SMOKES & DAGGERS
A mischievous mix of (mostly) news
LEO VARADKAR tweeted a picture of a pancake on Tuesday, with the comment: ‘Last treat before the Lenten fast begins.’ How devout. But then he added: ‘Looking forward to an uber healthy 40 days.’ Does he think he’s commemorating how Christ spent 40 days in the wilderness slimming and detoxing after a Christmas binge?
RUSSIAN foreign minister Sergei Lavrov described the indictments of 13 Russian individuals and three Russian corporations for interference with the 2016 US presidential election as ‘blather’. That was the name of the UCD magazine edited by Myles na gCopaleen, pictured, in the 1930s. Even Myles himself might have struggled to imagine a world so absurd that Donald Trump is US president. The mother of all launches, Project Ireland 2040, led Joan Burton to remark on the ‘parade of 20 ministers of state and 15 cabinet ministers’ in attendance. She said it looked like a case of 35 ministers needing ‘to fix a light bulb’. But as Leo’s spin doctors will attest, it only really needed the Taoiseach to hold the lightbulb in place, as the world revolves around him.
SPEAKING of the great man, when asked last week in Austria about recent positive polls, the Taoiseach told reporters: ‘The former taoiseach Enda Kenny gave me a number of bits of advice… He said to me, “I’d be very wary of opinion polls, whatever happens. Never take out the revolver or the champagne as a result of an opinion poll”.’ That sounds a lot like the revolver line that got Vincent Browne into so much trouble with Enda.
IN THE Seanad this week, Sinn Féin Rose ConwayWalsh slammed Gerard Craughwell’s call for Sinn Féin MPs to take their Westminster seats, saying it was silly to believe ‘someone swearing allegiance to a foreign queen will solve the impasse’. David Norris stalled her gallop with the claim that Elizabeth, pictured, was ‘more Irish than Senator ConwayWalsh’, arguing that she was a direct descendant of Brian Boru and Hugh O’Neill. Which had the benefit not just of being true, but of softening Conway-Walsh’s cough.
SENATOR Catherine Noone has decried ‘the way people speak about the Seanad as a crèche or a retirement home’. If this attitude doesn’t change, she complained, ‘soon it will go back to the way it was at the beginning, when privileged people were involved in politics’, Catherine warned. Well, you could always get your party to implement the Seanad reform promised after the 2013 referendum.