Bill O’Herlihy signed off last night from RTÉ Sport.
He’ll leave it there so, live.
Meanwhile….
Tonight is the night for @billoherlihy to earn the affection of fans by committing to NEVER EVER represent the tobacco industry EVER again.
— ProfJohnCrown (@ProfJohnCrown) July 13, 2014
Bill!! Go out on a high!! Renounce tobacco contacts on your last night. Do it please. #RTEWorldCup
— ProfJohnCrown (@ProfJohnCrown) July 13, 2014
You may have missed this.
Curdled former YFG-er Deputy Brian Hayes brought his frankly freaky sexual ‘banter’ to bear on the Upper House last week.
Making the unelected ones look like statesmen.
Senator John Crown: “Fáilte a Aire. It is nice to see the Minister of State, Deputy Hayes, again, as we spent some pleasant time here the other day. I stated that somebody should really get video camera footage of the ministerial chair during the various stages of the Seanad Abolition Bill debate. We could make a really interesting pictorial calendar for 2014 of stills featuring the various faces that appeared.”
Senator David Norris: “Some of them of the same Minister.”
Crown: “I am not given to procedural wrangling. I come from a discipline, a day job, which prides itself in being of a rather practical bent, so from time to time I have been somewhat impatient with people using the procedures of the House apparently to delay matters or introduce issues not immediately germane or relevant to the item under discussion. There is a certain sense of getting our own back on this with regard to procedure. I would be grateful for the attention of the Minister of State and the Leader of the House. The manner in which this has been conducted by those who are proponents not really of putting the question to the people but rather of abolition of the House has been procedurally suspect. The arguments are well travelled and versed but they are nonetheless valid and bear some brief repetition.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Please continue Senator Crown.”
Crown: “I beg your pardon.”
Deputy Brian Hayes: “You lick yourself every night before you go to bed.”
Crown: “The word “prat” suggests itself sometimes.”
Norris: “Will the Minister of State make that remark more loudly?”
Senator Mark Daly:”He said the professor licks himself every night..”
Hayes: “I am saying..”
Daly: “..before he goes to bed.”
Hayes: “..in this House that you are talking to yourselves most of the time.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown..”
Norris: “I beg your pardon. We are talking to ourselves, are we?”
Hayes: “You are talking to yourselves, yes.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown, without interruption.”
Norris: “I think the Minister of State should withdraw that remark.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown, without interruption.”
Norris: “We are talking to you Minister of State.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown, without interruption.”
Norris:” No, I am sorry. The Minister of State says we are talking to ourselves and there is no reason to be here. Could the Cathaoirleach reprimand him on our behalf and ask him to withdraw the remark? It is outrageous.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown, without interruption.”
Norris: “Will the Cathaoirleach not ask him to withdraw the remark “We are talking to ourselves”?
Hayes: “Sanctimonious crap.”
An Cathaoirleach: Senator Crown, without interruption.
Norris: “I am sorry but I ask you, a Chathaoirlaigh, to ask the Minister of State to withdraw that remark, which is an insult to Seanad Éireann. Will you do that?”
An Cathaoirleach: “I did not hear what he said.”
Norris: “You did. I will tell you what he said.”
Hayes: “You insulted me. I have no regard for you.”
Norris:”He said there was no need for him to be here and we are talking to ourselves.”
Hayes: “You were insulting me the whole evening.”
An Cathaoirleach: The record will show..”
Norris: “I never said a word about you.”
Hayes: “All evening, with your nonsense.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown, without interruption.”
Crown: “Let us just hit the reset button. I am sorry but I would like to treat the Minister of State, this House, the Dáil and the process of Government with respect. I do not consider myself a politician but somebody with a real day job. I am somebody who because of the spirit of our original Constitution has found himself with the opportunity to take a position of advocacy, which I have done outside the House for many years, into the halls of our Oireachtas, as intended in the 1937 Constitution. I am sorry if I am not perhaps wise to the ways of politics and I beg the Minister of State’s indulgence in that respect.
Hayes: “But you are.”
Crown:” I believe that the way this problem has been tackled from the pro-abolitionist side has been unsatisfactory and it looks unsatisfactory. In the first instance, there were a number of amendments on Committee Stage that were never heard. I will gladly yield to the Minister of State if he wishes to make a point.”
Hayes: “I said there were ten hours during the debate when all of those issues could have been dealt with properly without the filibuster that occurred. The Senator knows that well, to be honest.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown, without interruption.”
Hayes: “With respect, at least be honest and admit that.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown, without interruption.”
Hayes: “The Senator knows that to be true.”
Senator Mary M. White: “He is being disrespectful by being on his iPad. It is the same as being on the telephone.”
An Cathaoirleach: “Senator Crown, without interruption.”
Crown: “I would like to yield the rest of my time. Thank you very much.”
Minister Hayes’s uninterested and unprofessional attendance at the Seanad (ProfJohnCrown.com)
Professor John Crown, consultant oncologist and Seanad member has proposed that all members of the Oireachtas swear an oath of allegiance to the Constitution. His initiative may have been prompted by the proposed abortion legislation. A piece which he wrote in last weekend’s Sunday Independent (now on his blog) has irked some of his opponents.
He writes:
Not for the first time, an attempt is being made to overthrow and discard our constitutional system of republican government. A cabal of insurrectionists, sympathetic to the agents of a foreign state are, as you read this, plotting and executing a coup d’etat. This is not your standard tanks-on-the-Leinster House lawn-type of coup, but a coup it is nonetheless. It is, in fact, a thoroughly Irish coup.
What this new composite “Tae Party” fringe is proposing is that the Government, in legislating for abortion in the strictly limited case where there is a threat to the life (as distinct to the health) of the mother, should completely ignore both the Supreme Court and the wishes of the ultimate sovereign in a democratic republic – the voice of the people, who not once but twice voted NO! in popular referenda to exclude suicide as a valid threat to life.
The conspiracy goes to the very top of our political structure, with TDs, senators and at least one minister indicating that they might thumb their noses at our Bunreacht and vote against constitutionally mandated legislation. Incredibly, they are being egged on by a former Taoiseach.
The foreign power is, of course, the Vatican, a sovereign state that orchestrated numerous plots to obstruct constitutionally mandated justice for child victims of abuse in multiple countries around the world. The agents of this oligarchic dictatorship are interfering in our democracy as surely as, but thankfully much less effectively than did the Italians and Germans in aiding the overthrow of the Spanish Republic in the 1930s. Thinking people will be particularly offended by the interference of Cardinal Brady, who once swore two small children to secrecy under oath about their testimony to a liturgical inquiry into the abuse they had suffered.
Article 34.4.6 of the Constitution states that “the decision of the Supreme Court shall in all cases be final and definitive”.
I recently proposed in the Seanad that our elected parliamentarians should be asked to swear an oath of allegiance to our republic and to its constitution. This was partly motivated by my irritation that certain TDs and senators who were elected and are paid by, and who represent the citizens of our republic, refuse to acknowledge the very existence of the Republic, preferring to reserve that sacred designation for an imaginary political entity that is about as likely to come into reality as Narnia, Oz or Klingon.
The question has to be asked: “Why shouldn’t our teachtai and senators swear loyalty to our republic and to its constitution?” Those who won’t swear it on the basis of selective conscientious objection should not be allowed to serve in our Oireachtas, any more than a Justice of the Supreme Court or a general in the real Oglaigh na hEireann who refused to be sworn in would be allowed to serve.
It is time to call their bluff, and to tell them that their primary loyalty as parliamentarians is to uphold the Constitution.
@profjohncrown Your article on Sunday was a bitter vitriolic anti-Catholic monologue. It belittled you. It did not belittle Catholics. Shame
— seanie (@drseanie) May 21, 2013
@profjohncrown More anti-Catholic bile, John. The mask has truly slipped!
— seanie (@drseanie) May 21, 2013
@profjohncrown Last time a call was heeded to exclude Catholics from parliament, it took Catholic Emancipation 1829 to restore our rights
— seanie (@drseanie) May 21, 2013
Criticism of me from Irish Catholic for being Anti -Catholic irishcatholic.ie/20130117/opini… PS I used to deliver Irish Catholic!!
— ProfJohnCrown (@ProfJohnCrown) May 21, 2013
A thoroughly Irish coup (Professor John Crown)
Previously: A Pro-Life Noraid
The Crazy Train Stops For Nobody
(Photocall Ireland)