Niamh Walsh’s Manifesto
There really is no place like home for the holidays
WITH summertime peeking its head around the corner, it looks very likely that for most of us there will be no setting off for some sun and sangria.
But just because we can’t jet away for a fortnight doesn’t mean that a holiday is cancelled.
With so many industries and sectors facing a long road to recovery we can all do our bit by helping Irish tourism.
Granted, I will accept that our weather is patchy at best but that doesn’t mean that holidays at home can’t be as fun as a fortnight in Fuerteventura.
Recent years have seen the sun shine on our finances, providing enough for many a far-flung jaunt. Most of us are probably more au fait with Spain’s Valencia than our own beautiful Valentia Island. Youngsters can easily backpack from Crete to Kusadasi but some would have trouble finding their way from Cork to Kerry.
We have a wonderful little holiday island of our own to explore and with the country having to rebuild it is our patriotic duty that we go explore our Emerald isle.
But Fáilte Ireland and Irish tourism as a whole must do better and offer us better breaks at more competitive rates if we are to trade Dubai for Donegal.
It’s time to dispense with our overreliance on Oirish craic agus ceoil and inject some more culture and value if we are to rebrand Ireland as a must-see destination.
Trading on a reputation as a land of leprechauns will never reach those dizzying heights as world tourism giants.
We need to be less expensive, but much better in terms of raising the standards of what we offer.
Our whole relationship with tourism needs to be revalued and reimagined. The Wild Atlantic Way was a brilliant start but we’ve a longer journey to travel yet.
Chinese envoy ‘presses’ case
THE Chinese Ambassador to Ireland, He Xiangdong, this week wrote a propaganda-style piece which was in an Irish newspaper trumpeting the virtues of China.
The lofty piece was littered with admonishments to anyone daring to question China’s role in the global pandemic and it also, laughably, set out why we should be grateful to the Communist state for sending us PPE all the way from Beijing to Dublin. While I take issue with everything in his missive (not least the Chinese lack of transparency about the source and true extent of the coronavirus) the tone and content of his letter was, to my mind, ludicrous.
But what is really ironic is that the ambassador is oblivious to the fact that while I don’t agree with his rhetoric, I do agree that he has every right in our uncensored (if at times overly regulated) free press to express his opinion. China’s representative in our wonderful free country wrote his letter from the comfort of his residence in Ballsbridge from whence it winged its way to the pages of a newspaper.
How different from the statecontrolled media in his own totalitarian regime, where citizens are censored to within an inch of their lives and any dissenting opinion, opposition – even fact-stating – is not tolerated by the regime he suggests are our buddies in Beijing.
Wicks ‘crowbars’ intimacy into week
THE Body Coach Joe Wicks has emerged as a sensation during the pandemic with the fitness guru leading millions through his daily YouTube exercise class.
But it’s not all jumping jacks in Casa Wicks as this week he let slip that the busybody beautiful ‘schedules sex once a week’ with his wife Rosie, with whom he has two children – Indie, 1, and fourmonth-old Marley.
He revealed: ‘Time is so disrupted it’s almost like you’ve got to crowbar intimacy into your week. One night a week... if you can go to bed earlier... it allows you to have that time to talk.
‘You’ve got to get warmed up sometimes, you can’t just jump straight into things.’
While I’m not married and don’t have children, the very notion of ‘scheduling’ anything is not by its nature pulse-provoking. You schedule a meeting, or a doctor’s appointment, but scheduling sex does not provide for passion.
Intimacy is exactly, to quote Joe, not ‘something that should be jumped straight into’.
Methinks Joe may want to consider spending less time on vertical exercising and more time on the horizontal kind.
X-rated marks the spot for Normal People
THE producers of the blockbuster series Normal People have their knickers in a twist this week as, in an ironic twist, X-rated channel Porn Hub streamed steamy scenes from the show on their site.
Let’s be upfront about it – Normal
People is pretty close to soft porn packaged as a love story, pumped out in all its naked glory on conservative RTÉ.
Normal People has basically normalised sex in a soft-porn type of way and, in fact, (so I am told) some scenes are far more ‘pornarific’ than some of the content already on Porn Hub.
But as Porn Hub’s act of contentstealing was non-consensual, the folks behind Normal People gave them a whipping in the form of a legal letter and ordered they take down the content, some of which was BDSM scenes.
Not too Late Late for a laugh, Ryan!
IT PAINS me to say this because I like Ryan Tubridy, he’s a great guy. But he has morphed into the nation’s misery guts-in-chief.
I get that The Late Late Show has to cover the coronavirus but does it really have to be so morbid and miserable.
The country has been plunged into chaos and, for all too many, unimaginable grief.
But the Late Late has taken to ‘reflecting the mood of the nation’ much too literally. Even the music is steeped in sadness.
What’s needed on Friday evenings is a reprieve from the all-engulfing sadness – in other words, a laugh and some light chit-chat.
I accept that Covid-19 can’t be ignored but does it have to be so embraced as entertainment?