Laudable behaviour which brought back memories.
Pity this sense of fair play doesn't cross over into The Beautiful Game.
The irony of it all is that typically it is policed on match-day by bruisers, scoundrels and ruffians who spent the rest of the week bullying the weak and stealing money off their grannies.
Mise le meas should be in great form and his knowledge of all things Leeds will be tested as we come face-to-face with some diehards as, over lunch, we quaff the finest wines the region can produce. Time therefore to get familiar with a few of the ground rules:
The farmyard filming techniques of Emmerdale Farm were originally modelled on the revolutionary soap-opera The Riordans, made by RTÉ, Ireland's broadcaster, from the mid-1960s to the end of the 1970s. Th e Riordans broke new ground for soap operas by being filmed largely out of doors (on a farm owned in the storyline by Tom and Mary Riordan) rather than the usual practice of British and American soap operas, of shooting almost completely in studios (where 'outdoor' scenes were sometimes filmed indoors). The Riordans pioneered farmyard location shooting with real farm animals and actors driving tractors.
In the 1960s and 1970s, outdoor filming of television programmes using OBUs (Outdoor Broadcast Units) was in its infancy due to the far higher costs involved and the reliance on things like the weather that were out of the control of the programme makers. The success of The Riordans showed that a soap opera could be filmed largely out of doors. Yorkshire Television sent people to The Riordans set in County Meath, Ireland to see the making of the programme at first hand.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it.
So here we are, one month after the election which was going to change everything and we’re being dealt the same old shite again. Evidence of corrupt behaviour in Government leading us to remember (how could we have forgotten?) the good old Irish qualities we have come to know and hate over the last forty years - arrogant and abject denials of the truth made by individuals who believe they are more important than the system; a lack of transparency; an inability on the part of the State to act and most damningly a return to Civil War politics with the two protagonists merely having swopped sides in the Dail chambers. How snugly the boots seem to fit Michael Martin as sits atop his new moral high horse. Remember where all this came from, you Cork prick.
The change which the country needs quite simply didn’t happen and we will now be left with the punitive IMF deal, a demoralised youth and a reputation so flawed globally that even the tourists don’t want to come because “it’s just not the same craic”. The opportunity to effect radical change was missed and so we lapse back into the old system of politics and governance. Yes, through the visibility of the press (the effective opposition) the corruption might gradually be cleaned up but you can rest assured that power will remain with an elite few, and their arrogance, egotism, and self-centred behaviour will ensure that, sooner or later, we piss any progress we make right back up against that wall.
Brilliant animated video of Bale, and one of the originals from the eighties with appropriate lyrics.
