Ronan O'Gara stock rising on OWC!

[Myles Na G.]

I didn't stereotype you, I stated that you were a republican, which you you've just said you're happy with. The website you constructed shares a name with one put up by Ogra Sinn Fein - this one, in fact:
http://ograshinnfein.blogspot.com/2007/08/north-armagh-shoot-to-kill-25th.html

f**k this is like trying to debate with a five year old - you really are very dim aren't you?    Forget about it...

Already forgotten, Socrates. 

[MW]

And proper order seems to be the RoI's anthem and flag being respected, with the opposite accorded to the UK's.
bodies.

What is the UK's national anthem?

You already know the answer to that question, so I don't know why you've asked it.

[Jim_Murphy_74]

Hmmm....Kevin Myers is fierce upset about it all:

IT'S simple. Ronan O'Gara is a lout.

Either he kept his hands in his pockets when he met Queen Elizabeth because he was unaware that no gentlemen ever keeps his hands in his pockets when he is meeting anyone -- whether t**ker, tart or toff -- which means that he is a lout. Or that he went up to Belfast, freely and of his own accord, and very deliberately kept his hands in his pockets in her presence, in order to establish some political point. Which also means that he is a lout.

And those bigoted midgets who have applauded him for his bad manners have merely shown that they are louts also.

Some things are important. You do not insult the flag of another country, and you do not show disrespect for its head of state.

The English captain Martin Johnson showed such disrespect to the President at Lansdowne Road by refusing to stand closer to the presidential red carpet, thereby making her walk over to him to shake his hand. Whether he did so accidentally or deliberately is irrelevant. He should have been publicly rebuked by the English Rugby Union and forced to apologise. He wasn't and he didn't. He is a lout also.

What he did was a serious breach of international protocol. But this should not have set a standard of Anglo-Hibernian bad manners to which Ronan O'Gara then uniquely adhered. (After all, no other Irish player felt the need to behave like him). Which means, if intentional, he went 300 miles to insult the sovereign of a friendly power. How heroic.

Which brings us to the tiresome issue, YET AGAIN, of ourselves and the British monarchy. Frankly, I am bored out of my skull with this pathetic, infantile obsession about Ireland not being British and therefore we don't invite the Queen (yes, that's deliberate) to this country. Only nationalist dwarves accept that argument. If she can visit Germany, whose cities were laid waste in her lifetime, with tens of thousands of civilians being slaughtered in their homes by an air force whose commander in chief was her father, then she can surely visit Ireland.

This issue has all the hallmarks of a very stupid family row. We know that the vast majority of Irish people use the term "the Queen" when describing the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Even Seamus Heaney wrote that in his family they never raised a glass to toast the Queen: yes, his capital letter.

The largest immigrant group in Ireland is British. For decades, the largest immigrant group in Britain was Irish. The laws of Ireland are based on English common law, and Irish barristers wear black in mourning for Queen Anne (died 1714). I could go on. So could you. This is because we all know the fundamental truths of this issue.

The culmination of next's season rugby championship will also see the 70th anniversary of the commissioning of Michael Floud Blaney, a Catholic and nationalist from Newry, and a graduate of UCD, into the Royal Engineers. He was rushed through a mine-defusing course, becoming one of the first of the new generation of bomb-disposals officers.

In September 1940, an unexploded German bomb in East London was paralysing traffic and preventing thousands of workers from doing vital war-duties. Captain Blaney volunteered to defuse the bomb, and working alone -- a method he pioneered -- he succeeded.

A month later, a new type of bomb was found in London. Fitted with two very dangerous time fuses, its sole purpose was to kill bomb-disposals officers like him. However, it was causing major economic dislocation and had to be tackled.

Again he volunteered to defuse it alone. He was successful. Then, a fortnight before Christmas, just after his 30th birthday, Captain Blaney was called to deal with another bomb. It had lain unexploded for several days, and was causing huge economic disruption. As usual he crawled unaccompanied into the crater, and while he worked on it the bomb exploded.

KING George VI -- the father of the woman in whose company Ronan O'Gara thought it appropriate to keep his hands in his pockets -- awarded Captain Michael Floud Blaney a posthumous George Cross, the highest possible British decoration for a soldier not personally present in the face of the enemy.

As Ronan O'Gara travelled North last week to insult -- either intentionally or otherwise -- the Queen, he would have passed Newry Old Chapel Graveyard, where the remains of Captain Michael Floud Blaney GC are buried.

How many people now know of this gallant man in the town where he was born, and where he had once been in charge of the roads department? Not many, I'd guess. Still, it's worth remembering that he used his hands to save life, not insult people.

The ultimate reward of the endeavours of so many Irishmen like him is also known by the name "freedom", beside which two words such as "Grand Slam" or "Ronan O'Gara" do not properly belong.

- Kevin Myers

[Rossfan]

Hmmm....Kevin Myers is fierce upset about it all:

O'Gara has obviously done something right so if that fcukhead is upset.

[Orior]

Did Myers get upset when David Trimble called Ireland a pathetic sectarian state?

Anyway, you're an arsehole Myers. The Queen is the single epitome of an occupying force and I applaud Ronan's action.

[Roger]

Jim_Murphy_74, what's your take on O'Gara last week? 

[Jim_Murphy_74]

Jim_Murphy_74, what's your take on O'Gara last week? 

I think it's obvious from how I started this thread that I felt it was something of nothing.

It's possible that ROG has a problem with royalty or British royalty I suppose but it seems to me he was "playing it cool" so to speak.  I doubt very much he was trying to score some political point. 

The fact that he discussed his friendship/acquaintance with her grandchildren suggests to me that he was just at ease with the occasion.

Myers is a knobhead of the highest order. 

[dodo]

How the hell does Myers make a living from that jumble of illogical drivel. Our very own Irishman born in Leicester or wherever, talking down to us constantly as if he held the upper ground of reason and logic. Was always surprised that the Irish Times employed him, albeit hidden in the 'An Irishman's  Diary' where serious comment isn't required. No real shock when Sir Anthony O'Reilly employed his vision of where we should be to the equally badly named 'Irish Independent'.

[Roger]

Jim_Murphy_74, what's your take on O'Gara last week? 

I think it's obvious from how I started this thread that I felt it was something of nothing.

It's possible that ROG has a problem with royalty or British royalty I suppose but it seems to me he was "playing it cool" so to speak.  I doubt very much he was trying to score some political point. 

The fact that he discussed his friendship/acquaintance with her grandchildren suggests to me that he was just at ease with the occasion.

Pretty much how I interpreted your original post's intent and how I interpreted O'Gara's posture.  Much ado about nothing.

[NAG]

That is the biggest load of rubbish I have read in a long time. Where in under god did get the connection between ROG and a second world war bomb disposal solider?

I am seriously fed up with this attitude which can only be described as west british coming out from the media in the pale.

We are not her 'subjects' and we live in a class-less society so it is up to ROG how he greets anyone.

We do not and should not have to cow tow to anyone in the world and that includes this drival from a paid mouth piece.

[magpie seanie]

Jim_Murphy_74, what's your take on O'Gara last week? 

I think it's obvious from how I started this thread that I felt it was something of nothing.

It's possible that ROG has a problem with royalty or British royalty I suppose but it seems to me he was "playing it cool" so to speak.  I doubt very much he was trying to score some political point. 

The fact that he discussed his friendship/acquaintance with her grandchildren suggests to me that he was just at ease with the occasion.

Myers is a knobhead of the highest order. 

Summed up quite perfectly Jim, especially the last bit.

[orangeman]

Jim_Murphy_74, what's your take on O'Gara last week? 

I think it's obvious from how I started this thread that I felt it was something of nothing.

It's possible that ROG has a problem with royalty or British royalty I suppose but it seems to me he was "playing it cool" so to speak.  I doubt very much he was trying to score some political point. 

The fact that he discussed his friendship/acquaintance with her grandchildren suggests to me that he was just at ease with the occasion.

Myers is a knobhead of the highest order. 

Good writer  - don't know about the last bit - deliberately controversial I'd say and has issues. That's being kind to him.

[red hander]

How the hell does Myers make a living from that jumble of illogical drivel. Our very own Irishman born in Leicester or wherever, talking down to us constantly as if he held the upper ground of reason and logic. Was always surprised that the Irish Times employed him, albeit hidden in the 'An Irishman's  Diary' where serious comment isn't required. No real shock when Sir Anthony O'Reilly employed his vision of where we should be to the equally badly named 'Irish Independent'.

I remember well the furore that led to Myers leaving the Irish Times after he railed against unmarried Irish mothers and their "bastard" offspring.  Shortly after he joined the Irish Independent he had a book published about his times as a journalist covering the Troubles in the Seventies.  A good mate of mine, a journalist in a Sunday tabloid, mentioned in passing down the pub that he was interviewing Myers the following week regarding the book.  Remembering that the boul 'Sir' Anthony was himself born 'illegitimate', I jokingly suggested that he asked Myers what he thought of "bastards" now considering he was taking a large salary from one.  Myers - a patronising, pompous English w**ker of the highest order with a reactionary opinion on everything - became uncharacteristically quiet when the question was duly put to him, threw a bit of a strop and refused point-blank to discuss the matter...

[ardmhachaabu]

How the hell does Myers make a living from that jumble of illogical drivel. Our very own Irishman born in Leicester or wherever, talking down to us constantly as if he held the upper ground of reason and logic. Was always surprised that the Irish Times employed him, albeit hidden in the 'An Irishman's  Diary' where serious comment isn't required. No real shock when Sir Anthony O'Reilly employed his vision of where we should be to the equally badly named 'Irish Independent'.

I remember well the furore that led to Myers leaving the Irish Times after he railed against unmarried Irish mothers and their "b**tard" offspring.  Shortly after he joined the Irish Independent he had a book published about his times as a journalist covering the Troubles in the Seventies.  A good mate of mine, a journalist in a Sunday tabloid, mentioned in passing down the pub that he was interviewing Myers the following week regarding the book.  Remembering that the boul 'Sir' Anthony was himself born 'illegitimate', I jokingly suggested that he asked Myers what he thought of "b**tards" now considering he was taking a large salary from one.  Myers - a patronising, pompous English w**ker of the highest order with a reactionary opinion on everything - became uncharacteristically quiet when the question was duly put to him, threw a bit of a strop and refused point-blank to discuss the matter...

Typical of the knobhead, good story though 

[Jim_Murphy_74]

This photo from another angle makes ROG look more the Walter Raleigh-type than Cork born rebel!