Gavan Reilly

The discussions today about Brian Cowen and whether he was drunk or not during his Morning Ireland interview seem to be missing one point.

Simon Coveney, tweeting about the idea, is not the thing that has set this story off. It was the fact that Coveney were merely one of dozens of people who all had the medium to record similar observations at the same time.

First of all, apologies for my apparent absence from the world for the last couple of days – between Comm Day stuff hitting full swing and a website that needed doing, the DramSoc Swing Ball on Friday night (which was great), being at the glorious rugby game on Saturday (Allez les verts! Now let’s not let this Grand Slam talk get too out of hand…) and two issues of the University Observer to get online – as well as blogs to set up for some of their contributors, it’s been a manically busy couple of days. So sorry for not blogging, and to the few commenters from the last post on third-level fees, I’ll get back to you shortly, I swear.

(Shameless plug: being on GTalk on Friday night led to me spending a few hours setting up IJustGotAText.com for my friend Carla. Plug plug plug.)

But no matter how far away from the world-at-large you can run, some things you just can’t escape. Today – getting back on the rungs of college life – we put on Morning Ireland to wake us up and ease us into the world outside of the house. We might as well not have bothered.

First news – banking. Second news – unemployment. Third news – unemployment. Fourth news – banking. Main feature – how Wexford is faring in the economic climate.

Christ. Whatever. We get it. Ireland is fucked. Fine. Let’s get on with it! I understand that people are losing their jobs, and it’s shocking and regrettable and sad but it’s been like that for a few months now. Anglo Irish was nationalised. Fine. That happened a month ago. Why is it still in the news? The country was frustrated before today that people were losing jobs, having pension levies, seeing education funding cut, and all of that, before it came today. People are short of money at the moment – the people already know that. They don’t need Morning Ireland to tell them when the world is getting better – they’ll know themselves when they can afford the odd mild luxury again.

An honest question to anyone: isn’t there a serious market right now for a news outlet that sidesteps financial news completely?

This F**k The Recession lark might catch on, you know.