Brian - or is that Briain?

Brian Cowen has done an awful thing.

By actively engaging in bilingual debate in the Dáil since he was made Taoiseach, he has made me… jesus I can’t even say it… he has made me wonder if I could in some parallel universe… vote for Fianna Fáil.

I know.

What has been particularly interesting is the press coverage of all this public Gaeilge.

Breaking news on ireland.com gave the full text of his speech on Wednesday, the first half of which was in Irish, and blissfully enough when he started speaking English he didn’t simply repeat himself thereby engaging in crass tokenism… I may be in trouble here, my heart did in fact skip a beat…

Yesterday’s Irish Times seems to have skipped over that part of the day.

Now, I can understand them not wanting to print the whole speech - in fact if they were going with the “sure why would we report that, it’s the first language of the country, of course the leader of the country can and does speak it” I might even buy them a pint or two. But it doesn’t feel like that’s what’s going on. Not least because every other paper I saw seems to have taken the same approach.

Which leads to an interesting, and in my case mildly amusing question - if Mr Cowen persists in speaking that mad language with all the CHHHHH sounds… at what point will mainstream media say “oh, right, eh… does somebody have a dictionary?”

What’s the policy, will they simply translate as they would from French or Russian? Or will they have the good grace to respect our language enough to print it? Or better still (and we’re strolling right into fantasyland here) will they print the original and the translation, with a bit of a foclóir, and take the opportunity that is clearly being presented to help everyone develop their language skills?

If nothing else, it will be an interesting little development to keep an eye on.

What is your attitude to ageism?

Better question: what is your definition of ageism?

‘Say No to Ageism’ week has been launched, and bus stops are being plastered in delightful posters that ask us to question our ageist attitudes - as long as we only do it in one direction.

Once again, the ‘equality‘ authority asks us to remember that older people are people too. Personally I hadn’t forgotten, but I appreciate that some people might. What I don’t appreciate is the way them equality folk supposedly aim to challenge that view, every year.

This year’s posters feature four portrait images - for example: three old men, in grey/b&w photos, with words like ‘grumpy’ and ‘over the hill’ stamped on them; and the fourth is a full colour image of a young woman, where the caption is simply ‘Lucy’.

I got angry enough to design my own version of the poster.

But then I decided being sued wouldn’t be ideal so I’m not going to post it. Probably.

The point is, this isn’t “Say No To Ageism” this is “Say No To Old-Ageism, but go ahead and keep stereotyping young people”. It seems particularly ironic in the context of this alternative initiative - but it says a lot that this is separated from the general ageism campaign.

Look at the latest drinkaware ads - there were four different scenarios where someone was too drunk and thus ruining society - and every one of the drunk people were of the under-30 variety. Because we’re all drunks, without exception - and more importantly, there are no drunks over 30. They’re just lovely social drinkers who not only drink responsibly at all times, but have a fundamental human right to drink a few pints then hop in the car and drive themselves home.

Can you imagine the reaction if rural students (a fundamental evil, how dare they be young while also working hard to get a decent education, clearly they are up to no good, ever!) had reacted to the new licensing laws by announcing that there should be a dispensation for 18-24 year olds because if they didn’t go to the bar with their classmates and then drive home after pints they’d be socially isolated??

I’m not trying to belittle the importance of appreciating older members of society - in fact, as I’m confident I’ve mentioned before, I think the lack of a widespread ‘respect your elders’ attitude is nothing short of disgusting - but the fact remains that if you are claiming to address ageism, then address all of it!