From top: Leo Varadkar and Boris Johnson in Dublin in 2019; Anthony Sheridan
Anthony Sheridan writes:
One of the most memorable clips from the hilarious BBC comedy Fawlty Towers involved Basil [John Cleese] upsetting a group of German diners by constantly making references to the war.
Blissfully unaware of the upset he was causing he warned staff member Polly:
“Listen, don’t mention the war! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.”
‘Don’t mention the war’ has since become a byword for those wishing to avoid discussing embarrassing issues.
But, it seems, RTÉs London correspondent Sean Whelan has never heard of it.
Reporting on the scandal surrounding Boris Johnson, he had this to say on RTÉ’s News at One:
“He’s the only Prime minister in Europe as far as I’m aware that’s being investigated by the police and that’s just not a good look.
“Here you have somebody who is making the rules for the rest of the country and the police force, the people who investigate crime, are now going to be investigating him and his immediate staff and that just looks dreadful, doesn’t it?”
Host Bryan Dobson, immediately realising that Whelan was blissfully unaware of the embarrassing parallels between the UK Prime Minister under police investigation and our soon to be Taoiseach, Varadkar, also under police investigation, studiously avoided responding to such a dangerous question.
I suspect that somebody from RTÉ/Fianna Fail/Fine Gael has since had a word in Whelan’s ear to castigate him for being the only journalist to breach the mainstream media bias protecting Varadkar.
Anthony Sheridan is a freelance journalist and blogs at Public Enquiry.
Irish Examiner View: Down the rabbit hole with Boris (Irish Examiner)
In all fairness – how long does it take the Gardaí to investigate Leo’s leak? I wouldn’t have expected it to take this long though i expect as it passes up through the various tiers of authority in the Phoenix Park there’s probably a whole lot of staring out the window wondering … “what’ll happen if ….?”
Or maybe the outcome has been written and the steps will be reverse-engineered? Surely not … !?
Very fair point Anthony. Simon Coveney and the DFA also pertinent to the double standards.
Sean not very well up then?
Educational standards fell off a cliff long enough ago for the ill-educated to now appear in positions where their illiteracy exposes their establishment propaganda to ridicule & this will continue & even accelerate. I remember a few years back seeing the first spelling mistakes & incomprehensible sentences starting to appear in the BBC News scrolling headlines. The quality of written word communication on this forum is superior to the work of younger journalists, these days. It’s an odd sensation, witnessing someone trying to propagandise you in English that would’ve garnered red ink in a Leaving Cert lower level English exam.
They didn’t fall, they were pushed of a cliff in the early 60s. A deliberate dumbing down of the masses, that has sought to make every generation more ignorant & compliant than the last. Gone is intellectual inquiry through critical thinking, first principles etc – to be replaced with specialisation & unquestioning rote learning.
The purposeful selection of dark triad types for the civil service, body politic & big business compounds the issues we face. This is clearly evident in the posting here and elsewhere – with Gov Dept clowns unable to provide any evidence for their assertions & merely resorting to childish name calling and mud slinging.
‘100% effective at preventing hospitalisation and deaths’ – has become the vaccinated forming most of the Covid casualties & filling cardiac / cancer wards. To point this out mean you ‘support Nazis!’ to these irredeemable idiots.
Thankfully, some have taught themselves how to think, and know not to fall for every propagandized narrative that is peddled.
Me Hole was asked about Leo the leak becoming T-Shock while under investigation on Newstalk
As usual he dodged the Question but he cant avoid it forever
Anthony Sheridan should broaden his reading horizons. https://bit.ly/3sfGBhT