How to get a reputation as the gang that can’t shoot straight… March 13, 2013
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Irish Politics.trackback
…is what comes to mind when reading this.
Shane Ross argued that it was:
..mad to embark on a campaign against a wrongdoing that he was involved in himself.
Mr Ross said his actions were “political insanity” and had been damaging to all politicians.
Well, yes. Not least because there are obvious ramifications here as detailed in the RTÉ report.
Mick Wallace argued later that…
It doesn’t change the bigger picture, the bigger issue, which is the fact that we have evidence of serious malpractice in the Garda Síochana. The termination of penalty points is widespread.
Perhaps there’s something in that… but one also thinks of the the vetting process that US Presidential hopefuls have to go through. One would have thought it a sensible precaution if making a public statement on any issue to be 100% clear that everyone is in a position to do so without any fear of inconvenient events relating to that issue that might give rise to accusations of hypocrisy.
One would think.
Though it is a bit sick making to hear Shatter get up on his moral high horse once again with a fervour he couldn’t seem to find for the Gardai who leaked the news of Claire Daly’s drink driving test to the papers. No word about that one these days.
The gang can shoot straight except it’s straight into their own feet.
Big time re Shatter.
I just saw the VB show last night. Hmmm…
Ming is a fool. People should avoid him. He is a walking disaster. Did he forget. If so he should get memory loss treatment.Between him and Wallace, I am at a loss
Pretty disgraceful column from Miriam Lord today: http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/oireachtas/ming-the-meek-makes-his-point-1.1324104
Claiming that Daly, along with Wallace and Ming, is a member of the ‘Technicality Group’ (how droll), meaning those who transgressed but escaped censure due to a technicality. Except, of course, the ‘technicality’ in Daly’s case is that she wasn’t actually guilty.
Of course, if she didn’t align herself with idiots like that pair, she mightn’t find herself tarred with the same brush. But still …
Fair point.
Good point Smiffy. That’s a disgraceful comment by the Times
Someone else jumping on the bandwagon…
http://www.broadsheet.ie/2013/03/13/dear-pot/
Yes. Could you get a more completely inappropriate person than Terry Prone to be throwing around slanders like this?
Although it doesn’t help when it’s picked up by Broadsheet to feed their weird personal obsession with the Communications Clinic et al.
If only there was a way they could all lose …
She’s a charmer alright.
I once interviewed her for some research I was doing. Certainly unusual.
Daly, Ming and the Minger – what a gang. If only our corrupt police didn’t have such moronic opposition.
Miriam Lord was a little more subtle than you in conflating Daly, Ming and Wallace – she was stitched up, or have we forgotten that? Unfortunately this clowning around from Ming will be used to paper over that.
She was stitched up – but should step away from the corrupt clown who she believes is suitable not only to sit in the Dail but to ally with.
“The Minger”?
This is a case of entrapment; of Ming, by Ming. It brings to mind Philip K. Dick’s novel, ‘A Scanner Darkly’.
Doesn’t she have a point tho’?
* Joe berates the political class for fiddling expenses while claiming for travel round the country to drum up support for the CAHWT
* Mick berates the rich for not paying their fair share of tax, while evading millions of his own tax liabilities
* Clare auditions for job as Chief Scold to the Nation, while driving around the south inner city with drink taken
* Ming … well no need to even go there.
In each case, it wasn’t really their fault, or wasn’t wrong at all. In fact they were doing the right thing by trying to save jobs or not embarrassing their hosts or eventually exposing a great conspiracy after repeatedly lying about it … the real fault of course lay elsewhere, with the pushy Garda, the banker forcing loans down an honest builders throat, the host with the unsteady hand when pouring whiskey.
Even for an electorate as silly and forgetful as we have in this country, eventually the tide will go out their particular brand of schtick.
While I’m hesitant to respond to this fairly obvious trolling, I’d just point out that (i) yes, Joe Higgins claimed travel expenses for activity undertaken in the course of his work, which he and all other TDs are perfectly entitled to do (ii) Miriam Lord’s article didn’t refer to Higgins in any case and (iii) Clare Daly was well under the limit when pulled over.
But, you know, nice try, including the misogynist tinge with the ‘Chief Scold’ line.
Well done moron. The stupidest post I’ve ever read on this, or indeed on any other, site. So stupid I’m nearly inclined to think you are Miriam Lord herself. Is the phrase ‘drink taken’ supposed to be the line which absolves the Gardai and journalists from pretending that Clare Daly was guilty of drink driving? Schtick indeed clown. You must have a fairly unsteady hand yourself to come out with this drivel.
Not in reply to Smiffy obviously. I only replied to it myself because I suspect this isn’t the last time we’ll see the pretence that Clare Daly was ‘nudge, nudge, wink wink,’ guilty of something or other the night the guards tried to set her up. And I still think the Times owes her an apology. I wonder if Fintan O’Toole has any feelings about their line of attack here.
Ming being referred to in today’s Independent as ‘corrupt TD’. I searched google using the following criteria:
“corrupt TD” site:independent.ie
and the five entries returned all refer to the Ming article in today’s paper. Based on that unscientific study it would appear that the Independent have never used the term ‘corrupt TD’ prior to today.
If you google “corrupt former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern” site:independent.ie you’ll get loads on Bertie. He’s been refered to as ‘shamed’ and ‘disgraced’ but not corrupt. Indeed in one story from 2012 he’s referred to as just plain ol’ ‘former taoiseach Bertie Ahern’.
What Ming did was stupid gombeenism but, as far as I can tell he hasn’t been subjected to damning findings by a formal tribunal; Bertie on the other hand…..
Yet Ming is definitely ‘corrupt’ but Bertie merely ‘shamed’.
Not to defend Ming but the glee with which his travails is being seized upon by a media tells you alot about how power operates in this state and the key role a small coterie of ‘journalists’ play in maintaining power and undermining any challenges to the status quo.
Agreed. And like I said I’m sure there’ll be plenty of future references to ‘Clare Daly’s driving misadventures/motoring misjudgement,” with ne’er a mention of the cops involved and the actual implications of the incident.
I also find all this self righteous shock horror about ‘drugs’ a bit much coming from journos who didn’t see much wrong with the fact that a recent late night debate saw many TDs bull drunk after a session in the Dail bar. You’d want to be smoking some amount of hash to put yourself in that state.
Eh, the man himself described his actions as corrupt.
I guess the technical group teflon disbars the media from reporting this?
no excuse for Ming obviously but the tone of coverage has been interesting. Especially the wheeling out of Prone and the like. Don’t forget he took the Fianna Fáil seat and boundaries have been changed since with possibly another FG (Connaughton) moving in.
Eamonn,
Set her up?
Pretended she was guilty of something?
What is this, a Birmingham Six style miscarriage of justice?
Did the Guards spike her lemonade with alcohol? Did they falsify the lab report? Did they hide the prominent no-right-turn sign that she ignored / didn’t see?
No they did not.
They were perfectly entitled to form a suspicion of drink driving, given that she was driving erractically and had on her own admission consumed alcohol.
She on the other hand, had no legimate expectation of secrecy being maintained. A legal arrest not involving a minor is public information, to expect this to be kept out of the public domain to spare her blushes is not realistic.
And by the way, she was guilty of a making an illegal right turn, which should have resulted in 2 penalty points being applied to her license.
‘Erractically’ ‘Legimate.’ How much alcohol have you consumed Miriam?
She on the other hand, had no legimate expectation of secrecy being maintained. A legal arrest not involving a minor is public information, to expect this to be kept out of the public domain to spare her blushes is not realistic.
She does have an expectation that the privileges conferred on a member of AGS will not be used in an oppressive, arbitrary, or malicious manner. Unfortunately, it does appear that this expecatation may not have been met in this case. The Ombudsman is currently investigating I understand.
And by the way, she was guilty of a making an illegal right turn, which should have resulted in 2 penalty points being applied to her license.
If this is the whey-faced puritanism you engage in, I am surprised you find enough time off the phone to Joe Duffy to come and troll here.
Incidentally, this is sort of shit Bartley pulled all the time.
Just sayin’.
Bartley’s IP is blocked but it sure scans like Bartley. Total disingenuous trolling either way. As you noted, all the little exaggerations and rhetorical turns to paint the situation as distinctly different to what actually occurred.
Well done moron. The stupidest post I’ve ever read on this, or indeed on any other, site.
I have seen stupider, but this one does make a good run at it. However, even as trolling it is still second-rate. Very sad.
You make a legimate point..
Doesn’t it speak to the quality of Miriam Lord’s journalism that she can count on such ‘fans’ to defend her?
‘Technicality Group’ What a riot. Her painful straining after humour always reminds me of this lad.
‘Chief Scold’…your a patronising c…I suppose we should be happy with Labour who know what’s best for us?
Trust you to object to scold with the use of c**t.
I never wrote c..t- you’ll see that it was c…
Which could be anything….you cynical cusp.
Yours was the first post I saw this morning and I thought you sounded like some of the fat, cynical, full-time Labour supporters I know, who tell us all to grow up and accept austerity, but think Clare Daly’s driving ‘offenses’ are a national tragedy. Or maybe she hit a few raw nerves when she pointed out how the Dail press corps are bought and paid for. Either way, GFY.
It dawns on me that you lads really do believe that Ming, Clare and Mick are the victims in all of this …
* poor old Ming was frogmarched to the biro and the belvedere bond
* poor old Clare was frogmarched to the whiskey bottle and her parked car
* poor old Mick was frogmarched to the hitman and the false VAT declaration
All someone else’s fault, to be swept under the ULA carpet with a non-apologetic apology and a paranoid reference to some vague dark forces plotting against that heroic but put-upon trio.
No we don’t troll. No one has minimised the questions facing MW or LMF. CD is a somewhat different case as has been pointed out to you ad nauseum. Now, go away before you’re blocked.
Yeah, whatevs … block away, I’m sure it gives you a STASi-style power-trip.
You’ve no idea what me and others had to go through before we instituted a policy of blocking trolls. We spent no end of time balancing our inclination to absolute free speech with our need to make this a space where people felt comfortable and safe. In the end the latter won out over the former.
As to this being a Stasi power trip. You think I have any shred of identification with them? It’s fine for you to spread malicious and incorrect gossipy innuendo, insults and worse, it’s somehow your God given right? And we have to take it? And yet I make quite low level requests for you to be reasonable and that’s the response I get? What a child, and an unpleasant one at that, you are. Goodbye.
Q. How is exercising a property right like the Stasi?
A. It isn’t. Miriam Fan is a moron.
+1
Room for Fine Gael in this technicality thing?
http://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/drink-drive-councillor-fled-and-hid-in-bushes-225589.html
A serving county councillor who had headed a Joint Policing Committee was yesterday convicted of a drink driving charge.
Fine Gael’s Michael Hegarty tried to avoid a Garda checkpoint and drove into a church yard, where he jumped over a wall and hid in bushes, before later emerging.
He contested the case on the grounds of being improperly deprived of his liberty, as he was arrested prior to being breathalysed.
His solicitor, Brian O’Callaghan, also stated that Hegarty should not have been arrested on private property and that his constitutional rights had been violated.