Duirt Siad.....

It has emerged that protestors against Shell in Rossport, County Mayo have been engaged in widespread baby eating and child murder. One local, who admitted to being too terrified to use his name, spoke of his horrific ordeal when a known protestor (name withheld) turned up at his house and cannibalised his six infant children. He added; "It is known in the area that the IRA is controlling them." - Chekov Feeney highlights the hysterical lengths some elements of the Dublin based media have resorted to in recent weeks in a propaganda campaign against the people of Rossport and the Shell-to-Sea campaign, Village, 12 October

Nor should newspaper editors seeking political moral high ground stand too close to the edge. For many years, Geraldine Kennedy, the current editor of the Irish Times, was a member of the Progressive Democrats and an elected TD for that party. When the Irish electorate (that mob again!) kicked her out, she instantly reinvented herself, first as a political correspondent and later as editor of the Irish Times. - Tom McGurk, Sunday Business Post, 15 October.

As Education Minister I abolished the 11 plus. It was abolished because it gave rise to a system which enhanced educational inequality and disadvantage. Let me be clear today, the 11 plus will be abolished and will not be coming back. Spin to the contrary from the DUP in the wake of St. Andrews about this issue does not alter this reality. - Sinn Féin MP, Chief Negotiator and former Six County Education Minister Martin McGuinness, Saturday 14 October.

A former Air Corps pilot who is now running an adventure centre in north Mayo says that Shell E&P Ireland tried to buy his support for the Corrib gas project with an offer of €15,000 last year. Ciarán Ó Muruchu of Coláiste Uisce in Elly Bay says that company officials assured him that no one would know that the money came from Shell if he accepted. - Lorna Siggins, The Irish Times, 17 October

These were people who could have lived next door to you, people you could have met on a bus trip," he added. "These were not grotesque people. These were my neighbours. These were my fellow countrymen." - Rev Harold Good, one of the two clergymen who witnessed the IRA's act of putting its weapons beyond use, on IRA personnel he encountered during the process. The Irish Times, 17 October.