Spluttáir.
A Jazz magazine in the native tongue.
Daithí Ó Cinnéide writes:
Don’t need to be fluent to get what’s going on here: Ireland’s first porno as Gaeilge! Ní hé lá na báistí lá na páistí indeed!!!
Salach anyone?
Read Fliuch here
‘An Chéad iris phornaghrafaíochta i nGaeilge’ foilsithe ar líne (Maitiú Ó Coimín, Tuairisc.ie)
This afternoon.
Multi-party TDs, including a brolly-carrying Gerry Adams (centre) and Senators join the daily vigil by Amnesty International calling for a repeal of the Eighth Amendment, the constitutional ban on abortion.
Yesterday : Carol Hunt: It Takes A Vigil
Sam Boal/Rollingnews
Inside The GPO.
The acclaimed play about the Easter Rising by Colin Murphy. running in the main hall of the GPO on Dublin’s O’Connell Street.
MUST finish THIS Saturday [details below].
Meanwhile…
Outside the GPO
Homeless food stand last Wednesday.
Thanks Colin
Shane Paul O’Doherty, aged 18, on the run in London, 1972
Repentant IRA bomber Shane Paul O’Doherty went on the Ray D’arcy Show on RTÈ Radio 1 yesterday to discuss his life growing up on the ‘wrong side of the border’and why he turned to violence.
In a lengthy, compelling interview Mr O’Doherty, who took to religion in Long Kesh, addresses ‘misconceptions’ about when the Troubles began, questions the role – if any – of the 1966 Easter Rising commemorations in luring young men to the IRA and speculates on the organisation’s most famous ‘non-member.
Grab a tay.
Ray D’Arcy: “My next guest, Shane Paul O’Doherty received 30 life sentences for his bombing campaigns with the IRA in 1975. Seeing his victims in court sent him on a journey of discovery through years of studying the Bible and corresponding with his Bishop, he found the truth he’d been looking for in the isolation of his solitary cell. Today, he’s still atoning for his actions. How’re you doing Shane?”
Shane Paul O’Doherty: “Who wrote that Ray?”
D’Arcy: “Will wrote it. You were the subject would you believe of a documentary on Sunday night?”
O’Doherty: “I accidentally emailed Roger Childs – “
D’Arcy: “…Who is the Head of Religious Programmes at RTÉ”
O’Doherty: “ – about six months ago, I said Roger, ‘Can you think outside the box, can you make a sexy, different play about Kevin Barry about his last few weeks?’ So, it worked out that we got a documentary about me writing a play about Kevin Barry and more, and more of my story than I really wished – because, I mean I’ve had this book out about donkeys years – that I’ve brought you a copy of and one for Will, there isn’t a copy for everyone in the audience.”
D’Arcy: “Thanks Shane. Well, I watched that and I watched Peter Taylor’s documentary, which was made in 1989, in which he spoke to your four brothers and your ma – it’s very fascinating and the interesting thing was that you wrote a letter when you were nine, which said, ‘When I grow up I want to fight and if necessary die for Ireland’s Freedom’. Signed Shane Paul. Well, you were nine – in 1965.”
O’Doherty: “Yeah, well I was 10. I had been reading books about Irish history for years, there was a real library at home and I somehow got stuck into books on Irish history, with you know the terrible sorrows of Irish history, and you know there was one book there – ‘Speeches from the Dock’ – an old book, I’ve still got copies of it yet. and I was fired up as a kid, you know, as someone who was reading from a very young age, my Da was a teacher in the Christian Brothers, he was a great man for reading and I had read so much about Irish history that i was overwhelmed by its tragedies and I had a notion, you know that I wanted to grow up and fight for Ireland – to die for Ireland. But the interesting thing was when I was being interrogated by the RUC much later, having been arrested during the cease-fire in ’75 – they raced in with great glee at one point in the interrogation and showed me this – and I was more embarrassed by that note…”
D’Arcy: “…that you’d written as a nine year-old.”
O’Doherty: “…than I was being embarrassed about being captured. So embarrassed by it.”
D’Arcy: “So they were using that as evidence against you?”
O’Doherty: “Ah well, I’d say it was intended to cause me embarrassment. You know, what a D Head you are – we’ve captured you, you know?”Continue reading →
Shoppers on Grafton Street
Following January’s reports of consumer sentiment hitting a ten-year high in December…
RTÉ reports:
Consumer sentiment weakened in March on the back of increased economic uncertainty both at home and internationally, a new index shows today.
The KBC Bank Ireland/ESRI consumer sentiment index fell from 105.8 in February to 100.6 in March.
This brought the index to its lowest level in six months and marked the biggest monthly decline since October 2014.
Consumer sentiment at six month low in March (RTE)
Rollingnews
This afternoon.
3Stella writes:
Some classic pavement blocking on Malpas Street, Dublin8.
‘User-generated content’ and the Irish media.
A short documentary.
Derek Bowler, of Storyful, writes:
RTÉ TV3, 3E, INM, 98FM, Benchwarmers.ie, FYI and many other media organisations and outlets have used User Generated Content in broadcasts, online and across their social media platforms without permissions from the content owners, and without attribution or courtesy to them.
There have also been repeated instances of misattribution and the re-use of unauthorised copies of the original content.
The aim of this piece is highlight the unethical practices of Irish media organisations and how they are knowingly operating outside of both Irish and international copyright law…
FIGHT!
Have you seen these men?
The duo are thought to have boarded a carriage in South London after attending the England and Ireland clash in Twickenham on February 27.
Officers say one of the men vomited on the floor and a 58-year-old passenger complained.
Detective Sergeant Sarah Garden said: “The victim was attacked after taking issue with one of the men who was vomiting on the carriage floor…I think the men in the images we are issuing today will be able to help with our investigation. Please tell us who they are?”
From top: Valartis Bank, purchasers of Anglo Austria; David Drumm (left) and Sean Fitzpatrick in 2005.
We didn’t have to wait long following the Panama leak to hear of an Irish connection.
Anne Marie McNally writes
Panama papers, tax havens, connected billionaires and a hidden money trail across the world. Is this the stuff of the latest suspense novel or an actual unfolding news story with implications for citizens across the world?
Surprise surprise it’s a true story – the stuff we of the 99% brigade have pretty much come to expect from those up there in the 1% brigade. But come to expect or come to accept?
I fear it’s increasingly become the latter as many shrug their shoulders and think ‘sure we know that’s what they’re up to, it’s no big deal.’
In the current US Presidential race we’ve two significant, and not untarnished, members of the 1% club running for the office of President.
Hundreds of thousands line up at rallies to support them despite knowing what they know about their shady financial affairs that have been designed to screw the ordinary Joe Soap while they accumulate millions onto their billions by avoiding the taxes that would pay for the services they claim to be campaigning for.
Even less surprising was that we didn’t have to wait long following the Panama leak to hear of an Irish connection.
Even if we leave aside the two Irish individuals- a former senior Fine Gael strategist and a well-known developer – we are still left with the fingerprints of toxic Anglo all over.
According to the papers Anglo Austria was recommended to customers by the now notorious Panama law firm Mossack Fonesca as one of a small number of banks with ‘fairly relaxed conditions’ when it comes to setting up offshore companies designed to facilitate wealthy individuals to disguise their ownership and control of significant assets.
This is the same Anglo through which the infamous Bernie Madoff channelled his ill-gotten funds in order to finance his lavish lifestyle.
As far back as 2013, Simon Carswell, writing in the Irish Times, was telling us that Anglo Austria had actually been soliciting business from a company known for setting up offshore trusts.
In 2006, while the branch was still under the control of the Irish operation, a senior official in Anglo Austria was sending emails to the Singapore based Portcullis Trustnet appraising them of the ‘smooth and quiet’ nature of Austria’s banks and praising the culture of banking secrecy.
Says a lot about the internal culture at senior levels within Anglo doesn’t it?
Anglo sold it’s Austrian subsidiary to a Swiss based company in 2008 with the deal being signed on the day of David Drumm’s resignation, which had come the day after the Chairman, Sean Fitzpatrick, had been forced to step down because of his failure to reveal the extent of Director loans – which ran into the millions- within the organisation.
At the time of the sale that bank had €600 million in assets yet it was sold for only a €49million profit, with the bank itself financing part of the sale costs by way of a loan to the purchasers, Valartis.
The circumstances of the sale drew whispers across the financial world from those in the 1% circle with more than a few rumours that David Drumm had been worried about how it conducted its business and the possible blowback on him and the Irish operation.
Sean Fitzpatrick had apparently made the decision to sell the branch – with its €600 million in assets – mostly liquid cash deposits, at a time when Anglo in Ireland was in desperate need of deposits and was about to be bailed out by the Irish people to the tune of €24 billion.
The Board of the Anglo Austria operation included eight people from Anglo’s Dublin operation – a number that far outweighed the Board’s Austrian contingent.
With that level of Board representation you’d have to assume there would be an overlap of information between the Irish situation and the Austrian branch which causes me to repeat the questions that were whispered at the time – why sell off a branch with liquid assets at a time when you were shoving the begging bowl into Irish people’s faces and forcing them to flay themselves on your alter?
The initial Panama reports indicate that there may now be an answer to that question, and it undoubtedly won’t be a pretty one.
Anglo the Musical? More like Anglo the never-ending saga of disrepute.
Anne Marie McNally is a founding member of the Social Democrats. Follow Anne Marie on Twitter: @amomcnally
