Archive for October, 2009

Over the past decade, it was only a matter of a few minutes following the final score before my phone rang. If the victory was particularly impressive, it was a call. If it was a less impressive victory, it was a text. The text read something like “Ye Leinster Langer”! Deductive reasoning told me Munster had won and my cousins in Cork were just reminding their Jackeen relation of this fact. If you are a Dub with Cork cousins, this ritual has been a regular part of the Irish sporting calendar. I’ve had to bear it stoically for some years.

The saga of Independent News &Media (INM) and the clash of the two Titans involved is the stuff of a Hollywood blockbuster. If you ever had the pleasure of reading a book like Barbarians at the Gate, you will notice the similarities in the characters, the battles and the likely outcome.

The massive swing to the pro-Lisbon camp reveals something enormous about our state of mind now, our insecurity and more than anything else, our fear of what is to come. It says more about the state of the economy than our perceptions of European integration.