Great balls of Van ire fire.
June 10, 1993.
Essex Street, Temple Bar, Dublin 2.
A casual, if menacing, Van Morrison (left), who celebrates his 75th birthday today, with ‘The Killer’, Jerry Lee Lewis during an improbable impromptu session at Bad Bob’s, which also included Ron Wood, of The Rolling Stones.
Drink may have been taken.
Van Morrison at 75: Oisin Leech of The Lost Brothers reflects (Irish News)
From left: Fine Gael’s Mairead McGuinnness MEP, Frances Fitzgerald MEP and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Defence Simon Coveney
This afternoon.
Trough latest!
Via RTÉ News:
Minister for Foreign Affairs Simon Coveney has said he is not ruling himself out as a candidate to replace Phil Hogan as Ireland’s next European commissioner.
But, he said, he would need to be convinced that he would add “significant value” to Ireland’s chances of increasing its profile within the commission and said he is aware that Taoiseach Micheál Martin and his team are currently trying to establish if that would be the case…
Meanwhile…
It is also understood MEP Frances Fitzgerald is interested in the job and fellow MEP and European Parliament Vice President Mairead McGuinness has already publicly declared her interest.
The Taoiseach, Tánaiste and Green Party leader will meet this evening to discuss the nomination.
‘sup?
Yesterday.
Glenanchaquin Waterfall, Beara Peninsula, County Kerry.
Outrageously literal marketing strategy?
Or extreme Social Democrat canvassing?
We may never know.
Stop that.
Dublin, Summer 1974.
Rarely seen images of Dublin life from noted American street photographer William Gedney.
Gedney spent a week in Ireland in July 1974 on a stopover to London calling on from top: The Forty Foot, Sandycove, County Dublin; Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2; Sandymount Strand, Dublin 4; Leonard’s Corner, South Circular Road, Dublin 8; Caledon Road, East Wall, Dublin 3; near the Ha’penny Bridge, Dublin 2.
William Gedney photographs and papers (Duke University)
Save single-pipe Poolbeg.
Big Phil the Fluter
A Golfgate/Phil Hogan redux of William Percy French’s Phil The Fluter’s Ball.
Written and performed by Broadsheet commenter Paulus.
In fairness.
Ryan Tubridy hosting the Late Late Toy Show in 2018
This morning.
Via RTÉ:
Late Late host Ryan Turbidly has revealed that he already knows what costume he will wear and what song he will be singing on this year’s top secret Toy Show, adding that it will lead to “some goofy looking scenarios”.
However, he is keeping everything under wraps, saying, “Nobody will be able to predict anything because we’re going somewhere completely different for us.”
Ryan Tubridy teases this year’s top secret Toy Show (RTÉ)
Meanwhile…
Michael Francis writes:
Conceived as a slot filler when guests were in short supply in winter several moons ago.
Driven and expanded with support of big budget makers and sellers of toys.
Consisting of:
* A frenzied audience – with the mood stoked by free stuff in all its forms and tax free for selected employee and favour-friends
* A collection of children to perform (even if far away from home, late at night)
* A ‘star’ from whom a favour is called in to ‘surprise’ a telegenic child (enter Paul Mescal/Michael D. The President/Maura Higgins)
* A presentable family with a current difficulty (for a low budget feel good story)
*An MC to introduce bits and fool around
*A puppet or two
Promoted shamelessly, and endlessly as if a blockbuster movie.
Pushed with a dollop of free money from the licence fee kitty and help including that of ‘friends’ and others struggling to fill paragraphs in July, August, Sept, Oct and November.
Marketed persistently for months, despite (surely for some) each mention being another dent in mental wellbeing as minds are directed to dark and dreary winter nights ahead.
Scheduled in a late night slot (sssh….about the sleep well-being of children).
The ‘flagship’ episode of the ‘flagship programme’ of the doubly-funded operation that likes to identify itself as the ‘national broadcaster’.
Never a word spoken of parents on their way to DePaul in an attempt to deliver the selection of a sleep deprived child.
Never called out for what it is.
Not replicated in another country – a unique franchise. The slot-filler nurtured to be the RTÉ self-indulgent present, a gift to self.
FIGHT!
From top: Section 43 of the Health Act 1947; Barrister Tony McGillicuddy
Yesterday.
On RTÉ’s This Week.
Barrister Tony McGillicuddy spoke to Carol Coleman about gardai receiving powers to enter people’s homes.
It followed the Cabinet last Friday rejecting proposals for criminal penalties for people organising gatherings of more than six people but Tanaiste Leo Varadkar later saying a ‘civil offence’ may be introduced.
Carole Coleman: “Could you explain for us briefly what a civil offence is? And how it is investigated or prosecuted?”
Tony McGillicuddy: “Yeah, there is no such thing as a civil offence, Carole. It’s a contradiction in terms. I mean, under our Constitution and our laws, we have statute laws and then regulations which fill in the details of those and they can be enforced either through civil orders that are made in the courts or else by a criminal sanction if those provisions are made criminal law offences.
“So there’s two streams. And we have that at the moment with our regulations on, for instance, wearing a facemask in shops or shopping centres. So that is a provision. The power to make that order is in the Health Act 1947. The minister made the relevant regulations to make that a requirement of all persons. And if a person is in a shop today and they’re not wearing a facemask, a garda can approach that person and give them a direction that they must wear a facemask.
“If that person doesn’t wear a facemask after getting that direction from a garda, that is a criminal offence and the garda can arrest that person and can prosecute that person. So it’s the failure to comply with a direction of a garda to wear a facemask in a shop that would then be a criminal offence.”
Coleman: “They’re now planning to involve gardai in the house parties or the house gatherings. So what you’re saying is that it would become the law of the land but not a crime. What use would this be in say a flagrant breach of the house gathering rules?”
McGillicuddy: “Yeah, I mean, it is possible, that there could be a requirements set out in regulations or in a primary piece of statute law, whereby a person would be prohibited from having a gathering of six people in their household from three or more households. And they could then decide not to make it a criminal offence, they could just say it’s in statute, it’s in the law of the land and it doesn’t have any criminal sanction.
“I think the only thing that I can see that might have an importance at the present time is that there’s a very interesting provision in the Health Act 1947 which has not received public commentary up to now.
“It’s Section 43 of the act and that outlines that if a person, if there are requirements for a person to take certain precautions to avoid Covid or other infectious diseases, and if they don’t do so, and if a person then, in their household, becomes infected with Covid, that person who has attended, as an invitee at their house, could sue them for damages. And it would be presumed in law that they obtained the infection from attending at their house unless the householder can prove otherwise.
“So you could have a situation whereby the Government will say ‘well, we’re gonna make this the law of the land, we’re not going to impose a criminal sanction but if you invite more than six people into your house of a night and if one of them subsequently finds out that they have Covid, they could sue you for damages’. And it would be up to the householder to show that they hadn’t been infected at their house that night.
“And I think if members of the public knew that that presumption in law could act against them, in such a scenario, that might have its own coercive effect on people organising house gatherings.”
Coleman: “OK, well that’s very complicated and lots to be discussed there, barrister Tony McGillicuddy, thank you very much for joining us.”
Anyone?
Listen back in full here
