An Irish woman's social, political and domestic commentary
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| GUBU An Irish woman's social, political and domestic commentary |
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Saturday, January 31, 2004
Dullest blog in the world
This is masterful. posted by Sarah | 21:42 0 comments Note on the backlash Ok lads, don't go tooooo far. Otherwise the backlash might backlash. Guardian sample, More Guardian. posted by Sarah | 21:38 0 comments New blog - irish interest Welcome Tom, to blogland. posted by Sarah | 21:26 0 comments Friday, January 30, 2004 Those damned elusive WMD Favourite reason for failure to find WMD: "The bastard: He tricked us!" posted by Sarah | 23:15 0 comments Backlash city!! Hohoho; I think Blair et al must now realise that Hutton did them no favours. On a technical legalistic point Hutton is correct but the BBC story is blatantly correct in every other regard; principally that Campbell did recommend changes to the dossier which increased the level of threat. More importantly, the intelligence has proved to be totally wrong: the people will not forgive Blair so easily. Great editorial in the Guardian. posted by Sarah | 14:01 0 comments Thursday, January 29, 2004 Hijab I have been asked to comment on the ban on religious symbols in French schools. As John Waters points out its an issue where feminism and liberalism meet and have fallen apart. Here's where I stand: - The fundamentalism of some should not be used against the moderation of others, i.e. comparing the hijab to the burqa is not fair - Naturally it appalls me that the reason the hijab is required is because men are not expected to control their lust or anger and it is the responsibility of women to cover themselves so that they do not accidentally tempt men. Clearly this is medieval and the burqa is practical torture. (Except perhaps if you live in Afghanistan where there is no law or order, the place has been bombed back to the stone age, and war lords and tribes rule the day) - I also acknowledge that even within Islam the hijab is hugely controversial and is for instance banned in Tunisia and Turkey. - Further, I am aware that Islamic women who don't feel the need to wear the Hijab can come under a lot of pressure to do so - but that is the crucial point. The hijab is a matter for Islam - it's something which they need to sort out and one would hope that the moderates prevail - it is not an issue for the state and they have no business telling people what they can and cannot wear. Prohibiting certain dress seems to be as intolerant as proscribing it. Provided basic human rights are not being infringed, people should be let do what they want. I think that the ban will only provide amunition to fundamentalists and make life harder for the moderate wing of Islam. It will probably result in girls being kept back from school which will make their lives harder. It will result in the alienation of Islamic society from 'western' society rather than promoting co-existence. In short, the 'west' will have to stop viewing Islam as the Moors coming over the hills to conquer all before them. The roots of Islam are extremely tolerant and we should be helping the moderates; not excluding them. posted by Sarah | 18:24 0 comments Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Wow! Hutton.... must love Blair. While one might accept that they can get away with saying that they didn't know that the 45 minute claim was incorrect, I ask this: why were they the only ones who actually thought it was true? Blix and the other inspectors said that all they could say was that a tiny percentage of the WMD were unaccounted for. They repeatedly stressed that that was not saying that they existed; merely that they could not definitively say they had been destroyed. It was absolutely clear from Susan Watts's tape of Kelly that he did credit Campbell with putting on pressure to come up with more 'evidence' for the dossier. That's sexing up in my world. To me it is absolutely clear that no.10 cast around looking desperately for any evidence which would back-up their previously devised policy of regime-change. Gilligan screwed it up in his terminology and the governors screwed it up by not making a qualified withdrawal earlier but this much is true: - Campbell did make changes to the dossier which emphasised the threat - the 45 minute claim was incorrect - Kelly (based on the Watts tapes) was briefing journalists of this If Gilligan had said that that no.10 had inserted the claim even tho' intelligence officers had warned that it was unreliable then everything would be ok. Instead Gilligan said that they had inserted knowing it was probably wrong. He also credited his source with using the term 'sexed up'. That's the screw up and on these specific issues Hutton is correct. However, it still doesn't excuse the following: - THERE ARE NO WMD - they should have accepted Blix's view of the above instead of one dodgy intelligence report of their own - they went to war on a false premise - the post de facto justification of war on humanitarian grounds is not acceptable since that is not the case they made to the world. They cannot claim that they were duped by bad intelligence when Blix, France and Germany said there wasn't sufficient evidence. They went looking for anything which would back up their case and wrote a dossier which would include this so-called evidence in an attempt to persuade the British public. Hopefully the BBC will conduct some kind of fight back on the substantive issue and not allow their management f***up to destroy their confidence in pursuing this issue. Given that Blair is never likely to admit his fault, the question now is: what weasly words will he employ years from now to explain the mystery of the WMD. Will he die claiming that they are there, somewhere underneath that desert? posted by Sarah | 23:26 0 comments Some rest After my Tribunal stresses and recent TV performance, physical collapse has ensued and I am taking to my bed today. However, am listening to Hutton report and will comment tomorrow. New readers have been getting in touch. Welcome all. posted by Sarah | 14:42 0 comments Tuesday, January 27, 2004 More Moriarty Allegations Allegation No. 2 Communicorp, DOB's holding company did not have sufficient funds to back a mobile phone company. Given this financial weakness they should never have been awarded the licence. The Truth Communicorp couldn't really afford its share of the funds at the time. Their share of the bid was underwritten but there were weaknesses. But everyone knew that once the licence was awarded the money would come rolling in. I witnessed this personally when the day after the licence winner was announced, Denis picked up a congratulatory fax from a financial institution offering an opportunity to discuss funding. Before scrunching it up and firing it in the bin he said "these f***ers wouldn't take our calls last week". To that extent the money didn't really matter. Whoever won the licence would have no problem getting funding. This state of affairs was recognised by Andersen Management who assessed the bids; (source) “The evaluators have concluded having regard to the level of interest in the Irish competition for the GSM licence and the high profitability of mobile communications generally throughout Europe that the project is fundamental!y robust and, after a licence has been awarded, an attractive opportunity for corporate debt financiers, The evaluators have therefore formed the view that, subject to at least one of 'the principals having sufficient financial strength at this stage to ensure completion of the project, a potential financial weakness of one consortia member should not have a negative impact on the ranking of applications. It is important, nevertheless, to draw attention to the need to deal with this factor where relevant in the context of licence negotiations " AMI further state in their submission to the Tribunal (this document being on the Tribunal website but strangely never sourced by journalists reporting the issue) "In AMI's opinion the evaluation result nominating Esat Digifone as the winner thus was and is the right result" and further "The quality and consistency of ESAT Digifone’s application with regard to the extent and content of the information provided is among the absolute [my emphasis] best that AMI have seen during the many evaluations that AMI at that time and since then has participated in." Now these are the quotes from the bid assessor Michael Andersen. He has backed up all this in private sessions with the Tribunal but refuses to appear as a witness because: - The Tribunal behaved so aggressively with him in private he does not want to expose himself to that aggression in public (it being in the Tribunal's interest to find fault with him). The Tribunal want to assess the assessor. - Telenor now own his management company with whom he no longer works and hold a lot of the documentation and surprise surprise don't want to help him out - He is well aware that Persona, the second ranked bidder have two reps at the Tribunal and have a long list of people to sue and without an indemnity from the state he would be stone mad to appear. However the Tribunal, taking as one journo has said a Mastermind approach to the investigation (I've started so I'll finish) are free to pursue their agenda. I still have a gripe with journalists who consistently refuse to refer to documents like those above when constructing their various conspiracy theories. posted by Sarah | 22:08 0 comments Friday, January 23, 2004 More Moriarty Here's an example of some of the questioning I underwent. Telenor claim that they knew absolutely nothing about political donations to FG and if they had known, they would have disapproved. Of course their motive is that they hate Denis because he managed to get 40% of the consortium even tho' he had no money and then sold Esat Telecom to BT for $100 a share instead of Telenor's offer of $70something. The only problem with their line is that a donation was made to FG from the joint venture account. The donation (of 4k; you could definitely buy a licence with that, couldn't you?) was made by way of a draft however, it appears as a donation to FG in the accounts of the company (which Telenor would have seen and signed off on ) and the signature of one of their executives Hans Mhyre was required on the cheque which purchased the draft. Hans has said he has no recollection whatsoever of signing such a cheque and as I was the person who requisitioned the cheque and purchased the draft I was examined by both Tribunal counsel and Telenor's counsel (Eoghan FitzSimmons, a former AG no less) on the subject of his signature. Their questioning was very forensic and made reference to the fact that they had compared my handwriting with the writing on the cheque. The implications were obvious. Either I had forged Hans' signature or I had filled out the cheque after he had signed it or I had lied to him about the purpose of the cheque. As this all took place nearly 9 years ago, I have no idea whether or not I sought his signature at all or whether the cheque was simply handed to me by the financial controller (who can't remember either). Now of course none of this has anything to do with whether or not Michael Lowry was bribed by DOB to help get the licence, but my reputation still gets to be trashed in public! posted by Sarah | 16:36 0 comments Thursday, January 22, 2004 Supportive comments JO'S writes "You're far too genteel about the Mad Mullah. "Fascist pig" is mild stuff. Check out this as a standard of invective to emulate. posted by Sarah | 22:01 0 comments Why are tribunals expensive? I arrived at Dublin Castle and entered the Coach House. A dignified if somewhat intimate location for the enquiry. Attending the Tribunal are: Chairman (judge) Moriarty 2 x SC for the Tribunal John Coughlan and Jerry Healy 5 (approx) underlings, stenographers etc 2 x SC for Denis O'Brien - Ian McGonigle and Gerry Kelly What looked like 2 x SC for the Dept of Communications 2 x SC and 1 x Junior for Telenor 1 x Junior for Michael Lowry 1 x solicitor and 1 x junior for me 2 other reps for Persona, a losing consortium. Not sure if they were legal or not. Various other people unidentifiable. At 2.5k per SC that's a lot of money in one room. What's the alternative? Some will argue that the witnesses should not have legal representation in line with other models like the Hutton enquiry in England. BUT, the tribunal is enquiring into matters which will affect people's reputation. For example: - Allegations are made to which the witnesses cannot respond for months, in some cases years. - The Tribunal behaves more like a prosecutor than an enquirer so normal business dealings are presented as underhand. This means that witnesses are having perfectly innocent actions from years ago presented as being part of a corrupt conspiracy and because this all takes place in public the general public can and do make adverse judgements. Do you know anyone who thinks that the mobile licence was correctly awarded to Digifone? The actual report which may exonerate those people (primarily the civil servants) will not appear for years. - The eventual reports might be worded in a vague manner and not clearly state that the character of the witnesses is intact. It is this time lag which is crucial. While the enquiry takes place everyone assumes that, for example in the Moriarty case, that Digifone did not deserve the licence and Denis O'Brien and Fine Gael were up to no good. So while the Hutton Enquiry is rightly referenced as an excellent model, its report will be with parliament on the 28th of January. That enquiry was established, conducted and will report in a very short space of time thus giving all parties a fair hearing. Others may argue that the financial dealings involved in Moriarty make it impossible to conduct matters more efficiently but the Public Accounts Committee hearing into the DIRT showed that complex matters can be investigated quickly. In addition, the 'money trail' is always conducted in private - it is the public sittings which are most expensive and the most damaging to people's reputation. I met the Tribunal privately nearly 2 years ago I think. I made a statement. I think one of the reasons I had to give evidence publicly was so that the other parties involved (e.g. telenor etc) could cross-examine me. (which they did). There are so many vested interests that it is hard to see how to protect them all. But the result is the same: a huge transfer of wealth from the state to the legal profession. posted by Sarah | 21:54 0 comments Wednesday, January 21, 2004 Support for PDs So Michael, if you are reading my blog, shouldn't my support for your stance on Prison Officers count for something? posted by Sarah | 21:35 0 comments Met diversion A little amusement in the midst of all this angst. P O'Neill has a posting on the Mets/Met Office dispute - Americans trying to rule the world again. His title 'losing its identity' reminded me of some lines he penned in relation to BBC Radio 4's Shipping Forecast when 2 years ago they were required to ditch the sea area Finnisterre in favour of Fitzroy. Reasons detailed here. In the style of EJ Thribb's epics he wrote: So farewell then Finnisterre Fabled shipping forecast sea area Now losing its identity Appreciating this requires an affection for both Thribb and the shipping forecast. I think its great. posted by Sarah | 21:27 0 comments Moriarty - or McCarthyism? The evil day has passed. Went up; did my swear to tell the truth bit and went through my evidence. Will comment more on that tomorrow. BUT was slightly freaked out when the Chairman, in the process of reprimanding me for leaking information, made reference to my media activities AND my website! So are they reading my blog? Did they do a Google search? Did they read the reference to the 'expensive witch-hunt'? Will they make judgements against me e.g. deny me costs because of my public criticisms of their enquiry? Am I now supposed to engage in self-censorship in order to prevent incurring their wrath? Moriarty made it quite clear that the PDs were really pissed off that I had put it in the public domain that Denis was giving money to them at the same time that he was giving FG money. Does Michael McDowell now despise me and will he use his influence and power and demand that an example is made of me in the Tribunal? Perhaps calling him a fascist (pig) in this blog will be used against me legally. So Tribunal members or PDs, if you're reading this, make yourselves known! If you are noting my entries is it fair that they are taken into account when deciding whether or not I get costs? Just remember : I had no bloody stock options! posted by Sarah | 20:58 0 comments Tuesday, January 20, 2004 More Moriarty - The Allegations Allegation No. 1 When the tender document was originally released the licence was being effectively auctioned. The bidder was to name the fee that they were prepared to pay for the licence. One week before the bids were due in, the Dept. changed the document to put a cap on the licence fee. The Conspiracy Denis O'Brien's cash strapped Esat couldn't afford to pay the estimated 55m it would take to buy the licence. (Some would have you believe it would take 100m). Michael Lowry therefore forced the bid team to cap the licence fee at 15m so Denis could afford it. The Truth A few months previously Italy had conducted their second GSM licence competition. The bidders took part in the effective auction. DGIV, the European Commission's section on competition, ruled that it was unfair that the second licence holder should have to pay a huge fee for a licence which the incumbent i.e. the state phone company, got for nothing. They ruled that whatever the second licencee paid; the first licence holder should also pay. Cue nightmare scenario for Eircell. If the winner of the GSM competition paid 50m+ then Eircell would have to cough up the same. The civil servants realised that a) the state would end up earning nothing from the competition since they also owned Eircell at the time b) their mates in Eircell formerly Dept Post & Telegraph would have a harder time competing in the market without much needed dosh. Soooo they capped the licence fee and Eircell paid the 15m also. Has this been explained anywhere in the Irish media. No. Why not? How about a conspiracy theory on that? posted by Sarah | 17:28 0 comments Monday, January 19, 2004 Moriarty Tribunal - Part 1. So I'm up on Wednesday. Here's the deal with Moriarty. They are supposed to be enquiring if a) Michael Lowry received any payments, corrupt or otherwise from Denis O'Brien and b) if in return for said payments he interfered with, to DOB's advantage, the competition for the second GSM licence which was won by Esat Digifone. To date, after several years of enquiry they have discovered that Esat made donations to FG in the form of lunches and golf sponsorships. A table at a fundraising lunch costed 1000 punts. The money at each lunch goes into the local constituency fund. 10 Esat executives would go sit at a table and listen to a John Bruton speech and eat some roast beef. Everyone saw us there. The money was declared in Esat's accounts as payments to FG and published by FG as money received. Michael Lowry wasn't at most of the lunches. In fact, I think he was at one. Esat also sponsored a golf tournament and made a donation to a by-election fund. They also made similar donations to Fianna Fail and the PD's. How are these payments even remotely classified as worthy of investigation when they go the political party, not the individual? When other bidders also made similar donations? When everything is declared publicly? I've had to attend for a private session, submit a statement and spend loads of time telling them what they already know and what isn't remotely illegal, never mind unethical at a huge cost to the state. The senior counsel involved gets 2.5k per day that the Tribunal sits. Wonder if that has anything to do with this pointless investigation? That and the egos involved. How they love to conduct their expensive witch hunt. If there are any dodgy payments, they have lots of powers, as do the Rev and CAB to discover these, without having to drag me into it. Still, I'm getting the hair done tomorrow and had a facial today. They can play out their courtroom drama and I will at least look good. Will continue to address specific issues over the next few days. posted by Sarah | 22:04 0 comments Bailey loses libel case Well, quelle surprise! That fool Ian Bailey lost his libel case. This was the idiot who told several people he murdered Sophie Toscan de Plantier, threatened witnesses who saw him near the scene of the murder, admitted he was violent towards his partner and then sued the papers for printing these facts! He was awarded 8k because 2 papers said he was also violent towards his wife but will have to pay about 300k in costs. And now everyone in Ireland who hadn't heard of him before, knows for sure that he did murder the French lady. He deserves everything he gets on grounds of stupidity alone. posted by Sarah | 21:52 0 comments Thursday, January 15, 2004 Electronic Voting From today's IT "Suppose, come election time, the Government was to employ a private company to bundle up all our paper votes, haul them off to an unknown location for counting in secret before emerging with just the final, unverifiable result. Would you be happy?, asks Kathy Sheridan. I should think not. You might even see it as a war-like attack on our democracy. Well, the big news is that we are within six months of acquiescing to something not far off that. The only difference is that the votes will no longer be paper and the secret counts will take place within computers. The computers will obey coded instructions, devised by fallible humans from a private company, specifically for the Republic (so therefore not tried and tested elsewhere). Yet their source codes will not be open to independent, specialist scrutiny because of commercial copyright. Furthermore, the count results produced by them will not be open to independent verification because, astonishingly, no such means of verification is built into the system." I'm appalled by this whole electronic voting system. I'm a veteran of counts and the only reason people have faith in elections here is because members of the political parties can stand and watch votes being poured out of specific ballots boxes and watch the votes being counted. You can't get more a verifiable system than that. No one believes in anything any more and I don't think they are going to trust this system. OK, so once in a while there will be a long count, but with our current system everyone is happy at the end. With this one, if you lose a seat by a few votes will you? Furthermore, the system of paper counting allows everyone to see lots of information beyond the result: the spread of votes in particular areas and the transfer patterns. This is information which is really useful for political practioners. And as for voting remotely - the next stage ...what a nightmare. Just make personation and fraud much easier. People died and are dying for the right to vote. The least a citizen can do is show up at the polling booth. Actually, the least a citizen can do is vote and nearly 50% don't bother. Make it a criminal offence I say. posted by Sarah | 22:30 0 comments Monday, January 12, 2004 More LOTR gripes Paddy writes to add to the list of unnecessary irritations in RotK. "Didn't you find that bit in the coronation where Aragorn starts singing a song from Enya's greatest hits is a bit alarming?" Hear hear. posted by Sarah | 14:03 0 comments Thursday, January 08, 2004 Rip Off Ireland Just added new link to FG website listing rip offs. Find one and register it! Bottled water survey is good. posted by Sarah | 22:36 0 comments Constituency changes Haha. From today's IT "Sinn Féin's Joe Reilly came sixth in the five-seat Meath constituency in 2002. Now Meath is divided into two three-seat constituencies, making it much harder for Sinn Féin. If that wasn't bad enough, Navan, where he is based and has been a councillor for a decade, is set to pass into the new Meath West, while North Meath, where there is a traditional Republican base, goes to Meath East. Suddenly one of Sinn Féin's best hopes for next time has a serious problem." No mention of poor Jim Mitchell RIP. He lost his seat in the last election. In large part this was attributable to the redrawing of Dublin Central solely north of the Liffey thus losing him his Inchicore base. Meath is interesting in that I thought it would be divided North and South rather than East and West. Helps John Farrelly and Anne Dillon-Gallagher for FG. Bad for me tho' as Damien is Mr South/West Meath. If I ever wanted to run of course. Late Late Show option still has to be ruled out..... posted by Sarah | 22:33 0 comments John McGuire and John McGuire The Sunday Business Post did one of those irritating mass profile pieces over the new year entitled "Where are they now?". I glanced through it and was pleased to see the demise of one or two enemies but was rather worried when I saw that John McGuire founder of TrinTech had gone on to found Cape Clear. This is the Trintech McGuire and this is the Cape Clear McGuire. Now, Ireland is a REALLY small place. V. sloppy. So what else are they getting wrong? BLoody journos. posted by Sarah | 12:10 0 comments More LOTR Here's a interesting posting on RofK from Brad de Long's blog. I agree. I'd forgotten the beacons. They were fantastic. posted by Sarah | 12:01 0 comments Wednesday, January 07, 2004 Another LOTR correction Who would have thought that LOTR would generate so much correspondence...P O'Neill was on pointing out "I know it sort of defeats the purpose of blogs to be relentlessly fact-checked, but don't you mean Faramir rather than Boromir with the martydom stuff? (allowing that Boromir -- Sean Bean -- kind of does his own martydom in the first one)." Damn. Justin wrote to say he spotted the first error but didn't correct me. The question is: Did Darren spot the Faramir/Boromir mix up? If so was he being polite? If not, his status has Lord of the Pedants is severely diminished. For the record I welcome corrections as the only thing worse than being in error is remaining in error. None of this would have happened if I could locate my copy of the book. Search continues..... posted by Sarah | 11:38 0 comments Tuesday, January 06, 2004 LOTR correction Shock horror. Having this baby definitely mushed my brain. Darren Barefoot corrects me . Of course its not the 'city of Gondor'. The capital of Gondor is Minas Tirith. Sorry!! posted by Sarah | 17:45 0 comments Monday, January 05, 2004 Prison Officers Pay I had a query on my 90k figure for prison officers. Just cut and paste this from an IT article (link may or may not work as in archive) in November: "There aren't too many jobs like it. There are no third-level educational qualifications required to secure a position as a prison officer and training takes just two months. After that, entrants find themselves in well-paid, pensionable public sector employment with a basic salary of up to €34,000 including overtime, on a par with some professionals with a university education. And because most prison officers work 12-hour shifts, or just under seven days every fortnight, it means they are well positioned to earn the equivalent of their basic salary in overtime. Some are earning overtime up to €90,000, around four times the average industrial wage. Annual expenditure on the State's 16 prisons topped €331 million last year. Of that, €204 million went on pay, including €59.3 million on overtime. " posted by Sarah | 21:57 0 comments LOTR FINALLY, got to see LOTR, Return of the King. (at Big Fella in Liffey Valley - best cinema in Ireland). So here's my views: overall - excellent. The battle for Gondor is outstanding. It was genuinely frightening and even tho' I knew the ending they managed to maintain great suspense. Even the way they 'realised' the city of Gondor was great. It actually looked way more impressive than I pictured. You truly got the flavour for the heroism and courage the men needed especially the Rohirrim. Their charge at Gondor was brilliant. Shelob's lair was also excellent and I loved how horrible all the Orcs were. They also managed to get across Frodo's burden and Gollum was as usual excellent. Pity he can't get an Oscar. (My friend Leo tells me they put in the scene with Smeagol as the original hobbit in an attempt to get him nominated - but its a bit dodge.) However, Two Towers is Gollum's better platform anyway. On the acting side, Ian McKellan is really the only one that gets to act properly. The rest are all too OTT. Aragorn is great at all the tortous struggling stuff - has a great pained expression but I was shocked to see how sappy he looked at the happy bits at the end. The Steward Of Gondor was great. Boromir's attempted martyrdom was a bit self piteous to be sympathetic. Eowyn was much better than Arwen. In fairness she gets to do stuff but I thought she managed it well. Not just killing the Nazgul chief but also the crush on Aragorn..and wasn't he mean to her? Issues - I am afraid there were some. I understand that they had to leave things out but I was irritated by the things they added. Unfortunately my copy of LOTR has disappeared (am really annoyed) so I can't double check but I'm pretty sure the following did not appear. - Aragorn snogging Arwen to the applause of the people. This was really cringeworthy. She arrives in a great procession at the end in the book - not being coy hidden behind a banner. - Elrond showing up with the sword bleating on about Arwen dying. (Elrond is a sap anyway, he was badly miscast - it should have been someone more imposing). - Gandalf's speech to Pippin about what heaven looks like?? What was that about? - Aragorn's "now is our independence day" speech in front of the black gate. OTT I think. - All those loving shots of Frodo and Sam heading up the mountain. Bit gay. - Further loving shots of Frodo with other members of the fellowship on the bed. More gay. (And Legolas looks more girly than ever). Best bit is that I've joined the 21st century (in 'late majority' style as always) and bought a DVD player (Eu70) so can get all those special editions and extra footage versions. Can't wait! posted by Sarah | 18:44 0 comments Friday, January 02, 2004 McDowell and Prison Officers OK, so McDowell is a fascist pig BUT I agree with him on the Prison Officers. Every PO takes the maximum amount of sick leave so that every PO gets to have the maximum amount of overtime. They're earning 90k pa!! Just hire more and find out why the rest of them are skiving off so much. Oh, yeah, being a PO is dangerous and they're always injured. Likely story. posted by Sarah | 20:58 0 comments Ecowarrior Eejits I used to dismiss all protestors with contempt but since my own experiences with the dreaded NRA I now select some protest campaigns for support. Not the ecowarriors at the Glen of the Downs tho'. Remember them? Held up the widening of a really dangerous stretch of road for years down in Wicklow? I always suspected they were fighting the wrong battle because I knew the road well and figured the trees which were being cut down were just the young ones on the edge of the road and not the great oak and beech trees some of which are hundreds of years old. I had my suspicions confirmed yesterday when in conversation with an informed individual at a social gathering yesterday. The trees which were cut down had been planted only during WW2 to provide extra camouflage in case of invasion which I thought was interesting, not just as it indicated the relative youth of the trees but also exposed some odd thinking during our "Emergency". I support the Carrickmines people tho'. That road was only put there to suit the Jackson Way crowd. It will be VERY interesting to see how that one ends up. posted by Sarah | 01:47 0 comments |
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