Irish Times columnist Elaine Byrne put into stark contrast the billions being thrown into the black hole that is Anglo Irish Bank (The Dunphy Show, Sun 8th).
The cost is four times what the UN estimates it will cost to rebuild the entire country of Haiti after the devastating earthquake. It is 20 times the cost that BP will spend on cleaning up the worst environmental disaster in US history and it’s equivalent to all the structural funds given to Ireland by the EU since 1973.
Yet only last week the chief executive of Anglo, Mike Aynsley, was admitting that he hadn’t a clue how much more money his zombie bank would need.
He wasn’t shy, however, in effectively telling the Irish people to ‘get over it’ and berating the media for being too negative.
Journalist Robert Fisk was also on the show and at one point, very ungentlemanly, highlighted an error by Elaine Byrne when she used the word ‘antidote’ instead of anecdote.
Byrne’s reaction was interesting; she said she had difficulty in pronouncing some words, something her students picked her up on all the time.
It’s a very honest admission by someone who lectures in Trinity College and frequently speaks on media.
I can sympathise with her as I ‘suffer’ from the same problem myself. For example, I have to speak the word secularism slowly to avoid a complete mispronunciation.
Anthony, I’ve put a link to the Byrne August 11, 2010 entry on Public Inquiry on my facebook account. I appreciate what publicinquiry.eu does but lament the passing of the Centre of Public Inquiry. Additionally, I wonder if there is a means by which contributors to publicinquiry.eu can subscribe to an investigative reportage and a strong database for the detail acquired. Naturally, I’m fed up rather than insane.
Well Alan Dukes has been talking crap for months about how it’s cheaper to keep them running than to wind them up. His rhetoric is getting less believable by the day. I wonder when the next installment of tax payers money will take place