Revelation of the bank holi-Day

After a weekend of getting changed in car parks, doing naked press ups in the street, being burned at every junction by Mr Pink's one-liners and drinking more rum than a pirate, The Board has found his new favourite place. Kilkenny.

The Board has also discovered that he does a savage impression of Andy Parsons.

The revolution will be televised

Thanks to new media, death now only counts if it is caught on video.

Israel cannot and will not find any tolerance for the murderous actions it inflicted upon a civilian vessel in international waters early on Monday morning.

But what many are finding hard to stomach is the blatant hypocrisy of the international community's response.

A tragedy? Yes. The provocative act of a pariah state with nuclear capability? Yes. A surprise? No.

Embassies are rattling and marchers are marching in the wake of Israel's latest crimes. But the raid on the Mavi Marmara should not shock anyone familiar with how the Israeli government goes about its work.

But simply because Sky News and Reuters and France 24 were broadcasting shaky deck footage of soldiers attacking and being attacked within an hour of Monday's dawn raid, it becomes an international incident.

Because Twitter was alight with frantic updates all yesterday morning about reported death tolls, it becomes an international incident.

The ancient ignorance of diplomatic rules and a modern obsession with the latest footage came together in a shameful marriage yesterday morning.

Where were the citizen journalists when Palestinian children were being killed in hospitals struck by IDF bombs in December 2008?

Where were the UN Security Council when Israel used white phosphorous bombs on the innocent people of Gaza City?

Where is the rage of the online masses every single day that Israel breaks international law by starving the Gaza Strip and building new settlements in the West Bank?

New media has brought the information era into the minds and pockets of a new generation. Say whatever you want about the cheapening effect this has had on professional reporting.

The Board, for one, supports the editor of The Guardian Alan Rusbridger when he speaks of a future of 'mutualisation' between the creators and consumers of media. But New Media needs to sharpen its moral compass.

A two-year-old child crushed to death in its mother's arms cannot record footage on an iPhone. Until it can, its death will never mean as much to us as that of the 26-year-old Turk who does.

That truth - one we hold in our own minds - is as appalling as anything in Israel's murderous arsenal.

Ordinary decent criminal

Wayne was in the house last week. You may have heard. He's being mistreated and hassled, apparently. What do you think? Pah.

Rather than come up with a fresh, pensive opinion piece on it, The Board is going to re-hash an editorial he wrote about it all for last week's Leader, which Wayne - being an aggreived customers of ours, natch - surely read 11 times.

"Both the cause and effect of violent crime were clearly visible in Limerick this week.

On Monday, as Ireland legend Niall Quinn arrived in the city to announce details of a charity soccer match in aid of the Shane Geoghegan Trust, Wayne Dundon, one of Limerick’s most violent criminals, spoke out against alleged press intrusion into his life.

For a man like Dundon, the most senior figure in the Dundon-McCarthy crime gang and someone who thrives off an aura of silent menace, to simply walk into the Limerick Leader offices and bare his soul was extraordinary.

He spoke of his apparent feelings of hurt, fear and anger about the “innuendo” with which he is portrayed in the local and national media. He dismissed the feelings of Steve Collins, whose son Roy was murdered by a member of the Dundon-McCarthy gang last year and – to the derision of many – claimed he is afraid to set foot outside his home in Ballinacurra Weston, for fear that he is accused of threatening Roy Collins.

It is bitterly ironic that it was the publication in several newspapers, including this one, of photographs of his daughter’s Communion celebrations that sparked Dundon’s indignation.

It is understandable that Wayne Dundon and his wife are protective of the feelings of their seven-year-old daughter, but Roy Collins was murdered a month before his own daughter made her Communion – gunned down by James Dillon, a junior member of the Dundon-McCarthy gang.

Hardened gangland criminals do not exist in the same society as the rest of us. We may walk the same footpaths and breathe the same air, but they live outside our world of decency and respect for life beyond our own.

But what drove Wayne Dundon to allow his feelings to become known to the wider public?

Five weeks ago, he was released from prison after serving five years for threatening to kill Ryan Lee, Roy Collins’s first cousin, in December 2004. His release was met with trepidation by those who value safety and calm on the city’s streets.

However, Dundon this week insisted that since then, he has become a virtual recluse. Dundon has undoubtedly been shaken by the fierce, brave and relentless actions of Steve Collins and his public quest for the men who orchestrated his son’s murder to be brought to justice.

James Dillon, the 24-year-old who pulled the trigger, has now begun a life sentence for Roy Collins’s murder, but his father does not believe that this is enough. If he does feel that he is an undeserving target of Steve Collins’ ire, Wayne Dundon will find little sympathy among the ordinary people ofLimerick.

However, crime is not simply the property of urban estates and nefarious ganglords. At a meeting of the Joint Policing Committee in County Hall last Friday, Chief Supt David Sheahan praised garda efforts in securing a 21 percent drop in reported crime in county Limerick in the first four months of 2010.

In particular there was an 18 per cent decrease in burglaries and a 36per cent fall in firearms offences. This, coupled with tougher drug enforcement measures, has enabled gardai in our towns and villages to continue fighting crime on their terms.

However none of us can take the peace and order that we all seek to live by for granted.

Crime in Limerick city and county is itself just a consequence of the poverty and social exclusion that creates a world where gangland criminals flourish.

The rigorous work of the gardai and the ruthless honesty of men like Steve Collins may crack the dangerous facades that criminals spend their lives building. But it may never be enough.

Our society is unforgiving of serious criminals but is far too quick to accept as fact the world that they come from. We must all continue to look beyond headlines and photographs and statistics.

Crime, like so much else, is about cause and effect."

At Last, the First Farewell Tour

We've been through this before.

Like some Youtubed charlatan, The Board had his moment of electronic fame but disappeared into ignominy when he realised he could not type more than 400 words per day.

The hole in the internet was sharp and juicy as bloggers everywhere wondered aloud where their bi-weekly quotient of toilet jokes had gone.

Askeaton, Glin, Newcastle West and a dirty isolated forest road in Kilcornan is the answer.

Alas the expense account had to run out eventually, so The Board has returned, decrepit as the day Jebus made him.

What did we miss? Willie got the bullet, as did Eamon Dunne. Jim McDaid popped his gasket and The Board popped his shoulder joint.

Ailments and idiocy aside, The Board will try to keep you abrest of all such things in future, before his Tracy Jordan-esque habit of eating batteries claims his sweet, tender young life.

Revelation of the day

Tiger Woods really does have a dirty mouth.

Leader poll finds disdain for national holiday; skitters

The Board hates St Patrick's Day parades. Honestly. I would rather have my face tarred whilst being serenaded by Don Henley than endure one.

Chicken scratch banners. Vintage tractors with with motor skitters spewing diesel in your face. The blinding hue of false smiles. The rain. The inevitable hangover.

If the new Limerick Leader/UL poll had decided to include The Board in its testing sample and dared ask one of its serious, generic questions about politics and the economy and the most tragic lost childhood ice cream (Magnum Cone, we hardly knew thee), the discussion would have been skewed with abrupt fervour.

I don't know much about Shannon Airport, Suzie, but LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT GOD DAMN PIPE BANDS.

But among the 300 non-demented people who gave UL a chunk of their life before demanding they give it back, the answers were far more constructive.

62.7 per cent of them agreed that Willie had to go, 66.7 per cent dislike the fact that the entire region is on the dole, while only 12.7 per cent believe that Michael O'Leary's bare ass is to blame for the ills of Shannon Airport.

Future editions of the Leader will reveal more answers to those aching questions we're all asking, such as who is Limerick's favourite politician of all time and whether the Super Chip is the city's finest cultural achievement.

Post Script: Yes, The Board is aware that it has been well over one Earth-month since he last dropped a literary load all over the internet.

He has, you see, been stuck in a dangerous cycle. As he is now interim information overlord for all West Limerick, his weeks become so viciously busy that electronic disgraces such as this page have been reduced to semi-retirement.

Other areas of life that have suffered include: sport, career, personal fulfilment, libido, knowledge of NFL free agency and trapeze skills.

Though I have found myself watching a lot more Curb Your Enthusiasm and switching tenses mid-paragraph, which is always to be welcomed.

Pink cocktails and the Duffy Principle

The Board loves slow news weeks. Honest.

True, they often turn him greener than Ed Begley Jr at a climate camp, but they provide wonderful proof of how obsessive and easily distracted the media can be.

Take the recent hokum over the new president's residence in UL, and how it is a religious disgrace that about €2 million snots can be spent on such a frivolous, horribly angular building in this time of Great Depression.

As The Board's colleague and chief malteser thief Lady Sheridan puts it in her riposte here, this was never an issue while everyone had anything to talk about. Less than four years ago €17.8 million was spent on a bridge across the Shannon without a single peep from Batt O'Keeffe or the Mayor of Limerick or anyone else.

That's because nobody cared. This time next week, no one will care either. The Board never cared at any stage.

There's a weekly quota for public rage in this country. In the absence of easy, pick-up-and-play outrage (the trashing of John Gormley's entire emissions and waste treatment policy is too blasé, natch), the media will pick on whatever target we can find, and the easier the better.

Call it the Duffy principle.

As a dusty child of fortune, The Board prefers more romantic sources of angst. The cost of the new hot air balloon rides in Adare, for one.

A wonderful way to spend 90 minutes, of course. The trip of a lifetime, maybe. But €240? Really? The Board would rather waste it on elaborately-shaped breads and pink cocktails which, as evident in the picture below, he first sampled on a recent trip to Lahndan.

It was mostly Jack Daniels and therefore not at all feminine. Honest.