Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week March 13, 2011
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.trackback
First off let me state how shocked I am that the Press Ombudsman has upheld a complaint against the Sunday Independent on the grounds that a story in it was in breach of rules surrounding Truth and Accuracy and Respect for Rights. The newspaper, I was astonished to learn, had not taken reasonable care to check its “facts” in a story. Who’d have believed that such a fine paper as the Sindo could make such a mistake? Especially when the story was entitled “Union Bosses Getting Slices of the Pie”? Maybe the slimmer than normal pickings this week have something to do with a new quality control. Or not.
Step forward Colm McCarthy
The new Taoiseach and his ministers, if the press reports are to be believed, have been stressing the impracticality, rather than the unfairness, of the IMF/EU deal for Ireland. That they are right to do so is the mainstream view of the most respected economic and financial commentators across Europe. The new Irish Government should take encouragement from their support.
It’s almost touching to see how economists – who like to tell us they are practical people with a hard-headed, scientific understanding of how the world works – retain their faith in their chosen profession despite all the hard-headed, scienfitic evidence that the neo-liberal consensus among them has been a deranged fantasy that has contributed immensely to the current economic crisis, most of all in the Republic. We aren’t impressed by citing the most respected economic and financial commentators across Europe, even if they occasionally are capable of stating the obvious.
Brendan O’Connor has been singing the praises of the changes wrought by the Celtic Tiger.
We were also an intensely social people during the boom. Life moved outside the house.
Of course, that famously anti-social people, the Irish, coaxed out of their hovels by the bright lights of neo-liberalism.
This week’s winner, who also takes the award for saying something outrageously stupid to appear radical, is John McEntee, who wants the Republic to return to the UK. I nearly plumped for his statement about how flourishing Dublin was in 1910, and how happy were its people, but went for this instead.
I can’t gauge the inner feelings of the people but, as an exile of 35 years, I believe Her Majesty’s visit has forged an extraordinary subconscious link in their minds between the current economic shambles and the discredited political system which enabled the virtual bankruptcy of the former British colony.
What?
Republics being utterly discredited political systems. To monarchy we go!
Of course the Free State’s political system wasn’t based on British style parliamentary democracy at all. Just where do the Sindo get these people from? What’s even more frightening is the fact these people are from the supposed intellegentsia.
“He withheld agreed payments to the British Exchequer, leading to an Economic War with England which financially crippled Irish farmers dependent on Britain for cattle, pig and crop sales. This lasted from 1932 to 1938.”-McEntee
A different view:
“de Valera offered to pay the disputed money into a holding account, pending international arbitration, but the British rejected the offer.”
http://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/ryle-dwyer/lets-not-sacrifice-the-national-interest-by-repeating-blunders-of-the-past-147942.html
Ryle Dwyer has also made clear that Dev’s `neutrality’ was very one-side, and probably the best that the Allies
could have hoped for under the circumstances.
I was amazed to read the whole John McEntee piece. If you thought Cowen & co. were bad, imagine Ireland living under the rule of David “Close the Homeless shelters” Cameron. I wouldn’t be surprised if McEntee turns out to be a member of the Reform Movement or a similar group.
His is not a name that I recognise in that context (but they do hide their lights under a bushel these days. Their patrons list – featuring the names of people in the Indo Group, shockingly – was disappeared a few years ago from the website).
A case for the wayback machine?
Yes, though there was (I am certain) originally a website hosted in TCD for this lot, where they originated. I might have a print-out somewhere with the URL on it
But using reform.org gives us:
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/200101071821/http://www.reform.org/future.htm
Committee: Mr. Robin Bury | Ms. Anne Holliday | Mr. Derek Simpson
Patrons: Ms. Ruth Dudley Edwards | Mr. Bruce Arnold
Mention of the two above disappears in 2002 (I am certain that Harris, Mary Kenny and John Bruton were also mentioned on the website at one stage). I recall some gumph instead on the website about ‘confidentiality’ of their supporters. The website seems to have sadly expired in the last year, but Blogger (and Twitter) are forever:
http://reformblog.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/reformgroup
Cynic that I am, I have always suspected a high degree of membership overlap with the Dublin & Wicklow Orange Lodge.
http://www.dublin1313.com/site/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/53095570@N05/
Is this the John McEntee who writes for the London Daily Mail after being with the Express?
If it is Jack, that would explain a lot.
EWI – someone had told me the reform site used to be hosted on the same server as the Dublin and Wicklow lodge site?
In any event a public linkage has often been made between Reform and Dublin & wicklow LOL, although they tend to play it down in their communications
And let’s not forget Sen Harris who once again rounds on RTE for failing to report his pearls of wisdom even on ‘a slow news day.’
Meanwhile over at the SBP we learn that Suds is ‘offended’ that cynics have suggested his ‘no bondholder left behind’ exhortations might have something to do with his Goldman job.
I missed that JP in the SBP. I’ll go looking again.
That’s a classic Garibaldy… possibly best ever…
“I can’t gauge the inner feelings of the people but….I believe Her Majesty’s visit has forged an extraordinary subconscious link in their minds”
It’s superb, isn’t it?
I don’t think RDE had a piece in this week. One wonders if this was the replacement, and if she found him.
I’d imagine there’s no problem finding replacements, though of this standard of quality…
Too true.
It was Senator Harris’s 68th birthday today. I hope that, behind the scenes, appropriate arrangements are being made to celebrate the 70th of the great man. It could be a sort of dry run for the 1916 centenary celebrations, with a national holiday and, at the least, a biographical series on RTE (the lack of which would confirm his worst suspicions of the national broadcaster’s disrespect and ingratitude.) A nation expects…
Perhaps a collection of his writings from across the decades. To demonstrate his internal consistency.
I can distinctly remember Harris criticising
an “Irish Times” piece about his then-wife
Anne’s editorship of the Sindo, even claiming that it was “sexist” without citing any of the alleged IT sexism.
Around the time the Sindo was laying into John Hume for negotiating with Adams, Eilis O’Hanlon was complaining that RTE was deliberately keeping Harris off the
airwaves. This was the heyday of Sineve
Soe and Molly McAnally Burke whining about her Turkish ex-husband.
Did you miss the piece by Eamon Delaney – one of the loudest advocates of the Reform Group – on spongeing pensioners? Quite a piece of work, depicting protesting pensioners as middle class property speculators from ‘Killiney and Monkstown’.
Stupid statement of the week, however, must go to this nonsensical mangling of Joyce:
Joyce once said that Ireland was ‘the farrow that ate its young’, and it’s still the case.
Just a perfect encapsulation of that mix of stupidity and name-dropping pretension that ensures success in the DoFF
I saw it, but couldn’t find a short enough bit to quote. Plus on reflection, more vicious than stupid perhaps.
I like the Joyce ‘quote’ because it says so much about the Sindo’s standard of editing as well as its standard of writing.
It’s as well someone of your literary sophistication turned up to point that out. And I’ve read the Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man too. Shame on me.
I claim sophistication only in matters of husbandry, not literature.
Some of us claim neither for reasons this thread proves.
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