Category Archives: Politics

from the Dail to the White House and back via Downing Street and elsewhere.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-_GzbHDNz0

An anti-abortion protester has been convicted of harassing a Marie Stopes clinic director at her Belfast city centre offices.

Bernadette Smyth, who leads the anti-abortion group Precious Life, was warned she could face a jail sentence for her campaign against Dawn Purvis.

The judge said: “This case was run, no-holds barred, in a vicious and malicious fashion.”

He said an investigating police officer had been deliberately slandered.

Ms Purvis had been the victim of an unwarranted attack, the judge said.

Mrs Smyth was also told she will be ordered to pay compensation and would be restrained from the area around the clinic.

The 51-year-old had denied harassing Ms Purvis – a former Progressive Unionist Party assembly member – on two dates earlier this year.

With sentencing put back until next month, Mrs Smyth was told her potential punishment could be community service or prison.

The judge said anti-abortion campaigners stationed outside the clinic had been forcing any women of child-bearing age to identify their reasons for entering.

Because of that conduct, he said the range of possible sentencing may go from community service to imprisonment.

Mrs Smyth was told she will certainly have some form of restraining order imposed on her.

Although she left court without making comment, her solicitor described the verdict as “a disappointment for Christians worldwide“.

Anti-abortion protester Bernadette Smyth guilty of harassing Dawn Purvis (BBC News NI)

Previously: Bernie Smyth on Broadsheet

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Last night on BBC One, Spotlight’s Mandy McAuley investigated the use of public money to pay the rent of constituency offices of MLAs including Arlene Foster (DUP), Ross Hussey (UUP) and Sinn Féin members Martin McGuinness, Francie Molloy, Mitchel McLaughlin and Daithí McKay.

If ye can’t beat them, rob them.

The second part of the two-part exposé continues next Tuesday.

Part one is repeated tonight on BBC Two NI at 11:20pm.

Spotlight: Sir Alistair Graham calls for probe into Northern Ireland MLAs’ rent money (BBC News NI)

Previously: Kerching Féin

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An improvised grenade launcher claimed by the ‘IRA’ to have been used to attack the PSNI in North Belfast

Police officers guarding a notorious interface say they have been left like “sitting ducks” following a surge in dissident republican attacks, including a recent rocket attack.

It is claimed the police presence between Ardoyne and Twaddell Avenue in north Belfast has been scaled back in recent months because of budget pressures on the PSNI.

One officer said while patrolling the area they feel their every move is being watched by dissidents and they fear further attempts on their lives.

A senior police officer said the PSNI was making every effort to protect both its officers and the public.

On Sunday evening a man ran out of Brompton Park with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher before firing it at a PSNI Land Rover close to the loyalist camp at Twaddell.

The lethal device passed through the vehicle’s outer skin but ricocheted off heavier armour on the driver’s side. The officers inside were badly shaken but uninjured.

It was the third attempt to murder police officers at the interface in the past year.

Police: we’re sitting ducks (Chris Kilpatrick, Belfast Telegraph) [not currently available online]

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Senator McCarthy Paul Bradford (Reform Alliance) called out the Socialist Party on the latest water charges protests this afternoon.

I raised here last week, Cathaoirleach the fact that we were celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I’m sure Deputy Murphy and his colleagues in the Socialist Party and that ilk wished that the Berlin Wall and all it stood for, was still standing. Because they in their Trotsky Marxist view of the world have absolutely nothing in common with genuine working class people on this island….We must learn from this disaster but we all stand shoulder to shoulder with the Tánaiste and indeed anybody who’s been put under unfair pressure by mob rule. We must never give in to mob rule in this country. We haven’t given in to the mob rule of the Provisional IRA in the 60s, 70s, and 80s and we must not give in to mob rule now of extreme left-wing socialists who look back to a panacea of the Soviet Union and North Korea. That’s their aspiration for our island and it’s not an aspiration that I, and the vast majority of the people on this land would share.

1991 called.

They’d like their college debating rhetoric and striped shirt returned.

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Yesterday, Socialist Party TD Ruth Coppinger made reference to high-profile members of Sinn Féin bullying Maíria Cahill on social media.

One particular twitter account (@capnblack) belongs to Alan Donnelly (aka Alan Ó Donnaille), brother of Sinn Féin councillor Paul Donnelly, who ran in the Dublin West by-election earlier this year.

Meanwhile…

On last night’s ‘Tonight with Vincent Browne’, Sinn Féin TD for Meath West Peadar Tóibín denied Sinn Féin members were involved in online bullying of Maíria Cahill.

Watch in full here.

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Maíria Cahill spent the day in Leinster House answering questions and talking about the wider issue of abuse.

A Dáil debate is scheduled today from 2:30 pm regarding allegations of sexual abuse by members of the republican movement arising from the Maíria Cahill case.

Watch it live here.

Gerry Adams to meet woman ‘raped by top republican’ (Eilis O’Hanlon, Sunday Independent December 2013)

Laura Hutton/Photocall Ireland

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Bill O’Herlihy and Frank Flannery

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The first instalment of the Flannery Files has arrived.

28 minutes of Frank Flannery’s thoughts on the State of the Nation.

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Previously: Outside The Tent

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Read the Garda Inspectorate’s 489-page report in full here.

Earlier: ‘Underreported, Underrecorded And Underplayed’