Free The Trib by David Kenny Page A

continued his crusades well into his eighties. He regularly visited the offices of the Sunday Tribune to personally hand in press releases about his most recent campaign to stop the expansion of Dublin Port.
    A few years back, I didn’t hear from him for a long period before getting a letter from Sligo from him telling me he had taken ill there while on holidays. He told me that, as he was still recuperating, his wife had helped him write the letter. I didn’t know anything about his family but I thought it was one of the most romantic things I had ever heard. I wasn’t surprised to hear his family speak in such loving terms about him last week.
    For the rest of us, Sean Dublin Bay Loftus was a lesson for the hurlers on the ditch who wring their hands and complain about politicians and a lack of leadership. He didn’t moan or complain. He walked the walk instead of talking the talk.
    In an era where volunteerism is constantly declining, his unstinting work on behalf of his community is a shining example of what one person can achieve and what is really important in life. It’s customary when such an esteemed person dies to use the old saying, ní bhéidh a leithéid arís ann (there will never be his like again), ach tá súil agam go mbéidh, because, now more than ever, Ireland needs more men and women like Sean Dublin Bay Loftus.

C LAIRE B YRNE
Spot the difference: female models and model females
    28 October 2007
    K atie Price, also known as Jordan, is a woman who knows what she is doing. She uses her body and her fame to make money. Jordan is not an ambassador for charities, nor does she claim to represent a liberated feminist viewpoint or indeed recommend her lifestyle to anyone else. She just amasses huge amounts of cash by being a celebrity commodity.
    The unfortunate side-effect of what Jordan does is that her persona is elevated to iconic status. The worst brand of celebrity magazine presents her and people like her as a representative of modern woman ... and the vulnerable, and perhaps the young, buy into it.
    However, the wider British media do not present what Jordan is as an aspiration or ideal for all women.
    She is broadly seen for what she is by most responsible publications and there is a distinct separation between someone who takes their clothes off for money and someone who should have social influence.
    Here at home, we have a comparable example in model and celebrity Katy French, but the lines between model and moral authority have become dangerously blurred. Katy is everywhere, most product launches want her as their public face because her picture gets in the paper. She is in high demand as one of the most recognisable faces in Irish media.
    That Katy French is sought-after as a model is no harm.
    Good for her that she is busy ... take the work as it lands in your lap, Katy, and charge them top-dollar for the privilege.
    More worrying is the recent development that has seen Katy’s opinion held up almost as the voice of a generation. Her admission that abortion would be a better option than sacrificing her career for a baby and her vulgar honesty in relation to her sex life recently became frontpage, broadsheet news. The credibility this exposure gives to the musings of a model means Katy French now speaks for Irish women as a whole.
    It is not necessarily what Katy says that is offensive, but that a responsible society gives her such a loud voice.
    Katy French is a model who gets paid for posing in her underwear in the tabloids when the Dublin football team is playing in a big GAA match.
    She should not be portrayed as a new feminist whose flagrant flaunting of her sexuality equals sexual maturity.
    Most intelligent women are not, as she recently claimed, ‘threatened by her sexuality’ but instead cringe when her pronouncements are presented as being a bellwether indicator of what women think or want.
    Even the most venerable in our society have fallen