Category Archives: Politics

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

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A Fine Gael councillor, who was a strong supporter of Enda Kenny during the leadership heave, has avoided conviction for drink-driving for a second time.

In last week’s case before Longford District Court Councillor Frank Kilbride [above], a former showband star, was charged with failing to provide a breath sample at Longford Garda Station on March 24 last year. The case was dismissed because he was not given options to provide blood or urine samples.

In 2007, Mr Kilbride was charged with careless driving and failing to provide a breath or urine sample after a traffic accident near Granard. Gardaí said they had had to take evasive action in their patrol car to avoid a collision with a car approaching on the wrong side of the road. They said they followed it and moments later found the car the councillor was driving was lying on its roof.

Councillor Kilbride who resigned from Fine Gael last July over the Protection of Life During Pregnancy Bill  and subsequently rejoined the party, hosts his own weekly country music show on Sky 191 and has inspired a tribute song to his driving escapades.

Good times.

The Fine Gael councillor (and showband legend) who gets off over a second drink-driving incident (Jennifer Bray,Aisling Kiernan/Irish Daily Mail) [not available online]

Any excuse for the unborn babbies.


Longford Councillor resigns from Fine Gael (Shannonside Radio, July 2013)

lala-teletubbies-240747Jim-Shannon-291x275

Strangford MP Jim Shannon (above) believes the BBC children’s programme Teletubbies could change attitudes in North Korea. The DUP man has backed a House of Commons motion that calls for BBC programmes to be extended to the Korean peninsula.

The early day motion says: “The broadcast of programmes like Teletubbies would change the attitudes of the North Korean dictatorship, which has incarcerated more than 200,000 of its citizens in gulags.” The Strangford MP said it was “really important to have the BBC in North Korea”.


Teletubbies ‘could transform North Korea’ says DUP MP Jim Shannon (Stephen Walker, BBC NI)

FineGael

[A screengrab from the Fine Gael website last night]

Fine Gael’s website published has published a piece by Patrick O’Donovan, a Fine Gael TD on the Communications Committee, about the future…

Robert Synnott writes:

Go read it; it’s really quite an amazing piece. I believe it’s supposed to be about the Silk Road, a seller of illegal materials, largely drugs, on the Tor network, and possibly also about Freedom Hosting, also on the Tor network and formerly one of the world’s larger distributors of child porn. It could even be about Tor itself.

The reason for my uncertainty is that it is utterly incoherent. It talks about open-source browsers, and “replacement” open-source browsers quickly appearing to continue the illegal trade. But this is nonsensical. The only non-open-source browser in common use today is the much-in-decline Internet Explorer; while Chrome and Safari are technically closed source, they are substantially open source. Firefox is entirely open source. And there’s nothing illegal about open source browsers. I can only imagine that by “open source browsers” he means “Tor network sites”.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m all for the recent shutdown of the Silk Road and Freedom Hosting. Freedom Hosting was indeed a big child porn distributor, and Silk Road’s operator was a very nasty piece of work.

I’m not even worried that the government will make bad legislation off the back of this. When it comes to it, the government will not be banning Google’s browser on the say-so of an obscure TD.

My issue is more the amazing carelessness. It would have taken O’Donovan five minutes of reading Wikipedia to, if not have a clear picture of what was going on, at least know better than to write what he did. The computer-machines seem to be a strange focal point of governmental cluelessness; while TDs writing on other subjects are hardly perfect, you’re not going to get James Reilly writing a piece advocating the use of radium to cure The Humours, or something, nor will you find Alan Shatter extolling the virtues of the Freeman on the Land philosophy. This isn’t the first time, though, that a TD has spouted complete nonsense about computers.

It makes it all the worse that O’Donovan is on the Communications Committee. You’d expect he could at least put in a little effort on what his job is supposed to be. I don’t really expect him to know this stuff, though it’d be a nice bonus, but you’d think he could look up what the words mean. I mean, what are we paying him for? Is this all a backbencher does, write nonsensical letters about something they half-remember from a tabloid?

It’s also, of course, embarrassing; you can’t really go on about the Knowledge Economy on the one hand and do this sort of thing on the other. Not really good enough, Fine Gael.

Yikes.

O’Donovan calls for crackdown on internet browsers and payment systems which facilitate illegal activity (Fine Gael)

The government’s IT credibility problem (Robert Synnott)

Previously: Fidema: The Frape Tape

Donegal

 

Then Rena Donaghey took herself away.

Donegal County Council’s budget has been passed this evening after the deciding vote fell to martyr Mayor Ian McGarvey. Tied at 14/14, Councillor Rena Donaghey left the meeting without casting her vote leaving it to McGarvey to adopt the County Council’s budget.

Since she’s gone, they can do whatever they want.

Listen here

Highland Radio

Earlier: Meanwhile, In Donegal

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Eamonn Mallie interviews Ian Paisley in the first of two one hour episodes.

BBC One 10:35pm tonight.

Previously: Shots Across The Border

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Ian Paisley addressing a crowd in January 1974:

“I say to the Dublin government Mr Faulkner says it’s hands across the border to Dublin. I say if they don’t behave themselves in the South, it will be shots across the border!”

Four months later, on the 17th of May, three car bombs detonated in Dublin and Monaghan killing 33 people, the highest death toll in a single day of the Troubles.

[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/128822216″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=false” width=”100%” height=”166″ iframe=”true” /]

In his interview with Eamonn Mallie to be shown on BBC One on Monday night, Ian Paisley when referring to the bombings is quoted as saying:

“The political leaders brought it on themselves. I was very much shocked that there was anyone going to be hurt in that way. But I mean, who brought that on themselves was the people that, their own political leaders, and they had endorsed in what their attitude to Northern Ireland, and at that time the attitude of the south government in Northern Ireland was ridiculous, so it was. I not only had nothing to do with it, but I’d said I had nothing to do with it and denounced the people who had done it… What more could I do? I took my stand. I denounced what was wrong, but I could not say to the people: ‘Just sit down and let them put a rope round your neck’.”

Dublin provoked 1974 UVF Dublin and Monaghan bombings – Paisley (Belfast Newsletter)

jc

Speaking under parliamentary privilege today in the Seanad, Professor John Crown made further allegations against the board of St Vincent’s Hospital.

Professor John Crown: “The needs of those who require social inclusion, I think also includes those who have held challenges – and in this regard, I must just state in supporting the amendment that in September of 2002, a member of the administration of St. Vincent’s Private Hospital told me that the hospital had been billing VHI and other insurers in respect of drugs which had been provided to that institution for free, for research studies.
In the letter he stated that this was inadvertent and invited me to join with the hospital in making a joint approach to the insurers. Other documents which were provided to me had shown that this was untrue {gets interrupted} … that the billing was in fact..that the billing was deliberate and only ceased when the VHI found out. Incidentally, they found out from me.
The only defence the hospital could attempt was the absurd notion that {gets interrupted} they did not know that their research programme existed in their own hospital, despite dozens of staff being involved in reams of paper documenting its existence. When they were caught out, they next attempted to prove that the research programme was illegal {gets interrupted}. They spent tens, if not thousands of euro, public money (gets interrupted) in an attempt to criminalize a part of their own organisation. As a result of their action – the research programme was closed down for a year – women were denied access to a drug, Herceptin – which we now know was life-saving. {gets interrupted and asked to return to his seat} Though it was not the intention of the doctors, or those who attempted the cover-up {gets interrupted} – as an indirect result of their actions, women died. My hospital, its management and its board failed these women and should be forced to resign.”

St Vincent’s spent “tens of thousands” to cover-up “fraud” – Senator Crown (Michael Brennan, Irish Independent)

Previously: Malignant

 

Today FM political correspondent Gavan Reilly.

The listeners love his neckwear.

idm8/1/2013. Hearings on Abortion Issues

From today’s Irish Daily Mail:

Rhona Mahony has repeatedly failed to give the HSE evidence to support her claim that her €45,000 salary top-up was in respect of fees from private patients. Despite ‘several’ attempts from senior HSE figures to get information, the Master of the National Maternity Hospital has not explained how her €236,000 HSE salary is topped up.
PAC chairman John McGuinness said Dr Mahony would be compelled to come before the committee if she did not explain her top-up to the HSE.
Yesterday, it emerged that Dr Mahony even attended a high-level meeting with HSE director general Tony O’Brien last month where she was asked to hand over payslips and bank documents dating back four years. After details of Dr Mahony’s salary became public last month, a PR firm issued a statement on her behalf, claiming that the €45,000 – paid on top of a €236,000 HSE salary – was ‘in respect of professional fees from private patients attending the National Maternity Hospital’.

 

Has the Mail lost the true meaning of Christmas?

YOU decide.

HSE: Dr Rhona Won’t Explain €45,000 Top-up (Philip Ryan, Irish Daily Mail) (not available online)

Previously: My Cher Rhona

Professional Fees From Private Patients

No Additional Sweeteners

Sam Boal/Photocall Ireland