136 thoughts on “De Sunday Papers

    1. Dub Spot

      Let’s not be nasty. Jack Monroe was quite magnificent in her response and said she wouldn’t wish destitution on anyone.

      I’m surprised the Irish Times hasn’t had the temerity to rip off the Guardian and find their own Jack Monroe to show how to cook on a budget. But then, the Irish Times readership has tons of money and they don’t really have anyone on staff who could cut it looks-wise or in terms or actually credibility.

      Perhaps Roisin Ingle and Conor Pope can team up and do an Avocado with Beans On Toast podcast. Or maybe Rosita Boland and Kathy Sheridan can do a “Rough Guide to Sleeping and Eating Rough(age)”.

      GO JACK!

          1. Bertie Blenkinsop

            He didn’t discriminate Clampers, he battered men and women with equal gusto – I thought that’d put him firmly in your good books. :)

      1. Giggidygoo

        Because Britain had the liathroidi to stay out of the Euro (for instance) and to determine their own future. Ourselves on the other hand are in it lock stock and barrel. If us plebs say something that our German masters don’t like, we are told to rephrase our answer.

      1. Ollie Cromwell

        I generally do unless I see the occasional punt that interests me.
        But a second referendum ?
        Not a hope.

    1. DeKloot

      What a total dumbass. If you’re gonna go WP on national TV cos your buddies down at your local dive bar or lodge will slap your back, be prepared for the consequences.

      Following on from Frankie Boyle’s cancer quote above, chemotherapy will make you sick as a dog but hopefully it’ll cure the cancer. WP being the cancer, WP stupidity the chemotherapy.

        1. Nigel

          How can you be sure it has nothing to do with white power? The US Coast Guard think it’s a credible enough symbol of white supremacy to warrant firing the guy, and I don’t suppose they mess about lightly with this sort of thing. Shouldn’t that count for evidence against your insistence that it isn’t a WP sign? Perhaps it being associated with The Game is not incompatible with it being associated with white power? Is The Game even still a thing?

          1. rotide

            I’ll tell you why. Because it’s a fupping symbol in common usage to denote ‘OK’.

            It’s an OK sign. OK.

            If white power fanatics decided to coopt it as a secret symbol they picked an utterly moronic symbol as it is impossible to tell if the person is in favor of the Aryan race, is playing The Game or is just saying OK.

            So fine, you can believe it denotes white power. What you can’t do is accuse everyone who uses it as being a racist or fanatic. I have no idea how someone got fired for making a symbol that for 100 years has meant one thing but after a 4chan post now apparently means something else.

          2. Nigel

            Well if you have no idea maybe you should look into it. It isn’t as if white power types haven’t co-opted stuff before, and the KKK loved their stupid little hand signals. They’ve got you and head-the-ball defending it so it can’t be that moronic a move can it? If you or I made an OK sign we’d do it differently from these jokers even though the sign itself would be substantially the same.

          3. Rob_G

            “How can you be sure it has nothing to do with white power?”

            – if I saw someone trying to trick people into looking at their thumb and index finger in a circle, my first assumption would be the juvenile Game explanation, rather than some nefarious white supremacist plot.

          4. Nigel

            That kind of faux-innocent quasi-deniability is part of the point. Supposedly.

            (When Rotide said The Game, i thought he was talking about that stupid misogynistic pick-up system, I’d either forgotten about or never really known about the made-you-look-now-I-hit-you thing, Maybe the test is if you look and they don’t clatter you, they’re a white supremacist?)

          5. Nigel

            I’m a 4chan meme that started as a prank but took on a life of its own and escaped into the internet to wreak havioc by confusing people as to whether I’m ok or a OK or okay.

          6. Rob_G

            If white supremacists adopted ‘thumbs up’ as one of their symbols, would it be fine for somebody to fired if they made the much more commonly-accepted ‘thumbs up’ in some other context?

            I spend a lot of time on the internet, and this is the first that I have ever heard of this hand symbol meaning anything other than ‘ok’, or ‘punch game’. I think it is a bit 1984-ish that someone working in emergency services can be fired on a whim for some mad-niche extreme interpretation of a commonly-used hand symbol.

            From further down in the same article:
            “Earlier this month, left-wing activists accused a former Trump administration official [Zina Bash] of making the symbol during a Senate hearing.

            Ms Bash, who is of Jewish-Mexican heritage, was branded a “neo-Nazi” or “white supremacist”.

            Her husband, Texas prosecutor John Bash, angrily pointed out his wife is the grandchild of Holocaust survivors.

            I mean, Jesus wept – this is like the Thought Police.

          7. Nigel

            If white supremacists successfully adopted thumbs-up as a symbol the sad fact is that soon people who were not white supremacists would avoid making the symbol, which is unfair and unreasonable but that’s how this kind of appropriation seems to work. Assume for a moment that the US Coast Guard have policies about not wanting racists/white supremacists in their ranks and that they take them very seriously. Assume also that they might be in a position to know more about the degree to which flashing such a sign indicates a white supremacist ideology than you or I. Inasmuch as it might be a prank, it’s backfiring pretty spectacularly on some of the people playing it, but if your idea of a good time is flashing newly ambiguous signs so you an say oh hey, that’s not a white supremacist sign that’s OK, or I’m actually waiting for you to look so I can hit you, hahahah then maybe you should go to hell.

          8. Rob_G

            Would you ever cop on to yourself – that’s like saying that my wearing of a red t-shirt is promoting gang violence because some Crips lad in Los Angeles does it as well.

            The hand-punch game has been in the popular culture thing for more than 20 years (it had already been around a long time when it appeared on Malcolm in the Middle), the same symbol being used as a white power symbol doesn’t seem to have any basis in reality other than as a hoax on 4chan.

            … then maybe you should go to hell

            – or maybe to continue to think for myself and apply logic to a situation before arriving at an opinion on it, rather than going straight for the pitchforks and torches because that online mob is telling me to.

          9. Nigel

            Rob tells me this guy, an American in America, which is a totally different continent with a totally different culture, has to be playing a game from a 20-year-old TV show for some reason, and that the US Coast guard, who have the job of making hiring and firing decisions and who are also Americans living in America and presumably more up to date on the current usage of such hand-symbols, could not possibly possess the specialised knowledge both of the culture of the US and of the behaviour of this man, their employee, that Rob, who lives in Ireland and who admits to being largely ignorant of current usage, apparently has. I really admire the fidelity to logic being displayed here.

          10. Rob_G

            “It is important to realize that the “OK” gesture is a nearly universal hand gesture and most usage of it is completely innocuous. Even when used as described here, the fact that white supremacists, the alt lite and many Trump supporters all use the symbol means that one cannot assume that anyone who poses with such a gesture is intending or exhibiting an association with white supremacy. ” Anti-Defamation League, updated 2018

            I am sure that the Coast Guard thought the ‘controversy’ as daft as I do, but it being 2018 and optics and all that, felt that they had do something to appease the mob.

          11. Nigel

            I’m sure you do think that. Me, I don’t think invoking mobs and pitchforks is sufficient to explain why they’d fire a guy for giving a hand signal that everything was ‘OK.’ If anything it suggests that there might be something to it.

          12. Nigel

            I find myself intrigued by the idea that someone came up with this as an elaborate, long-term counter-move in that stupid Game, whereby anybody who attempted to play it risked being accused of being a white supremacist.

    2. Dub Spot

      Deserved to be fired on humanity grounds. Plus, the U.S. Coast Guard is part of the U.S armed forces: There to defend and protect ALL Americans. A firing squad for treason might have been a better solution, but I’m against the death penalty – like most right-minded Americans.

    1. f_lawless

      I think stories like that have little merit in the times we live in – unless the identities of the commenter(s) writing the death threats can be directly established. To varying extents most modern states these days employ teams of online commenters to try and mold public opinion in their favour. If your goal was to try and prove to the public that the Garda reasoning for the use of balaclavas was justified, it’s all too easy to post anonymous death threats to achieve that.

  1. Giggidygoo

    So which is it?
    Above – Gardai claim they wore balaclavas to protect their identity.
    Harris + GRA claim it was protection against fire and acid.

    Well, neither would work if we are to believe the above story about identity, and obviously part of the face and especially the eyes are not covered against acid or fire.
    ……………
    No one though has answered with clarity why the Gardai allowed the Thugmobile and it’s balaclava-covered occupants to roam the streets despite this van having no MOT and front identification number plate. Why is Drew Harris and the GRA avoiding giving any answers on that?
    …………….

    1. SOQ

      No MOT AND no insurance because if the vehicle was not road worthy, especially as it had not been tested in four years then it could not possibly be insured. If you or I were caught in similar we would have the book thrown at us, and rightly so. God help anyone that thing ran over because there is no way it could be safe.

      It has been suggested that the guards actually own the vehicle which would make sense but that is even worst. It is one thing for a private citizen to be breaking the law but quite another for the guards to be doing it. They above all should know the importance of MOT and NCT and is more than a little double standard to prosecute others for similar. No matter what way you look at it, the whole thing stinks to the high heavens.

      1. SOQ

        And just to explain my rant; I was a victim of a similar vehicle. I was standing on a pavement minding my own business when this cowboy came round the corner and lost control because one of the brakes failed. By the grace of God I was wearing a hat because otherwise my skull would have been cracked open but, I did receive two broken limbs and three months concussion. And I am not on my own by any means because there are plenty of others who have been victims too.

        Because it was from outside the jurisdiction is no excuse as all they have to do is check on the gov.uk website. ANY vehicle which is not road worthy should be impounded on the spot, otherwise they fail to keep people safe and uphold lawful order. All credit to Drew Harris for his commendation of the masks but he also really needs to explain why that vehicle was on a public road.

        1. Freedom

          Waffle

          These people, even though I agree with their points, needed to be thrown out and actively escalated a public order confrontation by ignoring the notice to quit

          The Guards bumbled the optics of it but it was a pretty successful operation because the property is now vacant.

          1. SOQ

            Oh look at you big keyboard man.

            They broke a serious law while enforcing a less law. Try not being able to walk down any pavement on a main road for six months then come back to me with the meaning of waffle eh?

          2. Let Freedom Ring

            It’s sad what happened to you

            I was the victim of a similar event myself in the past.

            I don’t use that as an excuse for an anti civic order rant however even when I agree with the cause.

          3. SOQ

            Oh another new shapeshifter username I see. I very much doubt you were but anyways.

            Where in the above is the anti civic rant exactly? Hammering around in a vehicle which is likely to fail and careen out of control at any given time is hardly the most ‘civic’ of things to do now is it?

            But I doubt you even care about any of this, you just want attention, which is beyond sad.

          4. Let Freedom Ring

            You said yourself it was a rant

            As for the shape shifter thing don’t make me laugh, weren’t you Some Old Queen before?

            Some old princess more like

          5. SOQ

            One is an abbreviation of the other. I use the same name all the time.

            WTF is wrong with you that you can’t have a civilised conversation without resorting to sneering and name calling all the time?

          6. Let Freedom Ring

            One is an extension of the other

            I excoriate the same bumptious self regarding “usernames” all the time

            Example/ only “your” experience knocked down by an uninsured vehicle “matters” – justifying your anti civil order diatribes

            Mine on the other hand – you “very much doubt” if it happened- negging “my” insights to an irrelevance even though they are as valid as yours. Maybe more valid …

      2. Martco

        I hope this TBTC group have the sense to cam themselves up in future & maybe livestream the next encounter

        recording contentious meetings with the Guards is advisable as Maurice McCabe has shown

      1. Giggidygoo

        Did the commissioner utterly condemn the Thugmobile driver and occupants!
        And where are you getting the ‘understanding’ – from the back of your Wally Mitty brain?

          1. MaryLou's ArmaLite

            Please provide a list of Sinn Fein approved news sources ?

            An Phoblacht
            and ….. rants from shinnerbots on politics.ie ??

          2. jusayinlike

            @ Mary Lous Armpit

            I’ll provide those no problem, but firstly you cite evidence of British secret service collusion with loyalist paramilitary organisations causing massacre style death tolls.

            How come you never mention loughinisland or Omaha massacres and the respective fallout which unequivocally showed British state collusion with loyalist paramilitary organisations.

            quid pro quo

      2. jusayinlike

        “I understand…”

        “As far as I can recall..”

        twit comments, but pat for course for the cowardly DUP and their troll farm.

      3. Dub Spot

        Why are these gardai on Facebook? And using their own devices? They should be more careful of their personal security.

        Tough buns if you don’t get enough Likes because you’re a guard. Fupp off.

      4. SOQ

        Spin it all you want but a few keyboard warriors reacting to what was a very badly managed policing operation is hardly in the same league as at best, a downright dangerous and highly illegal vehicle being escorted to and from a crowded city centre location. They could have killed someone ffs.

        If this van still had an English police force logo on it then no matter where it went, north or south, it would have stuck out like a sore thumb. And yet, no reports of sightings from anywhere. At this stage I am pretty certain that if a search of Garda storage is done, it will turn up.

    2. Daisy Chainsaw

      Can’t be acid, not with those bare arms and hands on display and no protective eyewear/goggles. It’s hiding their shame, pure and simple.

        1. bisted

          …I think you mean the Ard Chomairle…a few of them are from Belfast alright…just announced that it is Liadh though…

          1. bisted

            …I agree that it will be a two horse race but I’ll be betting the shinners top the pole on the first count…the shinner core vote is very solid and they will come out to vote…the media are declaring this a one horse race and I’ll bet the Higgins camp hate that but I expect he will win outright but only after the elimination of the other three…

          2. Frilly Keane

            It was always going to be a 2 horse race anyway
            Between the Michael D and who ever the Shinners whittled their own candidate shortlist ta’

            Michael D can forget about Munster
            And probably Dublin, Kildare, Kilkenny, Louth, Donegal and Meath

            Now we actually have a proper race

          3. johnny

            with impeccable timing as part off a wonderfully coordinated media strategy the NYT has a simply marvelous piece on the front page off todays travel section-well done SF:)

            “Were you out at Synge’s Chair?” I called out as she approached.

            The sun behind her hung, unmasked by clouds, low and long in the Irish early summer sky.

            ”I was,” she said. Her voice was strong, clear — the way one’s voice can be when exhilarated. ”I’ll start writing a play soon.”

            https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/10/travel/aran-islands-ireland-jm-synge.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Ftravel&action=click&contentCollection=travel&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=1&pgtype=sectionfront

            Good luck Liadh.

          4. Clampers Outside!

            True Frilly, a proper race!

            Good luck to your candidate of choice, I’ll be shoutin’ for MDH. :)
            – –

            And… sorry, to hear of the comments going down the nasty route on your Friday post… :/

          1. Giggidygoo

            I have never, once, heard Higgins say, or tell the government that they have a duty of care to the citizens of this country. Has he even taken the time to address the Dail on any matters? It takes someone whose existence can be traced back to an actual traditional heritage, to say this. Someone with a bit of real history behind them.
            Ni Riada has a better chance (in my opinion) of being President that any of the other candidates, including Higgins.
            We have had enough of ‘Musha Eire’.
            We have the real thing here. Mise Eire.

          2. MaryLou's ArmaLite

            yer politicians are just like your commenting style – toxic

            she won’t get within an asses roar.

            Is she like Gerry, was she not ever in the IRA ?

          3. Brother Barnabas

            she was in the notre dame des missions convent battalion

            rubbed shoulders with some of south county dublin’s meanest republicans during her time

            why do you ask ?

          4. SOQ

            The only reason anyone now days cares if a parent was in the IRA is because they will be loaded? Financial not literal interpretation obviously.

  2. Ollie Cromwell

    Chanel has snubbed Paris in favour of London.
    Take that Macron.
    Take the Remoaners.

    The legendary fashion house generated global sales of over £7 billion last year and has chosen London as the place to consolidate its global operations for the first time, despite being founded in Paris over 100 years ago. Several senior executives are set to move and the company’s main New York offices have relocated to London, bringing dozens of jobs with them. Zut alors!

    1. Ollie Cromwell

      Chanel has snubbed Paris in favour of London.
      Take that Macron.
      Take the Remoaners.

      The legendary fashion house generated global sales of over £7 billion last year and has chosen London as the place to consolidate its global operations for the first time, despite being founded in Paris over 100 years ago. Several senior executives are set to move and the company’s main New York offices have relocated to London, bringing dozens of jobs with them. Zut alors!

      #despitebrexitmehole

          1. Ollie Cromwell

            You’ve got more chance of getting a nosh off the Queen than you have of a second referendum.
            It’s the soaked piece of flotsam and jetsam the Remoaners cling to as their last hope.
            It ain’t happening bozos.

          2. jusayinlike

            Watch it get overturned, all the papers are rounding on the government, lobbying the masses to reverse it, it’s gonna happen and I can’t wait to rub your Tory snot in it.

          3. jon

            You really do not understand the British people do you?
            A referendum was taken out to leave the EU and they voted out
            Its the duty of parliament to carry out the will of the people
            Instead of wishful thinking Ireland needs to get its act together regarding the damage we will face.
            And do not look for the help from the EU as we experienced their help already after the crash.
            Our leaders need to grow balls and not play ball with the EU

    2. jon

      Well after all London is a centre of fashion and France is a nightmare to do anything in business wise
      Lived there for nine months trying to open a business
      But in the end decided to move back to Ireland and open here(head done in with red tape and shoulder shrugs then the labour laws)
      Add in the fact that British designers like Alexander McQueen head fashion houses in France and elsewhere
      Just shows contrary to the propaganda, the UK is and always will be a centre of excellence.

        1. jon

          correct SOQ but he was such a great designer his brand still exists thrives and wins awards
          But lets try another john Galliano Stella mc Cartney
          The list is endless
          And the only thing I did not quote was his death

          1. SOQ

            Get over yourself. You didn’t even know Alexander McQueen was dead. Stella McCartney is a multi millionaire because of her father. John Galliano is despite his passport, Spanish, and lost everything for hurling anti Jewish abuse in Paris.

            Try again?

          2. SOQ

            Go read up on people like Anita Roddick before coming on here telling us we don’t understand English culture.

  3. Clampers Outside!

    Jaysus! sounds like that thread went nuts.

    Feck ’em Frilly!

    We may disagree on some stuff, and move on, without personal digs. But the level of vitriol from these new names is reaching unprecedented levels of pure nastiness… :/

    Think I’m gonna make a proper effort from now… to ignore the fupps !

    1. Frilly Keane

      I know
      And they think they’re doing that girl favours

      But at least ye all know the truth now

      I own and run Broadsheet

      Btw
      Who’d have thought Memes would have been capable of grooming a successor

      Oh yeah
      I’m also Leather Jacket Guy
      So

      Do yere worse
      I’m going ta’ hell anyway

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