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Topic: Then there was the Yummy Mummy....
An Fear Rua
(Editor)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 14:52
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Lives in Malahide.

Her only son, little Ruan, wanted to join the local boxing club. To be with his friends. She said she wouldn`t allow it. Didn`t want him mixing with all those rough working class types from the Council houses. God only knows what bad things he might pick up from associating with them. Omigod, she told her friend Cecily over morning lattés, he might even end up boxing against a Traveller!

So she decided he should take up a respectable  sport. With such nice people involved. So, now he goes out every Saturday to an arena ... showjumping ...
premiergirl
(460 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 15:06
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Originally posted by An Fear Rua:
Then there was the Yummy Mummy....

I strongly object to this sweeping generalisation.

For Shame
This message has been edited - 21-aug-2008 @ 15:06
uisceford
(531 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 15:28
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whats this post about?

Originally posted by An Fear Rua:
Lives in Malahide.

Her only son, little Ruan, wanted to join the local boxing club. To be with his friends. She said she wouldn`t allow it. Didn`t want him mixing with all those rough working class types from the Council houses. God only knows what bad things he might pick up from associating with them. Omigod, she told her friend Cecily over morning lattés, he might even end up boxing against a Traveller!

So she decided he should take up a respectable   sport. With such nice people involved. So, now he goes out every Saturday to an arena ... showjumping ...
Flog
(1,112 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 15:53
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Originally posted by uisceford:
whats this post about?


It`s about snobbery and people with airs and graces above their station......
an bearna baoil
(444 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 16:21
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Anything better than that hurling. Imagine he would end up playing against O Tooles or the Craoabh.
Its bad enough to have to pass them on the way home. Thank God for the Port Tunnel
Seamusin
(1,283 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 16:34
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Originally posted by an bearna baoil:
Anything better than that hurling. Imagine he would end up playing against O Tooles or the Craoabh.

Actually the future of Dublin hurling lies in its thoroughly middle class clubs. There may be a few bastions of the attitude you describe still around, but hurling/ Gaelscoileanna/ contrived Irish names are perfectly acceptable  to the Irish Times-reading classes
Welger AP630
(2,507 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 19:28
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Is`nt there a poster about called Mullach Ida  (or something like that ) , he wont like that!
SHANNONSIDER**
(8,499 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 19:34
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The inverse snobbery on this thread is gas. If you think Harvey Smith and the Whittakers are snobs then you`re way off the mark. Hard as nails the lot of `em. It is very much a hand to mouth existence for most jumpers, living off horses they sell on usually.

The real upperclass equestrian sport is eventing, showjumping is seen as crass and vulgar due to the focus on prizemoney. NB Princess Zara is an eventer.
An Fear Rua
(Editor)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 20:14
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Originally posted by SHANNONSIDER**:
The real upperclass equestrian sport is eventing, showjumping is seen as crass and vulgar due to the focus on prizemoney. NB Princess Zara is an eventer.

Thanks for explaining that, SS**. However, for most people, they`re all just about of toffs riding around on poor misfortunate animals with their fat arses stcuk out in their tight breeches. And that`s only the women.
rebelhorse
(881 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 20:31
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Originally posted by An Fear Rua:


Thanks for explaining that, SS**. However, for most people, they`re all just about of toffs riding around on poor misfortunate animals with their fat arses stcuk out in their tight breeches. And that`s only the women.


stereotyping of the worst kind, riding club is fulll of ordinary Joes who are far from fat ass toffs,,
SHANNONSIDER**
(8,499 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 20:41
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Originally posted by An Fear Rua:
Thanks for explaining that, SS**. However, for most people, they`re all just about of toffs riding around on poor misfortunate animals with their fat arses stcuk out in their tight breeches. And that`s only the women.

For most people? That`s the problem with most people though isn`t it, they take their cues from the Daily Mirror.
turfcutter
(1,705 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 21:00
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Havent heard an interview with you man Lynch but I wonder if he has that wonderful thick tipp accent.
SHANNONSIDER**
(8,499 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 21:03
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I`m sure he has, he`s from Kilfeakle.
mullach ide
(67 Posts)
Posted: 21-Aug-2008 22:45
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Originally posted by Welger AP630:
Is`nt there a poster about called Mullach Ida   (or something like that  )  , he wont like that!

I`m from the poor part!
BallygunnerBlaa
(60 Posts)
Posted: 22-Aug-2008 02:26
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Originally posted by SHANNONSIDER**:

The real upperclass equestrian sport is eventing, showjumping is seen as crass and vulgar due to the focus on prizemoney. NB Princess Zara is an eventer.

They are wannabe upperclass SS** - new money only prevails amongst this lot.
An Fear Rua
(Editor)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 11:12
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`The Irish Times`

Boxers offer a window into our marginalised society
Tue, Aug 26, 2008

The admirable qualities of working-class communities are ignored by wider society outside of the Olympics, writes Fintan O`Toole

THERE IS a strange silence about one of the most obvious aspects of Ireland`s Olympics: social class. It expresses an underlying discomfort.

As so often in the past, national pride was salvaged by those of whom the nation generally feels least proud: young, working class men from marginalised communities. While the horsey set, with all their money and self-regard, were making a show of us yet again, the competitors who demonstrated honesty and discipline, pride and passion, were from the invisible Ireland that is represented only in court reports.

Their accents are heard most often in caricatured advertisements, where they stand for criminality or stupidity. Unless they become individuals by making waves in sport, they are skangers, chavs, hoodies, xxs.

Kenny Egan`s north Clondalkin, for example, is almost literally a non-place. It is the product, not of democratic planning, but of the shenanigans that are the subject of the Mahon tribunal. Its "town centre" is a shopping centre that most locals can`t afford to patronise. The struggle to turn it into a home has been harsh: a decade ago, when Egan was starting to box, an astonishing 57 per cent of those aged between 14 and 23 in north Clondalkin had experienced homelessness.

This is an Ireland largely bypassed by the glossy high-tech economy. Just 6 per cent of its men and 5 per cent of women have a third-level education. Even now, there`s a 30 per cent chance of a child leaving primary school with serious literacy problems and a 50-50 chance of even sitting a Leaving Certificate.

There are no silver medals for north Clondalkin in the deprivation stakes - it scores 10 out of 10 in the economist`s index. Yet, there`s more to this story than deprivation - there`s the struggle against it.

Well-to-do society is quite comfortable  with the products of deprivation. It finds it convenient when young men from the working class reservations live up to the stereotypes, when they wear hoodies and white socks and throw shapes and sip cans of Dutch Gold lager on the back seat of the bus. The threatening signals allow for the maintenance of a reassuring distance. These people are stupid and crude and potentially violent, and it`s best to stay out of their way.

And then every four or eight years, when all else fails and the more well-scrubbed medal prospects have imploded, Ireland is forced to rally round young men from this class and adopt them as our great national hopes.

We get to hear them speak in their guttural urban accents - and discover that they have something to say for themselves. We get to meet their families - oddly enough, they`re nice, decent people. The cameras are brought into their homes - which turn out to be strangely clean and bright and comfortably furnished. We find, rather disturbingly, that a place like north Clondalkin is full of people with the same aspirations and ambitions as everybody else and that some of its young men make far better representatives for the country than their supposed social betters.

Boxing matters to these young men because it create s a world in which hard things are expected of them. Violence is controlled, restrained and sublimated. Wildness is the ultimate sin and discipline the ultimate virtue. Bodily power is nothing without intelligence.

Manliness is asserted, not by bullying, but by behaving honourably and respectfully towards an opponent inside the ring and, outside it, by a stoical acceptance of defeat and even of unfairness. Above all, boxing is a fatherly culture. Older men - trainers and mentors - treat younger men like sons, giving them the benefit of their own experiences and receiving, in turn, the gift of being listened to. And the young men learn, in the process, not just how to box, but how to be fathers themselves. They learn about encouragement and discipline, about cajoling and warning, about the ways in which different generations can talk to each other.

Boxing does for these young men, in other words, what education and community and society ought to do but don`t. It treats them as people who can achieve very tough things, not just in sport but in learning to be a man. It gives them respect and demands in return that they respect themselves. It defines them as individuals - in few sports is the competitor quite so nakedly alone - but it also create s its own family and its own community. It has no time for self-indulgent victimhood. It both teaches and recognises the dignity that is won in struggling against unfavourable circumstances.

But you shouldn`t have to box, or to be a man, or to win Olympic medals, to be entitled to the basic dignity of high expectations. The world we look into every four years when we`ve given up on showjumpers and excuses, is not a world of sinister hoodies with a few Kenny Egans on the side.

Kenny Egan`s skill and self-respect and intelligence and ambition represent the common values of his working class community. If Irish society as a whole could recognise that, his achievement would be worth much more than a gold medal.

© 2008 The Irish Times
Seamusin
(1,283 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 12:18
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Originally posted by An Fear Rua:
`The Irish Times`

Boxers offer a window into our marginalised society
Tue, Aug 26, 2008

The admirable qualities of working-class communities are ignored by wider society outside of the Olympics, writes Fintan O`Toole


Hasn’t Fintan done well, rewriting the same couple of articles for 20 years?

A cat can’t try to cross the road but Fintan will twist it to show that it is symptomatic of a divided society and that, being working class, the cat is unlikely to make it across
SHANNONSIDER**
(8,499 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 12:46
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What an utterly ignorant article from Tintan O`Foole, not content with knocking Lynch for an innocent mistake he has a sneer at his `money and self-regard`. You haven`t a clue what you`re talking about O`Foole, Lynch is not a rich man by any means, he is a journeyman rider. Where is the self-regard? He talks about stereotyping and prejudice then labels everyone on a horse as if they`re straight out of Tennis Term at Trebizon. Odious twat.
The Darkside
(99 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 13:10
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How can you really feel proud by a boxing medal at the Olympics?
The top boxers turn professional while the second rate lads go to the Olympics. Kenny Egan is in the same weight division as Roy Jones Jnr. FFS
chewfáile
(698 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 13:18
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Originally posted by SHANNONSIDER**:
What an utterly ignorant article from Tintan O`Foole, not content with knocking Lynch for an innocent mistake he has a sneer at his `money and self-regard`. You haven`t a clue what you`re talking about O`Foole, Lynch is not a rich man by any means, he is a journeyman rider. Where is the self-regard? He talks about stereotyping and prejudice then labels everyone on a horse as if they`re straight out of Tennis Term at Trebizon. Odious twat.

I think he actually has a sneer at the whole "horsey set" SS and not Lynch specifically.
And by focussing on the couple of lines where he does refer to show-jumping, you then decry the whole article as utterly ignorant.
I`d argue that the thrust of the article is not to savage the "horsey set", they merely receive a few sideswipes, it`s to assess how we refocus our innate perceptions when sporting events such as the Olympics occur.
It may be a point often made but it`s valid nevertheless. IMO.
ballygowan
(1,987 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 13:26
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Originally posted by SHANNONSIDER**:
What an utterly ignorant article from Tintan O`Foole, not content with knocking Lynch for an innocent mistake he has a sneer at his `money and self-regard`. You haven`t a clue what you`re talking about O`Foole, Lynch is not a rich man by any means, he is a journeyman rider. Where is the self-regard? He talks about stereotyping and prejudice then labels everyone on a horse as if they`re straight out of Tennis Term at Trebizon. Odious twat.

Why do you continuously defend Lynch when he is clearly indefensible? This "innocent mistake" is like the boy who cried wolf. How many people have to make innocent mistakes before everyone cops on and realises that they are responsible for their bodies, and what`s in them, and for their horses bodies. After Cian O`Connor there is no such thing as an innocent mistake.
Diamond Geezer
(462 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 13:48
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Originally posted by The Darkside:
How can you really feel proud by a boxing medal at the Olympics?
The top boxers turn professional while the second rate lads go to the Olympics. Kenny Egan is in the same weight division as Roy Jones Jnr. FFS

Just to clarify - this would be the Roy Jones Jnr that went home from the Olympics the same colour medal as Kenny Egan, yeah?
The Darkside
(99 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 14:16
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Correct,as a teenager he won silver despite landing 3 times more punches than his opponent  (who later apologised for his embarrassing win )  the judges admitted a mistake was made and later were suspended.

Somehow I can`t see 26y/o Kenny following in his footsteps
SHANNONSIDER**
(8,499 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 15:42
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Originally posted by ballygowan:

Why do you continuously defend Lynch when he is clearly indefensible? This "innocent mistake" is like the boy who cried wolf. How many people have to make innocent mistakes before everyone cops on and realises that they are responsible for their bodies, and what`s in them, and for their horses bodies. After Cian O`Connor there is no such thing as an innocent mistake.

Apples and oranges, O`Connor intravenously applied a substance used to treat schitzophrenia in humans, Lynch manually applied a cream used in every yard in the country. Yes he fcuked up, but I don`t think he deserves the sneering he is getting, he is a hardworking grafter who has worked for anything he has got, he is not a silver-spooned Cian O`Connor.

As for the rest of the article, I think it`s rubbish, just because O`Toole thinks of chavs when he thinks of Clondalkin doesn`t mean the rest of the country does, he`s just pouring out his own prejudices all over this article. He is part of the well to do society.
BOULD THADY
(98 Posts)
Posted: 26-Aug-2008 16:09
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I think that O`Toole makes a few valid points. Any sport that teaches young men to control their agression, learn discipline and self-respect is a good thing.The point he makes about older men mentoring young lads is also valid.When you are in the ring you are on your own and you have to be self-reliant.There are a lot of young guys that would have strayed off the straight and narrow only for boxing.Perhaps if those well-off thugs that killed the young man outside Annabelle`s nightclub a few years ago had done a bit of boxing they would have controlled their agression.

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