An Irishman’s jaundiced View

Another 250 jobs gone at Dell

For years we have had to listen to propaganda telling us that we are one of the richest countries in the world.
On RTE’s Prime Time last night we were told that seven homeless people died on our streets over the Easter holiday. This would be bad enough but, to discover that there are units to deal with the homeless all over Dublin which are lying idle because of cut-backs in our half-arsed Health Service.
Given this scenario at the bottom end of society, it’s disturbing to see that a huge number of the wealthiest business people, who pretend not to be living here, pay no tax at all with some appearing to pay no tax ANYWHERE.

You can see the Prime Time program …HERE
As more programs are added, you might have to search for it later.

250 more jobs lost at Dell

Irish Catholic priest tries to get violent rapist ‘off the hook’

Ireland is in the grip of a huge rise in violent crime and the fact that our inept politicians have directed the Gardai to manipulate crime figures in order to do a ‘damage limitation’ job is a scandal.
11 years our government are sitting on their hands while people are afraid to go out at night onto our streets. Almost every other day there is another ‘atrocity’ resulting in a bit of a media flurry and a couple of days later, it’s all forgotten about.
Most of the murders and other criminal mayhem are carried out by by thugs who are either out on bail or who have dozens of convictions.

“Crimes like burglary and criminal damage are what affect the community most — in recent years these are just not being treated seriously because of the huge amount of crime,” the TD said. “In many cases people have given up going to the gardai.”

The full story
Gardai don’t even have number plate recognition devices
Gardai launch scheme to tackle thefts and burglaries
Forgive me for being thick here but, I thought that such a scheme had been put in place years ago…IT’S CALLED THE LAW

At present in Ireland we have a Health Service which has been on it’s knees for years because our stupid government have fail to adequately address the problem. Right now there are up to 300 patients waiting on trollys to either be seen by a doctor or to be admitted to hospital. Some of these patients have been in A and E departments for days.
Given this scenario, it’s infuriating that somebody could take a case to the High Court, lasting 37 days, in order to prevent the hospital from giving her blood transfusions.
And all because she was a Jehovah’s Witness.
There are times when I truly believe that we’re a planet full to the neck of GOBSHITES!

It’s simple! All you have to say is that you didn’t think she was under age and you’re found not guilty. Throw in a few drinks into the scenario and you’re laughing!
You would think that the above statement was outrageous in ‘Catholic Ireland’ and you would be justified in thinking so but, when a man who had sex with a 13 yr old girl is found NOT guilty in an Irish Court it brings our Legal System down to being a farce as there was no argument as to whether sex took place or not.
Outrageous as this scenario is, in 2006 a man was released from a jail sentence he was serving for having sex with a 12 yr old girl.
It appears that it’s too much to expect our outrageously over paid politicians to spend a little time in the ‘anticipation business’.

Related links:
Paedos prosper in sick Ireland
Our Catholic bishops won’t have to go to Bangkok so often now.

From the Irish Examiner
‘Mr K knew I was 13 when we had sex’

By Conor Ryan
THE woman at the centre of the landmark mistaken-age sex case has said the man cleared of sexually assaulting her knew she was 13 at the time.

Speaking after the 27-year-old man, referred to as Mr K, became the first person in the state to successfully use the legal defence of honest mistake, the woman said both of them knew there was a seven-year age gap.

Yesterday, the verdict reignited the two-year-old controversy surrounding statutory rape laws and prompted Justice Minister Brian Lenihan to say if the constitution was an obstacle to reform it had to be changed.

His comments came after the woman, now aged 20, said the day before she and Mr K had sex in October 2001 both were part of a group that discussed her age: “I was 13. I was just three months gone from being 12. Mr K had seen me in my school uniform, he knew how old I was because we all discussed it the day before. I looked maybe 14 or 15, but he knew.”

On Wednesday, a jury at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court found Mr K not guilty of sexually assaulting the then 13-year-old girl at Howth Head on October 18, 2001. He became the first man successfully to use the “honest mistake” defence and told the court he thought she was “aged 17 or 18”.

Mr K used the clause that was introduced after the 1935 law prohibiting sex with underage girls sensationally collapsed in the Supreme Court in May 2006. He was facing a charge of unlawful carnal knowledge, but this was dropped and replaced with one of sexual assault.

However, speaking on radio, the north Dublin woman was adamant that, while she drank almost a half pint of vodka throughout the day in question, Mr K could not have thought she was an adult.

“The gardaí took the clothes I was wearing. My jumper was aged 13-14 and was a blue Ellesse sports jumper. I had white Champion sports tracksuit trousers and ankle socks. [The trousers] would be three-quarters length on me now. Those aren’t the clothes of a 20-year-old,” she said.

During the trial, the woman agreed she consented to having sex. But after the jury returned its verdict she admitted feeling punished for being so honest.

“If I wanted to lie to protect myself from mommy and daddy and everybody else, I could have made a rape allegation, but I did not make a rape allegation. I told the truth and I was as honest as I possibly could. But the fact is Mr K knew how old I was,” she said.

Yesterday, the verdict provoked outrage from children’s rights groups, victims’s advocates and opposition politicians representing Fine Gael and Labour.

The Irish Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children said the Government had to speed up legislation to replace the emergency law passed during the 2006 constitutional crisis.

“The welfare of the child must be the priority in all advances that are made in child protection,” it said.

Speaking in Templemore the Justice Minister said if the Oireachtas committee on constitutional reform recommended change, this would be done. He added the honest mistake defence should be limited.

Bertie Ahern resigns. Clampdown on tax dodgers. Coincidence???

Online Videos have now become a huge factor in people’s daily usage of the internet. Apart from the fact that they are a very popular source of entertainment, there is also a big demand for videos as an educational tool. Almost every subject under the sun is now covered in some way in the content of online videos.
To make it easier to find certain categories, I have put together this fairly comprehensive library of online videos all about Irish life and culture.
I will be adding videos on a regular basis.
You can see dozens of photos of Ireland…HERE

IRELAND: A selection of videos showing different aspects of Ireland… =================================== Irish music videos including noted Irish recording artists… =================================== Videos of Irish Theatre productions and promotions… =================================== Irish Dancing videos from many parts of the world… =================================== Videos of Irish Horse Racing events from all parts of Ireland… =================================== Irish recipe videos where you can learn from the top chefs… =================================== Plenty of funny videos from around the world… =================================== Videos of People telling Irish jokes. Some don’t have the talent… I plan to tell some jokes on video soon.

Francis Kelly has turned his Limerick home into a ‘pub’ where he invites his friends to club in for a drinking session and, even better, drinking and smoking together just like the ‘good old days’.
Of course, the greedy publicans in the area are up in arms because it’s a threat to their already dwindling bottom line and have ’sent’ the Gardai/Police to the house on three occasions at time of writing. Each time that they confiscate the alcohol in the house, Francis and friends go out and buy more.
As far as I understand the situation, unless he is caught taking money at his bar, he isn’t doing anything illegal and, surely, a man is entitled to have his friends over for drinks in his own home and how he serves the drink is his own business.
It appears that the Gardai are going to take Mr Kelly to court and it will be interesting to see
the outcome.
Latest:
It now appears that Mr Kelly is to be taken to court over his Shebeen and €5,000 has been collected in order to take the whole ’shebang’ to the high court. I hope he succeeds and I won’t be one bit sad for the plight of the greedy publicans.

He said that he did nothing for the thousands of pounds he received
That’s exactly what the generous donors who gave him the money wanted him to do…nothing.
And in doing nothing Bertie Ahern excelled himself.
The crooks who gave him the money were already creaming it and the last thing that they wanted were changes in the ’status quo’. The greedy developer section of the cabal of his so-called pals already knew that they could manipulate the property market to the point where they could get poor bastards who should never have been given a mortgage to pay exorbitant prices for shoe boxes with not even a car parking space. It’s reckoned that there are over a 100,000 mortgage holders in negative equity at the moment. It will be years before these unfortunates get to the stage where they owe what their house is worth.
The fact that our ‘beloved’ leader did nothing for the 40,000 people on waiting lists who couldn’t afford to even think about getting a mortgage played straight into the hands of Ahern’s crooked friends.
Our Health Service is in tatters as a result of Bertie Ahern having done nothing. If the ‘inepts’ who are in charge of this disaster didn’t give Ahern money, they should do so now because, not alone were they given carte blanche to look after themselves by consolidating their positions and pensions, but they were allowed to vastly increase their numbers while cutting services to the most vulnerable in society. Now, it’s going to be a huge job to pare back on the numbers of useless ‘pen pushers’.
Just recently we had the usual controversy as the where a new hospital was to built. It now turns out, after all the expensive reports, consultants, meetings and committees, that there is no money for the hospital anyway.
If the banking sector didn’t give Ahern money, they should have. Because during the tenure of the Ahern led governments, they were found to have overcharged thousand of customers by manipulating their charges with not one court case ever brought in order to get them to explain.
Be jaysus Bertie, I think that you are still owed money from your ‘friends’!

Ahern’s loophole inaction a ‘gift’ to developers — Gilmore

Cartoon from today’s Irish Independent

A delightful little film that I came across on Youtube
“Those who do not learn from the past, are condemned to repeat it”.
Boy! Have we a whole bunch of repeating to do.

Yes, a thug stole a taxi and and sprayed six occupied houses with a powerful machine gun.
In Dublin some thug strapped a pipe bomb to a car resulting in the Army having to carry out a controlled explosion after residents were moved out.
I could go into more detail but no one actually gives a fuck!
Latest:
There are times when I think that it’s me who is suffering from some sort of illusion. Between the media, government spin doctors and conniving politicians, they have now succeeded in convincing the public that the white thing that they are looking at is actually black. They obviously have a secret ‘bamboozle machine’ hidden somewhere and working like a charm.
I was just listening to RTE TV news a few minutes ago as they were interviewing a Fine Gael TD/MP (Didn’t get his name) and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
The idiot was advocating bringing in ‘emergency legislation’ whereby anyone caught with a gun would get 15 years in jail.
For jaysus sake, they should be getting that sentence already!
How can any society achieve a reasonable standard of civilization if some thug rakes six houses with a machine gun and isn’t put away FOR LIFE?And I mean the whole of his life.

Those with the least to gain and the most to lose get to do the dying.
The latest figures from the American dead in Iraq means that there are 4,000 families in the US who have to suffer the loss of a loved one.
For what? So that the friends of George Bush can consolidate their financial position in the oil and other industries while never once putting themselves in any danger.
It never fails to amaze the effect the concept of patriotism can have on people who are at the lower end of the social scale who spend a livetime being ignored by their government until there is dying to be done. Young men from ghetto areas are conned into believing that when the conflict is over that life for them will be better. Even if they come back physically undamaged it can take years for the mental scars to heal and in that time, they will be forced to get by on welfare or some other measly source of income. Of course, if the have received serious injury, it will be even harder to get by with them virtually have to beg for what are supposed to be ‘entitlements’.
The other side of the coin will see the middle aged leaders who sent them to war make millions on deals which they ‘negotiated’ while in possession of inside information and retire on massive pensions paid for by the ordinary taxpayer…the relatives of those who were killed.
War is a very profitable game for the powerful. The ‘grunt’ rarely benefits in any way.
And the band played Waltzing Matilda