Messages

its a fascinating subject this, and we are watching what is little short of a gentle reformation play out before our eyes. the vast majority of citizens in the republic of Ireland ( using this as i'm using census figures) classify themselves as catholic, over 80%,
yet the vast majority of these Catholics reject huge parts of the church doctrine, any remaining doubts  about the extent of this being well and truly dispelled last week. 

yet all these Catholics consider themselves catholic, and by and large are happy in their Catholicism. i'm an atheist and have been since i was 11 and i came from a home that was a good deal less catholic then most of those around me so i honestly cannot understand their thinking at all, it baffles me.

but i see it in my wife's and her family and my friends and their families, all secular liberal minded people, rarely if ever go to church out from weddings funerals etc, yet consider themselves catholic and profess a great fondness for many aspects of it while having an equally great revulsion for may other aspects of it.

they pick the bits they like and ignore the rest and condemn some of it and are as often appalled by the church's actions as they are inspired by it.
and it has come to the point that on the ground most priests are perfectly happy to go along with this and on a personal level seem closer to the views of their flock tan to the teachings of rome.

now not that long ago (up to last week) all this sickened me a bit as i saw it as giving an easy ride to a malevolent and dangerous organization that still held too much influence over society and i saw the hypocrisy of these so called Catholics as perpetuating this sly influence on society.

as of last week i see they have no influence left, zero, its finished, they are harmless, their continued presence as the new Irish Catholic Church is no threat to modern irish society.

digging up an old thread here as i have recently attended a couple of league of Ireland games and i was just wondering if any others here followed it at all.

the young lad is mad into all sports, GAA being number one but also soccer, rugby, basketball, swimming, squash etc etc. so i though i'd bring him to see sligo rover our nearest LOI team. we have been twice the fist time to see them play dundalk and lastly to see them play St Pats on Saturday night.

all in all i enjoyed it and he loved it. they have a nice set up, easy in and out, a nice covered stand reasonably priced. sligo lost the first game and i thought the standard was poor but the 0-0 draw on Saturday was much more exciting and the standard was higher.
a lot of the players would have played in England and a lot of them would have represented Ireland underage. the sligo goalie is on loan from Chelsea and one of the out field players was on the books at Liverpool and was is  in Europa cup squads.

having said that its a million miles away from the excitement of a GAA match, it would barely compare to a mayo FBD league game let  alone a league or championship fixture  but then i suppose that's a matter of interest and perception.

on the downside i was taken aback with the level of abuse the players and coaches were giving the officials. if a player in a gaa game spoke to a linesman the was i saw a dundalk player address  one he would have been imminently sent off, yer man wasn't even booked.
then there were the fans. the home fans were a lot more male and middle aged then a gaa crowd. not many woman and not even that many kids.
i was quite surprised at the state the away fans were in. on both occasions a large proportion of them were out of their minds on drink and i'd say drugs as well, the crew with st pat's were coked off their heads.
now there was no trouble as such but on Saturday there were 3 firemen fully kitted out ready to go into the crowd and retrieve the many flares, and fire crackers they were letting off and throwing on the pitch. they chanted throughout a  minutes applause for a person who had passed away.
now having said that never stopped singing and chanting and defiantly added to the atmosphere.

so all in all i think it is a good enough product and while i doubt id bother with it if it was just myself for kids with an interest in soccer its a good option.

i dont know if this has been mentioned already but the capacity of mc hale park for this game will be 28,000. well below what the ground can comfortably hold.
this will put a bit of pressure on tickets.

is anyone watching national treasures on rte. i see the promo for this Sundays show from Belfast features one of this boards most notorious and famous posters.

if you go down to the harbor you can get boats to carpi or ishia. i spent a few days on ishia once, it was the loveliest place i ever was. the boat trip its self was some experience packed to the gills with locals off on a day trip, all dripping in fake designer gear. it was like something out of Gomorrah.

it would be a full day though so might not be doable if you are only there a short time. if you were to give a day over to leaving the city then it would have to be Pompeii.

plus this is an ideal time of the year for pompeii, not as hot as high summer and not as many tourists.

Free u 16s not counted I presume??

nope, everyone is supposedly counted going in the turnstiles,they turn the same for kids as adults plus there would be way more u16's then the short fall anyway.
attendance as reported is supposed to be everyone in the ground, kids, paid tickets, season tickets, any complementary tickets.
now i could be wrong i might just be crap at guessing crowd numbers but i'm not the only one saying it.

i dont know what the craic is in other counties but i'm pretty convinced at this stage that the mayo co board are under reporting the home crowd by between 2000 and 3000 for league matches for the last few years.
there is no way there were less then 12000 people in mc hale park last Saturday.  the stand was effectively full and its capacity is 10,000, even accounting for 5% empty seats ( and there wasn't) that's 9500. there were at least 3000 people on the mc hale road side probably more like 4000 and maybe  1000 behind the goal. 
id say the crowd was minimum 14000 and maybe 15000.

another thing is i'm convinced that there is some sort of shenanigans going on with attendance count at games, mayo games anyway and the league in particular.
last year in the league id say that the attendance at each home game was under reported by at least 3000 to 4000

Firstly I should point out that he wasn't diagnosed retrospectively with having diminished responsibility or not understanding the difference between right or wrong or the consequences.
He was diagnosed retrospectively without ever being examined by that physician of having a depression induced psychosis.

My own feeling is that whatever his perceived mental state, and these latest letters appear to back it up, is that he knew exactly what he was doing, the consequences and the horror of his actions.

Are those who commit suicide selfish and cruel then? They often leave letters that show they know what they are at and the consequences of their actions.

Selfishness and Cruelness are subjective graduated concepts so differ on how each individual observer see and feels about them.

This discussion was regarding his mental state and specifically wether he understood exactly what he was doing, the consequences of his actions and wether he understood them to be wrong. From his letters it would appear that he did.

My point was simply that when someone takes their own life there is a lot of sympathy for them as others see it as something an illness (depression etc.) caused them to do as opposed to something they would have done if 100% healthy mentally.  If Hawe was impaired mentally then surely it could be argues that it was the result of his illness and not entirely his fault.

as  understand it your mental health would have to be so impaired that your were unable to tell right from wrong, that you had no idea that what you were doing was wrong or in any way illegal.

if your defense is insanity and that defense is accepted by a jury then you are found not guilty of the crime you are charged with.
in most cases where this happen you are then committed to a psychiatric institution until such a time as you are no longer insane.
this could be a week or it could be 50 years, or never.
most people who have committed a murder and been found insane have ended up spending a long long time in psychiatric care, often much longer then they would have spent  in jail for murder.

there are exceptions to this of course, your man Gallagher  being one.

the bar is set very high to be considered insane when committing your crime. it is quite rare and in the vast majority of cases you would not need to be a professional to see that the person had suffered a complete psychotic breakdown. its a jury that decides ultimately, not the treating doctors so its rare that the accused can ''fool'' everyone into thinking they were out of their mind at the time.

[The Eurozone does not have a lender of last resort]

Seafoud tried to rebuke me and then immediately linked to a publication whose entire exsistence is centered around attacking capitalism and literally supports marxism. You may as well kick the ball in your own net and be done with the discussion.

Syf, the economic system is very close to collapse. The Eurozone does not have a lender of last resort. Do you understand what that means ? 

a fella who used to play for Mayo called Ludwig Von Mises said that all debt expansion systems end in mass bankruptcies. WW2 was the result of the last one.


is the ECB not a lender of last resort?
You support plutocracy. God only knows why. What did plutocracy ever do for Roscommon?

the castlebar knockmore game was a very enjoyable match to be at. great crowd great, atmosphere and two teams having a real go. prefect location in Ballina (Compare this to the atmosphere in Bekan that next day).
for knocmore mc loughlin was the leader and for castlebar it was paddy durcan. durcan was class he was able to up the pace when needed and  scored a goal just when it was needed.

an honorable mention to the ref in that game, his surname was Kennedy i cant recall his first name. he consistently pulled both sets of defenders for fouling off the ball.  this encouraged both teams to stop doing that and contributed to a great game.

some craic out in Balinaboy last night. i could clearly see the light from the flares  from the gas release from my house in Ballina about 40/50 miles away, it  must have been fairly unsettling if you were living locally.

if the EU could agree in advance processes to incorporate separatist areas from existing  EU states directly into the union, it could provide a simple road map for this.

sure the lager countries would not be too happy about it but if its the will of the people they cannot really object. plus the EU could agree a mechanisms to off set financial loss (oil or gas or wherever).

its not that long ago that Europe was more city states or small provinces then nations. especially in central Europe the notion of nationality is a reasonably new one.

its hard to see why separatist regions could not be seamlessly incorporated into the Eu if they already send representatives to the European Parliament.

this is off the top of my head stuff so there is a lot of holes in it but i cannot see any massive roadblocks to it.

Any Mayo supporters slightly concerned at how they finished both halves last Sunday?  22 minutes was Mayos last score in the 1st half and in a half that was 40 minutes long and only scored one point in the last 16 minutes of the 2nd half.

One thing i noticed is the interest in this game has increased in the last 3 years. Attendance 52,495 for the drawn Kerry v Mayo semi final in 2014. Sunday the attendance was 66,195. The replay in Limerick had attendance of 36,256 what is the expected crowd this Saturday?

ya i 'm surprised there has not been more talk about this.
while the phenomenon that is the mayo support has garnered some comment in the last few years last Sunday took it to a new level.
of that 66,000 in excess of 45,000 were mayo fans ( allowing for 5000 neutrals which is very generous) id guess. mayo outnumbered kerry at least 3-1.
the population of mayo is 130,000, this means that in excess of a third of the population of the county were in attendance. now obviously this is not physically possible. when you take out the old and infirm, very young children etc it would mean that in the region of 50% of those  capable of going went.
of course mayo has a huge diaspora and they make up a fair percentage of the fans but even still the level of traveling support is now approaching what would be termed a migration.

i would guess that that was biggest mayo crowd to ever attend a game in croke park.