Hey Lord, don’t ask me questions…

Vincent Browne in cracking form, taking on Klaus Masuch of the ECB.

Notice Masuch’s reaction, it starts with a sort of sneer as if he could just ignore the irritating insect in front of him but then he gets more and more uncomfortable as Browne presses his point. Its just a shame that not one of the other journalists pushed any member of the Troika over Browne’s claims that we don’t owe need to pay unsecured bond holders and that the reason for paying them back is just to keep other European banks from getting into financial difficulties. Not to mention the fact that we shouldn’t be shoring up a now defunct bank.

The telling point from the past couple of years is the lack of any serious investigative journalism into what happened to our financial institutions and into why we have to accept what the Troika tell us to do. We have been told that we have to pay back a debt, most of which the Irish public did not incur, without any good reason. Our major media organisations have fallen in behind our political leaders in telling us that we have pay back money that we don’t have. Our journalists have been silenced, apart from Browne and Fintan O’Toole, and they have been marginalised as being eccentric or too left-wing to be listened to. There is a major story to be written about the ties that bind journalism with politics in this country, unfortunately that story will not be written by any of our journalists. If it is written at all, it will be written by the historians looking back at this gombeen nation.

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Sorry For Your Troubles

You won't catch me

So Fingers Fingleton is showing a bit of remorse for the way the Irish economy has gone down the toilet. Of course, you won’t hear the word ‘responsibility’ from the odious little toad. Nor will you hear him admit that the Irish Nationwide did anything wrong when it hid money that Anglo-Irish Bank was paying to its directors. This is the guy who oversaw a €280m loss at the building society before retiring on a pension worth €27.6m and who got a very handsome golden handjob of €1m, which Irish Nationwide is now trying to claim back. This is the guy who was at the helm of a massive money lending operation to Irish developers that is going to cost the taxpayer in excess of €3b.

What would you expect from a former priest?

The cunt.

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Fuck All Interest

FAI Officer's pledge

Well done John Delaney and the FAI for scoring a spectacular own-goal in the same week that the Aviva Lansdowne Road stadium opened. Just when the FAI needed some good publicity to help push those disappointing corporate box sales they have to go and deny Limerick what could be a life-saving friendly against Barcelona.

To make things even worse, the FAI admit that there is a secret criteria for League of Ireland clubs that want to organise lucrative games against glamour sides. It seems that the clubs have to go to the bother and expense of making a fixture and advertising it before the FAI come along and say, “Well that contravenes our hush-hush deal with some company that we can’t name because, like all commercial companies, they don’t want the publicity”. And when asked what the criteria are that have to be fulfilled before a game can take place, the FAI pulls down its fedora, takes a drag on its unfiltered cigarette before drawling, “Kid, you don’t need to know”. And to rub salt into the wound, the FAI have arranged a friendly with Manchester United despite this taking place the evening before Bohs Champions League qualifier – breaking at least two of their own top-secret criteria.

The utter idiocy behind the 1984-type machinations is just staggering. As Emmet Malone points out in his Irish Times piece, the grassroots are now subsidising the FAI rather than the other way around. For too long the FAI have regarded the League of Ireland as an inconvenience instead of promoting it as the highlight of domestic football. They stand indicted for allowing, even encouraging, our best young players to disappear into the maw of the British football machine, to be ground up and spat out if they don’t make the grade.

It seems the Blazer Brigade is alive and well despite Roy Keane’s best efforts to shame them into some sense of decency. This summer sees the idiots close down the League while the World Cup is on. This despite June having the longest, warmest evenings of the year and giving clubs the best chance of getting bodies into stadiums. But no, Delaney and de lads would much rather be in Durban than Dalymount, sucking up to Sepp and in the hope of getting a few crumbs from the fat cats table. Lets hope that, this time, de lads don’t try and flog their ticket allocation to George the Greek.

The League of Ireland will never attract the Priemiershit barstoolers, shouting on their “local” team from Liverpool, London or Manchester. But the FAI could make it easier for families to get to games by making sure they are played at the weekend rather than having to shoehorn them into midweek just because the mandarins want to fuck off to hoover up the cheap booze in South Africa. Its time Delaney and his cronies decided whether they want the best for Irish football or for themselves.

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