I created the montages below to illustrate various blog posts.
Links to original blog entries are at bottom of the text.
Links to original blog entries are at bottom of the text.
Mary Coughlan, became Tánaiste when Brian Cowen took over from Bertie as Taoiseach. As such she was called upon to cover a wider range of affairs than those arising from her specific ministerial briefs. For a period it looked as though every time she opened her mouth she put her foot in it. The party eventually seemed to have pulled her off the streets and her broader exposure diminished. She is shown here as Molly Malone, as renowned for her female endowment, to which she has been known to draw attention, as for her fishy marketing.
Brian Cowen had his own troubles from day one as Taoiseach when he lost the first Lisbon referendum. He is shown here remonstrating with his referendum director, Micheál Martin, over the loss. Oliver Hardy rebuking Stan Laurel over the fine mess the latter is supposed to have got them into.
Bertie ruthlessly schemed his way into extreme power, all the while projecting the image of a barely literate Joe Soap. The electorate bought this, more or less, for almost three terms of office as Taoiseach. That is, until the wheels began to fall off and his reputation sank like a stone when he could not explain the origin of large amounts of cash, reposing in two safes for want of a bank account, and when he finally let his distressed personal secretary take the brunt of a robust tribunal interrogation. After he resigned he appeared inside a fridge in an ad for his football column in the Daily Mail. He might have more appropriately appeared in the above Bertie Bowl. I suspect that, at this stage, an appeal for volunteers to pull the chain would be massively oversubscribed.
This little creep came to Ireland to tell the people how to vote in the second Lisbon referendum, or else. He is a vain ruthless little bollix who, fortunately, is now staring defeat in the face in the upcoming French Presidential election. A flag flown upside down is a universally acknowledged sign of distress. And yes you can fly the EU flag upside down.
This is based on a quote from Jacques Attali about his close friend DSK, shortly after DSK's arrest in New York: "I think the best service I can give him is not to speak, not to hear, not to listen, as a kind of moment of mourning."
Source: New Yorker, 30 May 2011, p25
Not yet used in a Blog Post
"This morning I had another talk with the President of the
European Central Bank and here is the paper
which bears his name upon it as well as mine."
(Hover the cursor to see the original)
Noted