Villager

   Roy Keane, Bono, Michael Fitzmaurice, the Le Pens, Morgan Kelly etc  Meaningful surnames So Jared Payne’s an injury doubt for upcoming rugby internationals, while Ireland’s second try-scorer against South Africa is pretty-boy Tommy Bowe. Keane to defend himself Roy in Portmarnock book fracas…zzzzzzzzz. Globalism and tax breaks Bono and the IDA want to change the World. Villager wonders what people who want to keep it the same look like. The People’s Peter Mathews Michael Fitzmaurice is beginning to make quite an impression in the Dáil.   Multinational Back The French Front National’s Marine and her dad Jean-Marie Le Pen seem to have fallen out, after his dog ate her cat on the family compound outside Paris over the summer. A few months ago she said his suggestion that Patrick Bruel, a Jewish singer, should be “put in an oven” was a “serious political mistake”. Villager certainly would not demur. Now she wants to change the national front’s name but he says “only bankrupt parties change their names”. Ok then, how about just change the policies?       Trust not Front The Chairman of the English National Trust, Sir Simon Jenkins, a former editor of The Times, has attacked David Cameron, who once said he’d no more put the countryside at risk than his own family,  for abandoning Tory election pledges including by calling for a £15bn “100-roads revolution” by the end of the decade. Jenkins accused former Tory planning minister, Nic Boles – whose father, Jack, counter-intuitively was head of the National Trust 1975-1983, of being effectively a recruiting officer for UKIP which apparently is understanding about the countryside.  Such language would never be heard in Ireland’s National Trust, not since the never-knighted editor here – then An Taisce chairman – called Eamon O’Cuív a gobshite, in 2001.         Morgangst Villager doesn’t really do heroes. Gandhi maybe or Mandela. In Ireland we’ve em Adi Roche and Morgan Kelly. Anyway, the ECB has gently done the bank tests and only PTSB is in trouble. Where does this leave Professor Morgan Kelly? As recently as March he specifically reckoned the ECB was “gonna do” a “trial run” on Ireland.. It didn’t and won’t.  Stress tests would do for a large swathe of our SMEs which were surviving on “bank forbearance”: a “ticking time bomb”. “The ECB has basically kept pumping that sweet, sweet credit into our veins and we haven’t had the real crisis yet” but “we are going to see a big  chunk of the Irish economy wiped out in one go”, he predicted. As with Karl Marx you shouldn’t get in the business of predictions if you’re not prepared to take responsibility if they prove false. Morgan’s prediction is simply inaccurate. Village checked out the video of his subterranean lecture to a bunch of spotty UCD economists, and it’s all there. Never mind that he says Ok a lot, presumptuously, and does an irritating reverse praying gesture with waving hands. Villager has therefore downgraded him to McWilliams. It’s the clock/recession comes around once every 24 hours/business cycle syndrome. When that happens Kelly and McWilliams will be right. Better than most economists, but not great; and not heroic. Gurdgangst Still, like McWilliams, Kelly’s always been floppily cuddlable. On the other hand, Villager’s frankly always been a little scared of Constantin Gurdgiev.  Is there no end to the misery, Constantin? He seems to claim property prices are not rising when everyone else claims the opposite. Yet a cursory look at myhome.ie shows the prices of most properties does seem to be falling.  Is there something we’re not being told? Note to editor: ditch desperate, ill-thought-out plan for Village Property supplement. Statler and Waldorf In a blur of redundant silver-fox smoothness Frank Flannery and Bill O’Herlihy, two compromised former public Fine Gael elders, are to front a weekly iTunes podcast, paid for by Heatley Tector, cricket and rugger-buggering instore music and advertising mogul. Flannery, who was once president of the Union of Students in Ireland and shared rooms with Pat Rabbitte (just imagine the fights over who finished off  the sliced pan) received payments of €351,000 from Rehab over six years.  He was forced to resign from its board and as a Fine Gael trustee earlier this year after it was revealed that the charity paid him to lobby the Government, and that he was hanging around foxily in the portals of the Dáil to do so. He also used invoices from a dissolved company, Laragh Consulting Ltd, when being paid by Rehab for such services. O’Herlihy is a former investigative reporter turned sports broadcaster and Fine Gael handler, and is now chairman of the Irish Film Board. O’Herlihy has marshalled his reputation as a soccer sweet heart to lobby for some dodgy clients over the years. He worked on behalf of the tobacco industry in opposition to plain cigarette packaging, on the grounds that plain packages would make smugglers’ lives easier. In 2004, the Sunday Independent reported that O’Herlihy had lobbied on behalf of an Irish company, Bula Resources, to lift sanctions on Iraq. He also lobbied disingenuously in the early 1990s on behalf of Monarch Properties, subsequently found to have made corrupt payments after he’d moved on, for the rezoning of Cherrywood in South County Dublin. O’Herlihy told the Mahon tribunal that Richard Lynn, the project manager for the rezoning, explained to him that the way the system worked was that one picked a lead councillor in each of the political parties and then discussed the matter with them. An estimate of the amount of money needed to buy votes was made and the money was then provided to the lead councillor who did everything after that. O’Herlihy wouldn’t do that so Monarch replaced him with Frank (Dunlop not Flannery). So Villager waited up and podcast it, these exciting ‘Flannery Files’. Cue sub-Pat-Kenny-Show Mahler’s portentous Symphony No 6 in A minor, then it’s O’Herlihy, drole honest broker, introducing the great man who promises to be

Times past, times present Villager loves Irish offshore billionaires who take on the free press, or preferably own it. Dermot Desmond has gratifyingly extracted an immense and humble apology from the Sunday Times for a 1998 defamation. That year, a Mr Tom Doyle wrote to the Moriarty Tribunal stating that the Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC) was his idea not Dermot Desmond’s. He stated that he made a formal proposal to the Department of Finance in 1985 outlining a plan for such a centre in Shannon, County Clare. He also expressed concern that his idea was leaked to Desmond who then proposed the creation of the IFSC in Dublin and was rewarded for this with an option to purchase an office block there at a favourable price. In 1998, the Sunday Times rehearsed these defamatory claims of Doyle. They also pointed out that Desmond had paid significant sums of money to Charles Haughey, who enacted the legislation which implemented the IFSC plan. In 1998 Desmond issued separate legal proceedings for defamation against both Doyle and the Times. The parties exchanged communications regarding those proceedings until October 2000. Desmond took no further action until December 2005, when he served each of the defendants with a Notice of Intention to Proceed, claiming that the delay was on the advice of Senior Counsel and was to allow the Tribunal to issue its report. In 2008 Judge John MacMenamin ruled while there was inordinate and inexcusable delay by Mr Desmond in advancing the action, that the Sunday Times had not shown that the delay had resulted in more than  marginal or potential prejudice to the defence. On appeal to the Supreme Court Judge Liam McKechnie considered that the documentary evidence of Doyle was entirely unsatisfactory. Doyle claimed documents existed in 2001 which confirmed his assertion that he had come up with the idea for the IFSC. He could however provide no proof that these documents existed, and correspondence showed that Doyle was not even sure if the documents existed. The Supreme Court upheld the McMenamin judgment.  After that the Sunday Times has caved in, apologised and made a payment to charity. Rocking the anti-establishment Past pupils at rugger-loving, unisex, fee-paying Blackrock and Belvedere Colleges have written to alumni urging them to campaign against the Education Bill which is intended to remove “soft barriers” to admission by forcing schools to publish entrance policies. The Belvedere students’ union has circulated a smug sample letter directed against Minister for Education Jan O’Sullivan, claiming the bill was “a stealth tactic, to destroy private institutions like Belvedere College”. The bill would also allow schools to prioritise siblings of past or present students and the children of staff, but only as part of a transparent process that is subject to external review. But the privileged ones are most enraged by a provision that would limit schools’ rights to guarantee places to children of past pupils. Blackrock’s campaign is fronted by Shane Murphy, senior counsel and giant who was a charismatic auditor of UCD’s L and H debating society thirty years ago, and who subsequently spent a spell as a French Tridentine novice, immersed in the ascetic pleasures of the Latin mass. Murphy could argue his way out of a plastic bag, but he  should champion causes that deserve him. When publishing the draft bill, former minister for education and Rockman, Ruairí Quinn proposed 25 per cent of places could be reserved for such pupils but an Oireachtas committee has since recommended no such quota be allowed. Exemplary perks Apple and Facebook are competing neck and neck in the latest stage of the Silicon Valley “perks arms race”: Employees at both companies will now be able to freeze their eggs under their employee health plans. The companies will cover up to $20,000 in costs, typically enough to pay for two rounds of egg harvesting. The future is now. Unlawful Society At a hearing before its President in October the High Court upheld the nine findings of misconduct against Fergus Appelbe that were made against him by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal of the Law Society  in February of this year. The findings included fraud and forgery. Appelbe is a former member of the Law Society Conveyancing Committee. It was in pursuit of complaints by him that Cork Solicitor Colm Murphy was struck off. Appelbe was the subject of two ‘Today Tonight’ investigations into his conduct. Appelbe and his various companies are indebted in a sum in excess of €100 million. Much of this loss will have to be borne by the state. Colm Murphy had written letters to the Law Society and swore Affidavits in 2003, 2004 and 2005 pointing out that Appelbe was committing various wrongs but the Law Society failed to investigate him and instead prosecuted Colm Murphy on foot of Fergus Appelbe’s complaints. Until now. Keane of Tikrit Village doesn’t do sport but Villager will say that Roy Keane looks and behaves too much like Saddam Hussein for Villager’s liking. And Roddy Doyle who now resembles Mahatma Gandhi should have known better than to be his cypher. Neither of them has had an idea in a generation, they debase the discourse and the language. Have you ever tried reading ‘The Giggler Treatment’ to a child? Janey Delaney Also, how did FAI mogul, John Delaney, a figure of fun the last time anyone thought about him, manufacture so much space in the Sindo for himself some weeks ago, on the Sindo’s Brendan O’Connor’s ‘Saturday Show’ and in Independent.ie which ran a ‘behind-the-scenes’ documentary, hosted by spittle-licker Barry Egan. Implausibly Denis O’Brien confided in the newspaper which recently published an apology to him – but over which he exercises no control – that Delaney could run UEFA or “anything”. But it was left to others, led by Delaney’s glistening new girlfriend, to recognise that he is a “teddy bear”. Denis O’Brien stumps up a nosebleed-inducing 70 per cent of Martin O’Neill and Roy Keane’s  pay packets – €910, 000 of

Villager loves Irish offshore billionaires who take on the free press, or preferably own it. Dermot Desmond has gratifyingly extracted an immense and humble apology from the Sunday Times for a 1998 defamation. That year, a Mr Tom Doyle wrote to the Moriarty Tribunal stating that the Irish Financial Services Centre (IFSC) was his idea not Dermot Desmond’s. He stated that he made a formal proposal to the Department of Finance in 1985 outlining a plan for such a centre in Shannon, County Clare. He also expressed concern that his idea was leaked to Desmond who then proposed the creation of the IFSC in Dublin and was rewarded for this with an option to purchase an office block there at a favourable price. In 1998, the Sunday Times rehearsed these defamatory claims of Doyle. They also pointed out that Desmond had paid significant sums of money to Charles Haughey, who enacted the legislation which implemented the IFSC plan. In 1998 Desmond issued separate legal proceedings for defamation against both Doyle and the Times. The parties exchanged communications regarding those proceedings until October 2000. Desmond took no further action until December 2005, when he served each of the defendants with a Notice of Intention to Proceed, claiming that the delay was on the advice of Senior Counsel and was to allow the Tribunal to issue its report. In 2008 Judge John MacMenamin ruled while there was inordinate and inexcusable delay by Mr Desmond in advancing the action, that the Sunday Times had not shown that the delay had resulted in more than marginal or potential prejudice to the defence. On appeal to the Supreme Court Judge Liam McKechnie considered that the documentary evidence of Doyle was entirely unsatisfactory. Doyle claimed documents existed in 2001 which confirmed his assertion that he had come up with the idea for the IFSC. He could however provide no proof that these documents existed, and correspondence showed that Doyle was not even sure if the documents existed. The Supreme Court upheld the McMenamin judgment. After that the Sunday Times has caved in, apologised and made a payment to charity.