Author: Anthony

Respect for the dead

There was a fierce row on Liveline recently over a poster put up by Fine Gael councillor Jim O’Leary. The poster depicted Bertie Ahern and Charlie Haughey with the legend ‘Let’s break with the past’.

Seems reasonable to me, O’Leary is a young candidate anxious for a future free of political corruption. Haugheyites, including Jimmy Guerin, brother of murdered journalist, Veronica Guerin, were not so reasonable. Indeed, they were extremely angry that this ‘great Irish patriot’ should be denigrated in such a manner so soon after his death.

Here’s some of what Guerin had to say:

“He’s speaking ill of the dead and that’s not something the Irish electorate will tolerate. The reality is he has taken a man who is revered by some, who has undoubtedly made a huge contribution to this country, a man who had faults but what he’s forgetting is the man is not dead a year and it is disrespectful to behave like this towards someone who has passed away.”

So, respect for the dead is apparently important to Haugheyites. When President Erskine Childers (a man who stood up to Haughey) died in 1974, Haughey was asked why he was attending the funeral. He replied;

“To make sure the fucker is well planted”

Ah yes, respect.

All is crystal clear now

Our great nation is indeed fortunate to have a Tanaiste and Minister for Justice of the standing and alertness of Michael McDowell.

At the first whisper of serious questions being raised concerning the financial dealings of his buddy Bertie he immediately demanded a full and vigorous investigation by Bertie into the allegations.

The nation is doubly blessed in the leadership, integrity and scintillating investigative skills of Michael’s buddy Bertie.

After a vigorous investigation which took just a few days, unlike those dastardly leaking tribunals, Bertie reported back to an anxious nation that all was well. He had no question to answer after all; it was all a nasty conspiracy by the opposition in league with a low-down malicious media.

Everything is crystal clear now, let the nation march forward

Eurovision comedy

Fr. Ted is my favourite comedy and my favourite episode is Ted and Dougal’s participation in the Eurovision where they gave a fine rendition of My Lovely Horse.

Never, even in my most mad moments, did I think that this episode would become a reality. But that’s exactly what happened on Saturday night as Ireland bombed out, attracting a mere five votes from Albania.

Albania?? Where the feck is Albania?? Who the feck lives in Albania?? What connection has Albania with Ireland?? Does John Waters have a long lost cousin out there, on the run from a previous Eurovision??

Or, perhaps Dermot Morgan (cue music from the X Files) had a hand in this, the worst ever Irish performance.

Dermot was ruthless in his exposure of the vanity, arrogance and corruption of Irish politicians, especially the Fianna Fail variety. He was also hilariously dismissive of Catholicism.

John Waters is a Catholic fundamentalist and sees Haughey as the great chieftain leader of the Irish nation.

Well done Dermot, for the most enjoyable Eurovision ever.

The 'nudge nudge' factor

SEE HERE FOR GRAINNE CARRUTH’S EVIDENCE, MARCH 2008

Since the mention of the biography of Bertie Ahern, “Bertie Ahern: Taoiseach and Peacemaker” by Ken Whelan and Eugene Masterson came to light in recent weeks, myself and Gavin thought it might be worthwhile having a closer look at what was said in the book regarding the purchase of Bertie’s constituency office in Drumcondra and subsequently his house in Beresford.

The authors are critical of Fine Gael and the tabloid press because of the ‘nudge, nudge’ stories they regularly put out about the purchase and ownership of St. Lukes. Here are some of the details as outlined in the book. See what you think, is there a ‘nudge nudge’ factor, are there similarities between the two purchases?

The St. Lukes deal:

To finance the purchase, they [Kett and Kiely] brought together 25 local well-to-do supporters who pledged £1,000 each, with further contributions over a five year period. This was sufficient to put together a mortgage for the house with the repayments paid through the constituency organisation’s own bank.

The purchase price in the mid-80’s was £57,000. The house was assigned to a group of five trustees – again, not party activists – who for legal purposes vested the property in the Dublin Central Fianna Fail organisation. The senior TD was Bertie Ahern and St Luke’s effectively became his headquarters.

It continues:

When the purchase of St Luke’s was closed it became obvious to all and sundry that the house needed serious refurbishment as there was a foundation crack in the structure. This was costed at a further £50,000 and, when approved by the trustees, the work took over a year and half to complete.

Some of the original contributors dropped out over the following few years or simply made occasional donations to the mortgage on St Luke’s. This shortfall on the purchase and redevelopment of St Luke’s combined with the salaries of the full-time constituency workers there together with sundry expenses, were causing serious headaches and making huge inroads into Ahern’s private time, until Des Richardson arrived and restructured the fund-raising requirements of Dublin Central through his annual Royal Hospital Dinner.

Summary: In effect, St. Lukes was Bertie’s home. It was apparently bought and paid for by Bertie’s friends and/or colleagues. After the property was purchased it was noticed that major refurbishment was required. (Presumably, this was before people employed an engineer to check out properties in advance of committing huge sums.).

The purchase price was £57,000 (£25,000 of which was paid up front by 25 donors) and the refurbishment cost £50,000. These figures need to be repeated – £57,000 to buy, £50,000 to refurbish, in the mid 80s?? Was the entire house reconstructed?

The Beresford deal:

He rarely stays at St Luke’s these days. He moved out to his new home two years ago… It’s about half a mile up the road in an exclusive estate off Griffith Avenue called Beresford. Again, keeping with the patterns of his life, the house is built on grounds once owned by the parish.

It cost him £139,000 to buy and is today valued at over £200,000 in the highly inflated current property market in the capital – friends say it’s the only time he has come out on the right side of the balance sheet. His personal mortgage on the property is over £100,000.

Summary: Beresford was originally bought by Michael Wall, a friend of Bertie’s, for £138,000 and sold to Bertie for £139,000. Seven months before Wall bought the house; it was found that the four year old property required an £80,000 refurbishment.

£50,000 of this was to come from Bertie’s own funds made up of £22,000 ‘dig out’ money and £28,000 he apparently saved over a number of months.

£30,000stg was also handed over, in cash, in a briefcase, to Bertie by Michael Wall and was subsequently lodged by Celia Larkin in her personal bank account. This was, we are told for the purpose of refurbishing a 4 year old house.

Massive amounts of cash, astonishingly generous friends, amazing and ‘unforeseen’ refurbishment costs? C’mon, be reasonable, where’s the ‘nudge nudge’ factor?

Update: It has been asked who the 25 supporters were. It appears the operation was run by Des Richardson. The office was/is staffed by Cyprian Brady, Grainne Carruth and Sandra Cullagh. Former Senator Tony Kett was involved, as was Daithi O Broinn. The book does not mention the names of the 25 people who donated the £1000 each.

What?

There was an interesting conversation on last Saturday’s Marian Finucane Show. Comdt. Colum Doyle, a former Director of Public Relations with the Defence Forces was reminiscing on how he and his staff handled the army deafness controversy.

Marian began by asking why no one in authority was held responsible for the damage done to the hearing of thousands of servicemen, despite the problem being known about for decades.

Comdt. Doyle blamed solicitors, judges, civil servants and of course the servicemen who made the claims for the debacle. He proudly boasted of his successful PR strategy in countering what he described as the snide remarks made by civilians. He candidly admitted that he was, in effect, a spin doctor.

Here are some of my memories of the controversy. In the 70s, there was no hearing protection provided for servicemen during range practice. It was decidedly un-macho to use ear protection at this time. The few personnel who tried to protect their hearing by using cotton wool were usually ridiculed. I remember on one occasion an officer ordering a man to remove cotton wool so that orders could be properly heard.

During the 80s, when the problem was beginning to get noticed we were issued with ear plugs. These were cheap pieces of foam that had to be firmly pressed into the ear to be effective and probably caused more damage than protection.

Sometime in the mid 80s new headsets were purchased. These were modern, safe and effective but unfortunately the military authorities were very reluctant to hand them out. The word was that they were considered too expensive to be actually used. The following story will illustrate the official attitude.

While in stores one day to collect some kit I noticed the new headsets and asked for an issue as I was due for range practice that week. I was told that only those with an officially certified hearing problem would qualify for the new hearing protection.

The final compensation bill for the taxpayer was €321 million. I wonder how much those headsets cost.

It's all in the mind

Cologne Re, the Dublin based reinsurer at the centre of a malpractice investigation is in the process of winding up its operations here in Ireland.

Its former chief executive, John Houldsworth, is accused of arranging fraudulent contracts to boost the profits of one of its clients, the giant insurance company AIG.

Houldsworth is awaiting sentence in America on conspiracy charges.

Financial regulators in America, Australia, Germany and the UK investigated and took action against those involved in the fraud. Incredibly, despite Dublin being the centre of the conspiracy, the Irish Financial Regulator took no action whatsoever.

For those of us familiar with how things are done in Ireland this comes as no surprise.
However, much of the global financial community is now beginning to see Ireland as a rogue market or as the New York Times put it, “The wild west of European finance.”

In a pathetic attempt to explain its failure to act the Financial Regulator CEO, Pat Neary, said there was

“no evidence other than what was in the head of John Houldsworth.

Now that’s bizarre.

Lively live radio

Today’s Liveline (Tuesday) was live radio at its best.

It started off innocently enough. Crime editor of the Sunday World, Paul Williams was claiming that Sinn Fein had close connections with some criminal elements in Dublin. Nothing new there, Sinn Fein Cllr. Christy Burke was defending.

Things got really interesting when, Alan Bradley, one of the alleged criminals came on air. Williams started throwing all kinds of accusations at Bradley and calling him all kinds of names.

The curious thing was Joe didn’t seem to mind this behaviour. This is unusual because Joe is usually very quick to intervene when, for example, victims of rogue solicitors even hint that learned members of the legal profession may have been, er, less than honest.

The same with politicians, you may criticise our esteemed public representatives but you must not suggest that they are anything less than honest.

Williams also kept getting things wrong like the age of Bradley’s child, the reason the Criminal Assets Bureau were chasing him (Bradley)and about the libel case Bradley is involved in.

When the libel case was raised by another journalist, John Mooney, Bradley said the case was under appeal to the Supreme Court and shouldn’t be discussed.

Joe intervened and said;

“No, the Supreme Court read the documentation, they don’t listen to radio programmes, go ahead John.”

The most amazing and hilarious Keystone Cops moment came when Joe got a call from a prisoner in the country’s maximum security prison in Portlaoise.

John Daly, serving nine years for armed robbery, rang from his cell to refute alleged lies written about him by Williams in the Sunday World.

Daly seemed to make a good case and, again, Williams was less than convincing. Although to be fair, I think he was fairly astonished to be talking live on air to a prisoner who was supposed to be under close scrutiny in a maximum security prison.

Some of the language used was choice and Joe’s reaction was hilarious. I’m sure he feared for his job if not his soul as he kept taking ad breaks to cool the situation.

It was great radio and well worth listening to.

Devils in crisis

George Weigel is a right wing American theologian who believes that the American way is far superior to all others and that the US should lead all other nations, by force, if necessary. He’s a strong supporter of Bush and believes that the invasion of Iraq was necessary in the fight against global terrorism.

He has written many books including the best selling biography of Pope John Paul II. He’s apparently highly intelligent and widely respected, getting invitations to speak from all over the world. He’s also a religious nutcase.

Writing in last week’s Irish Catholic about the Virginia Tech. massacre, George claims that the psychologists have got it all wrong. The killer wasn’t frustrated, self centred or even mad, no, he was possessed by the Devil. Yes, Old Nick himself is apparently still stalking the globe pouncing on every unwary soul that passes his way.

And this is not the first time George has come up with such a mad explanation for a major disaster. He blamed fallen angels for the Indian Ocean tsunami that killed approximately 300,000 in December 2004 (Read the full article here).

Christianity has always had a problem trying to explain why its god would allow such natural ‘evils’ like floods, earthquakes and tsunami’s cause massive suffering to innocent humans going about their business.

In the Dark Ages, before scientific enlightenment, all such nastiness was blamed on Old Nick and his fellow demons working away feverishly on their evil plans far below the surface of the earth.

But nowadays, apart from a few head bangers, most humans don’t give Old Nick the credit anymore. Nowadays, it’s all scientific theory this, scientific experiment that and I can tell you Old Nick and his demons are not happy.

The following is an account of a board meeting in 2004 between Old Nick and his fellow demons to discuss their credibility crisis.

Right you evil fuckers, I want some suggestions and I want them quickly. Things have gone from bad to worse topside. Humans have been making all the running lately, wars, disease, environmental damage, George Bush, global terrorism, Charlie Haughey. We devils have been almost forgotten, we’re not taken seriously anymore and we’ve got to do something about that.

How about killing the Pope? Oh evil one

Bollix, we sent an apprentice devil to do that in 1981 and the bastard missed. And with the state of JP’s health he’s due to join us shortly anyway.

We could arrange for an asteroid to strike and vaporise the whole shebang

Jesus, save me from stupid devils, if we vaporise, who will be left to suffer, who will be left to agonise over the existence or not of ‘Mr. oh so fucking holy’ above in heaven?

I have it. Oh master of darkness, we could impose Irish political standards on every government in the world.

Fuck, even I’m not that evil. No my son, you have great potential for causing suffering and destruction, but while we want something terrible we also want to give humanity some hope of survival.

I have it, oh prince of all that is perfidious, pestiferous and putrid; an underground earthquake in the Indian Ocean topped with a massive tsunami and finished off with a thick coating of dead humanity.

Brilliant, brilliant, but how will we convince the humans that it was our handiwork?

We could use George, your evilness, you know? George Weigel, one of your most successful creations, designed so that humans see an intelligent, philosopher/theologian when in fact you scraped him from the bottom of the barrel in the deepest pit of slime and stupidity.

Yes, yes I knew George would prove useful some day. Make it so you bastards, get out there and create mayhem.

You, get me George on the line…

What's new?

What was unusual about the news this week that former Fine Gael, now independent TD, Michael Lowry will not face charges for cheating on his taxes?

Not that he cheated on his taxes. He’s one of a long line of so called public representatives who obviously believe that paying tax is strictly for the ‘little people’.

Not that he portrayed himself as a victim of the system, moaning about the media, the tough time he had with Revenue, how he had to re-mortgage his house. Irish citizens are well used to tax cheating public representatives blaming everybody else for their own dodgy activities.

Not that he failed to apologise for cheating the state of monies that could have been used to help citizens who are genuinely in need of sympathy and support. Most public representatives who are caught with their grubby fingers in the till feel hard done by when they are politely asked by Revenue to repay their ill gotten gains.

No, what was new about this latest sordid episode involving the dodgy activities of an Irish politician was that it was the tax cheater himself who made the announcement of his escape from prosecution.

No Government official, nobody from Revenue, nobody from the DPPs office felt the need to make a formal announcement to the public they claim to serve that yet another ‘person of influence’ had somehow escaped the ultimate penalty from what we are constantly told is now a rigorous no nonsense system of tax accountability.