Politics.ie weather report

A sudden downpour of technical glitches on www.politics.ie has caused widespread panic among underemployed Dail staffers, student politicians and disillusioned party hacks throughout the nation.

They are now believed to be flooding niche bulletin boards and refugee stations have been set up on boards.ie for the worst afflicted.

Reports suggest that initial fears of a legal tsunami were misplaced. Rather, the current crisis appears to be the result of a high-pressure software upgrade clashing with p.ie owner David Cochrane's busy schedule.

Meteorologists predict that the site should be back up by the weekend.

Political junkies are urged to find shelter offline, and seek comfort in bound copies of old Oireachtas debates.

Hairstyles are more important than politics

According to Irishwomen, that is.

An Irish Times survey (subs required) has revealed that politics is the least important thing in my female contemporaries' lives. Only 9% rank politics as very important to them.

Financial independence was considered to be the second most important thing to women. Hardly surprising in a society only half a generation from when women couldn't work after marriage in the state sector and when divorce was illegal.

But the fact that hairstyles and personal grooming were considered more important, not only than politics, but also more important than friends or financial security, more important than ANYTHING ELSE in fact, is a bit of an eye-opener.

Since men aren't considered worthy of polling in and of themselves, we won't get to see a similar poll of male attitudes. But I suspect that a similar poll would see men put family and friends top of any list of interests (closely followed by sport, sex and of course politics.)

These findings may seem obvious to bloggers like FlirtySomething, who have long berated my tedious ranting about the state of politics in Ireland, but all I can say is that they were pretty surprising to me.

Further revelations from the strange land of the Irish female psyche are promised by the IT tomorrow and on Saturday. I for one cannot wait.