BREAKING: Actor Roger Lloyd-Pack, best known for his role as Trigger in Only Fools & Horses, has died
— Holly Hamilton (@HollyHNews) January 16, 2014
No.
Cold Hard Cash – one of many extraordinary pieces by New York wood sculptor Randall Rosenthal.
Gawp at the sheer skill of the man and view many more works at his website.
View the full process here.
“Well it was one those cold Winter nights, when the air is warm, the music’s right; I looked into your inhibitions…”
Crikey.
Raglans – (Lady) Roll Back The Years
From Raglans’ debut album titled Raglans released in March. Video by Finn Keenan.
Wait for the ‘Dublin’ shout out.
Thanks Jenny McGovern
As part of his Musicless Music Videos series, Mario Weinerroither presents Prodigy’s Firestarter video with newly added sound effects only.
Right So
at
An ad for boys, Woman’s Way, 1966.
Via Brand New Retro
[Peter O’Loughlin, of the newly-formed National Independent Party (NIP)]
Look around the eyes.
“I got a couple of emails from a couple of UKIP representatives yesterday. They saw what we were doing and they sent across, saying, kind of, you know ‘fair play to ye, lads’. You know? That’s kind of nice so, it’s nice to get a bit of ‘fair play’.”
“…what’s happening in Europe now, and battlelines are being drawn, it’s quite clear if you do follow politics on the European continent, and especially within the European Parliament and looking at the Euro elections, it is really dividing into, I suppose, to look, to use the buzzword ‘Europhile’ and ‘Eurosceptic’ camps, there’s no doubt about that.
“It’s very clear, we’re ‘Eurosceptic’, as far as that word covers what we believe in – we’re in that camp. So I mean we have no intention of sitting on the sidelines. No intention at all, we can’t sit back while this kind of fight is going on. Because we do believe that the European Union is, what it’s evolved into is not good for our country at all.”
Peter O’Loughlin to Seán O’Rourke on RTÉ this morning.
Previously: The NIPs Are Here
Panti Bliss aka Rory O’Neill (above) appeared on RTÉ One’s ‘Saturday Night Show’ and talked to Brendan O’Connor about his life.
On Sunday, our Lars Biscuits posted a short clip from the interview and an accompanying transcript.
Last night, RTE asked us to remove the video of the interview as “concerns have been raised about its content”. [We have asked who raised the concerns and are awaiting a reply from the station].
They further cautioned: “You are hereby put on notice that the publication and continued publication of this interview and any transcripts thereof may be defamatory.”
So we totally freaked out and removed the post.
We are unable to embed the video for copyright reasons but have reposted the transcript (below) as we believe the question of what is a homophobe is one of opinion, the subject is one of public interest, the opinion is based on facts stated or known (e.g. Breda,/John/Iona’s opposition to gay marriage) and it appears to be honestly held.
Therefore (until we hear otherwise)…
Rory O’Neill: “…but of course I’ve met people who have just absolutely had awful, terrible experiences coming out to their families and..”
Brendan O’Connor: “And but a lot has changed hasn’t it since then like?”
RO’N: “So much has changed. And I think em a small country like Ireland sometimes we get a bad rap because people think “oh small conservative country blah blah blah”. But actually I think a small country like Ireland changes much faster than a big country because absolutely…I’m..think about it every single person in this audience has a cousin or a neighbour or the guy that you work with who is a flaming queen. I mean you all know one. And it’s very hard to hold prejudices against people when you actually know those people. And Ireland because it’s such small communities grouped together, everybody knows the local gay and you know maybe twenty years ago it was okay to be really mean about him but nowadays it’s just not okay to be really mean about him. The only place that you see it’s okay to be really horrible and mean about gays is you know on the internet in the comments and you know people who make a living writing opinion pieces for newspapers. You know there’s a couple of them that really cheese..”
BO’C: “Who are they?”
RO’N: “Oh well the obvious ones. You know Breda O’Brien [Irish Times Columnist] today, oh my God you know banging on about gay priests and all. The usual suspects, the John Waters and all of those people, the Iona Institute crowd. I mean I just..you know just…Feck Off! Get the hell out of my life. Get out of my life. I mean..[applause from audience] why…it astounds me…astounds me that there are people out there in the world who devote quite a large amount of their time and energies to trying to stop people you know, achieving happiness because that is what the people like the Iona Institute are at.”
BO’C: “I don’t know. I don’t know. I know one of the people that you mentioned there which is John Waters. I wouldn’t have thought that John Waters is homophobic?”
RO’N: “Oh listen, the problem is with the word ‘homophobic’, people imagine that if you say “Oh he’s a homophobe” that he’s a horrible monster who goes around beating up gays you know that’s not the way it is. Homophobia can be very subtle. I mean it’s like the way you know racism is very subtle. I would say that every single person in the world is racist to some extent because that’s how we order the world in our minds. We group people. You know it’s just how our minds work so that’s okay but you need to be aware of your tendency towards racism and work against it. And I don’t mind, I don’t care how you dress it up if you are arguing for whatever good reasons or you know whatever your impulses…”
BO’C: “Because it is what you believe, it’s your faith or that, yeah?”
RO’N: “…it could be good impulses..and you might believe that these impulses are good because you’re worried about society as a whole and all this rubbish. What it boils down to is if you’re going to argue that gay people need to be treated in any way differently than everybody else or should be in anyway less, or their relationships should be in anyway less then I’m sorry, yes you are a homophobe and the good thing to do is to sit, step back, recognise that you have some homophobic tendencies and work on that. You know stop spending so much of your life you know devoting energies to writing things, arguing things, coming on TV to do anything to try and stop people achieving what they think they need for happiness.”
We offer a right of reply to anyone mentioned.
Previously: Panti At The Abbi
Also: Ignorance is Not Panti Bliss (Matthew Mulligan, Trinity News)
Fianna Fáil TD and chair of the Public Accounts Committee John McGuinness was on Tonight With Vincent Browne, following members of Irish Water and the Department of the Environment appearing before the committee last night. They talked after they saw a clip from the meeting, in which Secretary General of the Department of the Environment, Geraldine Tallon told the PAC she didn’t speak to Environment Minister Phil Hogan ‘in specific terms’ about consultancy costs.
Mr McGuinness then spoke about how, during the meeting, it emerged €5.7million was spent on a County Managers’ Group – baffling Vincent and indeed others.
Vincent Browne: “John were you impressed by the evidence given [, concerning Phil Hogan not knowing that €50million had been paid to consultants?”
John McGuinness: “I think that the performance, in terms of the Department, Irish Water, or indeed the [Energy] Regulator – they were fine. But they raise a lot more questions and we’re talking here about the content of the answers and, whether or not, the answers are believable. And, quite frankly, I don’t see how a department can manage its affairs and not know the detail of the spend. Now..”
Browne: “Wait a minute now, I think, I would have thought, that listening Geraldine Tallon everything she said was believable and what was also believable was what she didn’t say. She was killed in avoiding the specific question.”
McGuinness: “She avoided the question but the fact of the matter is that everyone in the, or people in the department knew about this. Remember that, prior to reaching this point of €50million, and this is something that came out this evening, at the very end of the meeting. That they had a County Managers’ Group to oversee the transition and that that group cost €5.7million.”
Browne: “The County Managers’ Group?”
McGuinness: “Yes.”
Browne: “How did that cost..?”
McGuinness: “It also emerged there was a further report…”
Browne: “How did that cost anything?”
McGuinness: “I have asked for further information on that, but that’s what the office cost – €5.7m.”
Browne: “What office?”
McGuinness: “This particular office that would oversee the transition. Now that was on the back of..”
Browne: “Sorry, I don’t see understand it. But these people, county managers are already paid. And, so, was this travel expenses they were getting? Or what did they get?”
McGuinness: “No, it was a cost of putting together that internal group.”
Browne: “Of county managers?”
McGuinness: “Yes. As to how the €5.7million was spent and what it was for, we have to seek that from, we’ve sought that from the department, in terms of listing out what that €5.7million was for and ongoing costs, because that group apparently…”
Browne: “This is €5.7million for a group of county managers?”
McGuinness: “A group of county managers who, in their own respective counties, would have been responsible for infrastructure and delivery and it turns out now that they were also members of this group that was involved in the transition. And the cost of that operation…”
Browne: “What operation?”
McGuinness: “In terms of the office and in terms of their advising, I presume, it cost €5.7million. So, it was at the end of the meeting and we’ve asked for..”
Browne: “Let me understand this now. But. I cannot understand how, bar the costs of tea and biscuits and maybe travel costs, that county managers coming together would cost anything?”
McGuinness: “But Vincent, I can’t understand it either. It’s a figure that simply, I think, amazed people of the Public Accounts Committee and it’s a figure that was sort of dropped in at the end of the meeting, after I asked the question. But the point I’m making is that, prior to to that, there was report done by a consultant, €180.000 it cost the department. So, all of this didn’t just happen yesterday. There was a build-up to all this information and all of these costings and the figures. And it was known by the, cause I asked the question, it was know by the MAC in the department, the Management Committee, and that’s made up of political leadership, senior civil servants and so on, and they discuss this whole thing on numerous occasions. So it doesn’t come as any surprise to me that, within the department, they would have known about the €150million, plus the €30million.”
Watch here