Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week February 14, 2010
Posted by Garibaldy in media.trackback
Apologies about the absence of last week’s feature. This week, in third placeBrendan Keenan, proving the old adage about lies, damn lies and statistics.
The fiscal programme is not an attack on public spending, because public spending will not fall. With the economy set to shrink again in 2010, it will actually rise as a proportion of national income.
In second place, for blaming the wrong people, Shane Ross. Apparently, it was mainly the Bank of Scotland’s fault, and not a lot to do with government, economic policy over decades, corruption etc.
The assault on the mortgage market is over. The Bank of Scotland (Ireland) was a willing player in the property madness. It played its part in bringing Ireland to its knees. Good riddance.
In first place, Eilis O’Hanlon, who manages to turn British Tory racism into an attack on the public sector unions.
If so, then it does seem depressingly appropriate somehow that the Irishman who complained about this joke told by a town councillor in his 70s in the back end of Nowhereshire should have been a full-time trade unionist employed by the council in question as an official with Unison. We ought to have guessed. This is exactly the bureaucratic, pettifogging way of doing things which the trade unions love.
Thank heavens that we have a fearless journalist like her exposing the real problems in Irish society.
In first place, Eilis O’Hanlon, who manages to turn British Tory racism into an attack on the public sector unions.
On a similar note, I can’t help noticing the preferred mode of reference by the well-off middle-class rightwing commentators to union officials as “the beards”. Not a lot of beards going around in the middle-class (unlike the PAYE class).
The assault on the mortgage market is over. The Bank of Scotland (Ireland) was a willing player in the property madness. It played its part in bringing Ireland to its knees. Good riddance.
Yes, because God knows it can’t possibly be anything to do with Shane Ross’ buddies in the Irish banks (and Fingers especially, whom Mr. Ross praised to high heaven in his recent book).
Praise to high heaven by Ross for Fingers Fingleton? Not really.
-Two fundamental questions were suddenly being asked. How was a building society ever allowed to become a developers’ bank? And how did Fingleton himself manage to be paid millions while his society was facing possible doomsday?-Shane Ross, The Bankers. p111.
Thanks for that – the Phoenix thought otherwise, which is where I got that from. I’ll have a rustle around in the magazine rack to see if I can find the issue again.
Regardless of what Ross said in his book, he spent the previous decade acting as the PR dept of Irish Nationwide, supporting Fingleton and attacking the few members who attempted to put an end to Fingleton’s excesses in the naughties.
Missed this last week, Gari, nice to see it back. Always appreciate a trip to the frontiers of human mendacity, and it’s a lot better for the blood pressure than actually reading the paper. Some particularly fine examples of doublespeak this week.
(Am I imagining it, or did one of last year’s entries compare striking public sector workers to employers in the 1913 lock-out? I think that would be hard to trump.)
(Am I imagining it, or did one of last year’s entries compare striking public sector workers to employers in the 1913 lock-out? I think that would be hard to trump.)
Not least because William Martin Murphy (then-owner of Independant Newspapers) was the leader of the employers locking-out the workers…
John Paul M’Carthy, history tutor at Oxford University:
“Fine Gael also draws on a proud liberal constitutional tradition, essentially British in inspiration, as seen in the many innovative clauses of the Free State Constitution that were designed to protect minorities.[..] One thinks here of the [..] constitutional ban on religious establishments.”
Has he ever heard of the Church of England?
“This is the cult of Michael Collins, and it reached its meridian point during Michael Noonan’s leadership in 2001 when he notoriously proclaimed that Fine Gael was an Irish nationalist party”
He also does an injustice to James Dillon and his position on Archbishop Stepinac:
http://www.oireachtas-debates.gov.ie/D/0103/D.0103.194611210042.html
Does he not know that Winston Churchill, the Archbishop of Canterbury, along with practically the entire British establishment, the American Jewish Committee, the New York Times, the US House of Representatives, etc, all agreed with him?
“real liberals like Hubert Butler”
This is the same man who the Athol group keep assailing as a fascist because he based his election campaign on his ‘Protestant blood’.
I heard about the accusations of Stepinac’s Axis
collaboration from an article Eamonn McCann wrote
about Andrija Artuković being hidden in Ireland
in Ireland en route to the US.
Butler was actively involved in the Irish anti-Apartheid
Movement in the 80s.
As for McCarthy, I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out
to be a protege of Eoghan Harris-their styles are
very similar.
Wasn’t it in fact Butler who wrote the original article about Artuković in Ireland?
This is it: ‘The Artukovitch file’, published 1971. It has a fascinating account of how A. was hidden in the Franciscan monastery in Galway, now, as far as I know, called the ‘John E Cairnes School of Business’.
‘when he notoriously proclaimed that Fine Gael was an Irish nationalist party”
Wow.
Wow indeed. Who on earth is John Paul McCarthy?
Well, he’s not one of the ‘Reform’ unionists (or their ex-WP hangers-on); at least not in early last year:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/letters/2009/0323/1224243268550.html
Not for want of the same sentiment, surely. I’m just baffled as to how an unknown postgraduate student – Oxford or not – gets given such a platform to pontificate (wrongly) every week. Actually, why am I surprised?
He must have some good books or articles published. Or am I being stupid and is being a glove-puppet for the Senator enough to get you a job in the Sunday Indo these days?
The Reform Movement is a front group for the Dublin-Wicklow Orange Lodge. It would suit him well.
Precious little in the way of publications, as far as I can tell, Johnnie, which is what puzzles me. I mean, I’m no great fan of the Sunday Tribune’s resident historian Richard Aldous, but as a professor and the head of the UCD History department (not to say ‘co-author’ of Bertie’s ‘memoir’) he at least has some pedigree.
I agree with Eilis on this one – what a pile of sh*t, when someone can feign offence and then receive compensation for it!
I’ve heard that joke before and thought it was more about Dublin wit than Paddy-whackery.
I find Brian Kelly’s ‘offence’ and subsequent compensation deeply offensive. Whom can I sue for this?
I think Garibaldy nominated O’Hanlon not for her objection to Kelly or even to her – predictable – attitude to political correctness, but her managing to drag union-bashing into a story that it had nothing to do with.
Read the story for yourself to find out how silly it looks: it’s in yesterday’s Sindo, right between ‘Haiti: why the public service fat cats must be made pay for the earthquake’ and ‘Ireland’s Rugby Humiliation: how public service unions plotted our 6 nations disgrace.’
Yep, and I’m accepting that point. His union membership has less to do with it than the pervading culture of offence-reparations. As a Union official, crying like a little girl might not have been the best response….
Yeah I thought it was funny , but not funny as a Tory cunt losing a few bob
Before you lose the plot entirely and take offence at the offence taken, it’s worth looking at the circumstances. Kelly was the union official at an appeal against dismissal (not, so far as I can tell, employed by the council) when
the councillor told his joke during a break in proceedings. Telling a joke
like that to an Irish friend might be funny but telling it to an Irish union official
during a hearing isn’t.
Details here:
http://www.kentonline.co.uk/medway_messenger/news/2010/february/8/irish_joke_proves_costly_for_m.aspx
I’m taking faux offence at your pseudo-offence at my feigned offence. Who has their calculator out adding all this compensation up?
Of course the old codger was being a prick (can I say prick on CLR?) and should have apologised. But some bright spark decided that this offence quantified to exactly some figure in the “thousands of pounds”. That’s what I don’t like about this.