Sunday Indo are Cunts Thread

Culture
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A thread for all the instances of cuntishness you’d like to highlight from Sir Anto and his army of footcunts.
As well as Brendan O’Connor’s hilariously shit first chat show appearance last night we then have this joke of a front page article and headline today. The bias against the public sector is now becoming completely ridiculous from these jokers. Unions make absolutely no attempt to hide the fact that yer one’s husband lost her job yet Sindo amazingly try to spin it into some type of controversy, while at the same time calling it ‘spin’ themselves. You couldn’t make it up.

Revealed: how pay cut ‘spin’ duped the nation
Civil servant unwittingly caught up in unions’ propaganda war

By JODY CORCORAN and JOHN WHELAN
Sunday January 31 2010

A woman put forward as the face of “harrowing stories” caused by the Government’s decision to cut the pay of public-sector workers turns out to be the wife of an unemployed private sector worker, the Sunday Independent can reveal.

The case of Mary Duffy, a civil servant, was presented by her public-sector union last week as a metaphor for what it said were the devastating effects of the decision in the last Budget to cut public- sector pay.

Ms Duffy, who is paid €450 a week, is undoubtedly suffering as a result of the recession, as are many other people throughout the country, particularly the 425,000 mainly private-sector workers, such as her husband, who are out of work.

Her story was highlighted last week by prominent trade union leader Blair Horan, of the Civil and Public Service Union. He spoke on RTE of “absolutely harrowing stories” when he defended his union’s decision to impose a work-to-rule as part of industrial action to pressurise the Government to reverse pay cuts.

Ms Duffy herself has also spoken publicly of how she and her family have been affected by the Government’s decision, to the extent that she was forced to default on her mortgage and hand over the keys to her home.

A clerical officer with the Department of Education, Ms Duffy lives in Laois-Offaly, the constituency of the Taoiseach, a political dimension which was seized upon by Labour leader Eamon Gilmore as he referred to her unfortunate case in the Dail to embarrass Mr Cowen.

However, the Sunday Independent last week established that while Ms Duffy did indeed lose her home, it happened last August, shortly after her husband had lost his jobseeker’s allowance, having lost his job as a plasterer in the first wave of redundancies throughout the private sector in January last year.

Ms Duffy, who was unwittingly caught up in a propaganda war, was last week reluctant to discuss how her and her family had been thrust into the limelight by her union as part of its campaign to force the Government to reverse its decision to impose pay cuts in the public sector.

There is genuine sympathy for the situation in which she and her husband now find themselves, as there is for everybody continuing to suffer as a result of the ongoing economic crisis.

The Government, however, remains reluctant to be drawn on the specifics of the Mary Duffy case, or on its wider ramifications, as it gears up yet again to engage in negotiations with the trade unions.

Senior government sources last week said it was interested only in “getting back to the table” following what one source described as the “guerrilla” actions of elements within the public sector.

“There is a desire to get this resolved, because civil servants have an enormous capacity to disrupt the running of of the country,” one senior figure admitted __ a clear indication that the Government remains intent on engaging with public-sector unions even though they have not deviated from their insistence that the pay cuts be reversed.

The Government’s tactic seems to be to persuade the unions to end their industrial action and to engage in meaningful talks on public-sector reform in return for a guarantee that further cuts to public-sector pay will not be imposed next year.

The stance of public-sector unions are supported by the Labour Party, whose leader, Eamon Gilmore, last week highlighted the metaphor for hardship that is the Mary Duffy story.

In the Dail last week he said: "We heard the story, for example, of Mary Duffy who is a clerical officer. Her husband lost his job and his jobseeker’s benefit has now run out. We heard how that family is now trying to get by on Mary’s pay of €451 per week and how they had to hand back the keys of their house.

“As a result of the pension levy which was imposed last year and the cut in pay which was imposed by the Budget, Mary’s pay has been cut by €77 per week.”

Ms Duffy herself also spoke of her predicament at the CPSU conference in Dublin on Tuesday. From the podium, she declared: “In August 2009, we discussed our mortgage with the bank, our only option was to hand it back. if we volunteered this option, we wouldn’t be taken to court, so the day we had dreaded so much had arrived. On my son’s first day at school we moved into rented accommodation in Tullamore.”

Nobody in the body politic could accuse the Duffy family of exaggerating their genuine hardship. However, the desperate situation in which the Duffy family find themselves only came about after her husband lost his job as a plasterer in January last year in the first wave of job losses in the private sector. He subsequently lost his jobseeker’s benefit in August.

A Government source said: “Look, the case of Mary Duffy is undoubtedly difficult. Undoubtedly so. Nobody wanted to cut her pay, but it had to be done, broadly speaking, or the country would have gone bust. If you ask me, while I’m sorry for Mary, I’m more sorry for her husband. He is out of a job after all.”

The fact that Ms Duffy’s predicament in losing the family home came as a result of her husband losing his job was not emphasised by Mr Horan of the CPSU in a media campaign last week against the pay cuts for low paid public sector workers.

When asked to give an example last week of the harrowing stories he had encountered, he said: “Well, there’s a woman in Tullamore whose total cuts in the last year were €80 a week. She’s earning just over €400 a week, her husband has lost his job and she’s lost her house. She’s now in rented accommodation with a young lad.”

  • JODY CORCORAN and JOHN WHELAN
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This thread will be the scene of many a glorious rant :clap:

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I am not sure if I would lay all the blame at O’Reilly’s door. I think Aenghus Fanning is the real cunt here.

O’Reilly’s Independent in the UK is meant to be an excellent paper.

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I would say that the Sindo market is well covered over there farmer

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If you’re a bleeding heart liberal. not as bad as the Guardian in fairness

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What’s bleeding heart liberal about it?

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How about people just don’t read the indo?

It’s like me putting my hand in the fire and then giving out because I got burnt.

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I don’t read the Indo but that doesn’t mean it’s not there runt, with Brendan O’Connor paddling around in it like some demented, shit-covered walrus.

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But a lot of people obviously do. It wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a market for it.
The choice of broadsheet Sunday papers is pretty shit.

I’ve gotten the Sunday Times a bit recently and you get heaps of supplements with it, but also a lot of English centered stuff (obviously).

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No one ever said they don’t, in fact it’s popularity is what makes it all the more concerning that utter shit is peddled for news. The fact that it has a market tells you little other than it has a market. Look at Fox News, extremely popular but outright propaganda. You don’t have to watch it to know it’s dangerous.

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Do you ever think gola that the people who are taken in by this stuff aren’t worth worrying about? If they are that easily taken in by bullshit then their opinion will be blown the other way by the next gust of wind anyway. Maybe the union situation is an exception because it is an outright ideological war, but at the end of the day if people can’t recognise corporate anti-union propaganda, are they ever going to understand the fundamental role of unions in balancing power in a capitalist society? I somehow doubt it.

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Boring.

Next…

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its a tabloid rag thats not in doubt and thats a classic tabloid story, but a worthy story all the same.
i suppose Blair Horan couldnt really give an example of the double public service income couple losing their home so he has jumped on the story of a poor man in the real world having done so to furhter the cause of his members.
thats a story and hopefully the indo continue to expose these clowns.

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Great idea for a thread.
That paper surely provided more cunts for the COTY competition than any other employer.

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Classic Sundayindoism from Anne Harris

Andrea and PJ’s celebrity marriage ends without glare of publicity

Some marriages end silently – without any reason the world would understand, writes Anne Harris

Former Miss Ireland Andrea Roche’s marriage to businessman PJ Mansfield is over.

Some marriages end silently. That is not to say they end in silence. Far from it. They end quietly, imperceptibly with no reason the world would understand. Sometimes with little reason the people concerned understand. It’s tough, it’s sad and in a civilised world it’s nobody’s business but their’s.

When a national celebrity’s marriage ends in this way, this is rarely the case. Andrea Roche meets the criteria of Irish celebrity under many headings. Since she became Miss Ireland in 1998 she has regularly topped polls as one of Ireland’s most beautiful and stylish women. She dated pop star Jim Corr before she met Mansfield.

Naturally, the media scrabble around desperately for some rationale, as though the public (who certainly feel some entitlement in the lives of their celebs) could not understand the emotional subtleties of a relationship changing, if not necessarily dying.

But sometimes there is no meat to be put on the bare bones of an ordinary human tragedy.

Andrea Roche’s marriage is over. It ended a few months ago. Roche moved out and now lives alone. The decision was hers. To say both of them are hurting is a given. As is the fact that the separation is amicable and characterised by a mutual respect.

This sort of marriage break-up information imparted in the media usually unleashes a flood of chatty and informative ‘friends’ with special access, who volunteer all sorts of reasons. And if you live a lot of your life in the public eye, reasons can always be found.

But the real reason in this case is as simple as it is banal. They grew apart. They had been together for about nine years. Their bond was the tenderest kind, formed in youth before either of them were fully formed as personalities.

The marriage of the former Miss Ireland and the youngest child of property developer Jim Mansfield in 2006 was the stuff of dreams – even in a world of dream weddings as Ireland was in Celtic Tiger days. Their big day was in Saggart Church in August 2006, and every last tiny detail was reported in the press and in VIP magazine, The dress was by Monique L’huillier, the reception in a marquee in Palmerstown House, which is part of the Mansfields’ property empire. She was 28.

Some cynics thought that having achieved the big fat wedding, Ms Roche would sit back and enjoy the privileges of being a socialite wife. But it is her brain, rather than her beauty that has always driven her.

Having won Miss Ireland and had a successful career as a model, Andrea Roche pioneered a new path for Irish beauties by becoming a businesswoman herself (she had studied business in Carlow). As well as being the face of Newbridge Silverware, she became involved in organising pageants herself, first the Miss Ireland pageant and then the Miss Universe Ireland.

She appears frequently on television, including fashion presenting on TV3. She had a very successful stint on RTE’s Celebrity Bainisteoir. She is beauty editor of VIP magazine and fashion editor of South East Wedding magazine and is a wedding fair planner. And when her close friend Katy French died, she and Andrea were filming a pilot for a model agent show, a project Andrea is still intending to see through.

In short, she has always worked hard to earn her own money.

In a week in which another beautiful, successful, iconic young woman ended her marriage and had no reasons to give, it’s well to remember that the heart has its reasons which reason cannot know.

It was poet Rainer Maria Rilke who said “convention has tried to make this most complicated and ultimate relationship (marriage) into something easy and frivolous.” Andrea Roche, like Kate Winslet, has refused to bow to convention.

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I decided a couple of months back to completely boycott the Sindo, depsite the fact that it is the newspaper of choice in my home. I now find myself thinking for myself.

It’s great.

I also have succeeded in completely avoiding Cunt O’Connor’s chat show so far.

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That piece from Anne Harris is magic - I can only imagine she was pissing herself laughing as she was composing it.

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It’s hard not to laugh at this.

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/i-signed-my-life-away-for-the-sake-of-city-centre-apartment-2106182.html

I signed my life away for the sake of city centre apartment
Alison O’Riordan, a gung-ho first-time buyer purchased her city pad while the market was still buoyant but now struggles to pay the bills and a sizeable mortgage

Sunday March 21 2010

TWO years ago I bought my apartment and swapped the leafy suburbs of my family home in Rathmines for life as a city slicker in the sought-after riverside location of Grand Canal Quay in Dublin 2.

When I began my search of properties in early 2008 I knew exactly what I wanted. A two-bed apartment designed for modern living with a roof garden and outdoor space with great views of the happening city. When I saw just this in May of that year, it accelerated my impulse to buy immediately, even though the market was softening.

The two-bed showroom apartment on the fifth floor of a six-storey building cost me €525,000 at the time which included a parking space in my development for €45,000. I now see my apartment devalue massively on a daily basis.

Hooke and McDonald have said the typical price drop for apartments in city-centre locations is 40 per cent.

When I contacted my property consultant HT Meagher O’Reilly this week to find out how much my apartment has dropped, they said these types of units would be on sale for around €300,000 to €325,000 at the minute. I didn’t even buy at the peak of the boom, but at a time when I thought things were at a more realistic level.

It was, however, weeks before the collapse in the middle of 2008, when prices tumbled. I ignored repeated warnings both from my parents and the Central Bank and instead ploughed in head first and handed over the money.

I have major regrets thinking about what I did, and what I could have done with all the surplus money that I will have to pay back for many years to come.

The cold wind of reality is never far from me and it constantly blows abruptly into my life. I have considered moving back home and renting out the apartment as the once affordable mortgage is not so affordable anymore with pay cuts and it has become a struggle to pay the bills and large mortgage.

But I worked hard to get here and put myself through tedious years of college so I could afford my own place, so I will persevere.

And also a big factor is that if I move out within two years of buying the apartment to rent it out my stamp duty exemption will be clawed back, so that is not an option.

And so I carry on being entangled in this web of struggle and hardship, trapped in negative equity with my dreams of city-apartment living turned sour.

The sleepless nights and bouts of anxiety will continue but hindsight is a very exact science and I can do nothing about that fateful day when I signed away my life and effectively put myself into my own financial prison.

  • Alison O’Riordan

Sunday Independent

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Fantastic effort from Anne Harris. Exceptional writing.

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“Some marriages end silently – without any reason the world would understand”

Superb stuff. It probably has something to do with them having nothing in common with each other.

She dated Jim Corr for fuck sake.