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12 February 2009 Edition

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Sammy stands up to Brit ‘propaganda’ on climate change

“POTATOES studded with razor blades,” it was reported this week, “were used as weapons by a marauding group of ‘hooligans’ dubbed ‘The Animal Gang’ during pitched battles on the streets of Dublin in the 1930s.
“The group of 100 youths, some of them ‘newsboys’, banded together to carry out feuds, including one with the IRA in 1934 over the distribution and sale of An Phoblacht.”
It was never easy to sell the Phoblacht, it seems. Though, in fairness to the Garda Special Branch, they refrained from throwing razor-packed root vegetables at me when I used to do my rounds of pubs every Thursday night.
The Irish Independent was reporting this week on the release by the Department of Justice of over a thousand files from the 1930s dealing with police monitoring of the IRA, O’Duffy’s Blueshirts and various communists that were considered too sensitive to be revealed until now.
Perhaps because we can now expect a note from Jim Allister asking whether the IRA still has access to potatoes and a pack of Gillette Mach 3 razors.


THE picture of knight of the British realm ‘Sir’ Bob Geldof’s daughter, Pixie, in lacy undergarments on the cover of the Irish Independent’s Weekend magazine was bad enough. Putting it under the headline ‘Daddy’s Girl’ crossed the line that divides bad taste from a wink-wink approach to incest.
“We step into photographer’s Tim Bret-Day’s ‘Vestry of Virgins’ shoot in which Pixie was styled as a ‘virgin – rosebud of lip and sweet to taste’. Bob and Paula’s third daughter displays confidence beyond her tender years.
“Standing in her racy, lacy white corset, stilettos and pearls for our cover shot, this girl is all woman and her sultry eye contact with the camera guarantees her an exciting future as a model.”
The thrust (oh, dear) of the article is that men should be buying women’s lingerie for Valentine’s Day this weekend. Which is fair enough, and all offers accepted.
But it’s not quite clear why we needed the soft porn images of a teenage girl to convince men to do this.

TERRY McGeehan, the thinking person’s Mr Angry, was in fine form in Monday’s Irish Daily Star, sticking it to the bankers, probably the only people more hated in Ireland today than Travellers, asylum seekers and public sector workers.
McGeehan’s proposal for a resolution of the no doubt complex legal and financial contractual dispute around bonuses for bankers is that Brian Cowen tells them “to stick all hopes of a bonus right up their arse”.
He’s been putting the knife into Cowen in typically forthright fashion for the last few weeks and managed to get the words “bollix”, “multiple orgasms” and “Biffo Cowen” in close proximity on Monday, which is the kind of mental picture that you read the man for. That and to see how many times it’s possible to get the phrase “fat cats” into 600 words.
Beats a ‘woe is me’ Irish Times editorial anyway.


FINALLY, let us pay tribute to DUP Environment Minister Sammy Wilson, standing up to those pesky Brits with their high-falutin’ notions about ‘climate change’.
Wilson, who perhaps is wistfully hoping for warmer climes to indulge his taste for naturism, has blocked a TV advertisement on climate change across the North.
The ad (available widely on www.sluggerotoole.com as “The Advert Sammy Wilson Tried to Ban) has been condemned by Wilson as being part of an “insidious propaganda campaign”.
Insidious. The worst kind of propaganda campaign.
He has even gone on to try and prevent postal advertising campaigns trying to raise awareness of methods to cut CO2 emissions and reduce global warming.
BBC NI environment correspondent Mike McKimm said:
“Mr Wilson has also advised Whitehall that such messages can only be promoted in Northern Ireland with his permission and he wants to see what he terms ‘postcode lock-outs’ used to prevent them ‘leaking’ into that part of the UK.
“Wilson, Environment Minister remember, went on to say that he simply doesn’t believe ‘man-made greenhouse gas emissions are the main cause of climate change’.
He’s likely right, you know.
It’s probably the fault of Fenians.


An Phoblacht
44 Parnell Sq.
Dublin 1
Ireland