22 thoughts on “De Monday Papers

  1. Giggidygoo

    Varadkar tries to dodge Vicky Phelan and had a member of his private Spin Unit (it hasn’t gone away you know) to make up a reply.
    Varadkar is basically a coward.

    1. Cian

      “Speaking before she accepted the award, Ms Phelan praised Health Minister Simon Harris for his efforts to improve screening standards.”

    2. Eoin

      “All talk, no action” – that’s a devastating assessment of Leo by Vicky Phelan

      She’s talking about the response to the cancer scandal, the erroneous testing and the failings to inform patients, but she could just as well be talking about housing, homelessness, hospital trolleys, the illegal adoption of babies, the questionable burial of babies in certain institutions, the inquiry into concerns at IBRC, Brexit preparedness and the many, many issues that will be on display tomorrow outside Leinster House as the politicians return from a three-week break.

  2. Dub Spot

    You missed the Irish Times and the staggering “Are Female Leaders (translation: Theresa May) Being Set Up to Tumble Over a Glass Cliff”. — Una Mullally

    Seriously. Brexit is a toxic male assassination job. And before being PM, Theresa May did what job? Are chance it was some great policies towards women of colour and less powerful parts of the community.

    https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/una-mullally-are-female-leaders-being-set-up-to-tumble-over-a-glass-cliff-1.3756470

    No point in writing to the Irish Times with a riposte, the don’t publish challenges to Ms Mullally etc. Trigger Warning By Proxy.

    1. Clampers Outside!

      “Set up” ….hah! Nothing like a good conspiracy, eh. This ain’t one of those tho.

      1. harry

        it’s what they’ve been planning all along!
        “if we leave the European Union ,devastate our economy, and tear apart the cohesiveness of the UK then we can humiliate a woman!”

    2. Spaghetti Hoop

      Mullally constantly ekes out some sort of sexism in everything and then churns out this drivel. Who really considers May’s gender when discussing her role as British PM? I have been watching and reading British media a lot lately and I see no reference to May as a “female leader”, let alone perceived as being set up to fail so that the next PM can be male. Equality is in assimilation – a process of applying the same rules of employment, opportunity and indeed critique, to all.

      And the last time I heard “woman of colour” it was in a TV period drama. British people do not use this term so why does an Irish journalist? She really needs to move into 2019 and quit this moany fiction.

        1. millie st murderlark

          Which tells you a lot about what she spends her time reading in the evenings.

          Nothing wrong with the expression at all, but I agree, it’s not really common parlance in Irish/English media.

  3. Eoin

    The Guardian suggests a request by the British to the EU for an extension to Brexit would be a formality and would be waved through.

    I don’t think it is a formality. The Brits have had 31 months to agree a deal. They’re not getting anything better from the EU in the next 31 months. Brexit has exhausted so much oxygen in the EU. When asked about an extension last week, Simon Coveney was surprisingly luke warm – “we will not stand in the way of an extension”. Germany and France will not be supportive.

    And imagine what an extension would do in the UK to the relationship between parliament and the voters. If you were a Leave voter and you watched the MPs traipse off home for Christmas for a fortnight and deferring the vote, you’d probably conclude parliament doesn’t want to give effect to your voice (expressed 31 months ago). That’s dangerous, and those Leave voters are financially-backed, media-backed, well-organised, used to physical confrontation in many instances and angry.

    Apart from the Guardian, the other British papers are spinning the Brexit wheel. Round and round it goes, where it stops, nobody knows.

    (1) Adopt current draft withdrawal agreement (2) attempt renegotiation with EU of current draft withdrawal agreement (3) Cancel Article 50 notice to leave (4) Seek agreement to extend Article 50 notice to leave (5) Hold a second Brexit referendum (6) Call general election (7) No-deal Brexit crash-out

    1. milk teeth

      All EU negotiations go down to the wire and everything, in my experience anyway, gets extensions. Though my experience is only of negotiating structural funding packages not something anywhere near this significant.

  4. Eoin

    On Saturday, RTE reported the Kinahan #2 had flown into Birmingham from “a Middle Eastern country”

    The Sun today claims it was “South America” and you know what sort of carry-on they get up to there, sniff-sniff.

    Fake news from RTE? Doesn’t matter too much though, it’s clear the Kinahans are headquartered in Dubai, ruled by pals of Mary Robinson and #Marian.

  5. Liam

    all this crap about preventing parents from opting their kids out of Irish. Just make it an optional subject FFS – we’ve had 100 years of it being mandatory and it has not increased usage or made it the daily language of the state as Dev wanted. It’s barely even used in the Gaeltacht these days.

    1. postmanpat

      Especially in secondary school. If your folks don’t speak a word of it , you’re on the fast track to falling behind in school, and underachievement becomes the norm. Because it doesn’t matter what other kinds of intellectual curiosity a child may have, if the overall average is automatically dragged down by compulsory subjects , school just becomes something you have to grind your way through. Fair play to the parents who game the system. I might do it myself. I had to scrape stock phrases on the side of a pen to cheat a pass ordinary level. I find Gaelgors insufferable to listen too anyway but that’s just me.

      1. George

        The problem is primary school where children do not get a strong enough foundation to excel at secondary level. Primary schools should have specialists who are fluent and do only Irish lessons. Expecting every primary teacher to be able to teach Irish well isn’t working.

      2. dav

        ” I find Gaelgors insufferable to listen too anyway but that’s just me.”
        Is it because they are better than you?
        At Irish?

        1. postmanpat

          not at all. I’m not jealous of language hobbyists. I just don’t care for the language personally, a mix of bad memories & lack of interest in the first place I suppose. I never liked when teachers would talk away in Irish by the class door in primary school so that the kids wouldn’t understand what the were saying while doing a maths exercise or whatever, was like adding insult to injury. They were supposed to teach you the language yet counted that you didn’t understand it. As an adult you might be in the company of a couple of Irish speakers who would break away from the group conversation and start to try and out-fuineogegabaiste – each other while everyone else rolls there eyes. I know one very nice Irish speaker work colleague who finds that kind of thing extremely rude and doesn’t do it , and actively tries to steer the conversation back to English.

    2. kellMA

      I love the Irish language (well I like languages in general) and my two cailini are great little Irish speakers. It’s not the main language at home but we do chat in Irish quite regularly. It should not be mandatory but there should be rewards for people keeping it alive to encourage people to freely participate – and there are with the extra points in the leaving etc.

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