The Connaught/Ulster MEP Dana Rosemary Scallon, according to some reports, has run into trouble with the Pope. John Paul II is an enthusiastic supporter of EU enlargement as his native Poland is keen to join. He is known to be less than pleased that Ireland voted No to Nice. What is not known is whether or not he is "disappointed" with his friend and supporter, Dana. The MEP's manager, her brother John Brown, in a statement this week dismissed such reports as "factually incorrect, flawed and without substance". Neither the Pope nor any of his envoys had been in contact with Dana on the Nice Treaty, he said.
While all this rumbles on, Kevin Carey, professor of economics at the American University, Washington DC, World Bank economist, Bloomberg analyst and occasional media commentator, has composed a poem. In his spare time, Carey (whose father, Bill Carey, is a long-standing FG councillor in Co Meath) likes doing spoofs of W.B.Yeats. Below (with apologies to 'No Second Troy', Yeats's poem about Maud Gonne) is 'A Government Poet Writes About Rosemary Scallon - No Second Nice'
Why should we blame her that she filled our days
With misery, or that she would of late
Have brought ignorant men down most misled ways,
Or hurled a little no upon the great,
Had we respected their desire? What changed that peaceful face, which still reminds
That it was Eurovision which started the fire,
O How little then did we know, all kinds
Of opinions which are not practical in an age like this,
Things we once believed but now we spurn.
Why, what could she have done being what she is?
Is there another Nice for her to burn?