Imagine being a poor leprechaun struggling to deal with the difficulty of trying to hide your gold in a country experiencing a massive population boom, but then the symbol you use for marking your treasure gets stolen by a political movement. This harrowing tale is what happened to Sheamus Murphy, an Irish Leprechaun, when his gold marker was stolen by the Pride movement.
“Worse still,” Murphy continued, “the proliferation of my marker has led to people posting every rainbow they see on social media! This allows my competitors to locate and steal my gold.” What Murphy describes is a horrific pattern which he explains has been getting worse over the past few years. “It used to be a smaller movement which was only popular with niche groups, at that level I was only losing a small amount of gold each week. Now however I’ve completely run out of ideas and gold to hide! The world of gold hiding is a leprechaun-eat-leprechaun world! When I lost my advantage, my competitors ruthlessly gutted my stashes.”
On the verge of bankruptcy and after being disowned by his family for losing the family fortune, Murphy is currently in the process of filing Intellectual Property (I.P.) theft charges against the political movement for “stealing” the marker he used to mark the location of hidden valuables. The Leprechaun alleges that the rainbow idea was “stolen” in 1978 when Gilbert Baker, a gay rights activist, was charged with coming up with a symbol of pride for the Gay community. Now often called the “pride symbol”, Murphy is requesting an undisclosed sum of money in damages from the organisation for co-opting his symbol.
When asked why he has refused to deposit his stockpile of gold in a financial institution, Murphy alleged that the “Wall Street bankers” were conspiring against him with the unicorns. Murphy also argues that it was this apparent alliance that forced his family to rely on pots of gold. Now however this practice has been found out by Murphy’s competitors resulting in the aforementioned legal suit.
Dugh Hooley – Turbine Reporter
