THURSDAY
Man gives money away
News of JP McManus’s remarkable ‘€1m for every GAA county board in the audience’ gesture broke today. When the news outlets began to report on the soft-spoken tycoon’s early Christmas gift to GAA grassroots, it barely seemed believable.
Even allowing for the Limerick man’s long track record of philanthrophy, this sounded extraordinary. Could it be true that McManus was actually planning to donate €1m to every single GAA county board in the island (€32m, to be distributed evenly between all clubs and all codes)?
True it was. Roscommon County Board received a cheque for said €1m today. As the public digested the news of JP’s €32m offload, we made the now (almost) obligatory trip to social media, where the reaction wasn’t unanimously positive. The fact that McManus is a tax resident in Switzerland – essentially deemed a tax exile – was highlighted by many.
Roscommon’s Midlands-North-West MEP, Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan, was amongst those not volunteering to organise a ‘thank you party’ for McManus. ‘Ming’ tweeted: ‘If only there was another system whereby he could contribute. He wouldn’t have to deal with all the pesky publicity either’.
I tend to agree with those who view the gesture on a stand-alone basis: the McManus family have donated a massive amount of money to the GAA (when they didn’t have to). This is something which I think should be welcomed. I agree too with those who make the point that there are many other very wealthy Irish people who have ‘moved their tax affairs abroad’ and haven’t chosen to make donations on anything like the scale the McManus family/Foundation regularly does. This is a great gesture, and a good story.
FRIDAY
Piers & the Prince
While Piers Morgan wasn’t actually in the dock today, the outspoken broadcaster was very much on the wrong end of a judgement in the High Court in London, where Justice Timothy Fancourt ruled in favour of Prince Harry in his action against Mirror Group Newspapers.
I sometimes agree with pugnacious Piers – occasionally I am even impressed with his chutzpah – but he has taken a credibility hit here, with the High Court Judge making it clear that he believes Morgan was aware of the use of phone tapping during his time as editor of the Daily Mirror.
I remember a time – it must have been before the phenomenon of the Trump presidency – when one (however reluctantly) accepted the word of a judge. But Donal Trump has now normalised dissing the verdicts of judges. Moments after today’s ruling, a nervous but bullish Morgan was reading a statement to the media, in which he again denied any knowledge of phone hacking under his Mirror stewardship, thus rejecting the judge’s view. Morgan also launched what for him was a customary attack on Prince Harry, describing his foe as someone who “wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped him around his California-tanned face”.
It was a bad day for Piers Morgan, but such is his mastery of social media, I expect him to remain as both a divisive and popular force in public life in the UK.
SATURDAY
RTE Sports Awards
I didn’t watch tonight’s RTE Sports Awards (RTÉ One), as I find such shows very tedious – mainly because of the dull, and sometimes fawning interviews with winners/nominees. After all, the Dublin footballers are hardly going to spill secrets to Marty, are they?
Rhys McClenaghan was overall winner on the night. Few, if any, of us ever expected to see a gymnast winning sportsperson of the year in Ireland. Congratulations to McClenaghan, a supremely accomplished sportsperson, who is currently a World and European Champion.
Young Sportsperson of the Year is promising Republic of Ireland and Brighton footballer, Evan Ferguson, while the awesome four-in-a-row winning Limerick senior hurlers won ‘Team of the Year’.
Andy Farrell – in a decision which divided our friends on Twitter – was awarded Manager of the Year (John Kiely advocates were not impressed, helpfully pointing out that Ireland, ranked number one in the world, only reached the last eight of the Rugby World Cup). I guess one of the many reasons we love sport is its capacity to stir debate.
SUNDAY
New crib
An impressive new crib was installed in the heart of Roscommon Town yesterday, courtesy of our tireless Christmas Lights committee, now 30 years voluntarily lighting up our county town each festive season.
A lot of preparatory work went into bringing this project to fruition, so well done to all involved (see report on page 16). The beautiful crib, with life-sized figurines, is located to the right of the front of ETL Giftware (overlooking the Square).
It so happens that a popular local resident popped into our office last week and – in the old tradition whereby people would call into the local newspaper with an item of news or to voice an opinion – good-humouredly observed: “There’s no sign of any cribs in any of the shop windows!”
Well, alleged window woes aside, our friend will at least be pleased to see this fantastic new crib arriving in town!
MONDAY
Words you will hear…
Are the Christmas clichés in full flow yet? I presume at least some of the following are dominating conversations this week…
‘Sure in a week’s time, it will nearly all be over’.
‘… people running around the shops as if there was no tomorrow’.
‘Sure it’s really only for the kids’.
‘Have you many for the Christmas Dinner/Are ye having Dinner at home?’
‘Well, have you all done/all got?’
‘I’m just looking forward to a few quiet days, putting the feet up and…’
‘Do ye do a Secret Santa?’
Meanwhile, I understand that bookies have the following two clichés as joint favourites to be ‘most used’ on St Stephen’s Day: ‘That’s it over for another year… a lot of fuss about one day’ and ‘There was absolutely NOTHING on the telly!’
TUESDAY
Ring a bell?
There’s an ad on TV at the moment which features an extremely authentic ringing of a doorbell. So much so that one could mistakenly rise from one’s sofa and head for the front door (I didn’t, but it almost catches me out every time).
If you did go to your front door, on returning you would then see that the ad was for ‘Quality Street’. Talk about torment on top of embarrassment.
