62 thoughts on “De Sunday Papers

  1. MaryLou's ArmaLite

    The Independent and Express have very different opinions on the progress of the US-UK trade deal.

    Who is telling porkies?

    1. martco

      my fantasy brain is hoping it’s some clever trick by Joe…but I suspect the sad reality is in announcing his plan to finish up he’s unwittingly nuked the spirit the camp & with it that marginal 1% thing that separates great from the good & now we are fuppd.

      I wonder how those who’ve planned their €15k holliers to Japan are feeling now :(

      1. MaryLou's ArmaLite

        Rory Best is a spent force, he looks to have trimmed down a bit, probably in the hope of being more mobile, but he is now completely ineffective in all areas.

        That Klyne is in the squad is a perversion of the residency rule and it appears to be backfiring spectacularly. Quinn Roux, Ultan Dillane and Taghe Bernie must be sickned.

        POM and Stander went hiding…. again. POM is a great lineout operator but England didn’t even bother with a back row jumper and completely dominated our lineout. Stander might as well have been sitting in the stand for all he did.

        Schmidt has flogged Sexton and Murray to the point that we don’t know who our backups are. Are we really going to take 2 undercooked, crocked and injury prone 10s to Japan. Sexton is being protected now, but he will be targeted in Japan and he will go off injured.

        Larmour, and a bit less so for Stockdale, they cannot defend. Larmour is especially bad in this area. He is a delight to watch with ball in hand, but at the other end it is car crash stuff at times.

        Finally fullback, again we have flogged Kearney, however there is an able deputy in Zebo… but he had been alienated. There are other fullbacks in the other provinces, but we seem to want to use a kid that cannot defend as backup.

        I just hope that they were flogged to bits in Portugal and were just not able to get the legs going for today, otherwise it means the chickens that many have said are coming home to roost are finally doing just that.

        1. martco

          yeah it’s hard to disagree with anything you’ve put there, I still think it’s more than coincidental however that it all fell apart directly after he’d made his departure known. I feel sorry for them & it’s such a pity for us as well, a strong performance in the RWC could have been a shot in the arm for the country with all that’s about to happen brexit-wise (I absolutely believe that the soccer team’s efforts from Euro 88 thru the 90’s did lift the mood/psyche of the country at the time, contributed, greased the wheels a bit)
          let’s see

  2. delacaravanio

    It is amazing how deluded the pro-Brexit British media is. The Express says that a UK-US trade deal is practically done, yet the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi and other influential legislators in the US have repeatedly said there will be no US-UK trade deal should the Good Friday agreement be put at risk. Since all trade deals must pass through Congress, there’s no hope of a UK-US trade deal for years.

    1. Batty Brennan

      Have you watched the MacTaggart Lecture delivered by Dorothy Byrne earlier this week? She’s the head of C4 news, and attracted the ire of Cummings from his lair in Downing Street for her calling out of dePfeffel for avoiding interviews and media scrutiny.

      In her presentation, she reported some interesting stats (from OfCom) on news credibility. Surprisingly, TV news rates very highly with the UK public, while social media is held in very low esteem as a news source. I think more of the public can see through the propaganda than we realise.

      1. some old unicorn

        Of course they can but they are not being allowed to have a view- neither a reference not a general election- it really is that subversive.

        The entire political establishment has been hijacked by the extremes- both right and left,

        1. bisted

          …er…didn’t the UK have a referendum…but yes, the democratically expressed will of the electorate is being hyjacked…

          1. scottser

            Leave won that referendum by telling absolute lies. who would have voted for brexit if they were honestly told it’s nothing more than a coup for racists and the super rich?

          2. bisted

            …yes, but the UK electorate clearly voted to leave…to suggest that 17.4 million people were duped is mere speculation…a bit like the opinion polls at the time…

          3. Brother Barnabas

            that the British electorate was assured:

            ” If you think about it, the free trade agreement that we will have to come to with the European Union should be one of the easiest in human history.” 

            isn’t “speculation”. it’s fact. a great many voted for brexit because they were assured there’d be no downsides. they were duped.

          4. some old unicorn

            Ah bisted- the same old mantra- by that logic we should never have a general election again.

            The truth is, if the choice is between Remain and a no deal Brexit- Remain will win hands down. But keep playing that old penny whistle of yours eh?- in the sure certainty that it is not you but others who will suffer upon a no deal.

          5. bisted

            …I freely admit that I have given up hope long ago of any kind of brexit…if I was one of the majority who voted in the UK to leave the EU, I’d be very reluctant to ever vote again…

          6. Cian

            @bisted.
            What about a second referendum – with real, tangible options to allow the people make an informed choice?

            Stay in the EU? Or Hard Brexit?

          7. bisted

            …what’s the point in having another referendum when a clear outcome is already being ignored…maybe they’ll go for the best of three…or five…

          8. some old unicorn

            what’s the point in having another referendum?

            Round in circles we go- because what they are going to get is not what they voted for? Brexit was a con job from start to finish.

    2. eoin

      It’s a world exclusive from the, er, Sunday Express. They’ve beaten the rest of the British press and broadcast media. Better still, they’ve beaten the financial media, the FT, Reuters, Bloombergs. They’ve even beaten the US media, particularly the right wing media beloved by Trump, Fox and Breitbart. Well done, Sunday Express [is that the one that usually features the statins kill/save you, psycho airborne scumbags?]

      1. Jibjob

        For the UK, signing a trade deal with the US ‘next month’, i.e. September, i.e. before Brexit, would be illegal under EU law.

  3. Cú Chulainn

    At this stage the leader of the UK and his government are openly hostile to Ireland and the Good Friday agreement. Whatever happens next, I think it’s going to be a very long time indeed before our two countries have a normal friendly relationship again. If ever.

  4. eoin

    Congratulations again to Vera Twomey whose book “For Ava” entered the charts a fortnight ago at #9 and is believed to have topped the charts last week for a non-fiction book by an Irish author.

    For a book that wasn’t whored around Tubridy, Sean O’Rourke or Pat Kenny, it’s doing amazingly well. A mother’s story about her successful fight to get medicine for her daughter in 2018 Ireland. €15.

  5. eoin

    The Sunday Times goes large on “Get Delaney” this week with four articles. Its front page story suggests financial chicanery but at the end of the day, an individual was paid €60,000 a year for five years to run a foundation and for coming up with a charity concept that the FAI sold to FIFA for €10m [“Martin said he had been told by Giles that the FAI sold the Walk of Dreams concept to Uefa, the European governing authority for football, for €10m.”] Maybe I need a coffee, but I can’t finger anything wrong being revealed with the story.

    A second article begins “John Delaney told the FAI board he was keeping a defamation complaint against a news website running even though his case was weak, to prevent the website from writing negative stories about the association.” Again, hello, welcome to Ireland with its draconian defamation laws. If this story is true, John has learned from others how to chill the media. Delaney took action against a number of media outlets including the Journal and Joe after reporting of the Rio ticketing scandal. Delaney was also unhappy with reporting by the papers and at least one radio station. It appears that Joe is the only media to have paid damages, or at least “a substantial payment” for Delaney’s legal costs. Again, this is hardly news.

    The two other stories are based on what the FAI might have thought were confidential board meeting minutes, but all they reveal is the FAI’s concerns about any termination payment to Delaney and the unsurprising financial relations between the FAI and Lansdowne Road stadium (Aviva is paying €18m for naming rights, money well spent lads, wha), the FAI pays to play matches there and Lansdowne Road pays a dividend to its two joint owners, the IRFU and FAI. Big whoop.

    I don’t think today’s stories move the whole FAI debacle on very much.

  6. eoin

    Both the Sunday Times and the SBP carry similar stories on the €5 (five) billion National Broadband Plan and the report produced by the Oireachtas communications committee last week which called for the NBP to be kicked into touch while a review is carried out.

    The ST says the contract can only be signed from October, because of EU procurement rules.

    On Tuesday, the Oireachtas communications committee will discuss their report which was voted against by all FG members of the committee. The shady Richard Bruton hasn’t responded to the report five days after it was produced. Doesn’t Richard understand that Denis O’Brien’s Digicel is all but bust,or at least that’s what the pricing of Digicel bonds strongly suggests to be the market’s belief.

  7. eoin

    Congrats to the Broadsheet massiv for reaching #181 in the league of top websites in Ireland, leapfrogging Dublinlive.ie (the Mirror’s effort, at #224) not to mention the website of the #3 daily newspaper in Ireland, TheSun.ie at #206.

    Well deserved, well done.

    1. eoin

      Though, on the other hand, it’s all yer fault.

      Mick Clifford writes in the Examiner this weekend “the size of Ms [Gemma] O’Doherty’s following prompted her to seek a nomination for the presidential election. In that quest, she received support from outlets such as the self-styled anti-establishment website Broadsheet.ie. Following her failure to get the nomination, she then changed tack and began appealing to the nativists.”

      But, at least, Broadsheet, yer not the home to columns by a toxic little fib leprechaun, a pig-faced plagiarist or an over-paid charity boss.

      1. V

        self-styled anti-establishment
        When did that happen lads

        Btw, I note another venue referred to Broadsheet as Libertarian

        I’m having my own identity crisis as it is
        Discovered there’s great craic to be had with the Soccer crowd
        It might be their fancy footwork but they’re Savage dancers and singers that can start and finish a song in full

        But then I’m seriously hungover today
        So there’s that
        I’ve my own fear going on

  8. eoin

    The Sindo front page advertises a story about RTE can solve its cash crisis. I’d bet cutting Ryan Tubridy’s €495,000 annual fees is #1………

      1. GiggidyGoo

        The idea is to maximize profits. A monkey could present to late late, and as long as it’s called the Late Late Show, there would be advertising revenue. Alexa could present the radio shows, and it’d have as much as an audience, and revenue.

      2. V

        Yeah Cian
        Of course it does and more

        But in every organisation you will always have departments that bring the money in
        Revenue makers
        But they support their non income generating colleagues; Payroll, HR, Facilities

        The difference between what Tubs makes and what he costs can be referred to as Contribution
        Contribution to Overheads
        So knock off the smuggy smart alecky dick stick
        You’re simply not cut out for it

        Tubs is paid way more that what the market would offer for his audience in any other English speaking broadcaster
        And that’s a fact

        Something else.
        I bet you a Spice bag dinner that there are better earners for RTÉ in net Contribution measurements than Ryan Tubridy

      3. V

        Yeah Cian
        Of course it does and more

        But in every organisation you will always have departments that bring the money in
        Revenue makers
        But they support their non income generating colleagues; Payroll, HR, Facilities
        And their “Direct Cost” Sales Support colleagues; marketing, production etc
        The difference between what Tubs makes and what he costs can be referred to as Contribution
        Contribution to Overheads
        So knock off the smuggy smart alecky dick stick
        You’re simply not cut out for it

        Tubs is paid way more than what the market would offer for his audience in any other English speaking broadcaster
        And that’s a fact

        Something else.
        I bet you a Spice bag dinner that there are better earners for RTÉ in net Contribution measurements than Ryan Tubridy

        1. Cian

          What’s your point? Tubs’ “Contribution to Overheads” is positive. He makes money. And on flagship programs I’ll bet you a dinner that he is in thr top four best earners in money terms (rather that percentage).

          Can you provide evidence for your “fact” please.

          1. V

            Cian
            I don’t work for you
            I don’t need to provide you with anything

            And I never contradicted that Tubs makes money for RTÉ
            He is their biggest money spinner, which I’ve opinioned plenty times before

            Which must always be considered against the fact that he is their biggest talent cost

            Tubs fronts assets already owned by RTÉ
            That’s it
            That’s what he gets paid for

            So do many others that are less costly

            Anyway Cian
            Either get a life
            Get the ride
            Take up kite surfing
            Something

            Anything
            That stops you stalking commentary that’s unfavorable to your whatevers whoevers
            Because what you’re at around here
            Is not recreational
            Nor is it some Asperger’s fanaticism for protecting the Public Service and establishment cartels

          2. some old unicorn

            Venessa- you’ll be auguring that Crossmaglen credit union is fully above board next.

          3. V

            Whether they are or not
            It’s none of my business as I’m not a member there
            Nor am I their Auditor
            Or their Regulator
            Or am I one of their Creditors or Employees

          4. B9Com From No

            V, Cian’s point could have been that you are waffling. On the basis of your reply and ad hominem attacks he just might be right.

  9. eoin

    “Exclusive: BT Group is in exclusive talks to sell its corporate business in Ireland to Mayfair Equity Partners, a London-based private equity group that owns stakes in Ovo Energy and Yo! Sushi. The value of the BT Ireland deal is likely to be more than €300m” tweets Sky’s business correspondent Mark Kleinman last Thursday.

    Second biggest phone company in Ireland worth just €300m. National Broadband Plan worth €5 (five) billion?

    1. some old unicorn

      BT’s s the ultimate definition of ‘notions’- completely over priced labels labels labels TAT- you might pick up a decent work suit in the New Year sales- if you are willing to commit manslaughter in the rush to get to it.

      Looking like a south Dublin drug dealer in their ‘leisure’?- nope- I’d rather join the barrow boys- although there is a crossover I believe.

    2. eoin

      “BT Ireland”, “the second biggest phone company in the State”.

      The BT stands for “British Telecom”.

      Brown Thomas isn’t a phone company, but if it ever decides to give up the auld €25k handbag business, there’s a €5 (five) billion National Broadband Plan contract there where the rewards are even greater.

  10. eoin

    I must say, this column by the Guardian columnist Marina Hyde about Prince Andrew/Jeffrey Epstein is unusually good.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/23/prince-andrew-appalled-epstein-royal-wedding?CMP=share_btn_tw

    Private Eye this week reports “newspaper reports were kept out of the breakfast room [at Balmoral where Queen Elizabeth is spending time with the family, including Andrew] – standard practice when one of the family is in the headlines for the wrong reasons. A flunkey who dared to suggest that Andrew might travel to church separately from Brenda [remember the pic of Andrew and the Queen in the car smiling broadly for the cameras] was curtly dismissed, the monarch feigning not to understand the need for it. Andrew needed a human shield and she was quite prepared to beam for the cameras beside her dodgy son”
    These are the people who nominally rule Britain.

  11. eoin

    The main theme of the HK protest yesterday doesn’t appear to have been reported in Ireland. According to the Guardian

    “The key theme of the sanctioned march earlier in the afternoon was to oppose the government’s installation of smart lamp posts equipped with sensors, closed-circuit cameras and data networks. The government said the lamp posts would only collect air quality, traffic and weather data, although many at the protests said they had covered themselves because of privacy concerns.

    Some handed out medical masks while others gave out tinfoil to cover phones, credit cards with smart pay functions and smart identity cards that Hongkongers are mandated to carry.”

    Sneaky Chinese, mass surveillance of you through lamp posts. Have they not heard of the PSC yet?

    1. GiggidyGoo

      Oh they’ve gone further and managed to put equipment into birds. And not shy about advertising it either.
      Peeking Duck.
      :-)

  12. GiggidyGoo

    So, Bailey and Varadkar didn’t notify her demotion. Which means that she is probably still being paid for the position. Probably also means that Varadkar didn’t do anything, left her in situ and thought that would be then end of it. Which also brings into question her ‘resignation’ from two more committees. Probably ls more smoke and mirrors.
    Has Reggie repaid her overpayment yet?

    1. V

      Doh

      Don’t you know anything about Leo’s Management Style and his Government’s signiture move

      Step 1 Announce
      Step 2 Snap a pic
      Step 3 Tweet/ release
      Step 4 Place radio/ news segment to friendly
      Step 5 Roll with it for 36 maybe 48 hours
      Step 6 Then move on
      To Figure it out later
      Or later again, with a repeat of steps 1 to 6; on loop

      Now if step 5 gets delayed and too prolonged; insert a boogie dance move, like pic at a wedding or sea swimming, doesn’t have to be fancy, in sneakers at a gig or filling the dishwasher will do

      Hey if it’s not broken don’t fix it
      Like, he’s gotten his Government this far hasn’t he
      And given that he’s had two disgraced Minister Resignations
      And fill in the 50 more calamities over the last two years yerselves

      It has to be said
      Leo’s found his groove

      1. GiggidyGoo

        Without the Grand Old Duke Of Cork, Varadkar and his ‘government’ wouldn’t exist. Like a record, there’s only one groove ( not counting side b) which comes to an end eventually.

        1. V

          Not denying that
          But who has actually rebuilt their party from the ground up via Locals?

          And btw a few higher-than-they-should-be- profile Independents are not to be left unmentioned either

          1. GiggidyGoo

            Enda Kenny would take credit for that. I wouldn’t term it rebuilding as it was FFs failure during the recession that handed FG the gift. Kenny asked for people to lend their vote to FG. They got short and medium term loans of votes which they failed to capitalise on.
            Those loans have now been called in – hence the gradual loss in support for FG.
            Maria Bailey wasn’t the be all and end all reason of FG losing the level.of support during the last elections (local).

        2. V

          Not denying that

          Meanwhile
          who has actually rebuilt their party from the ground up via Locals?
          And who has the support of 60% mostly grassroot get-the-vote-outers of Leo’s own party

          And btw a few higher-than-they-should-be- profile Independents are not to be left unmentioned either

      1. V

        True

        And given that Leo might be stuck for support within his own party ….

        See
        This is the type of conspiracy I like
        Proper snotty snivelly local gombeen political conniption stuff

  13. GiggidyGoo

    Enda Kenny would take credit for that. I wouldn’t term it rebuilding as it was FFs failure during the recession that handed FG the gift. Kenny asked for people to lend their vote to FG. They got short and medium term loans of votes which they failed to capitalise on.
    Those loans have now been called in – hence the gradual loss in support for FG.
    Maria Bailey wasn’t the be all and end all reason of FG losing the level.of support during the last elections (local).

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