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LETTERS
July 29 2006
One rule for Guinness drinkers...
Dear Editor, I was in the Quays pub Saturday night. Shortly after being served, my sister and I went outside. Before we'd stepped over the threshold, our glasses were confiscated and our lager transferred into plastic vessels. Unimpressed and unaccustomed to such practices, my visiting sister questioned the doorman. He empathised and elaborated that the policy permitted longnecks outdoors b ut just not glasses. (He was pleasant and we chatted until he went on a break.) Later, my sister reappeared with another round of drinks - already prepoured into plastic. But this time, one drink was for a Guinness drinking acquaintance. On seeing the delivery of a plastic Guinness, a covering doorman swiftly moved in, military style, took the plastic Guinness and poured it into the somewhat startled drinker's almost finished pint glass. Was I seeing things? Through symbiotic respect, I'm usually reluctant to question public house empowered doorpersons but I just couldn't help myself on this occasion. Perhaps it was where-doesa-bouncer-throw-you-when-you'realready-out bravado. So, I betrayed the Bee Gee tone that was rising in my head and adopted a less incredulous tone and asked him why he'd just transferred Guinness into a glass? He answered - The taste of Guinness is ruined if drunk from plastic. (I refrained from remarking that pouring it from plastic into a used Guinness glass was unlikely to have enhanced the taste, not to mention the visual horror.) Further probing proved the doorman didn't have many details of this particular 'rule'. But, I'm intrigued. Is it a VFI rule? A State rule? A Quays rule? Or is it a Guinness-sponsored one? And who is this rule protecting? Are Guinness drinkers more careful and less likely to break glass? Or are they nicer people and less likely to assault another with it?A cynic might be provoked into thinking it was an attempt to goad all lager drinkers into being louts. Yours, Deirdre Langan, Knocknacarra
Why keep A dog?
Dear Editor, The above caption does not apply to our canine friend but is from a quote that will ring in the ears of the people who have fished that great lake Lough Corrib, and will go down in history as a statement made by a controversial T.D., minister, prime minister (Taoiseach) and statesman the late Charles J Haughey. It all started back in the mid-60s, when the Lough Corrib Angling Federation that represents the fishing clubs of the people that fished Lough Corrib, from north to south, east and west, realised that the lake needed an "uplift". This band of voluntary fishing people of all political sections, came to accept that fresh-water angling, both at home and from overseas, was on the increase. This federation have a brown trout hatchery at Oughterard, Co. Galway, where the brood trout, male and female, are artificially stripped of their procreation at the fall of the year, and after the trout eggs and milk are mixed they are then placed in small trays and put into holding areas in the hatchery, where a constant flow of water runs through them from the Owenriff River. The eggs, now fertilised, remain there until the fry develop with their yolk sacks attached. A few months later, those fry are distributed among the federation club members and are released around the streams and shores of Lough Corrib. The people who have been involved in fishing and the production of trout fry over the years realise that if they could bring the fry to the summerling and fingerling stages and then release them back into Lough Corrib, their chances of survival would be 100% greater. This theory, in a way, was based on the fact that at Cong, the home of The Quiet Man, there is a salmon hatchery plus farm (salmon), and the salmon progeny are eventually released back into Lough Corrib. They make their way to the sea. Since the salmon hatchery and salmon farm works very well for salmon stocks, then why would the same arrangement not work for trout stocks? Of course there is one big difference between salmon (Salmo Salar) and brown trout (Salmo Trutta fario) even though they are cousins; and that is that the salmon are migrators and leave our lakes and rivers to fatten up at sea, whereas the brown trout stay at home, and do not leave our shores to explore the "salty deep". So the members of the Federation put their heads and fishing knowledge together and decided to invite the Minister for Fisheries, Charles J Haughey, to come and visit the trout hatchery at Oughterard and explain to him what they had in mind. Why invite the minister down? Money, of course. The Voluntary Federation of Angling Clubs did not have the money to produce the hatchery into a trout farm. The main advocates of this proposed centre were F.X. O' Brien, Christy Deacy, Michael Lovette, Johnny Geoghegan T.D., Bartley McGauley, his brother (the Yank) Pat McGauley and Pakie Kyne (now all deceased), also Jim Regan and Bobby Molloy TD. On a sunny fine spring afternoon, Charles J. and his wife Maureen Haughey arrived at the trout hatchery in the Mercedes, with a cavalcade of Garda out-riders. This writer met with Charles J and walked him through the hatchery grounds and explained in detail what we had in mind for the future of this hatchery. I paraphrased to him F.X.. O' Brien - an authority on fresh-water fish who said: "There is no acre of land in Ireland that could produce the wealth of one acre of water in Lough Corrib, properly stocked with wild brown trout!". At a buffet held in the Corrib Hotel in Oughterard for our distinguished guests, the late Pat McGauley presented three beautiful brown trout caught on the Corrib to Maureen Haughey, and he explained that if the minister gave us the green light, that this could be the kind of trout that Lough Corrib could produce but in much larger quantities. His wife Maureen (Lemass) Haughey said "Charlie, if you can help those people achieve what they require, then please do it, as I am convinced that they are sincere." A deputation from the federation were called to Dublin and Dail Eireann to get the results of their proposals regarding the hatcherycum-trout farm. They all headed off with high hopes. They met with Minister Charles J Haughey and this is what he said. "I presented your proposals to my fisheries experts and they tell me it's `pie in the sky'. So I must refuse you people any help in this matter." Now comes from the mouth of Charles J. that which will always live in the minds of fishermen who fish Lough Corrib. "Since my experts (led by A.J. Went, a Brit and only had the interest of salmon at heart) disagrees with you. There is no point in me keeping a dog, if I have to do the barking myself!" The self-same minister-cumTaoiseach, later on in his career, tried to introduce the dreaded Rod Licence - but, "sin sceal eile!" This man, the late Charles J Haughey, was indeed with intelligence, talent, and an extraordinary form of charisma, but did he use it to the full for the good of the people and the country? Since I am not a politician and only work on basic sense, I will leave it to the historians to answer the question. In a way Charles J. reminds me of the World Cup that are taking place, as I write, in a united Germany. He, Charlie, is standing in front of an open goal with the goalkeeper at his mercy - he shoots and misses. Had he scored - and he had the ability to do so - he might have gone down in Irish history as great, a bit like Julius Caesar. Veni vidi, vici - I came, I saw, I conquered. Unlike Mark Antony's quote, "I have come to bury Caesar, not to praise him!" Yours, Brendan Madden Carrowmoreknock, Rosscahill, Co Galway
Advertiser campaigned against internment in the early seventies
Dear Editor, Given the way the `morality of the latest outrage' has been promoted by round the clock American and British media `embedded' with the armed invaders of those countries in Iraq it is probably necessary to stress to a younger generation that the shock and horror of bombings in places like Birmingham and Dublin in the 1970s was none the less because some of us were also concerned about the way people were `stitched up' by the police for these crimes. Or in the Irish cases, north and south, some cases were never properly investigated because some in the security business who `knew that they knew' feared those involved had MI5 and other British government `protection'. In that context then it may be worth recalling that in 1973-74 the Galway Advertiser was campaigning against internment without trial for people north of the border some 30 years before Quantanimo Bay became an active local issue. The original `End Internment' campaign was initiated by Hibernia the forerunner of the Phoenix magazine edited by John Mulcahy. But Advertiser editor Ronnie O' Gorman and a few others who went to the trouble of visiting the north in those days to see things on the ground, succeeded in getting the late Monsignor Denis Faul to come to Salthill as part of the campaign to address a public meeting. All went well and a number of other concerned citizens, including medical people who were interested in the torture techniques which George Bush's boys seem to have refined, based on the Irish `guinea pigs' mistreated by the British army while most of the rest of the world looked the other way, agreed to speak, but then Birmingham happened the very night before Fr. Faul was to speak. The reaction of most `right-thinking' people was interesting. Some decided not to attend. Others actually suggested we cancel the meeting for fear of being `guilty by association'. In other words it might have been the IRA or some remotely `Irish' group. And because we had no clues or any other better idea, we were in due course prepared to take at face value the naked anti-Irish propaganda of the Fleet Street media that they had caught the `Six' involved. And hang our heads in shame and keep our mouths shut, even if it did emerge that these accused like most of the `Irish' jailed in the wrong in Britain were UK citizens, i.e. people of Irish nationality but born in Northern Ireland, and educated in THEIR educational system, to THEIR standards of `civic responsibility', law and order, respect and fair play. Just as recent bombers in London were reared under the Crown and in theory as privileged under British law as Terry Wogan's or Roy Keane's family! Yet in some curious way in those years, `Paddy' who got the blame was usually somebody from Galway or Mayo, like poor Frank Stagg or Micheal Gaughan, and RTE the national broadcaster could always ring up an Irish diplomat or a Sun Daily Mail or Telegraph correspondent in London to `explain' why a `backlash' against Irish citizens, guest workers from an EC country, `was inevitable', and why the Irish Embassy in London did so little to help out even the families of persons from the 26 countries (never mind the Northern six counties) who were detained and interrogated under emergency provisions not dissimilar from what Middle Eastern citizens are going through in London at the moment. For the record Fr Faul came to Salthill to fight internment. He spoke at a good meeting and was as critical as usual of British policy in the north. But he was particularly scathing about people `here in the south' to shy away, sing dumb or look the other way about these injustices just because some other equally outrageous lunacy had taken place in Birmingham. "It is precisely this morality of the latest outrage that has led us to where we are today", he thundered. "Kidnapping by any other name, is still kidnapping, even if called something else, and done under some sort of emergency legislation." A lesson we still have to learn perhaps in an era of `emergency provisions' in a week when George Bush said, after five years, that `he would like' to end Guantanemo Bay. The US President further alleged that `some of these' people that he would like to release "are cold-blooded murderers". But then the late Fr Faul never believed that the American legal tradition, even with a written constitution, treated Black, Hispanic, and broadly Catholic groups any fairer than the WASP police without a written constitution treated his neighbours and friends in Co. Tyrone. Unless and until PEOPLE STOOD UP AND WERE COUNTED. There is still a lesson for us all in that this week as we watch the war planes from another invasion conflict dominate the Salthill skyline. Yours, Nollaig O' Gadhra, Co na Gaillimhe
Anyone know a Richard Kinneen in 1898?
Dear Editor, Would any of your readers know of a Mr Richard W Kinneen, Eyre Square, Galway who sent personalized Christmas cards in 1898? One of his cards reads as follows. "Thanking you for past patronage and soliciting your esteemed favours in the new year," followed by a quote "Friendships like the ivy clings, to olden times and olden things." and then -- A happy Christmas and prosperous New Year to you and yours is the sincere wish of yours very truly, Richard W Kineen, Xmas, 1898." I hadn't realised that they spelt the word Christmas as Xmas in 1898! Yours in anticipation, Curious reader, (Name with editor) Highfield Park, Galway
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR:
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