Columbia Sportswear , Deckers Drop; Sector Gains
Mary O’Rourke rode to the defence of her Fianna
Mary O’Rourke rode to the defence of her Fianna Fáil sister. “To taunt and say silly things across the chamber – calling people Marie Antoinette, for example – is puerile and infantile . . . To think anybody would approach with delight saying to people that a Christmas bonus will not be paid would mean that person is very sadistic.”
Mary Hantoinette nodded in agreement from her ministerial chair.
Then Mammy O’Rourke made an interesting observation, which suggests that the Government may yet be contemplating pulling a nice little stroke for Christmas by restoring the Santy bonus in the nick of time.
“The Minister opened a chink in the argument last night . . . and indicated that if there was a chance of giving this Christmas bonus, she would grasp the opportunity and encourage the Minister for Finance to do so as well . . . I add my voice to this and will continue to do so.
“As the months go by and Christmas approaches, we hope there will be some avenue which could be further explored for the partial or whole payment of this Christmas bonus.”
Again, Mary Hantoinette nodded her agreement.
Let us hope this is the case, if only to cheer up Labour’s Ciarán Lynch, who waxed Dickensian during his contribution, which he began by quoting the opening line of A Christmas Carol.
He painted a heart-rending picture of aged grannies without as much as a turkey leg to chew on over the festive season, unable to buy Ugg boots
for their ragged grandchildren and bottles of whiskey for their rat-arsed neighbours.
But, like Scrooge, Mary Hantoinette might still see the light. A Christmas Carol is a story of redemption, sniffed Ciarán, moist of eye.
There wasn’t dry seat in the House by the time he finished.
Wake up, social media users, we're crushing our
First we had personal web pages, blogs and forums and now we have advanced to social networking and video-sharing to enhance the global conversation.
The irony is that as more people climb aboard, to tell the world their life stories in a photo gallery or in 140 characters or less, the romance and democracy begins to fade.
With the burden of content, the true cost of this gaggle of free services is becoming more apparent.
If our cherished social media is to survive, it will do so at the cost of our patience and our privacy.
Social networking users are already tolerating a considerable amount of targeted advertising for foolish products aimed at specific age groups, genders and locations. Because I'm 23, I am offered free Ugg boots
. (Yes, there's a catch.)
Change your relationship status to single and within hours the online dating service ads appear. Is this an invasion of privacy? Not quite, you put the info out there yourself, remember. But it still feels a little creepy and underhanded.
At least on Facebook, you can usually discern the ads from the activity of your friends. The latest social networking cash grab involves people getting paid to post Twitter updates (tweets) that endorse specific products to their (supposed) friends.
The consolation is that as advertisers warm up to the web, the ads of the future might be for stuff you could actually see yourself buying.