG/Lab dialogue. "We are living away beyond our means" is no different to the "We all partied" lie. People are no better off now than they were then, it's the same auld shite, different dictator.
1. UTVIreland
2. #RebootIreland
3. Charlie
After almost a year of building us up to something new and exciting, UTVIreland landed on our screens like birdshit lands on your windscreen. Emmerdale was it's first offering. For the uninitiated, Emmerdale is a soap much like Glenroe set against the backdrop of rural Blighty. It's been running on UK TV since Jesus was a boy. Next up was a tepid hour with that young dynamic presenter, Pat Kenny. Pat droned on for a while before settling into a bland interview with some rugger bugger much the same as he has done for 100 years in his previous incarnations on RTE and on Dennis O'Brien's crapaganda Snoozetalk radio station. The highlight of UTVIreland's launch was Tom Cruise doing the worst Irish accent ever in a movie that bombed when it was first saw the light of day 23 years ago.
#RebootIreland is Lucinda Creighton's Immaculate Deception. Styling itself on UKIP and spitting venom in all directions, the party with no name has no policies, no candidates and no vision other than to harvest dosh from disaffected Fine Gael and Fianna Fail voters who are finally facing up to the realization that the imaginary difference between the parties can no longer be sustained. With snake oil specialist Eddie Hobbs by her side, it remains to be seen if they can exploit the conundrum for FG voters that a vote for FG is now also a vote for FF. Basically #RebootIreland is a reactionary anti-left party trying to squeeze into ground that is chronically overpopulated. The hard, hard right is already moving toward #RebootIreland, the xenophobes, the poor haters and the 'blame the victims' merchants are lauding Lucinda and Eddie as just the medicine Ireland needs, as if? Ultimately, Lucinda wants politicians to have free choice when it comes to denying abortion rights for everybody else. See the problem?
'Charlie' finished off the unholy trinity of bitter disappointments. The cast of LoveHate got suited and booted in the dreadful fashion of yesteryear and set about portraying the deeply corrupt and exploitative shenanigans that passed for governance during the Haughey reign. The disappointment was not in the acting or the script, it's in the fact that Charlie will not be the final nail in the FF coffin and indeed, could well herald a resurrection in their fortunes. Charlie is doing for Fianna Fail what LoveHate did for gangland drug dealing; Haughy is being rehabilitated as a lovable rogue. It's not surprising when one sees that many of Haughey's speeches have been copied and pasted into the current FG/Lab dialogue. "We are living away beyond our means" is no different to the "We all partied" lie. People are no better off now than they were then, it's the same auld shite, different dictator.