Tuesday, February 13, 2007

Irish Blog Awards 2007



With less than three weeks to go to Ireland’s second annual blog award ceremony, The Dreaming Arm has been nominated in the best arts & culture blog category. I’m facing some stiff competition as there is a very high standard of blogging out there. So may the best blogs win!

The full list of nominations can be viewed here.

To vote for the blogs of your choice go here.


I plan to be there at the Alexander Hotel on Saturday, 3rd March and look forward to meeting some fellow bloggers.


Indo lacking in Dutch courage
By chance I came across a piece in that reactionary rag known as the Irish Independent (“I’m a victim. See my gig”, 13 February). It’s the usual Indo fayre in the features section where the rottweiler barks loudly against anything they disapprove of, but fails to come up with any solutions or have anything good to say about anything. The article starts off by castigating the singer Mary Coughlan for allegedly wallowing in her own victimhood to publicise her gig. It then has a pop at a campaign initiated by pro-Palestinain activists to boycott Israeli diamonds. A campaign, which began in Galway, which the writer in his/her own infinite smugness describes as “Ireland’s most annoyingly smug city”. While I would not lend support to such a campaign (however people in Galway may want to start a boycott the Indo campaign), I am in favour of newspaper journalists getting their facts right. And I quote:
“…the fact that 80% of all rough diamonds, 50% of all cut diamonds and more than 50% of all rough, cut and industrial diamonds combined are handled through Antwerp, which means we should surely be boycotting Dutch diamonds, is neither here nor there”.

I suppose the simple fact that Antwerp is in Belgium is neither here nor there either.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Indo says about its diamond geezer: 'Opinionated, witty and scathing, Ian O’Doherty ridicules the stupidity of officialdom and the vapidity of celebrity culture.'

A fine summary of the man's talents. Or they could have said 'Boneheaded, dreary and jaw-shatteringly annoying, Ian O'Doherty's columns are ridiculously stupid and vapid.

CW said...

Nice one, Hugh. I see he's issued a correction in today's edition:
"Due to a combination of stress, incompetence, being a flibbertigibbet and generally not checking anything, ISpy erroneously claimed that Antwerp was in Holland.
As we all know, it's in Sweden. Sorry for the error."

I nearly split my sides with laughter.

And don't even get me started on the Sunday Indo - to quote the inimitable Twenty Major: "a badly written piece of shite that is nothing more than a scutty tabloid in broadsheet form...Anyway, Sunday Indo and your shitbag editor, whoever the fuck you are, just when I forget how terrible, inane, insipid and banal your 'news'paper is you do something to remind me and for that I thank you". Priceless.

There are pubs in the North London area that have free complementary copies on a Sunday - which I suppose can come in handy when they run out of bog roll.

By the way, I like your new site by the way! A big improvement on the blogspot version. I notice quite a few bloggers are following this route.

Lady Fotherington-Smethers said...

Voted for you for best arts & culture blog Ciaran. Am looking forward to going to the awards!!

Julia Buckley said...

Best of luck Ciaran. And well done for being nominated!

CW said...

Thanks Julia. I'm afraid The Arm didn't make it to the final shortlist, but thanks to all who voted for me and I look forward to a good night in Dublin!