My Trip to the High Court

The Stalinist tendencies of the regime governing the various Athlone Town FCs have not yet led to a Great Terror or a famine. But  Ol' Uncle Joe would certainly tip the hat to seeing a bit of history being rewritten, a bit of whitewashing.  And this is where we are today.  The 2024 accounts of Athlone Town AFC CLG were released last September. You wouldn't have known it from looking at the website of the Companies Registration Office. There they languished at the end (pre-2015), not at the beginning (post-2024) where they should have been. They have since disappeared from the site in that form, been re-registered and placed in the front section three days ago. A resolution made on January 5th however remains in the end section. So, what is going on and why is the CRO the latest national institution to be playing silly buggers with the public on behalf of the boys? The big news (assuming nobody is surprised that 'loans' attributed to the ever generous Messrs. O'Conno...

 Viewed in a certain light, Catherine Connolly may make a good president. She comes from an unprivileged background, has a sense of humour and lacks the pomposity we've come to expect from presidents. Unlike many of her lieutenants, she does not seem to be a genuine idealist. Which is good, I guess. She is undoubtedly on the right side of the neutrality debate and will probably be allowed a victory on that issue, as Michael D. Higgins was, for the simple reason that it doesn't matter a damn. We don't have a military and we don't have resources.  A president has one job, to prevent any government from pulling the wool over the people's eyes. If the coalition government had tried to stop her getting elected, then there would be reason to think she might deliver on this duty to the people. They didn't though. The three branches of government in a Republic are the Legislative (politicians), the Judicial (judges) and the Executive (key politicians and bureaucrats). T...