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Can't believe the Brush isn't involved in the entertainment.
He'd really get the crowd jumping.

Yeah, he'd get me jumping off the top deck of the Hogan to end the misery

I'd like to shoot my boss but I'd have to aim for his arse, because if the bullet went into his head it wouldn't hit a vital organ

Anybody any idea how the tickets are going?

To bring this thread back to its original subject, Tony Healy and Paul Brady were playing each other in Croke Park in the final of the 2003 World Handball Championship.
 Brady won the first game, Healy was 11-3 up in the second when Brady went down with cramp.  Under international rules cramp does not constitute injury so Brady would have only his remaining timeout (one minute) to recover or else forfeit the game, leaving Healy World Champion.
Sportingly Healy immeditely called his own timeouts to give Brady additional time, Brady recovered, Healy won the second game but lost the tie breaker and thus the World Championship.

I was there, I saw it, truly a memorable act of sportmanship in a GAA game

Fair play to the fella, that's brilliant

Was in Omagh today, fcuk it was freezing. Very good display today by Tyrone, 1-18 is great scoring at this time of the year.  Has to be said that I think it will take some team to beat Tyrone this year come championship time.  Midfield impressive today with McGinley & Cassidy getting the better of Clerkin & Finlay.  Up front SON & Cavanagh...what else can you say, their performances said it all.  I think we are going to have a very strong panel the year and it looks like we now have cover for every position, roll on 2009   

Aye, enjoyed that today all right ... if we can avoid the injury curse that hits us after winning Sam then we'll be there or thereabouts

William Zantzinger ... wealthy farmer jailed for the fatal beating of a black barmaid whose story was recounted by Bob Dylan in The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll


William Zantzinger, who died on January 3 aged 69, was the scion of a rich tobacco farming family in Maryland whose drunken, racist assault of a black waitress at a society ball in 1963 ended in her death. He would have subsequently sunk unmourned from view had the attack not come to the attention of a young folk singer, 22-year-old Bob Dylan. As it was he became a notorious and widely-loathed icon of bigotry just as America's civil rights movement came to the boil.

"William Zanzinger killed poor Hattie Carroll/With a cane that he twirled around his diamond ring finger," Dylan sang in The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.

Dylan deliberately misspelled Zantzinger's name in the lyrics, perhaps concerned that he might face legal action. Indeed Zantzinger, in a bitter tirade about the song three decades after it was released, claimed that it was "a total lie". "I should have sued him [Dylan] and put him in jail," he said.

The song, considered one of Dylan's finest, tells the story of the night of February 9 1963, when Zantzinger, who had been drinking heavily, arrived at the Emerson Hotel in Baltimore to attend a white tie ball.

Reports from the time said that in addition to his top hat and tails, he was sporting a toy cane, which he initially used to imitate Fred Astaire. But as the evening progressed and he grew steadily drunker, Zantzinger became increasingly abusive. He either fell on, or pushed his wife to the floor before hitting several of the hotel's staff with the cane. He then demanded a drink from Hattie Carroll, and when she was a little slow in getting it, he responded by repeatedly hitting her with the cane and swearing at her, his invective laced with racist epithets.

Seeking refuge in the kitchen, Hattie Carroll told colleagues she felt "deathly ill" and an ambulance was called. She died hours later, aged 51. Zantzinger was charged with murder.

"Hell," he said as the trial got underway, "you wouldn't want to go to school with Negroes any more than you would with French people."

In court however, three judges ruled that Hattie Carroll had died from a stroke possibly brought on by the stress of the attack, and sentenced Zantzinger to six months' jail for manslaughter.

It was a report on the sentencing that reached Dylan, sparking his outrage that a rich white man had received only six months for apparently beating a black woman to death.

Though the story was undoubtedly more nuanced than that, it came at a febrile time. Zantzinger's sentencing on August 28 1963 occurred on the same day that Martin Luther King Junior, addressing a crowd from the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC, just 40 miles from Baltimore, uttered the famous words: "I have a dream".

Dylan insisted that Zantzinger had been protected by his family's local standing and political connections. "With rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him/And high office relations in the politics of Maryland,/Reacted to his deed with a shrug of his shoulders," he sang.

Indeed, the timing of Zantzinger's trial was managed so that he could complete the tobacco harvest and his light sentence, which he served at a county jail, seemed designed to ensure he was protected from the wrath of the mostly black inmates in state prisons.

William Devereux Zantzinger was born on February 7 1939, the son of a real estate developer and farmer. He grew up in the farm's white-colonnaded mansion and graduated from school in 1957. After that he spent most of his time until the fateful night in 1963 working the family's tobacco plantations.

After his release from jail he found that his sentence had little impact on his reputation with his immediate friends. He was a member of a local country club and gave generously to his church.

Beyond his circle however, Dylan's song was helping to ensure Zantzinger became a figure of hate. Written just months after the case and incorporated into the singer's 1964 album, The Times They Are a-Changin', the song put Zantzinger's name on the map nationwide and ultimately across the world. Dylan sang it on television and at concerts, continuing to perform it as recently as last year.

Nor was the Hattie Carroll case the last of Zantzinger's racially-charged legal travails. In the 1990s he was convicted of claiming rents from black tenants for tumbledown homes, not connected to water or sewerage pipes. In fact the dwellings had been confiscated from him in lieu of back taxes. He was fined and sentenced to 18 months but only spent a few days in jail.

The case seemed to seal Zantzinger's reputation as a racist, but he long protested that Dylan's song had misrepresented him, a verdict with which Dylan's biographer Clinton Heylin agrees.

"That the song itself is a masterpiece of drama and wordplay does not excuse Dylan's distortions, and, 36 years on, he continues to misrepresent poor William Zantzinger in concert," Heylin wrote.

William Zantzinger will have few defenders however, and the infamy in which he was cloaked by Dylan will certainly long outlive him. He is survived by his second wife, Suzanne, and three children from his first marriage.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

"With 24 countries having approved the treaty, I am not sure whether the voters of Ireland should have a right of veto over the aspirations of all the other people of Europe. I am not sure whether that is, or is not democracy."

UK Foreign Office Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown.

---

Still voting Yes for the Lisbon Treaty?

At least the Irish people were given the opportunity to vote ... I don't think Ireland requires any lessons on democracy from the brits

PS ... who's taking the piss with that advert on page 1 of this thread?

I see no difference to what the IDF are doing in Gaza to what the SS did in the Warsaw ghetto ... the Israelis can't complain about being compared to Nazis when that is the way they behave ... yer woman, the Israeli Foreign Minister, has come out with some odious shite that I'm sure Goebbels would have been proud of...

["This gruesome interest in mass slaughter indicates just how little Sinn Fein has moved on.]

A SOUTH Down MLA has voiced outrage that members of Sinn Fein's youth wing plan to visit the scene of the Narrow Water massacre this weekend.


The site outside Warrenpoint is where 18 British soldiers lost their lives in an IRA attack in August 1979.


It remains the biggest ever loss of life suffered by the British Army in Northern Ireland in a single attack and one of the most bloody episodes in the history of the Troubles.


Ogra Shinn Fein is staging a Republican Youth Weekend in Newcastle this weekend (9 to 11 January) and the agenda includes a demilitarisation protest at Ballykinler Army base and a "historical tour, tracing local republican history, including Narrow Water."


But the plan to visit Narrow Water has angered local DUP Assembly member Jim Wells.

"Most people living in South Down will be appalled that the youth wing of Sinn Fein have included as part of their conference programme an outing to celebrate and gloat over one of the most dreadful events in Northern Ireland's history," he said.


"This gruesome interest in mass slaughter indicates just how little Sinn Fein has moved on.

"They should be ashamed of this heinous crime, but instead they are encouraging their young members to regard the site of the carnage as an opportunity for a day out to celebrate multiple murder."


Sinn Fein MLA Caitriona Ruane is one of the guest speakers at the youth weekend and Mr Wells called on her to "ensure the outing is cancelled immediately."


The DUP man said he was also concerned about a "threat to vandalise" Newcastle Orange Hall.


It follows an anonymous comment on the Ogra Shinn Fein website about the Republican Youth Weekend in Newcastle, which states: "Great work, I heard there will be a change of colour outside the orange hall this year too!"


Newcastle Ogra Shinn Fein is hosting this weekend's event and spokesperson Fra Cochrane accused Mr Wells of seeking to generate "cheap headlines."


"Whilst it is encouraging that Jim Wells has the time to examine Ógra Shinn Féin blog-spots on the Internet, his latest attempt to generate controversy over genuine political discourse is designed to do nothing more than generate cheap headlines," he said.


"The weekend being organised by Ogra Shinn Féin will include debates on a diverse range of issues, involving prominent guest speakers who are taking the time to engage with young people on political and social topics.


"There will also be a number of historical tours, including a trip to Narrow Water Castle, that will allow for an explanation of some of the defining moments of the past conflict.


"Mr Wells needs to realise that Republicans fought a justifiable war against the British war machine here in Ireland, just as the Palestine people are currently doing in Gaza.


"The British Paratroop Regiment are notorious killers who, amongst a litany of other crimes in the six counties, murdered 13 innocent people in Derry on Bloody Sunday.


"The soldiers killed at Narrow Water were combatants in a bloody conflict where all sides suffered."


And the Ogra Shinn Fein spokesperson dismissed claims that the youth weekend posed a threat to Newcastle Orange Hall.


He said: "Mr Wells knows full well that it is impossible to control comments posted on an Internet site.


"He only has to examine the sectarian bile that is emailed to Loyalist band websites to understand this, yet of course he always remains silent on this issue.


"The reason why Sinn Féin has a very active youth wing is because the party puts an emphasis on political discourse and if Mr Wells would like to participate in this weekend's event he is welcome to do so.


"This is probably unlikely however, as he is still unable to speak or be photographed with Sinn Féin elected representatives, such is his inability to treat Republicans as equals."

 

Now whether you agree with what the Shinners are doing here or not ....you would have to wonder and ask yourself is this one of the same guys who would be commemorating mass slaughter in France during WW1 etc every year on 11th November.

If you can't see the difference between commemorating the dead (your own dead, in particular) and celebrating the death of one's enemies, then you can't see very much at all. One is about paying respect to those who fell in battle, the other is about gloating.

Aye, and the British army never gloated over the deaths of IRA volunteers (or joyriders they machine-gunned to death for that matter)?

Ron Asheton of The Stooges ... a guitarist who influenced a whole generation of kids to pick up an axe... his music will live on

My comment was a little tongue in cheek but I think there is some basis behind the statement. In the same respect that estate agents have succeeded in killing the housing market I think the unions have forced the wage costs into an untenable (sp.?) position also.

As everyone is well aware the cost of goods and services in the South is at a ridiculous level following the introduction of the euro and surely cannot be sustainable at this level. The housing market reflects this and to pay for higher housing costs etc. wages have been forced to increase to keep up but obviously the correction is taking place and with it the jobs will go.

I am not an advocate for the minimum wage - if the price of any commodity goes up demand should decrease in theory, the job losses reflect this. The basic premise of modern day economics with demand and supply are artifically tinkered with when you introduce a minimum wage - also, it was introduced originally to tackle the poorest in society, its not a popular view but is there really that many people in absolute poverty? Not poverty by some definition from a government think tank but real poverty, not being able to afford food/shelter etc?

I wouldn't blame it on the minimum wage, I'd blame it on capitalism full stop ... it was the greed of these bastards going after their big bonuses by investing all that money sub-prime mortgages (aka a pyramid scheme) and being allowed to do so that has us in the shit we're in ... there's a great T-shirt on sale at minute with a big picture of Karl Marx saying: "I told you this would happen!"

I blame the unions and the minimum wage.

Aye, it's the union's fault for trying to get their workers a living wage, nothing to do with the management who benefit from the big tax breaks and government subsidies to set up in the first place then at the first sign of an economic downturn f**k off to where they can exploit foreign workers and pay them slaves' wages

I dont think Dell are exploiting foreign workers, if the cost of housing, food, services etc are lower in Poland well then you do not need to earn 30k a year to build a computer.

As sure as night follows day, the Polish workers will start pushing for better pay and conditions, will achieve their aims over time, the yanks will pocket all the subsidies and tax breaks and then up sticks to an even cheaper place where they can exploit low wages again

A few huns on last night on Sky Sports going apeshit about happenings at Castle Greyskull and calling for Murray's head ... he might have to turn to his mate 007 to sort the restless natives out with his Walther PPK

I blame the unions and the minimum wage.

Aye, it's the union's fault for trying to get their workers a living wage, nothing to do with the management who benefit from the big tax breaks and government subsidies to set up in the first place then at the first sign of an economic downturn f**k off to where they can exploit foreign workers and pay them slaves' wages