IS THE NEWS getting you down? Current affairs causing a frown? Satirical site The Mirehas an alternative angle on the week’s hot topics…
Fáilte Ireland organising litter-picking tours for tourists
Monday, 3 September
Tourists arriving in Ireland for The Gathering 2013 will be given a unique opportunity to take a part of Irish culture home with them.
Fáilte Ireland litter-picking tours will bring tourists to beauty spots around the country to collect rubbish dumped by locals.
“Litter pickers and gloves will be provided to our visitors for a small fee,” a Fáilte Ireland spokesman said.
The tourists will then be offered an opportunity to buy a bag of the rubbish they collected to bring home with them.
“They will be able to show it to their friends at home and explain the importance of dumping in Irish culture,” the spokesman explained. “This will encourage their friends to visit Ireland too.”
Injury risk as colleagues rush to avoid Health Minister
Tuesday, 4 September
Medical staff will attend today’s Cabinet meeting in case anyone gets injured in the rush not to sit beside Health Minister Dr James Reilly.
A Government spokesman said an ambulance was on standby as well as a doctor, two nurses and gardaí in riot gear.
“Crowd control barriers are in place to prevent Dr Reilly getting too close to his colleagues and jeopardising their careers,” the spokesman said.
“We’re hopeful that Dr Reilly won’t bother turning up but if he does we are prepared for any eventuality.”
Gardaí said they were confident of handling the situation. “He’s a big lad but we managed Brian Cowen… we can handle Bottler,” a garda said.
Micheál Martin accuses government of constructive dismissal
Wednesday, 5 September
Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin is taking a constructive dismissal case against the Government for stealing his job.
Mr Martin is outraged that the Government is now providing its own opposition after it forced itself into a u-turn over cutbacks for the disabled.
“It’s not good enough for them that they put us out of government,” Mr Martin said. “Now they want to put us out of opposition too.”
Mr Martin called on the government to immediately stop criticising the government. “Get on with your own jobs,” he said. “If you can.”
Review of free travel scheme to ‘save millions’
Thursday, 6 September
A review of the free travel scheme has recommended that it should only be available for outbound journeys.
“There’s a flaw in the scheme that allows pensioners to use their free travel passes to go somewhere and then allows them to use the passes again to come back,” a consultant said.
“Obviously, this leaves them free to use the passes again at random at considerable cost to the taxpayer,” he added.
“If we modify the scheme so that passes cannot be used to return from anywhere we will save millions of euro.”
Special classes to tackle accidental paedophilia in the Church
Friday, 7 September
In an attempt to stamp out accidental paedophilia in the Catholic Church, priests are to undergo special classes to help them understand when friendships with children cross the boundary line.
“Too often we have found that a priest and a young child are having harmless friendly fun when suddenly it ends in sexual assault,” a bishop said.
He explained that the classes would focus on real-life situations of children and priests at play.
“Unfortunately we haven’t been allowed to use real children for the classes,” he lamented. “So some of the priests will take it in turns to dress up.”
