Old Sneezes

Archive for February, 2009

The time is now Woman O’Clock

Thursday, February 26th, 2009

O, my love is like a red, red rose
That floats on high o’er vales and hills
So wrote the poet. Or poets, for this was a group poem. A precursor to the group blog. These men were ahead of their time. But in those times there were no awards for group poetry so Burns and Wordsworth [...]

Mother Nature is woolly

Tuesday, February 24th, 2009

Coffee mug in hand, I stood looking out the window as it dawned. Nothing new. The same old scene. Sheep. What else on the Kildare plain. Kildare – the land of the three S’s – sheepshite and soldiers.
The wind howled from the south-East. Trees and bushes ducking from the rain it lashed at them. Not [...]

Knowledge economy. What knowledge economy?

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Fintan O’Toole wrote an excellent piece in The Irish Times back in August 08 about the delusional nature of our “knowledge society”. It is well worth reading, however for those who don’t have the time, let me summarise – it doesn’t exist, it never did exist and will probably never exist.
O’Toole wrote that what [...]

Judging for the Awards

Tuesday, February 17th, 2009

The local primary school have been teaching the senior kids how to make websites. It’s good to see the ICT in Schools programme being put to some practical use. The wee village may even produce some more techies because of it. Maybe a blogger or ten.
As  a past pupil and the local web-head I’ve been [...]

Ultan Bator and St. Hallmark’s Day

Sunday, February 15th, 2009

Ultan, or Ultan Bator as he’s known, rambled in and flopped down on the stool next me.
I’m in the wars, Sneezy. Or at least I will be. I completely forgot it was St. Hallmark’s day today. The shop’s sold out and herself’ll be getting off work any minute now. She’ll have a face on her [...]

More State money for the Catholic church

Friday, February 13th, 2009

Mary Hanafin, Minister for Social and Family Affairs, loves making press releases.
Last week she considered making two lousy PDF files available for download worthy of a press release.
On Monday, she said the current economic situation was putting “new stresses on family life” and duly allotted €7.8 million to counselling services. Who gets the lion’s share? [...]

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