Niamh Walsh’s Manifesto

Yes, Quality is vital, but believe me so is quantity

I AM entirely aware, given the unimaginable pain and suffering that too many people in too many parts of the world are enduring, that bewailing the deterioration of a formerly reliable box of sweets can be construed as vacuous.

However, in mitigation, it is precisely in times of great turmoil that we need stability.

When things are off-kilter we crave the familiar. Or, to put it more plainly, when the world is scary is precisely when we most want our chocolate.

That we crave chocolate during tumultuous and terrific times is something that those unscrupulous confectionery CEOs are perfectly aware of.

So having run the gauntlet of grocery shops, garages, garden centres and just about any shop that sells anything, I finally succumbed to sweet pressure and stuffed a box of Quality Street, pictured, in my shopping basket.

‘Cut-price’ said the scribbled bright yellow stuck-on sign. So having got home I opened my box of Quality Street and, much to my discombobulation, I quickly realised just why they were being flogged at a discount: the box appeared slightly empty. To add insult to my absolute unbridled, indignant, outraged injury, these toffee-penny-pinching Nestlé executives also appear to have instituted a rations policy. There was an obvious paucity of the most popular sweets.

There was a serious lack of the clear Quality Street favourites, along with an over-abundance of the ‘also-ran’ sweets – the leftovers that are only grudgingly demolished after all the nicest sweets have been scoffed.

While my legal qualifications do not – as yet – allow me to take my case to the highest courts on the continent, I do feel eminently qualified to present a compelling case in the court of public opinion. So unless Quality Street are prepared to up the nice sweet ante, they should be compelled to rebrand as Quantity-less Street.

Celebs silent on tragedy unfolding in the Holy Land

HAS humanity plummeted to such depths that people are embroiled in a hate-fuelled row over whether or not 40 tiny babies were beheaded?

Is that how low some have sunk? Forty babies, innocent babies, were slaughtered. A pregnant woman had her unborn baby ripped from her womb, while still alive. Children and elderly people were burnt in their homes. Young people in the prime of their lives, including young Israeli-Irish woman Kim

Damti, were ruthlessly killed while enjoying a music festival.

These murders are barbaric acts of terrorism, not unintentional casualties of freedom fighters.

Israel is also guilty of countless acts of comparable terrorism: bombing Palestinians out of the Gaza Strip; the large-scale use of banned chemical weapons; cutting off power, water, food and medicine – starving babies to death is no less cruel than a bullet through the heart.

Israel has, for far too long, been at liberty to unleash hell on Gaza.

But Israel’s unjust brutality in Gaza and the wholesale displacement of its people from the enclave, either historically or today, can in no way justify or absolve the rape, slaughter and atrocities perpetrated by Hamas last week.

Which is why the silence from the BE KIND celebrity brigade is deafening. You know the type for whom, when it serves their purpose or popularity, there is never a bandwagon on which they won’t sanctimoniously bounce.

There has been a plethora of pointless proclamations beseeching everyone to just be nice to each other – as if some great big group hug across the Gaza Strip will put an end to interminable conflict in the Middle East.

The reluctance of many celebrities to stick their heads above the parapet indicates just how spineless many are in the face of such inhumanity, that they lack the most basic of moral compasses to condemn atrocities for fear of losing favour and followers.

Justice catches up with 89-year-old animal abuser

THE scales of justice are, mercifully, blind to old age, as 89-year-old Mary Kelly learned.

The octogenarian repeat offender was packed off to prison for 10 months after being convicted of violating animal welfare laws.

‘Beneath contempt, callous and calculating… a persistent reoffender’ was how a judge described the 89-year-old, imposing a 20-month jail term after finding her guilty of 19 counts of animal cruelty at Athy District Court.

Lest anyone feel sympathy for the elderly, this wasn’t Kelly’s first animal cruelty rodeo.

She was previously banned from owning animals and inspectors found even more dogs in terrible conditions in June 2022. She was sentenced to ten months in prison that September but avoided custody after being hospitalised.

Such was the publicity surrounding the case that Kelly cursed the judge in the national media.

‘I’m cursing him day and night, that’s all, but whether my curses will catch up with him, I don’t know,’ she said in an interview.

Perhaps less cursing and more contrition would have saved her from a spell behind bars.

Greed isn’t yet good for a few Adare residents

‘GREED IS GOOD’ is, of course, the immortal line of grubby stock broker Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas in the 1987 movie Wall Street, pictured.

The film was supposed to be an anti-materialism tale. But many missed the moral message. Take those folk living in the picturesque town of Adare.

Dozens of property owners in the Co. Limerick town are using an accommodation website to rent out their houses for up to €85,000 during the 2027 Ryder Cup at Adare Manor. But so far, they have attracted no interest.

Recent events in the sport, where players have pocketed millions in Saudi money, show that greed and golf make perfect bedfellows. Even if the bed costs €85k a night.