tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19492813.post115122262986390047..comments2024-02-24T09:14:44.403+00:00Comments on The Poor Mouth: Proof that Age Does not Always Confer Wisdomjams o donnellhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17315325008175184363noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19492813.post-1152137222327642172006-07-05T23:07:00.000+01:002006-07-05T23:07:00.000+01:00Diarmaid the Dub, I will ignore your crass assumpt...Diarmaid the Dub, I will ignore your crass assumptions about my political stance and cut to the chase.<BR/><BR/>Mr Keating may have participated in the Tan and the Civil War and he must be one of the very last veterans still alive. This is fine and well as he represents a link to an important time in Irish history, the same way that say Henry Allingham does in the UK. <BR/><BR/>His stubborn refusal even to recongnise the Irish state, his refusal to take a pension or the award to centtenarians may be a mark of ideological purity but to me it is a mark of stubbornness.<BR/><BR/>I presume that you consider his patronage of a bunch of die hards to be laudable. Again I stand by my view that the support of the bullet over the ballot is out of step with other nationalists. Continuing with violence will not advance the cause of a united Ireland one jot. 44 or 104 I have nothing but contempt for anyone who still adheres to such a view.<BR/><BR/>Anyway, feel free to pass on my comments to Ken Loach. If he wishes to respond here, he is welcome to do so.jams o donnellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17315325008175184363noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19492813.post-1152098089316115402006-07-05T12:14:00.000+01:002006-07-05T12:14:00.000+01:00To suggest that a 104-year-old man of Dan Keating'...To suggest that a 104-year-old man of Dan Keating's pedigree could be classed as "an old fool" shows that you are a suitable member of what you declare as the "soft left of the Labour Party". You are at home in an organisation which cares little for the views of older people it disagrees with, as witnessed with the ejection from your party conference of 82-year-old Walter Wolfgang who had the timerity to heckle during a "debate" last year. <BR/><BR/>I might take this opportunity too to wish your party good luck with its war effort in Iraq, a fight your party leadership instigated with lies and now leads with George Bush. Perhaps you too support this war effort - unlike your disdain for Dan's lifelong fight to free Ireland of people with dismissive arrogant views of the right to Irish freedom, many of them Labour ministers and party grandees like Jim Callaghan, Roy Mason and Merlyn Rees. <BR/><BR/>Dan will be deeply untroubled by your comments, which I intend to forward to Ken Loach. <BR/><BR/>By the way, given your apparent fondness for Flann O'Brien, the term "Labour left" ranks as oxymoronic a term as anything to be found in even the most eccentric or bizarre of his writings. He would be proud.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com