Author Archives: Bodger

This afternoon.

Tony Connelly of RTÉ News reported that the European Union is likely to challenge on legal grounds any move by the UK to trigger Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Via RTE News:

Although the UK government has repeatedly threatened to trigger Article 16, saying the conditions have already been met, the European Commission does not believe that to be the case, and would challenge any triggering of the article on legal grounds.

While details have not been shared with member states, it is understood the European Commission is preparing a hierarchy of responses should London trigger Article 16.

“The commission is internally of the view that Article 16 could happen at any time, that it hasn’t gone away, that it’s a very serious possibility,” says one diplomat familiar with preparations.

It is understood the European Commission is working on a twin-track approach, on the one hand bringing forward new proposals that would ease the implementation of the protocol, while on the other hand preparing a response to an Article 16 move

EU likely to challenge any move to trigger Article 16 (RTÉ)

Graphic:  @MillsSheehy and @melissaittoo

This afternoon.

Via The Irish Times:

Liam Kavanagh, managing director of The Irish Times, said the agreement with Google was “a welcome acknowledgement of the value of trusted news sources in modern democracies”.

“It means titles in The Irish Times Group have more support to provide high-quality, independent journalism to a wider audience,” he said.

The Irish Times Group has agreed terms with Google which will allow access to content from all titles in the group available through Google News Showcase when it launches in the Irish market later this year.

Google signs deal with Irish Times and other Irish partners to promote news (Irish Times)

Meanwhile…

Google shifted more than $75.4 billion (€63 billion) in profits out of the Republic using the controversial “double-Irish” tax arrangement in 2019, the last year in which it used the loophole.

The technology giant availed of the tax arrangement to move the money out of Google Ireland Holdings Unlimited Company via interim dividends and other payments. This company was incorporated in Ireland but tax domiciled in Bermuda at the time of the transfer.

The move allowed Google Ireland Holdings to escape corporation tax both in the Republic and in the United States where its ultimate parent, Alphabet, is headquartered. The holding company reported a $13 billion pretax profit for 2019, which was effectively tax-free, the accounts show.

A year earlier, Google Ireland Holdings paid out dividends of €23 billion, having recorded turnover of $25.7 billion.

Google has used the double Irish loophole to funnel billions in global profits through Ireland and on to Bermuda, effectively putting them beyond the reach of US tax authorities.

Companies exploiting the double Irish put their intellectual property into an Irish-registered company that is controlled from a tax haven such as Bermuda.

Ireland considers the company to be tax-resident in Bermuda, while the US considers it to be tax-resident here. The result is that when royalty payments are sent to the company, they go untaxed – unless or until the money is eventually sent home to the US parent.

Google used ‘double-Irish’ to shift $75.4bn in profits out of Ireland (Arthur Beesley, Irish Times, April 17, 2021)

This afternoon.

Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Good times.

Clinton hails work of women in peace process as she becomes Queen’s University’s first female chancellor (Belfast Telegraph)

From top: Businessman and kidnap victim Don Tidey (second left) and his children following his release on December 17, 1983; Above from left: Don Tidey; Mother of Garda Gary Sheehan, Margaret Sheehan, Gary’s sisters Grainne and Jennifer and Martin McAviney (at back)

This afternoon.

Dubhlinn Gardens, Dublin Castle, Dublin 2.

At a ceremony to award deceased, retired and serving members of An Garda Síochána with Scott Medals for bravery were the family of Garda Gary Sheehan, who lost his life helping to free kidnap victim Don Tidey.

Mr Tidey, a supermarket executive, was kidnapped outside his home in Dublin in November, 1983 and held captive for 23 days by an armed IRA gang before he was rescued by the gardaí and Defence Forces.

Garda Sheehan along with Irish Army Private Patrick Kelly were shot dead during a shoot-out in Drumcroman Woods, Derrada, county Leitrim.

Don Tidey: Gardaí honoured for bravery during kidnapping (BBC)

Sam Boal and Eamonn Farrell/RollingNews

 

Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Michelle O’Neill and President of Sinn Féin Mary Lou McDonald

They both have big chests.

Pause.

Oh, grow up.

Willie Hampton?

Police outside the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne, Australia on Wednesday afternoon

This morning.

Further to continuing protests against covid measures across Australia….

…public health physician David Bell writes:

‘As an Australian, I want to write something on the significance of what happened in Melbourne this week, and the destruction of societal values. About the scenes of black-clad police firing rubber bullets at protestors at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne.

The Shrine of Remembrance is as close as non-Aboriginal Australia comes to a sacred place. It’s an unusually moving place of quiet and reflection. It evokes the memory of many who chose to risk death, and died, so that others would be free, not live under totalitarian regimes.

This was not empty garbage. As a child I knew people who had suffered greatly and survived, an uncle died well before I was born. A family member still had the nightmares 30 years on. As many have, in many countries, in the sufferings of war.

Australia, despite many faults and suffering internally, particularly for indigenous people, has been an unusually inclusive society.

Police have never, to my knowledge, fired rubber bullets.They don’t use armoured vehicles. They only recently started dressing in black.

To see these black-clad police, replete with weapons and body armour, firing on civilians at the Shrine, forcing the type of regime that the Shrine’s solemn defiance is set against, with the excuse of ‘public health’, brings a profound sense of something gone terribly wrong.

We have to realise the enormity of what is being done, through promotion of fear, and through incitement of hatred against others for thinking differently.

Not just in Australia, but wherever people hold that all are born equal, and oppression is wrong.

If we don’t work together to stop this, stop the people doing this, and tell them this is unacceptable, the Shrine will signify effort spent in vain.

The effort of those who have fought to keep truth, openness and respect as a basis for society will have been betrayed.’

Hundreds arrested for illegally protesting across Melbourne (9News)

Pic: Sky News

Gulp.

Firm but fair?

Or plainly inhumane?

Only you can decide.

Earlier: Time For Your Booster

Alamy Stock

Meanwhile…

Um.

Thanks KN

This morning.

Airfield Estate, Dundrum, county Dublin.

Pupils from Wesley College – from top: redsers Lucy Clarke and her brother Henry and Juliette Carol Breen and fake redser Charlotte White – launch ‘From the Ground Up’, a free Junior Cycle short course where students will ‘use skills learnt in Science, Business, HE and Geography to demonstrate how all subjects are integrated through the production of food’.

It all sounds a bNOMNOMNOM

Leon Farrell/Photocall Ireland

HSE CEO Paul Reid

This morning.

The Health Service Executive has said that a third dose of Covid-19 vaccine for those who are immunocompromised will get under way from next week.

Via RTÉ

Speaking on RTÉ’s Morning Ireland, HSE CEO Paul Reid said contact would be made with people who are deemed at highest risk, saying that risk would be determined by clinical teams.

“It will be a period of five to six weeks to complete this programme,” he said, adding that it will be complex with it focused on the most vulnerable and immunocompromised.

He said identifying the most at-risk would not be a simple process as it is not a list that they can “take off the shelf” but is rather a “complex piece of identification”.

“It does address people who are highly immunocompromised, organ recipients, renal patients, certain cancer patients and certain people on certain medications,” Mr Reid said.

He said if people are not contacted it is likely they are not in that highest risk category.

Third dose for immunocompromised to begin next week – HSE (RTÉ)

RollingNews

Meanwhile…

James Fitzgerald writes:

Surely Bodger must condemn the high rate of vaccination in Waterford as far as I know it was done without hunting down people in the street with vaccine blowdarts…

Fight!