Sunday, February 19, 2006

Death by foreign satellite tv

First of all, I just want to get one thing off my chest. Like the inspiring and sometimes annoying George Hook, I am an angry Munster fan. I put up with paying high prices to go and see our heroes perform in Thomond Park or on foreign fields in Britain or France. I put up with the pain I put my family through when I have to leave them for a whole weekend of drinking and singing debauched rugby songs in English or French (I’m not joking here – this is actually quite a wrench away from my family, but I’m loyal to Munster). I even put with the fact that I pay over €80 for a jersey of modest quality that’s made in China by people being paid 2c a week under the orders of a New Zealand-based company and which also forces you to go around as a billboard for Toyota.

What is unacceptable now is the fact that, from now on, we’ll have to pay a foreign satellite company a subscription for a load of crappy channels that I don’t want just so that I can watch a team representing the hopes and dreams of my home province. That’s not right.

The government can do something about it, but it refuses to do so. All it has to do is simply add Munster games to the list of sporting things of cultural significance so that they are not available to be prostituted on the open market as if they were prostitutes.

Anybody else feel the same about this sick state of affairs? Make your voice heard.