"Pirate music lovers voice political aims" is the title of an article in the Sunday Times which was spotted by the eagle-eyed Glen Gibbons, who kindly tipped the IPKat off (readers will know that the IPKat is not a devotee of newspapers, though a folded broadsheet is discreetly placed beneath his bowl in case of accidental spillage). Anyway, this item reports that the Pirate Party Ireland is planning to emulate the electoral success of the Swedish Pirate Party by putting a candidate up for election to the Irish Parliament, the Dáil. The constituency in question is Donegal South-East, where a by-election is being held.So far, the paper reports, the Irish group has fewer than 100 members but needs the signatures of 300 people before it can be given official national status alongside the 19 parties registered for general or local elections with the clerk of the Dáil. Said one supporter:
“Our support comes from a younger crowd. They are tech-savy people with a love of music so anyone can relate to what we stand for”.This member of the IPKat blogging team spent four happy years teaching in Ireland during the 1970s, where he recalls that the post of inspector for the Irish branch of the Performing Right Society was highly sought-after. In those days much of rural Ireland was not yet connected to the telephone and the inspectors would often disappear into the countryside for days at a time, forced to make merry into the small hours of the morning with nothing but a constant flow of poteen to sustain them while they checked the singers in each cosy little shebeen for traces of unlicensed repertoire ...