that was the week that was

These past few days we've been celebrating John Fry Week at The Heelers Diaries. (Along with Hamster Week, which is a much more popular festival.)
Yes it's that time of year, that fateful anniversary, when we commemorate the Johnston Press takeover of the Leinster Leader and my subsequent firing from that august organ three weeks before Christmas 2007.
Ah we were younger men then.
Within a year of that brilliant decision to fire me, the Johnston Press share price had collapsed from four quid to four pennies.
The value of the Irish titles had collapsed to zero.
And the editor whose name was on the firing letter was himself being filmed by RTE the Irish national broadcast network, signing on at a Dole office to collect unemployment benefit.
Oh the humanity.
You gorra larf.
Shortly thereafter the Chief Executive of the Johnston Press stepped down for a retirement which the company said had been planned all along.
And I'm the Archbishop of Canterbury.
The outgoing hipster doophus was replaced by one John Fry.
Two John Fry's would have been excessive.
Still they might at least have tried to lease a second one.
John Fry indeed.
A name that will live in infamy.
At least it will if I have anything to do with it.
The geniuses of the Johnston Press then attempted to put all the Irish newspapers they'd purchased back on the market.
They didn't find a buyer.
What they paid 250 million for, was now apparently worth diddlysquat.
Hilarious, no!
Not as hilarious as the fact that in paying 138 million for the Leinster Leader group alone, they hadn't even secured title to the buildings in which the Leinster Leader is based.
Yes, that's right.
They paid 138 million which they borrowed from idiot banks who have themselves subsequently collapsed, for a newspaper that was generating about a million a year (if you believe our accountancy department), and they then ended up paying a monthly lease on the buildings which housed that same priceless newspaper.
Sheer unadulterated inspirational genius.
Give those parvenus a cigar and a fat pension.
Bloody hell.
Clowns is not the word.
So they'd bought a newspaper for 138 million which in its best year, and with a little imagination, might conceivably at one time have given them back a million a year.
What else could they do?
Wait 138 years to break even on their investment?
They started firing people.
By the way 250 million is what the Johnston Press claims to have spent on all its Irish titles.
I believe the true figure is substantially higher.
But we'll know for sure on Judgement Day.
I ask you bold readers.
I ask you.
Is it just the teensiest weensiest bit possible that the wrong people have been getting fired?