httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECl7j2Tl8NY&feature=player_embedded

Today’s Leader’s questions. (go to 2.50)

Gerry Adams: “Can the Taoiseach answer how any of this, in terms of offshore accounts, invoices, money laundering of a very classical kind – ”

[shouting and laughter in the chamber]

Adams: “Well – well – may – ”

Ceann Comhairle: “Your time has expired, Deputy.”

Adams: “Well may you laugh. I made the point, I made the point yesterday – ”

Ceann Comhairle: “Could we ask the Taoiseach to respond please?”

Adams: “– that if some unfortunate woman steals a loaf or a litre of milk she would end up in the ‘Joy, but yet when this serious indictment of people on the opposite benches, and the government benches is made, they hurrah and laugh and guffaw.”

Video via Merrion Street News

Thanks Julia Drennan

Michael Lowry has just had his ass handed to him by a stern Angela Lansbury on TV3 News.

Here’s a flava:

Ursula Halligan: “Doesn’t it look like, now, that you are not going to get your costs from the Moriarty tribunal, and if you don’t get your costs, because your costs are substantial, then you will be bankrupted and you will be forced out of politics in any case?”

Michael Lowry: “Well you needn’t, you know, be so gleeful about it.”

Watch full ass handover here.

Corruption Allegations Do Not Signal The End Of Michael Lowry’s Political Career (Guardian – Henry McDonald Blog)

Previously In Ursula News: Ursula Vs Cowen (September)

What a tangled web we weave when first we learn to do whatever Sarah Carey was up to when she worked for The Denis.

Firstly Here’s how she knew Phil Hogan. Through her family.

And here’s how the Esat donation went down:

Taken from The Moriarty Tribunal report

Earlier: You Did See Sarah Carey On Prime Time Didn’t You?

Dear Phil, Yours, Sarah

(Photo:Indymedia)

Yes, we know. The weather hasn’t changed much since 2006.

Annie West

“It’s inevitable that I no longer smoke cannabis because it was inevitable that the guards would have to arrest me and turn my life upside down

“I don’t have any choice I have to make a choice between what I want and what is good for my family”

Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan on Today FM’s the Last Word

Chalk one up for ‘the Man’

Garda Investigation Forces Ming Flanagan To Quit Cannabis (Breaking News)

(Photocall Ireland)

Ladbrokes is paying out to punters who bet that justice secretary Ken Clarke would fall asleep during the budget speech.

The UK bookmaker had offered odds of 16/1 on Clarke nodding off during George Osborne’s address to parliament.

Ladbrokes Loses As Ken Clarke Snoozes (Guardian)

By Dominic Hyde

Yes, Denis O’Brien is a wealthy man and has a majority shareholding in the newspaper I write for.

But that doesn’t mean he’s not a stand-up guy.

The Big D, as almost no one calls him, would have been filthy rich even if he hadn’t bunged Lowry all that money (which didn’t happen because Moriarty is a crazy vengeful judge).

‘D’ was already rolling in the folding stuff long before Esat came along.

At school, he would sell crushed beetles to the younger boys for extortionate sums. He also ran a numbers and protection racket which made him a millionaire by the time he sat his Inter Cert.

This is where I met him. He paid for me to sit his exams, but rather than give me money he offered me something more valuable, advice.

The advice being: don’t sit someone else’s exam unless you get the money upfront.

He would savagely bully me sometimes within inches of me actually dying, but as we grew up, we became closer. Rather than burn my flesh with a lighted cigarette, he would often throw – oh, the irony – mobile phones at my head.

These were the days when a mobile phone sometimes weighed as much as a bag of sugar or a small child. Imagine being hit on the head with a bag of sugar or a small child three or four times a day. it’s no fun. But it did teach me a thing or two about life.

If it looks like a duck, you should duck.

(Cont. p64)