Some guy on some website wrote it mate.
I posted the link, but for some reason this here new fangled whizz bang TFK turns links into whole quoted articles.
Brilliant piece, very informative.
Very hard to get your head around the whole thing when you only see a sensationalist headline on the Irish Independent website.
Post up the link you cunt.
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Gene Kerrigan in the sindo today:
.
Minister, watch out, itâs that smell again
Itâs like someone farted in a lift. Everyone knows it happened, but theyâre pretending otherwise. They hold their breath and look at the floor, the walls, the ceiling.
The important thing is to avoid meeting anyone elseâs glance. So, everyone intently studies the sign that tells them how many people the lift can carry before it plunges towards a screaming fatal crash into the basement.
Thatâs what weâre doing now. Avoiding the obvious. Not out of embarrassment, but because what happened last week is very serious. And no one wants to confront the reality of it.
I refer, of course, to the Jobstown scandal. Was it the guards who farted, or someone in the DPPâs office? Was it a politician or an official?
Someone is playing silly buggers with the criminal justice system.
And the wrongdoing that occurred last week was carried out in an amazingly casual way - as though whoever is responsible is quite sure theyâre immune to any consequences.
The conservative forces that are supposed to hold the law in the highest respect are pretending this isnât happening.
We all know what happened in Jobstown last November. Joan Burton, the Minister for Social Destruction, attended an event; there was a protest as she left. As word went around, more people joined the protest.
Burton is not the most popular politician in town. People sat on the ground in front of her car. They refused to move.
Now, it wouldnât be my preferred way to spend a couple of hours. You make your point and you move on, thatâs the way I see it. Others have a different point of view, so they sat there.
Burton sat in her car, smiling, using her phone, seemingly at ease, surrounded by police. Eventually, she left the car, accompanied by police.
There was tension in the area. One of the consequences of the way the police have been used in recent years has been the alienation of large numbers of people living in estates. When such areas are policed as though the citizens who live therein are members of Isil, the long-term consequences are not pretty.
Some of this has to do with the use of the police as auxiliary meter installers, working for Irish Water. Most of it is not.
All it requires is that young men - and itâs usually young men - are stopped repeatedly for no reason other than they own a car and someone put their name into Pulse (and bear in mind that these days theyâre putting babiesâ names into Pulse).
In Jobstown, the tension continued long after Burton left the area, and resulted in someone throwing a brick in the direction of a police car. The whole thing was a serious but minor event, with no one hurt.
What should have happened?
The law should have taken its course. Any serious or potentially serious incidents - which would include brick-throwing - needed to be followed up.
Anything else ought to have been treated in precisely the same way protests by farmers and taxi drivers have been treated.
Thatâs not what happened.
Burton made political use of the incident to blackguard Paul Murphy TD, of the Anti-Austerity Alliance, who attended the protest. She used it to attempt to drive support away from the anti-Water Tax movement.
Burton was entitled to do that. Thatâs politics.
The claim that the anti-Water Tax protests are organised by a âsinister fringeâ was given another outing. Such smears donât work, because the grassroots of the protest - way out of the influence of any group - is well aware of its own independence. And of its roots in rejection of the prevailing austerity regime.
The media made no attempt to disentangle what happened, to explain the background of tension - and if anyone got the impression that someone threw a brick at Burton, well, sure, what the hell.
The police then indulged in dawn raids, coming in mob-handed and hauling people away. This is not how such things are usually done. It seemed embarrassingly amateurish, like a bad PR job organised by someone on work experience.
After all the breathless raiding, nothing happened for a long time.
Then, last Monday, The Irish Daily Mail had a story. Because of a âbureaucratic delayâ, it revealed, the protesters who sat in front of Joan Burtonâs car had been âlet off the hookâ. This resulted from a âDPP delayâ.
Apparently, the DPPâs office had six months to charge someone before the District Court, but - oh dear, bloody bureaucracy screwed up again - now the statute of limitations had run out. Oh drat.
Very embarrassing.
On Wednesday evening, RTE News had a scoop. Someone had leaked a story to reporter Paul Reynolds. The police, he revealed, had sent 30 files to the DPP in connection with the events in Jobstown, and twenty people are to be charged with serious offences, including false imprisonment. They will be hauled before the Circuit Court.
Reynolds referred to âsome public commentaryâ on the issue - I take this to be a reference to The Irish Daily Mail story two days earlier. Seemingly, the âbureaucratic delayâ jibe still stung.
The implication of the leak to Reynolds was that there was no âbureaucratic delayâ, it was always the intention to bring the protesters before a higher court. Under section 3(a) of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997, the penalty for false imprisonment âon conviction on indictmentâ is âimprisonment for lifeâ.
Now, if there was an offence relating to the sit-down protest it was a minor public order offence. How this was sexed-up into âfalse imprisonmentâ will no doubt be explored by the court.
Meanwhile, Murphy made an official complaint, because someone leaked the story before any protester was informed of the charges. The police immediately said they were investigating the leak. And they wanted it known that they began investigating the leak before Murphy made his complaint.
And they stressed that they were in the âearly stagesâ of the investigation. They said there will be âno further comment at this stageâ.
Leaking a direction of the DPP, before any charge is laid, is an extremely serious crime. If thereâs a serious investigation, every potential suspect should by now have had their mobile phones, laptops and office computers seized.
Someoneâs treating the law as a political tool. They expect the Minister for Justice to just sit and take this, as though she doesnât have a responsibility to protect the integrity of the criminal justice system.
But, of course, Fine Gael is the law-and-order party, and so, already - well, eh, nothing.
In January 2013, Clare Daly TD was handcuffed, taken to the cop shop, urine taken, and she was told to come back when she was sober. The tabloids were tipped off and they informed us sheâd been caught drunk driving. Daly released the results of the test - she was more sober than the average judge.
The gardai said they were investigating that leak. So, of course, they couldnât comment at that stage. Two-and-a-half years later, they still havenât told us anything. The smell from that scandal still lingers. Now, someone has again farted in an enclosed space.
Whatâs happening is unmistakable. Fitzgerald should know how dangerous this stuff is. If sheâs not part of the solution, sheâs part of the problem, and this can come back at her and kill her career stone dead.
The minister, the civil service, the media, the politicians - we all know whatâs happening. Are we going to do anything about it, or will we just hope the stink eventually goes away?
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Great article
Will be a long time until a Fianna Failer sits in a ministers car again.
A stretch to call it journalism, but amusing nonetheless
http://aboveaverage.com/joey-fatone-to-one-direction-everything-is-about-to-be-terrible/
Joey Fatone To One Direction: âEverything Is About To Be Terrible
Dear Liam Payne, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Harry Styles,
Hey guys. Itâs Joey Fatone, former member of NSync and current announcer on Family Feud, the job Iâve always dreamed of. This weekend, while sitting on the toilet and crying (I LOVE MY LIFE!!!) I flipped through my iPhone and saw that youâd announced a âone-year hiatusâ beginning in March. I just wanted to congratulate you guys and wish you well! Iâm sure 2016 will be a wonderful time for everyone from One Direction to pursue some independent projects before regrouping as a stronger band one year later! Hereâs to spreading your wings!
HAHAHAHA, PSYCH.
Hereâs how itâs gonna go down, fellas. While youâre all on hiatus, Harry will record some dope singles with Beyonce, Ryan Adams and Wiz Khalifa, come out with a killer solo album produced by Pharrell and Timbaland, cut his hair, dye his hair, do a second less awesome album, let his hair grow super long and wear it in two braids, crush a self-effacing cameo in a Judd Apatow movie, buzz his hair and release a third, self-produced album on which he hints at being bisexual that everyone will call his âbest work.â
The rest of you are fucked. I mean fucked. I am the second most-successful former member of NSync and I am Joey Fatone. Say that outloud to yourself: âBesides Justin Timberlake, Joey Fatone is the most successful member of NSync.â
Hereâs me being a spokesman for Bosley hair restoration last year:
Best case scenario, youâll do a 6-week stint in Minions: The Musical! on Broadway before you bounce around different hosting jobs on channels like Spike and TruTv. Do you know what Chris Kirkpatrick is doing? Because I donât. Heâs completely unreachable. He might be managing a Best Buy in Sacramento, he might be dead. No one knows. Louis, Iâm looking at you.
There is one exception: If one of you is gay you might have a shot. Wait till One Direction has been dead for two years, kiss your hot boyfriend at an awards show, then ride that relevance like a beautiful boner and pray to god you get a show on Bravo.
Itâs not that you guys arenât talented, itâs that Harry is so, so much cuter, cooler and more talented than the rest of you. Deep down, youâve always known that, but you will never truly understand it until youâre in your grimy little condo, sitting in your boxers, sucking a chow mein noodle off your Playstation controller and watching Harry blow it up on SNL.
Jesus christ I wish I was still in NSync. JesusâŚJESUS FUCK! I would give all my hair to go back to that.
Anyway, enjoy the next few months, One Direction, because theyâre your last.
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Good piece of the general mayhem of the GGA week
Gave up on that after a couple of paragraphs of his Vincent Hogan-like pseudo-waffle.
Admins, please move this to the Woeful Journalism Thread.
While discussing Donal Dineen in the Tonightâs TV thread, I was reminded of this quality piece on the origins of the No Disco music show on TV. Posters who watched this religiously through college should enjoy it.
Very good piece by Giles.
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Thatâs a cracking interview. Great read.
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very enjoyable read.
PK at his best there. Brilliant read.
Superb interview.
I think he is the best journalist currently writing.
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how twee
FFS , he quotes TH in that article