Advertisement

We need your help now

Support from readers like you keeps The Journal open.

You are visiting us because we have something you value. Independent, unbiased news that tells the truth. Advertising revenue goes some way to support our mission, but this year it has not been enough.

If you've seen value in our reporting, please contribute what you can, so we can continue to produce accurate and meaningful journalism. For everyone who needs it.

A woman photographs waves as they crash against the sea wall at Howth Pier in Dublin on Wednesday Niall Carson/PA Wire
you told us

Top readers' comments of the week

Here’s our round-up of the wittiest, most thought-provoking and original comments you lot made this week. Did you make it in?

IT’S BEEN A lively week here at TheJournal.ie.

Every Saturday, we like to take a look back at all the comments left by you lot on the site over the week and pick out the ones that most grabbed our attention. It’s our way of highlighting the interesting, funny, and unexpected things said by our readers over the past few days.

This week, meetings with Denis O’Brien and Michael Lowry got a lot of you exercised, as did the plight of Irish pornstars, Dáil holidays, Good Friday licensing laws, the household charge (yes, still), turf cutters – and much much more.

In no particular order, here are the standout comments from the week…

Stephen Doyle had seen first hand the harsh reality of children with cheese addictions (ahem) in the comments under the poll about whether advertising cheddar cheese to kids should be restricted:

its so sad to see these kids with cheese addictions. I’ve often seen them as young as 4 or 5 rooting through bins to lick on empty laughing cow wrappers. In my town its escalated with the teenagers sniffing easisingles and some have even started to inject the hardcore stuff like Edam. Its horrifying so something needs to be done, thank god we have the BAI doing something to protect the young!

A couple of people nominated this comment by Kevin O’Connor on the piece about how a SF politician (no,  not Aengus Ó Snodaigh) had run up a large bill on printer toner cartridges. Don’t know how the octopus would feel about having to work so hard…

Get them a pet octopus each and get the ink from them. Problem solved.

And on the same article, this tweet came from @Kevnmur:

This story is a carbon copy. RT @thejournal_ie: #Inkgate is back: jrnl.to/HwZigD

Ok, this is a long one but it’s worth reading. Last Sunday we ran a story about a study which found people who eat fast food are more likely to develop depression compared to those who eat little or none. It kicked off a big debate – and this comment by Paul Mallon got a lot of recommends from other readers:

I’m a firm believer that preparing your own food from scratch goes a long, long way to a healthy lifestyle and a healthy mind. Learning to cook, making weekly dinner plans, building a nice little library of your favourite recipes and trying new recipes on a regular basis is great fun.A couple of years ago my wife and I decided to adopt this philosophy and it’s been great. We used to always rush through cooking the dinner so we could sit down and switch off in font of the telly. but then we decided what’s the point of that? mostly crap on anyway. Spend an hour or so preparing and cooking a decent dinner, then set a nice table, stick on some candles and have a relaxed dinner. Fuck all on telly most times anyway. Now we have a massive catalog of recipes from all over the world and  even I can cook quite a few of them from memory.

After about 6 months you get pretty efficient at it too. It keeps your mind active, helps you wind down, you cook healthier food and you learn a lot.

You get really good at budgeting for food too. I felt very proud when one day we were paying for our food at the check out in tescos and it was entirely fresh meats, fruits and veg, no processed stuff at all. It’s a great feeling.Highly recommend it.  Fish too, how the hell did I ever get buy in life only eating chipper cod???? can’t get enough fish these days.

The people behind Kony 2012 released a sequel video this week – and El Brujillo was not impressed:

Ok, I actually determined to watch the whole thing. But I couldn’t get past the ignorance of the first six minutes. Nit one real. local. voice. 90% of them US. These people obviously haven’t listened to any of the criticism… they don’t represent the real needs of the people there, that they are guilty of a ‘white man’s burden’ for the 21st century.But what made me switch off was the map they show of ‘the world’ at 6.03. It’s an old colonial map, in which the size of Africa is drastically reduced to make Europe and the US look bigger.

These idiots need to be stopped and educated in something called Participation Development.

Eddie Harkin on the Good Friday licensing laws in the comments under yesterday’s poll:

It’s a hangover from a different era.

See what I did there?

This slightly abridged comment from Seán Ó Briain was left on last night’s column by Bernard Dunne about how he’s launched the Bród Club to encourage people to make use of whatever little Irish they have in their daily lives. Bualadh bos!

I think this is a great campaign on Bernard.. There is really a barrier in Ireland where people are afraid to use even handy phrase in Irish, like ‘slán’, or what not. I say this as someone who probably is no different than most people reading this article.. I didn’t like Irish too much in school. I didn’t hate it or anything, I just didn’t really like the pressure of the subject. I picked it up myself later in life, by setting up a conversational group – and immersed myself in the language.

You can feel Bernard’s passion about the language – and the fact that he’s not fluent makes it all that more powerful. It’s someone people can relate to. I was already well back on the capall before this campaign, but I think it’s a good opportunity for everyone to reflect and think look positively towards a language that is unique to this island, that has been here for over 1,000 years. That fact that it’s still alive today is in some way, a miracle – and we should be proud of the efforts made over the past 20 or 30 years in reviving it.

Beir bua!

Donal McCarthy had some advice for beleaguered Minister Phil Hogan who got a lot of criticism during the week for his meeting with Michael Lowry shortly after the publication of the Moriarty Tribunal report:

Phil needs to take Outlook lessons. Mine has a Cancel Meeting button.

Last Sunday  we made this very serious and definitely not a joke announcement that we were launching a much-anticipated print edition. HURRAH. Ahem. Anyway, Cork Coast had this suggestion for our sea-based readers:

dont forget journal.ie readers at sea….. please consider placing some print copies in bottles and throwing them off cliffs around the coast…. :-)

Brian Lenehan jumped in on a thread about Facebook and Yahoo suing each other to point out that a lot of threads are being hijacked by the same few issues. What do you think? Is it something you’ve noticed? And any suggestions on how to stop it?

I blame the government… Household charge… Enda Kenny… Austerity… Blah blah…

I don’t really, I’m just sick of people hijacking every news story no matter how irrelevant, to make it an attack on government. It gets tedious. Hadn’t been done yet on this article, someone was bound to start.

Sorry for the interruption… As you were.

Spot any good comments which you think should be included next week? Mail christine@thejournal.ie

Your Voice
Readers Comments
18
    Submit a report
    Please help us understand how this comment violates our community guidelines.
    Thank you for the feedback
    Your feedback has been sent to our team for review.