28 thoughts on “De Wednesday Papers

  1. shayna

    I wonder how many Europeans have been to a baseball game? I haven’t – it seems to take forever for a team to win – and it would appear that the crowd/audience/supporters are all drinking beer and eating hot-dogs for the duration. Backstop is a baseball term, yet, it’s used in Ireland and the UK in reference to Brexit, namely the border issue of NI and ROI. Has everyone been drinking beer and eating hot-dogs for the past 3 years? I’ve given up, pretty much, politically. Boris Johnson, who’s splashed (no Tory pun intended) all over the British press is the answer? Also – Tyrone on Saturday- I mean, kinda poor.

    1. kellMA

      I was taken to a baseball match in wrigleyfield many moons ago. Boring AF. I drank beer and we left early. I think the Cubs were playing but couldn’t be sure.

    2. Vanessa the Holy Face of Frilly Keane

      Hi Shayna
      There’s a baseball league here in Blah Cliath
      The City Council pitches here in Crumlin get re-marked into Baseball Diamonds
      2 on each pitch – when the soccer season ends and they’re done with them,
      opposite corners like and TBF the pitches are well maintained by Council greenkeepers

      Going by the crowds and the set ups they bring with them it’s definitely well attended and supported
      Deckchairs, kits etc
      Mixed teams play with the softball
      They’re all shy rhymes with kite mind you
      Kicks off from the June BH
      Training and development most weekday evenings
      Matches on Sundays

      Lorcans nearby who also use the pitches for training
      Are often seen rocking up to make up the numbers

      Last night I saw some of the neighbours and their kids join in
      Although they were insisting they were playing Rounders
      Just to wind up the yanks like

      Sum’ting else, they always cleans up after themselves
      Unlike the soccer crowds – leaving rubbish like

      Seriously, if ya fancy giving it a lash
      Or just a nosey
      Gis a shout

      But it’s definitely a thing here now

    3. Increasing Displacement

      I was at one. Bored me to tears so I had a few beers and banter with friends.
      The game itself was irrelevant after a while.

    1. ReproBertie

      “school some manners into the Peacock Taoiseach and remind him how much Ireland really depends on the mainland.”

      Nice to see the Sasamachs have learned exactly nothing from the past 2 something years of negotiating with the EU. But then, the tea boy is promising to renegotiate the deal he negotiated and that May failed to renegotiate several times already so intelligence is clearly lacking among the Sasamachs.

      Experts find a no deal will have a huge impact on NI businesses just as the conservatives are planning on installing the “f- business” tea boy as their Taoiseach. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic.

  2. eoin

    The internal FG review by whats-his-name SC of the Maria Bailey dodgy swing compo business is due today. While it’s unlikely to address Bailey’s Aer Lingus compo claim in 2005, it is supposed to look at the role the FG culture minister Josepha Madigan played in the swing compo business and it should also look at the merit of a case which was grounded in false statements about the extent of injuries, and quite possibly a lot more. Will Maria Bailey last the day or will she be suspended? What about Josepha Madigan? Why not make it 3-for-3 and kick Alan Farrell out for his dodgy compo claim as well?

    Or will this review be extended as well….

  3. eoin

    The press-Gardai crossed a line yesterday by identifying the citizen (Mago Gately) as the person who was raided by the Garda criminal assets bureau, which seized a blue Golf GTI (number plates blanked on the pics) and a dodgy looking “rolex”. Early yesterday, RTE jigsaw identified Gately and later the Indo published his name.

    Is this the first time the CAB have named a citizen on the day the citizen was raided? And if you’re going to name the citizen, what’s the point in blanking the number plate on the car you’re seizing?

    And remember this is the country where the media still shamelessly refers to “Mr Flashy” and “Mr Big” and where Noeleen Coakley Hutch is suing the Star, Jonathan Hutch is suing TV3 and Nikita Murtagh is suing the publishers of the Irish Sun/Times Ireland.

  4. eoin

    The sleazebaggery in FG grows whiffier by the day. Yesterday Leo tried to defend the government decision not to ban smoky coal which is transforming some towns, like Enniscorthy, into New Delhis for air quality. Leo says he’s a-scared of the coal companies taking legal action. Since when did Irish coal companies become more powerful than the farmers or vintners?

    And yesterday also, the government tried to defend its decision to block a Bill which would ban drilling for oil. The Times Ireland reports “The government opposed a bill to ban future fossil fuel exploration for fear of legal challenges from companies with oil and gas licences, a junior minister has said…Mr Canney said that there were costs associated with the bill, including refunds for application and licensing fees, and that legal challenges would be likely.”

    I would love to see what lobbying is taking place at the moment.

    1. Vanessa the Holy Face of Frilly Keane

      I don’t think you would
      Want to see the type of lobbying going on I mean

      ’cause like
      The Smokey coal market here isn’t substantial enough or long-term enough to be worth the effort
      So you’d have’ta wonder what the real money is looking for
      Or who it’s working for

      Haliburton’esq almost

  5. GiggidyGoo

    The LPT scam now will drill its way deeper into our pockets. Remember that our taxes always paid for local services. Then LPT was introduced, but the existing contribution from our taxes didn’t reduce. And it’s a scam to say that there will be ‘modest’ increases. The base rate might have a ‘modest’ increase, but the councils can increase the actual rate sharply.
    And we are getting nothing extra from this tax that wasn’t there when our normal taxes were paying for the councils. It’s a stealth tax. It’s an extra tax. No extra benefits. Apart from it going directly to another waste of public lunds – Irish Water ( an invoicing system, only, that has cost billions )

    1. Vanessa the Holy Face of Frilly Keane

      Remind me again there Gigs
      Why wasn’t the ESB or the FloGas crowd’s billing system good enough?

      BTW
      I wonder how many Councils
      Particularly City ones
      Will vote to raise LPT now that the elections are over

      Imagine cribbing about no funds for housing and services
      And then voting to defund yerself

  6. eoin

    Pity the member of the Congregationalist Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster lost his case at the Workplace Relations Commission against the National Transport Authority (which had provided free travel to people attending the Pope’s Phoenix Park gig last August). The Flyning Spaghetti people organised a gathering near the Phoenix Park at the same time and demanded religious equality with free travel for their members also. Sadly the Spags lost at the WRC, but only on a technicality by failing to follow WRC procedures. Shame. The NTA was represented at the WRC by top law firm McCann Fitz.

    1. GiggidyGoo

      We read about WRC awards. There is one actually reported today about a €20,000 award to a worker who was constantly being called queer by a director of the company.

      But we never actually get the company name or the name of the guilty party. Why is that?

  7. eoin

    Dodgy report by Reuters on Irish media out today (blame Jane Suiter at DCU for the following commentary).
    https://reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2019-06/DNR_2019_FINAL_0.pdf

    “It [Newsbrands Ireland] also successfully lobbied the government to reduce VAT on printed [sic] newspapers which took effect in January 2019″

    ” News Corp UK & Ireland [sic] is making most staff redundant and the paper’s print edition will cease publication. Just three staff positions out of about 20 are being retained.”

    Apparently thejournal.ie is the #2 online news website, after RTE at #1, in this country

    Dodgy, dodgy, dodgy.

      1. eoin

        Not just RTE,

        Irish Times “reports”

        “The Irish Times’ success in building a suscriber base for its online news products could point to a public desire for quality Irish perspectives on world events, according to Dublin City University’s Institute of Future Media and Journalism (FuJo).

        ….

        The report noted that The Irish Times achieved a 26 per cent rise in digital sales in 2018, making it the only newspaper here to grow across both print and digital during this period.”

        Print declined at the Irish Times in 2018, it’s down 4.8%, and they’re now selling less than 48,000 copies at full price each day.

        As for digital, just 20 (twenty) out its 21,000 average daily sales are at full price. You can build digital sales if you’re giving the stuff away!

        The Irish Times goes on to report “The report shows that 10 per cent of the 2,013 people surveyed in January and February 2019 cited The Irish Times as one of the main brands they used for news. Some 8 per cent cited The Irish Times, which launched digital subscription products in 2015, as a “main traditional source of news”.”

        It doesn’t give context by saying the IT is waaay down the list of news sources.

        And yes, that’s [“suscriber”] how they spell “subscriber”

  8. Lurch

    I wonder at what point do people really start to panic about climate change and biodiversity loss?
    At what point?
    We all know that the longer a problem is ignored the worse it gets.
    We all know that the effects will be catastrophic; in some countries they already are.
    Are we powerless? Can we not stand up and do the right thing and demand a carbon neutral economy?
    Can we not demand that our government stop blocking environmental legislation such as the “Climate Action – keep it in the ground” bill? Can we not demand that our government stop using undemocratic “procedural trickery” to prevent these bills being passed?
    Irish people are inherently good. I’m proud of our history. I learned that we always stood up to tyranny in the past.
    Well our government is on a very different path and I’m worried.

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