Ian O'Doherty: Bad day for the sisters...
Thursday November 05 2009
So, what's the biggest worry you have today? The incompetence of the Government? The fact that you just know that your boss is using the recession as an excuse to make you work more hours for less money?
Or are you really consumed by the fact that Portmarnock Golf Club has won its battle to remain a male club?
When you think it through, it must be great to live in a world where the worst thing that can happen to you is to be refused membership to an exclusive, fee-paying club populated by middle-aged men in pastel trousers.
But every battalion of the Government-funded equality army has been dedicating itself to overturning this club's -- a private club, lest we forget -- rules.
The decision has been met with the usual whiney nonsense about how this proves that women are still second class citizens and treated unfairly by those nasty men.
So, in the tradition of building bridges for which we are rightly loved, here's a compromise for the ladies: let men join Curves, the women-only gym, and apply your beloved gender quotas and insist that half of the board of the (again, Government-funded) National Women's Council be men.
Until then, girls, can you concentrate on cooking your husband a nice dinner for a change?
Ooh, big job, that
The Large Hadron Collider is potentially the greatest man-made creation since the invention of a beer that never goes flat. But it seems to be in a bit of trouble.
First, a series of inexplicable malfunctions kept knocking it off the grid, something which happened with such complex regularity that some leading scientists suggested that the machine was trying to sabotage itself from the future.
It took a year to find one faulty piece of soldering which had shut the whole thing down, prompting one cynic to say that all they had managed was to create "the most expensive piece of modern art in history".
The French scientists in charge of that part of the LHC refuse to accept responsibility, saying that they were entitled to go for their three-hour lunch when the accident happened and it wasn't their job to try and fix it.
The Polish scientists immediately started jumping up and down and said that they could fix it in twice the time and half the price that Irish scientists offered, but sadly the German scientists immediately started to bully their Polish colleagues and the whole thing ended in farce.
More religious discrimination ...
Of all the religions, Buddhism tends to get the best rap.
To the uninitiated, it appears to be a nice, hippy-friendly, mish mash of other faiths which operates under the philosophy of leaving people to do their own thing.
And, of course, the whole reincarnation thing appeals to mad people everywhere.
And now a German Buddhist bank robber -- now there's a phrase you don't hear every day -- is threatening to sue the state because they won't allow his mother to visit him. This seems very unfair.
Until you realise that it's actually his cat, which he thinks is the reincarnation of his dear old mum.
"I know it is mummy," says 46-year-old Peter Koenig, "she looks after me just the way she did. I need to see her."
Obviously the man is mentally ill. After all, surely one of the positives of being in jail is that you get to get away from your Ma for a few years?
Irish Independent
