76 thoughts on “De Tuesday Papers

  1. Einstein

    So The Irish Times has it that Cistercian College Roscrea is one of the main feeder schools. It was to close last year. About 20 students (or thereabouts) sat the leaving cert. The majority of them went to 3rd level. Ok. However, a community school with 60 students sitting for leaving cert and half them go to third level. That’s 30 students. That’s 10 more than Cistercian College. The Irish Times don’t seem to get that fact. The Irish Times instead buys into the school’s PR. Not quite the paper of record after all.

    1. Malta

      The school I went to regularly features near the top of these feeders school lists. it takes a reasonably small number of smart middle class pupils, so obviously most of them go to college. It’s no great achievement of the school.

      Anyone with any cop-on knows the feeder school business is rubbish.

  2. Twunt

    Charger has gone very quiet since realising that the a bunch of Christian Fundamentalists from 3 counties of Ireland are calling the shots in the UK.

    Did you know they insisted on locking playgrounds on Sundays because it is the lord’s day, you can’t be having fun on a Sunday, that is sinful.

    Fun times ahead for you lot, but not on Sundays obvs.

    1. some old queen

      Interesting question raised by Sam McBride in the Newsletter.

      So did the DUP agree to some wording around the idea that Northern Ireland could retain regulatory harmony with the rest of the island of Ireland, only to get cold feet once news of the proposal leaked out?

      1. Martco

        this sounds more like the reality to me

        May’s team couldn’t have been so dumb as to have kept the DUP in the dark and for there to have been this sort of accidental drama reaction.
        Either a) as you said…Arrrghhhlean got a call from some fundamentalist cog telling her “go along with that and we’ll be seeing you after the service on Sunday” or b) it was all happy days & she and the other members are literally on a power trip…dance Teresa dance

        hard to know but I have a curiosity….where is the public protest? If NI (and if it goes to it the rest of UK) are being bounced into chaos by some crusading cabal of Little englanders why isn’t there any protest? I understood there was a very clear remain vote in NI….is there such a fear these days up north of getting out on the streets?? Why are they allowing Foster speak for them? (when she doesn’t even represent them)

      2. Listrade

        It’s interesting, I don’t think anyone’s totally sure.

        I wouldn’t put it past May that the deal was agreed without consulting the DUP and assuming they’d go along with it. Unofficially that’s how it should work in a confidence and supply arrangement and it’s unlikely that the final deal would go to a parliamentary vote.

        But the manner of the information getting out is likely to have upset everyone. A Juncker tweet and also rumours the information about the deal came from “an Irish source”.

        It wouldn’t surprise me if the DUP hadn’t been consulted and the information was out before May had made the phone call.

        1. Go A Way

          Likely this is true

          More likely it’s about the DUP getting an even bigger bribe now – this is textbook stuff from them

          1. some old queen

            If true, that is shockingly bad management by May. How did she think she could bounce the DUP into concessions without at least giving the leadership time to prepare?

          2. Listrade

            It’s a shambles, but the DUP have no say in the process. The threat they have is to withdraw from the confidence and supply agreement and bring down the government. That threat must have been real enough yesterday for May to scrap the deal.

            In short, if May hadn’t held the general election and lost the majority, this deal would have gone through and there would have been nothing the DUP could have done.

    2. Happy Molloy

      the gaa was also played on Sundays which made it all the more sinful and something to be struck out

      1. dav

        I heard Newstalk yesterday and they sent that Henry McKeen up to shankill road to interview the locals their about brexit and the deal. The level of fear that came through made their arguments almost incomprehensible.
        “let us have our border” said one woman ” and ye lot stay where you are”…
        The DUP base will never accept any deal because they can never overcome their fear of “the south”

  3. ivan

    You really ought to feature the from of today’s English Daily Mail.

    The front page Brexit coverage is a sight to behold

        1. Brother Barnabas

          in fairness, it’s a good headline.

          probably not true though to say May was duped. I’d bet she entered into that agreement with the DUP with a massive sign and eye-roll, knowing full well it wasn’t going to go well. she had no choice. sure she’ll rue calling that election until the day she dies.

    1. Listrade

      I know you like absurd analogies, so here’s the UK in a bus driving over a cliff, except you’re all laughing and pointing out the window as you drive over Ireland’s foot as you plunge to your doom.

      The assumption from the likes of the Spectator and the Brexit press is that Ireland is a small fish and Europe doesn’t care. In the main it doesn’t, but it does care about the border and it does care about the 1.5 million citizens who have a right to be an Irish and EU citizen (it has to under its own laws), it also cares about peace on on its own borders.

      Trade, people, manufacturing and the stuff that will hit Ireland…EU not that bothered. It probably thinks Germany and France can pick up those scraps. Having a hard border, having years of legal issues with 1.5 million citizens, impact on GFA…EU is worried.

      But you need to get out of the loop of the Pro-Brexit press. The Brexit Impact Study that we’re not 100% sure if the UK has commissioned and even if it has its said it won’t release, not even to Parliament (yay for Parliamentary sovereignty post Brexit)? The EU immediately commissioned over 20. Each looking at the impact on a variety of topics and each publicly available.

      Here’s the one they commissioned on the NI Border:

      http://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/BRIE/2017/583116/IPOL_BRI(2017)583116_EN.pdf

      This isn’t playing Ireland or toying with Ireland, it was one of the key concerns they had post Brexit. Enough that they did what the UK didn’t and looked into the consequences. Also, look at the deal that was scuppered last night, then look at the EU stance in this report:

      “One option would be for Northern Ireland to remain part of the EU Customs Union whilst the rest of the UK withdraws. This would permit tariff-free trade across the border. However, it seems inconceivable that the EU would permit such an arrangement in the event of a UK Brexit”

      “Any attempts at bespoke deals between the UK and Irish governments may meet opposition within the EU from those wanting sanctions against the UK, feeling that the (cherry-picked) benefits to the UK are not accompanied by any fulfilment of obligations.”

      The report confirms all suspicions about EU over individualism, it out right states that. It’s pretty bleak reading for Ireland. But that’s EU posturing, as it says above there are plenty of member states who want to punish the UK, even if that impacts Ireland (and many others). And yet a deal completely contrary to this position was done…at least for a little bit.

      The border will be an EU border whether its where it is or in the Irish Sea. Even if there wasn’t the other political stuff that goes with NI, the EU would be prioritising this, add into it all the other stuff and just because Britain tends not to think about the island of Ireland, doesn’t mean nobody else is.

      It’s like the Brits just remembered Ireland last week, but it has been a key issue for the EU since the vote.

      Hard brexit, hard border, WTO rules, it’s a bad place to be for UK. I’m sure they’ll recover, but best estimates are 5-10 years of significant decline. It’ll impact Ireland too. Poland, Latvia and a lot of other Eastern states who are part of the tariff free manufacturing business.

      UK needs friends in this process. The EU openly admits there are member states that are out to punish the UK even if that impacts others. Your sensibilities seem to be kamikaze in taking out as many people as you can on your way out. and laughing at them as you do it.

      But it also shows an ignorance of diplomacy and how these things work. It’s just an echo of the ill informed (including the Spectator) Brexit Press. A press that is forcing the government into a harder and harder stance, when there are deals to be done within the scope of what the EU has laid out.

      1. some old queen

        Good stuff Listrade.

        Meanwhile what happened in Britain yesterday was very telling. Just a rumour of NI remaining in the customs union had Scotland, Wales and even London joining in a chorus of ‘what about me?’.

        Brexit is a very fragile flower… or weed (depending on your perspective).

        1. Listrade

          I’ll be honest, that brought out the worst of the remainers. London-centric liberals still blaming the flat capped racist northerners for Brexit. Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds also voted remain, but they were forgotten about in the smugness of some of the tweets.

          Liverpool and Leeds voted on a similar margin to London (and it was only North London that voted Remain), Manchester voted with a much greater Remain majority. Yet they were never mentioned.

        2. mildred st. meadowlark

          I was reading that too, and all I could think was about how much of an unholy poostorm this is going to be.

          Ruling the Empire was so much easier when you just plonked a flag into the earth and decided that it was England.

          1. Cian

            Um it was slightly more complicated than sticking a flag in the ground.
            It was sticking a flag in the ground while being surrounded by 10,000 well trained soldiers

  4. Charger Salmons

    You’re falling into the convenient Continuity Remainer trap that it’s the evil media that forced over 17 million people into an act of self-harm.
    Unlike the supine Irish media which is toeing the Establishment line that plucky Ireland must resist the swivel-eyed,Little Englanders( insert your own cliche ) driving the UK over a cliff-edge there’s actually a wide divergence of opinion in the UK media.
    The Spectator includes pro and anti Brexiteers who attack each other in their own magazine.
    I caught some fat,sweaty oaf from the Irish Times on RTE last night regurgitating some cliche-ridden nonsense about NI that was student union level of intelligence rather than from Ireland’s paper of record.
    As with the financial crash and subsequent bail-out Ireland is being poorly served by a timid media overawed by the government of the day.

      1. mildred st. meadowlark

        You know, I honestly thought he was a troll, but now i’m really not sure.

        How many times can you have your ass handed to you before you signal defeat? I’ll leave that to dear Charger to answer.

        1. Nigel

          Every time something goes stupidly wrong with Brexit he has a hategasm about the Irish. Which is why he has so many hategasms.

        2. Brother Barnabas

          Don’t English public school boys have a fetish for being spanked and humiliated?!?

          Perhaps that’s why he keeps doing this.

    1. Listrade

      Nah, I’m falling into a trap that was based on over 10 years in public policy EU, UK and Ireland, not scratching around the internet to farm for opinions that meet my bias. I’m not quoting any news source left, right, middle on this because I don’t agree with their take. Their take is usually from political sources. Policy can be dirty and it is definitely and old boys club, but Chatham House rules still apply. The stuff in the press is mostly political posturing that is fed to the press, not what is said in the discussions.

      Still, I’m happy to discuss any issue you may have with what I wrote rather than random childishness about the Irish where you don’t actually make any point at all.

      Take all the time you need to google what your next opinion should be, even if it directly contradicts your last.

          1. mildred st. meadowlark

            No you don’t. Join me on the dark side, where nothing gets done and everything is warm and vaguely sarcastic.

      1. Killian G

        BOOM – WHACK – WALLOP!!!!!!

        The kids on fire this morning!!!!

        We can probably save a lot of time, Charger mate, if you just drop your trews now and bum-sex yourself with whatever household implement is to hand.

        Actually, seeing as your probably a former English public schoolboy… you likely did that first thing this morning.

        1. Charger Salmons

          Yup,here come the bum-slappers right on cue.
          Lads,I’ll be back to deal with you later – there’s a rather absorbing final session going on in Adelaide that I’m more interested in at the moment.
          But feel free to flick yourselves with wet towels for a while to keep amused.

          1. Killian G

            Hahaha

            You’ll be back alright – but just with some juvenile Paddy-this, Paddy-that crap. Stop being such a self-flagellating little ponce and just take your beating like a man.

            Pretend it’s the Battle of the Somme and you’re taking it for Queen and country. You’ll feel better about it then.

      2. Charger Salmons

        No Google for me old sport.
        I’ve wanted Hard Brexit from the outset as I know the EU will never permit a reasonable trade deal – Ireland is just being used by them and is too stupid to realise it.
        I see no reason why border checks in Ireland should in any way endanger the GFA – there are border checks all over the perimeter of the EU that don’t predicate an upsurge in violence.
        And it’s not just me saying that.
        http://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/the-ex-ira-men-united-ireland-it-s-all-guff-1.3041131

        1. Listrade

          First, you need to check your own logic before saying things. You wanted a hard brexit from the outset..fine only person who actually did, but hey good that you’re getting your wish. But yesterday you said you didn’t want a hard border:

          https://www.broadsheet.ie/2017/12/04/i-suspect-it-will-look-very-like-what-it-looks-like-today/#comment-1904790

          Umm, hate to break it to you, you can’t have hard brexit and a soft border. So either you don’t know what hard brexit means or you continually change your position depending on how confused you are about things.

          Second. GFA. Really?

          There are plenty of hard borders, but few involve a country where half the population are allowed by law to be European citizens. That’s your problem. They are existing hard borders and so there was no material change when one country became a member of the EU.

          Trade, schmade. People cross the border for work. They won’t be able to. People will be forced to be British Citizens and no longer EU citizens. I seem to recall a few years of that being something people had umbrage with. Dunno, seems like a big deal.

          As would the North-South Ministerial Council. Do you know of it? It’s in the GFA. Will have to go.

          Small things like cross-border electrical projects. Massive investments in rural electrical networks only existing because of joint EU membership. Stopped.

          Even smaller, Waterways Ireland. I know it’s only canals and rivers and evicting homeless people in tents, but it’s a cross border state unit that can’t exist post brexit.

          A hard border isn’t just checking passports, it stops everything.

          But back to the GFA. It is an agreement that has numerous references to the EU. Once the UK is out of the EU that has to be rewritten. It is no longer valid. But it’s not that easy, because 88% of nationalists voted remain and NI Assembly works on a qualified majority. So for anything to happen in changing the agreement you will need the nationalists (who now have no right to an Irish Passport or Eu citizenship) to agree to it. Probably going to be a little tense.

          It gets worse, because agreements and treaties have to be ratified. There’s British-Irish Agreement to uphold the Good Friday Agreement. I know you’re probably flicking through the Vienna Convention as you watch the cricket, but skip to Article 27. States cannot invoke domestic law as a basis for failure to undertake the obligations of a treaty. In plain language: Article 50.

          The UK has committed to GFA, but we will need a new one and that won’t be easy, not least because we’ll have to vote on it again, not least because a lot of people will be a bit miffed at the new situation.

          1. spudnick

            Excellently put Listrade. See, Tony Groves? Not quite the comment cesspool after all.

            I still remember the Good Friday Agreement being announced back in ’98. It was such a unite-the-nation moment. The thought of it being bounced out of the pram by a wilfully ignorant British establishment that has truly never-gone-away-you-know is immensely frustrating.

          2. Cian

            I agree with most of this. But i think Waterways Ireland could be okay.
            Irish Lights (lighthouses) have been an all-Ireland organisation since they were created, if they were able survive partition I’m sure WI can survive Brexit

    2. Brother Barnabas

      The leave vote was boosted by the ranks of uneducated, disengaged, disenfranchised ordinary people in the UK living out miserable lives with little hope or future. The likes of farage conned them into thinking their plight was the fault of the EU – and that it’ll all be better once they get their country back. Turns out it’ll actually be worse. That hasn’t hit yet, and those same people are muddling on in ignorant, forlorn hope that better days are coming. You know very well, Charger, that none of that is true.

      1. Nigel

        You know how people complain about the Repeal campaign preaching to the choir? Brexit, and Trump, are both also examples of what happens when you fail to get the choir to sing from their hymn sheet.

  5. Zuppy International

    Look at (prof) John Fitzgerald, virtue signalling like a literal madman from the cosseted perspective of his softly appointed job as Chair of the Climate Change Advisory Council

    He’s the worst example of the Green Tyrant (state pension, expenses, zero accountability) using an outdated, discredited dogma to tell the rest of us plebs we have no right to abundant cheap energy that surrounds us in the world. Instead, we should abandon coal, oil, gas and turf so we can freeze to death for our environmental “sins”.

    How do they keep warm in the Climate Change HQ btw? Flap their arms? Spoon each other? How do they power their coffee machine? With their own smugness?

    Kick this bozo to the curb before he has us all back living in the 18th century.

    1. Twunt

      If wind farms weren’t heavily subsidised they would exist. It is a very inefficient and ineffective way of producing electricity.

          1. Nigel

            Does this accounting factor in, like, the entire cost to and in and around the Middle East for the last century or so?

          2. Zuppy International

            Yes. Wind energy is at least 3 times the cost of hydrocarbon energy, only works 20% of the time, kills birds and bats and is never when the energy demand is.

          3. Twunt

            A mate works as a manager for a large wind farm company. He says if the subsidies dry up they are all out of jobs. They have all done the sums and know full well they cannot compete oil, coal, peat, gas or nuclear and probably never will.

          4. Zuppy International

            You’re talking about the extraordinary geo-political exploitation of hydrocarbon reserves by extranational and international entities for their own profit.

            Yet, hydrocarbons in every day use are proven to be benign, cheap, reliable and plentiful. Unlike wind energy (an obsolete technology only good for killing birds and extracting public subsidies) which is expensive, unreliable and dangerous to the electrical supply grid. Just ask the Germans who now – thanks to unreliable wind and solar – have to intervene to ensure grid stability 1,000 to 1,500 times a year (up from an average of 5 interventions a year pre-Energiewende).

            However, if you’re now worried about the geopolitical implications of continued hydrocarbon use (as opposed to the bogus science of “climate change” you’re usually spouting) then rest assured Trump’s got your back.

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ-AdQVTb9U&t=8m15s

          5. Zuppy International

            Nigel pimpin’ the fear as per usual.

            No facts, no truth just lies on top of lies and a false dogma about obsolete technology.

            Have you shares in these subsidy farms or something?

          6. Nigel

            What did he reopen the coal mines? I’m still mad at him for exposing climate change as a Chinese conspiracy.

  6. Killian G

    Never thought I’d say such a thing, but I’m disappointed Charger never returned.

    Disappointed but not surprised.

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