SMOKES & DAGGERS
A mischievous mix of (mostly) news
LEFT-WING British commentator Owen Jones took to Twitter earlier this week to announce: ‘I’m interviewing Sinn Féin’s leaders about Brexit. What do you want me to ask them?’ PR expert Karl Brophy leapt in with an inspired suggestion: ‘Given that the Brexiteers are now trapped in a union that they’re not being allowed to leave, is it appropriate for them to start using car bombs?’
IRELAND’S ambassador to the UK got upset over The Spectator magazine’s coverage of Ireland, writing an open letter. Spectator editor Fraser Nelson spoke to Smokes about his reaction: ‘Critiquing the Varadkar government is not the same thing as critiquing Ireland. I think it would be very unusual to have an ambassador claim that when someone criticises the UK government they are criticising the country as a whole… I confess to not being a great admirer of Leo Varadkar, but I’m now wondering if that might be considered a thought crime. Plenty of people in Ireland, I’m sure, are not admirers of Leo Varadkar either.’
AUSTRALIA is preparing to go to the polls and as prime minister Scott Morrison canvassed yesterday, he greeted an Asian voter with, ‘Ni hao’, the Chinese for ‘hello’. She responded: ‘I’m Korean.’ You just can’t please some people.
BEST response to a round robin of questions on FAI tickets came from Fianna Fáil senator Terry Leyden, who revealed he had ‘attended Lansdowne Road once, 30 years ago, at a Frank Sinatra concert’. Smokes can attest that Leyden has been doing things his way for quite some time.
THERE are 4.6million road signs in the UK – the AA reckons one-third are pointless. The authorities are now campaigning to reduce this visual blight – arguing too many signs dilutes the effectiveness of important warnings. Is there any hope we could repeat the process in Ireland, which has been blighted in recent years with dangerous street clutter? I recently spotted an incomprehensible set of three signs (pictured) on Dublin’s Bull Wall, which is open only to pedestrians. Two signs point in opposite directions, while the middle image is a pedestrian stepping off a pier – a structure that does not exist at this location!