Left, right – what do labels matter when a homeless man dies on a freezing night?

Left, right – what do labels matter when a homeless man dies on a freezing night?: "The urge to attach labels to people is human. It makes life simpler. But labels stick if left unchallenged, so when a member of Aosdána tweeted that last week’s column was an example of “the class war credentials – pro-establishment – of the Irish media”, I reread it to see how I had offended and perhaps to atone.
To recap: I wrote that in my experience the people whom Paul Murphy TD describes as “ordinary” and “afraid of the government” can be startlingly outspoken when senior politicians come to canvass. If the gentleman tweeter disputes this, he has never been on a canvass.
The column also described politicians’ routine self-abasement before a demanding electorate in the perpetual mission to mind the seat, while suggesting that the same electorate should examine the mote in its own eye, given its abrupt U-turn towards Fianna Fáil in 2007."



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