Irish politics discussion thread

http://sphotos-a.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/736524_10152407624245693_544914632_o.jpg

was surprised by the amount of anti-abortion ads around when i was home. above urinals and stuff. couldn't piss that high unfortunately.

they're pretty good at punching above their weight, presence-wise. Pity that it seems to work.

That's because there's a lot of US funding going into the anti-abortion campaigns.
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/why-american-pro-life-dollars-are-pouring-into-ireland/266981/

I thought this was priceless (from broadsheet):

http://www.broadsheet.ie/2013/01/10/an-easy-thing-to-forget/

Caroline Simons of the Pro-Life campaign told the Joint Committe on Health and Children today that she was unaware of being in that pro-life video broadcast on the American Christian channel EWTN.

Fine Gael TD Marcella Corcoran Kennedy said she couldn’t understand why Simons didn’t know about the EWTN video, considering she appears in it.

Caroline Simons: “In relation to EWTN. I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m sorry I can’t help you with that one”.

Later, she added: “I wasn’t aware that I was on it. I don’t know any agents of the culture of death, I hope. Certainly they haven’t introduced themselves to me.”

I tried complaining to the Guards in front of the GPO just before Christmas about the signs. While they were sympathetic they wouldn't do anything. It's the images that really get me. Everyone has a right to opinions, faith, etc. but putting images like those into the head of kids is just OTT and wrong.

About controlling social media I am much more worried about Shatter's privacy bill.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-21291356

wtf

They went to the local garda station and they got him tea and biscuits. He gobbled up the biscuits as he was ravenous so they got him some curry chips. They discovered he had been missing for the past eight months and that he was in fact an international high flyer”

Love this Christy Moore song.

He said rumours that he had been abducted...were speculation.

Uh huh.

Mental.

Don't believe a fuckin word but fair play, celtic tiger entrepreneurs love getting into the indo

"ah jaysus, you gobbled up those biscuits quick didn't ye? you must be ravenous!! here sure, we got ye some curry chips, tuck into those now while we decide what to do with ye at all."

If there's a vigilante group going round kidnapping, torturing and carving these cunts then good, i want in.

really hoping they did the Brad Pitt speech from Inglourious Basterds while they was carving it in

Don't believe a fuckin word

do you just mean about him not being kidnapped? i don't know what to believe about the general story here.

apart from the insight into the garda diet

Out of him

well if he wasnt kidnapped what happened to him then? bizarre story

my completely uninformed guess is declared bankrupt, fucked a load of people into the shit, put whatever he could salvage into a wagon of coke and took for the hills of cavan

sounds more plausible actually

i want to see the movie of this

Herzog to direct

and star

mcgeever - wrath of gard

apparently "babushka" was carved into his head.....either they were russian or big kate bush fans who knows

musta been a big forehead to get "babushka" carved into yer head tho

C/r in my hand from minister x to which i must reply like he's not a fuckin moron:

one of my constituents has a telephone no. similar to yours and she's pyoor mithered will ye change?

this magdalene stuff really fucking disgusts me. it's almost worse imo, if you can compare this kind of thing, than the sexual abuse scandals (not that it doesn't involve sexual abuse) just for how brazen a violation of people's human rights it was. like the idea of just imprisoning people for absolutely nothing, it's just truly disgusting to me that our state could stand over this after so many years struggling for independence.

A long struggle for independence doesnt usually result in Utopia afterwards tbf, no reason for us to be any different

but it's bad, as bad as the other abuses and the worse for being even more of an open 'secret'

A long struggle for independence doesnt usually result in Utopia afterwards tbf, no reason for us to be any different

ah i know, obviously.

for me it's worse than the abuses for the imprisonment/torture element. these were fucking slave camps, it's just absolutely abhorrent.

The report concluded there was no physical or sexual abuse by nuns or others on their charges, some of whom were only girls as young as 12.

nobody seems to be discussing the first point here. so, no physical or sexual abuse?

Tbh i've not had a deeper look at this; the summary i read seemed to suggest this was not on anything like the scale of what was going on in eg the industrial schools, church abuse coverups, etc

comparison is a very shitty way to approach these things though

And the report cost 11 grand.

im not saying whitewash, but 11 grand buys you fuck all whitewash anyway.

'no evidence of......' figures very highly

i just dunno what to make of it tbh, need to look further but rly it's anecdotal testimony vs a v scaled back inquiry that seems not to have stirred up much

it's really strange that that line isn't being explored in the media or that the lobby groups themselves aren't up in arms about basically being discredited.

doesn't seem like the report actually tried to establish the level of abuse or whatever though, wasn't really its remit.

Yeah, i mean if that figure is right, essentially you'd be limited to ringing a few nuns, asking them for the figures and any comment, then printing whatever they said.

the remit was just to discover state involvement in sending women to these institutions, wjich is very limited really

was there already a report on what happened to the people in the laundries?

Covered under 2009 inquiry but govt always denied involvement in the running of them, which is weaselly but correct

^uh wait a minute now http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2013/0206/1224329708069.html

Oh yeah, o'keeffe's (total cunt btw obv) statement has been long discredited re: referrals to these places and the likes of the gardai being used to round up runaways and that kind of thing

current govt position accepts that the state referred ppl to the laundries, did not ensure proper wages or conditions, ensured they got big state contracts, basically they acknowledge that these laundries were an establishment solution to an irish catholic state problem- but they maintain the laundries were church run, church owned and presumably the angle is that they do not accept liability for any future cases that may arise based on maltreatment or false imprisonment or w/e

which, as i say, might even be legally correct (given flouting of labour laws and the abuse of state apparatus and contracts for work, idk?) but would be fuckin contemptible.

that said i'd like to see this being a private issue against the orders at least as much, obv

and that said, the report seems to make clear that the abuse and maltreatment over years depicted in the arts and media is not proven as illustrative of the majority of individual cases, where the laundries functioned as Unpleasant and tough places of forced labour (obv bad enough in itself) but not anything like as bad as the institutions investigated in 2009

and that said, the report seems to make clear that the abuse and maltreatment over years depicted in the arts and media is not proven as illustrative of the majority of individual cases,

dunno how clear it makes this. this is the bit i raised earlier, it seems a pretty key point that needs to be dealt with, regardless of whether this report's remit allowed that.

like the consensus amongst the women seems to have been that there was violence plus abuse, and the narrative was always dominated by this idea. if it's not true that's really important. if it is equally so.

From the small bits i've see mcaleese seems not to think there is evidence to support this.

with such a small remit and budget i don't see how he can presume this, tho it is specifically stated that the vast majority of the women the committee spoke to did not experience ill treatment, physical punishment or abuse prevalent in the industrial schools.

i dont know how many women the committee spoke to out of the ten thousand tho

has the stuff about the mass graves ever been investigated? like causes of death and stuff?

i listened to liveline yday (for my sins, i followed a link on twitter) and there were people saying their relative had died young due to fumes inhalation and stuff.

it's sort of hard to imagine it wasn't a cruel and abusive environment, but yeah, the report at least says it found no evidence of that. it also finds that most people didn't actually spend that long in the laundries, again contrary to the way the media has tended to handle the issue. and that they didn't make any money.

it does seem to debunk quite a lot, but nobody seems willing to really ask the key questions, really bad coverage overall.

Eleven grand buys you fuck all whitewash. In itself that's a good coverup

so this prom note thing. is there any decent steer on what the fuck to think about it? i'm unsure why there's so much negative reaction when the only analysis i read was on irish times and appeared to be guarded but positive. at the same time it does seem v little info is clear, and maybe this is why people are annoyed?

Hahahaha wtf i go to sleep early *one* fucking night

i dont know.it appears to have been a fairly slick and well-planned operation to liquidise the assets of a bank worth -18bn before those assets (due to an anticipated run after leaks yesterday) became worth -31bn

that's the positive.

the negative will out in the wash ito how and what this means for the ecb debt, which is probably further entrenched as irish public debt and with maybe fewer options on the table to deal with it.

who knows, maybe we'll write off the lot and walk away (less depositor guarantees capped at 100k) but i kinda fuckin doubt it

yeah that's pretty much the take i got from what i read last night. i don't get why people on facebook/twitter etc seem so enraged, without making any clear arguments.

plus are there really any rules anymore in any of this?

I dont know re rules, but we own the bank and guaranteed the bondholders, which was the problem. I highly doubt this changes that, we can hope.

Ppl on fb etc froth at any mention of ibrc/ecb. Rightly so!

It could all a serious poker move, or it could have been done with ecb approval (first word yesterday tacitly suggested this but seemed not to have been accurate-nult- by 7.30pm).

the deal on the notes will now almost certainly be done

There is the risk that ECB won't play ball as they, in spite of much vaunted independence, are as political as any other EU institution.

This does appear to lessen the amount we pay each time but it does not reverse austerity measures. We will still be borrowing to pay the debt back.

C/r in my hand from minister x to which i must reply like he's not a fuckin moron:

one of my constituents has a telephone no. similar to yours and she's pyoor mithered will ye change?

― ben foster five (darraghmac), Tuesday, February 5, 2013 11:40 AM

I want to know what the reply was!

This does appear to lessen the amount we pay each time but it does not reverse austerity measures. We will still be borrowing to pay the debt back.

yeah it's still only a tiny amount of the overall debt i believe.

It will ease the current repayments significantly but not change annual budgets as agreed, which means that the money saved will go to more constructive uses like job creation and suchlike.

yes ecb is political, but imo now was a good time for this if they weren't going to do a deal which tbf had widespread support across many other relevant institutions and spheres, the political capital was there to chance this imo.

the reply was brief. Every day i get complaints from certain labour td's that we are implementing their legislation. Those replies are brief too.