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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
4March 2015
Villager
Trust me, I’m a journalist
After warfare and driving, the biggest
waste of energy in human history is…
social media. The very name.
For Villager Facebook is even more self-
indulgent than Twitter since it calls less
for a dialogue.
Being a herd-like and sociable bunch,
unsurprisingly % of Irish journalists
use social media, one of the highest rates
in the world, with half of those using it
daily. % of Ireland’s political
correspondents use Twitter – perhaps
because looking at one’s smartphone
averts the need to engage any eye contact.
% of other – ordinary – journalists do
so compared with only % in the US and
% in Germany.
However, despite their fetish for it many
Irish journalists apparently have concerns
over the veracity of information on social
media and believe that without external
verification, the information from social
media cannot be trusted, though whether
they consider the pap that most of them
churn rates higher for veracity is not
mentioned. Sixty-four per cent of
journalists in Ireland consider this lack of
trust as the main deterrent for using social
media in their work, according to NUIG’s
Insight Centre. So % have no such trust
problem.
Gratifyingly, that is almost precisely the
same percentage as that of the populace
who trust the (non-social) media.
According to a recent Edelman report,
trust in media declined another three
points to % this year, and has now
fallen points since . Of the
countries surveyed only Japan (%) and
Turkey (%) had lower levels of trust in
media.
Meaningful names
Back to Villager’s theory that names
convey something important about the
bearer.
CRH, the building materials giant, has
appointed UK-based former investment
banker Lucinda Riches to its board. Ms
Riches is a -year veteran of Swiss
financial institution UBS Investment Bank.
A tendentious article on the cover of the
immigration–unfriendly Daily Telegraph
of Feb noted that “Britain’s high
achievers take flight. Thousands of
talented workers leaving for lucrative jobs
abroad while six times as many emigrants
with low numeracy skills arrive”. Its
author, Tom Whitehead.
Also in February the Dublin Coroner’s
Court heard that a young man from
Clonsilla, Dublin , died as a result of
multiple stab wounds sustained when he
fought with Lance Geoghegan in the early
hours of June , .
‘One of Us: the Story of Anders Breivik’
by Asne Seierstad, has been translated
into English by Sarah Death.
12-year old v the system
On February , in North Carolina
Superior Court, -year-old Hallie Turner
appealed a decision by North Carolina’s
Environmental Management Commission
rejecting her petition asking the
Commission to promulgate a rule, based
on the best available climate science, that
would require North Carolina to reduce its
carbon dioxide emissions by at least four
percent each year.
Displeased with the Commission’s
decision, Hallie hopes the Superior Court
will understand the importance of
protecting the State’s climate system, and
call upon government leaders to take
meaningful action. “It was disappointing
when the petition got denied because we
trusted our leaders to take initiative on
this issue and they didn’t”, Hallie says.
“They should be making the right
decisions to protect our planet. When they
don’t, they are letting us down, as well as
future generations. My generation is ready
and willing to take action and we will
continue to pressure our leaders to do the
same”.
Commissioner Benne Hutson who
rejected Hallie’s petition is somewhat
compromised as the law firm she works
for, McGuireWoods, has represented Duke
a typical journalist today
Hallie Turner
March 2015 5
for property development. When well-
regarded beak, Peter Kelly, asked if Beades
had received the monies at issue from
Bank of Scotland – he received the
response “I refuse to answer that
question”. Beades seems to stand for a) not
taking responsibility and b) the rights of
people who own property to retain it even
when they blow it and even when it is to
the financial detriment of the public.
Rachel English called a stop to the
‘Morning Ireland’ interview when Mr
Beades claimed a PR company had been
hired by a bank for the O’Donnell story.
For Villager, that was the only edifying
part of the whole story. Why would Rachel
English want to extinguish this angle?
Humility comes to Kinsealy
The new owners of Charlie Haughey’s
Gandon-designed mansion Abbeville are
the Japanese hotelier family, the Nishidas.
They own the Toyoko Inn group, one of the
largest hotel operations in Japan which
now has expansionist plans in Europe. The
chain aims for uniformity in its ‘no-frills’
hotels, using as many prefabricated and
bulk-purchased components as possible to
reduce costs. It is also known for almost
exclusively hiring women: at one time,
% of the company’s workforce was
female, and nearly all of its hotel managers
were married women.
In Norimasa Nishida, president of
Toyoko Inns, was forced to agree to
retrofit all its hotels.
Nishida also apologised for not taking
the case seriously. At a previous news
conference, he had downplayed the
modifications, including removing parking
required for disabled people.
The Toyoko Inn hotels nationwide
had been found to have been modified in
violation of the Building Standards Law
and other laws that require certain types
of buildings to make their facilities
Energy, and its subsidiary, McGuireWoods
Consulting, is a registered lobbyist for the
Koch Brothers, Halliburton, and others.
Children are taking similar actions in
Oregon and Massachussets.
John from sales
Confirming Villager’s antipathy to all
things computer, Mohammed Emwazi, the
Briton controversially identified as an
Islamic State executioner, was once a star
salesman for a Kuwaiti IT company, the
Guardian has revealed, in fresh
revelations about the journey from
normality to infamy of the Man-U
supporter who became known as Jihadi
John.
Emwazi, the Kuwaiti-born but London-
raised computer graduate, who features in
Isis videos raving and beheading hostages
in the Syrian desert, was quiet and rather
withdrawn but had a natural gift for his
work, a former boss in Kuwait City told the
Guardian. “He was the best employee we
ever had”. the former boss said of the then
-year-old. “He was very good with
people. Calm and decent”.
The Browne/O’Brien family
Gerard Whelan, CEO of Denis O’Brien’s
Newstalk has suddenly “left to continue
his career outside media”. Mr Whelan –
who had previously held a number of
positions at Kingspan - replaced Frank
Cronin in September . Cronin was
part of Vincent Browne’s abortive crowd-
funding ‘Barcelona FC-style’ attempt to set
up a democratic magazine.
Browne suggested last year that a
collective of upwards of , people in
Ireland pitching in € apiece could
support a €m journalism project, based
on the Barcelona model. He particularly
emphasised that Barcelona ran without
the support of “an oligarch or even a cabal
of oligarchs”, though Villager seems to
remember that when Browne owned this
magazine it was scarcely run by town-hall
voting. He was reported to have roped in
Frank Cronin as well as his affable long-
standing right-hand man, Tom Vavasour,
and nephew, journalist Malachy Browne
who until recently ran politico.ie, a left-
wing news website, with support from his
uncle. Browne nephew, who once worked
for Village, then became the news editor of
social news agency Storyful, and is now
managing editor and European anchor of
Reported.ly, a new media start-up backed
by the founder of eBay, Pierre Omidyar. We
may assume he is unavailable for the
Barcelona gig.
Before Cronin, the CEO of Newstalk was
Elaine Geraghty, former personal assistant
to Vincent Browne and married to Tom
Vavasour. Since you ask, Geraghty now
runs charity Inspire Ireland which “helps
young people lead happier lives”. While
Browne helps older people to feel
miserable.
A beady eye on landlordism
Jerry Beades, of the New Land League,
spoke briefly to Rachel English on
‘Morning Ireland’ in early March about the
situation regarding the repellingly-coiffed
O’Donnell family’s home in Killiney,
Dublin.
Brian O’Donnell reminds Villager of
Jeremy in the organ-splitting comedy,
‘Paths to Freedom’. In the end, after a
series of financial setbacks Jeremy set up a
tent on a fairway at his golf-club, the
Fitzhatton, with a view to highlighting the
issue of injustice to the rich.
Jerry Beades, who runs a company called
‘Jerry Beades Concrete – easyscreed’,
served time on Fianna Fáil’s Ard
Comhairle (National Executive) from
and was a “close friend” of Bertie Ahern. In
he announced plans to launch a
website called “Fianna Fáil Nua”, to
promote “root and branch reform” of the
party, informing RTÉ Radio One’s
‘Drivetime’ that his proposal was similar
to “what Tony Blair did with New Labour
in England” and claiming FF Cabinet
ministers had taken control of the party
away from the grass roots members, like
him presumably.
He said an initial meeting of a “Fianna
Fáil Nua” had already been held but no
trace remains of the endeavour. Instead he
has given us ‘Land League Nua’.
In summary judgment was
granted against Beades for €.m to
Ulster Bank relating to loans for property.
€.m had been taken out of an account
with the assistance of a bank manager, as a
result of “theft”. He says that he intends to
bring a claim against the bank arising out
of this alleged wrong. He was also pursued
by Bank of Scotland for nearly €m lent
the O’Donnells?
the O’Donnells
a typical journalist today
6March 2015
NEWS VILLAGER
friendly to the elderly and disabled.
“We will restore (the illegally modified
hotels) to their original state as soon as
possible,” Nishida, his head bowed as he
wept, told a news conference in Tokyo. “It
was me who gave the go-ahead for (the
modifications) and I take all the blame”.
Climate’s biggest war yet
An unprecedented climate change-fuelled
three-year drought contributed to the
political unrest in Syria, a new paper
published in the Proceedings of the US
National Academy of Sciences concludes.
Researchers show how the drought
worsened existing water-security and
agricultural woes, and forced up to .
million rural Syrians to migrate to urban
areas, occasioning demographic changes
that fed instability in cities. In addition,
the drought contributed to rising food
prices and more nutrition-related diseases
in children, which exacerbated the
turmoil.
Getting boomier
The State collected €.bn in taxes in
January and February, an increase of
€m or . per cent on the same
period in . It is time to re-elect
Fianna Fáil.
Arch-beak-off
Paul Carney, the country’s most senior
criminal law judge, will retire next month.
The -year-old judge has been a stickler
for pomp, fawning and wig-wearing in his
court, once earning a rebuke from the
archest judge in the Common Law world,
Adrian Hardiman, for being, ‘arch’ when
he made disparaging comments about
wigless defence counsel during a criminal
trial. According to Hardiman, the
comments which though “plain as a
pikestaff to any lawyer” were “obliquely
couched” and could not have meant
anything to the presumably wig-unaware
defendant.
Carney who controls the Central
Criminal Court (part of the High Court)
has heard an unprecedented rape and
murder cases including the Wayne
O’Donoghue and Padraig Nally murder
trials over the last years.
He famously was arrested on the steps
of the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin banging
to gain entrance for ‘a late drink’ after a
stressful trial, though he was regarded as
clever, independent and usually fair-
minded.
As a child he lived in Sweden with his
academic parents who had moved to
Scandinavia to establish a Department of
Celtic studies at Uppsala University. He
returned to Dublin at the age of nine and
went to Gonzaga College where he
presumably lectured his peers in Swedish.
Before becoming a judge he worked for the
election of schoolmate Michael McDowell.
In he became embroiled in an
unedifying beak-off with then Chief
Justice, Ronan Keane, over the contents of
a proposed speech. Keane had asked him
to amend the contents of his paper ‘The
Central Criminal Court: The Limerick
Experience’. Typically Carney withdrew
altogether rather than agreed to proposed
changes.
Lest we forget
It is the fiftieth Anniversary of the arrival
of the first US combat troops in South
Vietnam on March , . After the Viet
Minh took power in Vietnam in from
the beleaguered French, the Allied victors
insisted on a division of the country
between the British-French-US-controlled
South and the Chinese-controlled North.
By the US-backed government in
South Vietnam was suffering from power
struggles among its leadership and troops
were deserting its army. Communist forces
from North Vietnam were taking
advantage, and gaining control in the
countryside. Viet Cong guerrillas had
attacked a US compound in the Central
Highlands that February and General
William Westmoreland requested two
battalions of US marines to which
President Lyndon Johnson agreed. By the
end of the year , troops had been
deployed. A decade later when Saigon fell
and US soldiers made their final exit, more
than , Americans had served in
Vietnam and more than , had been
killed. An estimated million Vietnamese
were killed too, including million
civilians. The Vietnam-US relationship
was normalised under the Clinton
presidency in . Two-way trade
reached $.bn last year.
But was Rupert the greatest
ever touring Lions wing?
Former Independent Group CEO, Gavin
O’Reilly (), and Natalia Nataskin ()
who front ‘the Agency Group’ are a new
entry at in the ‘ Billboard Power
’ of “the executives who rule music
now”. The Agency operates from seven
international offices – London, Malmo,
New York, Toronto, Los Angeles, Miami
and Nashville – and employs over
agents. The citation notes that “in their
first full year steering the booking
behemoth [the Agency], the formidable
duo has more than , clients
(including The Black Keys, Guns N’ Roses,
Merle Haggard and Wiz Khalifa) and
booked nearly , shows. Among their
moves: creating a branding division,
acquiring Nashville independent agency
The Bobby Roberts Company, planting a
flag in EDM through purchases of the Bond
Music Group and London-based Coalition
talent agencies and launching dedicated
casino, college and corporate divisions.
“I’ve made no secret about our
expansionist agenda, across all musical
genres”, says O’Reilly.
GREATEST ACCOMPLISHMENT: “Being
the only female CEO of a major talent
agency’s U.S. operations”
- Nastaskin
BUSINESS ROLE MODEL: “Rupert
Murdoch - visionary and tenacious”
- O’Reilly.
Impressive until you see that No is
someone called Lucian Grainge.
Red-faced and cross
The CEO of the Irish Red Cross, (IRC)
Donal Forde, has announced his
resignation from the Red Cross,
coincidentally on the same day he was
named on a list of bankers to appear
before the Banking Inquiry. Mr Forde had
been managing director of AIB in the
Republic of Ireland between and
. According to the bank, his salary
was €.m in .
He had been coming under pressure in
recent months from Volunteer elements
within the IRC seeking to stall much
needed and overdue reforms and seeking
to regain control of the IRC from its Head
Office and professional staff. Both the
Gavin
O’Reilly
and
Natalia
Nataskin:
winners
March 2015 7
Head of Finance and the Head of
Communications have also recently
resigned.
There have been problems in this
organisation since at least when the
Sunday Tribune reported “Red Cross in
Crisis over Funds report”.
In June the Secretary General left
in acrimonious circumstances. She had
been pushing for reform, a dangerous
pursuit in the IRC. By there were
problems with a huge financial deficit, staff
redundancies, staff morale, failures to
rotate board members and delays in
distributing funds raised for that year’s
domestic flooding.
The discovery of an undeclared bank
account in mid- in Tipperary under
the name of the IRC, which had had
€, lying in it for over three years,
caused consternation and panic. The
money was supposed to be for victims of
the Asian tsunami but money was
not forwarded to IRC head office as per IRC
financial procedures. The Vice Chairman
of the IRC, Tony Lawlor, was a signatory on
the account. He denied any wrongdoing.
At least one call for his resignation was
made.
David Andrews followed his Secretary-
General by resigning as Chairman of the
IRC – following an article in Village in
October calling for him to step aside
in view of issues of corporate governance
and propriety including the delayed
tsunami payment, under his watch. At a
meeting on November of the
central council David Andrews referred to
“wretched scribes”. The resignations were
treated in the press as part of a pre-
arranged process but in fact the Chairman
had recently been re-appointed; and the
tenure of both the Chairman and Secretary
General had a significant time to run.
Neither would have resigned had a crisis
not arisen. Whistleblower, Noel Wardick
who described the pattern of
dysfunctionality in an anonymous blog
was fired in for “gross misconduct”
– though he has since been vindicated and
compensated. The problem then as now is
a number of power-hungry recalcitrants
on the executive who in reality control the
organisation. The culture of an
organisation will trump any reformist
strategy.
After a -year association with the
IRC, Tony Lawlor remains chair of its
Training Working Group.
Reasons to vote Democrat
Republicans last won the White House
without a Bush on the ticket in .
Our Baths Saved?
Dún Laoghaire Baths are to be redeveloped
after years of dilapidation and disuse.
Phase-one plans involve refurbishment of
the original baths pavilion to include
artists’ space, public toilets, a small café
and the demolition of derelict buildings. A
small jetty will be built into the sea with
access for swimmers. The second phase of
the plans includes a swimming pool, but
no funding has yet been allocated for it.
Kning the competition
The Daily Telegraph is in the doggy box
over a story on its front page about rival
publisher News UK which publishes The
Times and the Sun. It came a week after its
former chief political commentator, Peter
Oborne, resigned claiming that the paper
had perpetrated ‘fraud’ against its readers
over its lack of coverage on the corruptions
of HSBC, a big advertiser. The front-page
article, which does not have a byline,
claimed that News UK has launched an
internal investigation into the suicides of
two of its commercial staff “amid fears
that staff are being put under unreasonable
pressure to hit targets”. Meanwhile, the
Guardian, having gunned down the News
of the World and the Sun is busting itself to
do in the Mirror, leading with stories like
“Phone hacking at Mirror titles was on an
industrial scale”. It makes Village’s tiffs
with other em non-supportive media look
like Buckaroo.
In football as in politics
Syriza backed down on football violence
even faster than it did on economic
injustice. In February Greece’s
professional football leagues were
suspended indefinitely in a bid to
crackdown on crowd violence, the top-
flight Super League. The move followed a
pitch invasion at the end of the Athens
derby and a Super League board meeting
which ended in a brawl. It was the third
time this season that professional football
in Greece has been shut down. Matches
were halted for one week in September
following the death of a fan after violent
clashes at a third division match. And sure
enough within a week the already
beleaguered Government caved and
indefinite suspension had become a week’s
suspension.
Sprucing up the same old policies
Forestry minister Tom Hayes has
announced the approval of the new
forestry programme by the EU
Commission but environmental groups
claim the plan fails to resolve serious
environmental issues with the Irish
forestry model. The Environmental Pillar,
which is made up of Irish
environmental NGOs, says the plan
represents the same model with some
token environmental measures. The key
issues are:
. Dependence on foreign species
The plan guarantees the continuation of
Sitka Spruce as the dominating tree in
Irish forests.
. Dependence on clear-felling by heavy
machinery. It devastates wildlife,
damages watercourses and is an eyesore
on the landscape.
. Missed opportunity for job creation.
Systems which focus on native trees,
natural regeneration, and coppicing
provide abundant timber while
maintaining the biodiversity and
watercourse protection benefits and also
provide more jobs. •
Greek
football
match
Sitkas
