Friday, December 24, 2010

Updating the cúpla focal.

Henceforth, Christmas week will be known as Sneachtain na Nollag in the first official language.

Contrary to Met Office forecasts during the week, nil thaw an fós.

Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Banking legislation could inspire a new Charlie Haughey?

Thankfully the Council of State, unlike the Dáil, is willing to meet in Christmas week.
There must be a strong possibility that the President will refer the new banking legislation to the Supreme Court as some of its provisions e.g. denial of the right of appeal to the courts, appear to be unconstitutional.

In conferring such powers on a politician, let’s not forget that Charles Haughey enjoyed extraordinary latitude in his banking arrangements with AIB, enabled by the implicit threat of misuse of his political power to inflict serious economic damage on that bank.

Now the Finance Minister has given himself draconian, possibly unconstitutional, powers which pose an explicit threat to any bank which risks his ire.

In such circumstances, it is essential that we now have full disclosure of the nature and scope of all banking relationships of our elected politicians and the political parties.

It would be foolish to imagine that all our politicians are to be trusted or that we’ll never have another CJH!

RTE's double-standards re Gerry Ryan death

In its handling of the Gerry Ryan cocaine-related death, RTE has provided ample proof to listeners that it is far better at dishing it out than at taking it.

All those "lifelong friends" and work colleagues (Kenny, Tubridy, Byrne, Finucane, Duffy etc) who queued up to pay their tributes and now telling us that they had no idea that Gerry was a drug user?

Given the nature of Gerry's "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" approach it is inconceivable that he didn't drop broad hints to his friends, even if only in a playful manner.

So the next time we have an RTE debate on some cleric/politician/citizen who has worked and/or lived with a child abuser, murderer, fraudster etc etc – let’s hope they remember their own defence in the Ryan Affair and give their target the benefit of the doubt.

Now that would be a change of tack!