Roses, beauty, brains, popularity ...

The International Rose of Tralee - beauty pageant or something more? Those of us old enough to remember the years before everything had to be PC will also remember why they made "dumb blonde" jokes: if you were born with "looks", brains could really damage your chances of a lucrative career. Especially in the day when men earned salaries and women stayed home, or earned a pittance.

Not so now; these ladies have to have it all to compete in our international pageant. The winner in 2016, Maggie McEldowney, has a degree in Media Studies from the University of Illinois, and works as the Director of Development in a Marist High School (not an establishment known for hiring people for their looks.

Our local representative in the pageant was Caroline Doyle from Lanesboro. She is also no slouch in the intelligence and hard work department - a teacher of Maths and Geography, she earned a Masters degree in Environment, Society and Development while working with post-war communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

These are not unusual - many of the 64 competing for the title were teachers, all were bright with large personalities and they came from all over the world. We were treated to Roses from

San Francisco, Toronto, Abu Dhabi and New Zealand. Of course we have no Roses of other ethnicities, because all the Roses need to be of Irish descent. However, with more immigration into Ireland that will only be a matter of time.

The pity is, when such a pageant can adapt to our modern culture, and time will take care of the ethnicity, how can we as a race get it so wrong at times?

Who would ever think that a relatively light-hearted competition would run so well, but when it really matters, like who is likely to run the biggest democracy on Earth, we get ...