On the face of it, the Labour Party's social employment scheme for apostrophes looks like a worthwhile initiative, writes Frank McNally
You take a redundant apostrophe, or at any rate one that has been down on its luck, and give it a job as a comma in an election slogan, such as: "But, are you happy?" Suddenly, the comma feels wanted again (even though, by any normal standards, it is not). Soon, it regains its confidence. Before long - who knows? - the comma may even get a proper position somewhere: for example in the slogan "a lot done, more to do". And yet, from a grammarian standpoint, news that the Labour posters are the work of an advertising agency called "Bloom" is worrying. I see from the latest issue of Marketing magazine that, just as one might fear, the agency is called after the hero of Joyce's Ulysses. This makes it a doubly apt name in one sense, since the original Bloom was an "advertising canvasser".
But Ulysses was also responsible for the mass lay-off of apostrophes and commas during the great Joycean depression of the 1920s. Many of these inoffensive punctuation marks were then faced with a choice of outright redundancy or low-paid jobs in the grocery sector, where thousands still languish to this day, promoting "apple's" and "orange's" and worse.
So before Labour's stream-of-consciousness campaign goes any further, maybe the party needs to clarify its policies on the English language. The posters have deliberately raised the quality-of-life issue, we are told. Now we need to know where Labour stands on quality of punctuation.
While we're on the subject of literary echoes, there's another one in the controversial scheme under which Dublin City Council has exchanged street advertising sites for bicycles and toilets. Although it may have been lost on both the council and JC Decaux - the French advertising firm involved - the initiative combines two separate passions of the late Flann O'Brien. Indeed, controversial as it is, the scheme seems a fitting, if slightly late, contribution to the 50th anniversary of the writer's death.
The bicycle was a central theme in O'Brien's work, particularly The Third Policeman. But perhaps less well known is that his late novel The Hard Life revolved around the issue of public toilet provision.
In the late-Victorian Dublin of the book's setting, it was unthinkable for the city council to provide toilets for women. This seems very strange to us now, in a more enlightened era when it is unthinkable for the council to provide toilets for either sex. But that's how it was, apparently. So the hero of The Hard Life schemes to provide mobile toilets in the guise of special unisex "trams", allowing women to relieve themselves under the pretence of using public transport.
Now, under what should be called the Flann O'Brien/Hard Life memorial agreement, JC Decaux is to supply a number of toilets in return for permission to erect 130 advertising panels, which will occupy prominent positions around the city for the next 15 years.
The two-metre-high panels are considered unsightly by critics, and some councillors claim the deal was not properly debated. There has also been criticism of the small number of toilets involved - four. The main focus of media attention was the 500 bicycles, which will be available for rent by commuters. In case of life imitating comic fiction, the provision of toilets has effectively been slipped in under the cover of a public transport initiative.
The JC Decaux agreement should not be confused with the forthcoming general election, a deal under which 166 TDs - some of them almost two metres high and a few, no doubt, unsightly - will be installed in Kildare Street for a period of up to five years, in return for promising unspecified public services.
In this case, the advertising will precede the installation. And if the council was not vigilant enough in studying the bikes-and-toilets agreement, it is accused of being "over-vigilant" in the case of premature election posters. Like Mark Twain's stopped watch, which was accurate twice a day, at least it's averaging well.
The accusation of over-vigilance was made by Pat the Cope Gallagher after his posters were removed from lampposts in Drumcondra before Sunday's National Football League semi-finals. The posters had targeted Donegal fans attending Croke Park, and were just the latest in a series of similarly illegal pre-election poster skirmishes around the country.
It's as if, like GAA players squaring up before a match, election candidates are already exchanging shoulders, insulting each other's female relatives, and so on, as they attempt to gain a psychological advantage before the throw-in. But what qualifies as election literature during a campaign is mere litter before a campaign is formally announced - hence the council's actions.
This is a sore point with circuses and other touring spectacles which traditionally depend on posters to make their presence known. Their posters are illegal too, unless there's an election going on and they have a candidate. Which is why, when last I heard, Fossetts Circus was still planning to run one of its cast members as a poster-protest, on a slogan: "The clown you can trust".
I read in the latest Village magazine that, according to an unnamed colleague of the Taoiseach, "there is a logic to how Bertie thinks, but it's a Bertie logic". In this context, it is interesting to learn that among the group out canvassing with Mr Ahern in recent days was his personal adviser, Chris Wall, and his constituency organiser, the man known as "Paddy the Plasterer".
In other words, the Taoiseach is surrounding himself with a plasterer and a Wall. I think there's a pattern emerging here.