The only president of Ireland with a decent set of cojones since my generation have been around was, as it happens, the first woman to hold the post. Mary Robinson regularly ticked off the government with a record number of challenges to their legislation and by considering taking up a UN role that could have put her in direct opposition to government policy, not to mention shaking hands with Gerry Adams when they specifically told her not to.

She took the UN on when they wouldn’t fund her department properly, and pissed off her parents too, marrying a Protestant. They didn’t attend her wedding. Tough AS.

Now she’s throwing her hat in the ring on Zimbabwe. As honorary president of Oxfam, she is all in favour of a global sports boycott of Zimbabwe, reminiscent of the ban on playing in South Africa. She joins old buddy Desmond Tutu in calling for harsher treatment of Mugabe, who had more people severely beaten, then magnanimously released on bail, over the weekend.

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Propaganda and shout-outs on the boycott from a Zimbabwean paper

Zimbabwean nurses can’t afford the bus to work