I’ve been on the road for the last ten days, so updates have been limited to linking and Whoniversaries, and actually reading LJ and email has barely happened at all. If anything interesting happened while I was away please tell me!
Meantime I managed to read several more books, of which the first was this set of anecdotes, borrowed from
But Coleman concentrates almost entirely on Dáil elections, so missing the drama of European and Presidential elections, not to mention the extraordinary case of the 1925 Senate election (and for all I know local council elections may have also produced moments of excitement I’m not aware of). So while the prose is generally catchy, and it would be a good stocking-filler for anyone with an interest in Irish politics, I wished for a little more breadth as well as depth.
I don’t think it works to make the offer and only then call up references – what if they give a reference that is no good? A job offer is a legal contract and difficult to withdraw.
And indeed, a prospective employer has to accept that referees are only human too. But I now have one candidate who has given me two referees who have replied, and another who has given me two who haven’t, which clarifies things considerably.