About a month ago (April 5) Declan Ganley, above, who is not in the CIA, was reportedly (on the Business and Finance website) setting up a Swiss bank with Consantin Gurdiev and David McDreamy as directors. The bank would look after Irish depositors who no longer felt their money was safe in Irish banks.

A day later we got this:

From:
Philip Lee Solicitors

Message:
Our Client: Declan Ganley

Dear Sirs,

It has come to our client’s attention that on your website, you have
published an article relating to our client entitled “This Is No Way
To Run A Bank”.

The article was uploaded at approximately 6.16pm yesterday.

It is important that you are made aware that this article is
substantially inaccurate. It contains a large number of serious
errors. Specifically:-

(1) Our client is not involved in the establishment of a new bank;

(2) Your article names a number of third-party individuals who are
neither directors nor shareholders of a financial institution of any
kind that is associated with our client; and

(3) The press release quoted from extensively is unknown to our
client. As far as he is concerned, it is a complete fabrication.

Our client is in the process of carrying out an urgent investigation
into the provenance of this material.

The purpose of the present letter is, in good faith, to afford you an
opportunity to immediately remove this article from your website. You
might note that we have already written to Business & Finance, an
apparent source for the article on your website, in identical terms.
The article has been removed from their website.

Our client has no wish to enter into unnecessary litigation, or to
apply for an injunction. Both possibilities can be immediately
precluded if you remove the article. If this is not done, our client
will have no option, however reluctantly, but to immediately move to
the alternatives (including an immediate application to the High
Court) available to him.

Yours faithfully
PHILIP LEE SOLICITORS

As it seemed somewhat unequivocal (and because Ewok had begun softly whimpering) we chose to ‘redact’ the article in a cowardly but ‘satirical’ manner.

Like so:

Not our finest 15 minutes but, you know, we all partied.

Then, late last night, Bodger spotted this:

And not for the first time did we muse to ourselves: what must it be like to be a lawyer for a person like Ganley? To have survived Gonzaga/Loreto or wherever, gone through law school, toiled for years setting up a practice/becoming a partner, only to end up writing comically scary letters on behalf of an angry rich dude whose motives are unclear even to himself?

And then we thought: the money must be fantastic.

Ganley Firm To Help Clients Put Money In Swiss Banks (Irish Independent)

(Photocall Ireland)

.

Even though he probably took part in that Gonzaga debate

High Court Master Edmund Honohan.

He has a novel idea.

He thinks  the pursuit of people to “the bitter end as part of an accountancy exercise to write-off debts for tax relief” is leading to “social disquiet” and driving some to suicide.

The banks, he says, come to court “assuming the banker always wins”

He believes  legislation should be changed to “put a brake” on the spiralling number of judgments against those who cannot pay.

He asks: ‘Why should there be an incentive to cause untold harm socially when there is no money at the end of the road?’

He told RTE if evidence that any transactions were in reality a joint venture with the bank, the law would insist that both parties share the losses.

Mr Honohan shares the view that most of the debt cases arose due to circumstances beyond the control of the debtor because the economy had shut down as a result of the banking collapse.

This is getting interesting.

High Court Master Calls For Debt Forgiveness (RTE)

Kidding.

It all went off without a hitch.

The projector (hello again) got stuck a few times, but then it is 400 years old.

‘Nothing really says economic recovery like a stilted power point presentation,’ scribbled Ewok (man at front taking notes) furiously.

Economic And Social Research Institute

(Photocall Ireland)

Bertie Goes To China…Again (Maman Poulet)

Chinese Foreign Affairs

Thanks Bibi Baskin Robbins

Controlling the Cost Of Financial Crises (World Bank, 2000)

Thanks Conor McQuillan

Yes, that one.

Well this is what photographer Lili Forberg was getting herself into this morning, promoting the nationwide amateur photo challenge (sponsored by TOP oil products) at the Gibson Hotel in the Point Village.

Nothing, to Chompsky’s addled mind, says amateur photography like naked women in the rain with a golf umbrella.

(Sasko Lazarov/Photocall Ireland)

Context.

Previously: Morgan Kelly Takes Out Bearded Man In Extra-Judicial Killing

The Mill apartment complex in Ballisodare: 75 apartments built on the site of an old mill on the Owenmore river about five miles from Sligo town.

Finished in 2006 with apartments starting “from”  €320,000. it was billed as “a property that simply has it all”

Things didn’t quite work out like that, as blogger Lenny from ZXCode discovered this week:

Sez Lenny:

“Its a shame that this place was built in place of the old mill which stood for over a century, but its a tragedy that it was not maintained and used to house someone. It must have cost between €5m and €10m to build and now its worth nothing. Water and electricity are cut off and the only sounds are the dying batteries in the smoke alarms. Remember that this development was pretty much finished and ready for tenants in 2006.”

Thanks Nev

In Other News: Planning Chairman ‘Regrets’ Design Stance (Frank McDonald, Irish Times)

“I just talked to somebody very knowledgeable … [who] thinks that he’s in a villa, a nice comfortable villa,”

A villa in Pakistan. Not a cave.”

Christiane Amanpour, HBO’s Real Time With Bill Maher.

If Chompsky could legally marry in this wretched, dog-hating country he would have asked for that lady’s hand a lot earlier than 2008.

Osama Bin Laden in a Pakistan Villa? Source Told Christiane Amanpour in 2008 (ABC News)