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.
The increasingly irrelevant Catholic church still refuses to face up to its obligations and responsibilities for the litany of child sex abuse cases in Ireland. The putative head of the church in this country, Cardinal Sean Brady, has invoked the Nuremberg Defense in order to excuse his inaction in the case of Fr. Brendan Smyth in 1975.
However, the increasingly loud calls for Brady’s resignation miss the point. At the very least, Brady knew of criminal acts committed by Smyth and did not inform the police. This itself is a criminal offence. At the other end of the scale, there could even be a case made for conspiracy as Brady’s inaction may have facilitated Smyth in continuing to abuse children for almost twenty years up to 1994.
Brady should be in custody. The celice wearing Minister for Injustice, Xenophobia and Jail-for-all should be demanding that the DPP (Director of Public Prosecutions) take some action. We need justice. The children need justice.
The sooner we remove this cancerous church from any sort of control in our society the better. We should start with Brady and continue by removing control of our primary schools from this malevolent and pernicious organisation. Patrick supposedly removed the snakes from Ireland, unfortunately what he left in their place is a lot more slippery and dangerous.
Remote Control
With a bit of luck the Government will miss Gabon’s reform of Civil Service lunch breaks. It’s interesting that in what is supposed to be a knowledge economy that there is such a reluctance to have Civil Servants avail of teleworking. The Department of Finance claims that it is too expensive to equip our homes with office furniture and that there are health and safety issues (our houses become more deadly if we work there, apparently). And there is also a concern about remote linking to Departmental computer systems. However, if we really want a flexible work force equipped to deal with the demands of a fast changing society then we need to look at this type of working. Taking the last few days into account I wonder how many civil and public servants availed of annual or flexi leave to avoid battling the elements to work. At least if they had the option of teleworking they would have been productive.
End Credits
It’s always sad when people who we respect have to take their leave but the last week saw two of my particular (and peculiar) favourites take their final bow. Michael Dwyer has been one of the more interesting and knowledgeable film critics of the past 25 years or so. I remember coming across him first in the In Dublin magazine many years ago and when he established the Dublin Film Festival with Myles Dungan. While I might not have agreed with everything he wrote I did admire his style of writing and the way he supported the film industry in Ireland. He was particularly good at interviewing film makers and the last time I saw him was at the 2007 Dublin International Film Festival when he presented Gabriel Byrne with a Volta and the following interview was fascinating. Dwyer set the bar for critics and he will be sadly missed although Daniel Day-Lewis said during his eulogy that he was relieved that Michael Dwyer never got round to seeing ‘Nine‘.
Another who turned his last sod was the landscape gardener John Cushnie. Cushnie had been part of Gardeners’ Question Time on BBC Radio 4 for the last fifteen years. GQT is a typically English institution, combining wisdom with wit and eccentricity. Cushnie could be forthright in his opinions but he had a wicked sense of humour and wasn’t afraid to send himself or his fellow panelists up. As a working gardener he had a real insight into the struggles of the (extremely) amateur genus.
Bow the Knee Biffo is a creationist. He’s also a master of spin – at a time when we are dramatically cutting our aid to Africa he is patting himself on the back about the work we are going to do to help prevent climate change in the third world. We would have been better served if Biffo had pointed out the inadequacies of the Pope’s response to the Ryan and Murphy reports of 2009. In fact we would have been better served if Biffo had just kept his big mouth shut.
We are all individuals
Bit of a kerfuffle over at Twenty.
