I don't know why, but recently I have been thinking about. For those of you who weren't around at the time, most of you, I suspect, Hall's Pictorial Weekly was a series of humorous TV programs broadcast on RTÉ in the 1970's. Devised and produced by Frank Hall, the program concentrated on lampooning politicians. This it did by depicting a meeting of county councillors in charge of a place called Ballinagash. Leading the actors in this satire was Frank Kelly, a pastmaster at mi

The origin of the term Kangaroo Court is somewhat obscure. However, having spent some time researching it, a consensus seems to emerge. That consensus, not surprisingly, implies jumping. It is, after all, what that unpleasant creature is best at doing: jumping. And so a Kangaroo Court simply jumps the usual requirements of a properly constituted court, a court of Law, for example, and pretends to function as if it were legitimate and that there were no problems. Kangaroo Cour