IMC judge in the dock

The judge who threw out Sinn Féin’s legal challenge that the unionist-inspired International Monitoring Commission was outside the Good Friday Agreement has been charged on two counts of exposing himself to women on trains.
Lord Justice Richards (56) was arrested in January after a complaint from one of the alleged victims about an incident last October on a train in south-west London. Following a police investigation, there was another claim of a similar incident, also on a train in south-west London and also involving Richards.
Sir Stephen Price Richards, who sits in the Court of Appeal, has denied the charges. He was released on police bail to appear at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London today (Thursday).

Donegal drops Slowey coach

A desperate Fine Gael has admitted that it has had to hurriedly change its general election line-up in Donegal South-West (i.e. dump its candidate) after “extensive research” showed that Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty might take the Blueshirts’ seat off of them.
A poll shows Pearse Doherty in first place with 28 per cent, followed by Fianna Fáil Agriculture Minister Mary Coughlan on 25 per cent and FF Junior Minister Pat ‘The Cope’ Gallagher on 18 per cent. Fine Gael’s candidate, Councillor Terence Slowey, trailed the pack on just 7 per cent.
Enda Kenny fears that this could leave Fianna Fáil holding its two seats but Sinn Féin with one and Fine Gael, embarrassingly, with none, for the first time ever in the history of the 26-County state.
Now tail-end Terry has ‘stood aside’ (he denies he was “pushed or shoved”) and veteran sitting TD Dinny McGinley has been dragged out of his planned retirement, announced last year, to try and stop Sinn Féin.
Was McGinley tempted out of retirement by a nod and a wink from Enda Kenny that keeping his seat in Donegal would get him a seat in a government Mercedes?
“I have had discussions with the party leader,” McGinley confesses. “There were no deals. However, I do feel if there is a change of government and we have a new Taoiseach, who is half a Donegal man himself, that the county will not be overlooked at the Cabinet table.”

David Burnside’s Rangers SOS story

David Burnside, South Antrim UUP Assembly member and former press officer for Bill Craig’s neo-fascist Vanguard movement in the mid-1970s, now wants to take over Glasgow Rangers FC.
Burnside is probably better known in Britain for being behind a dirty tricks campaign against Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic airline when he was the head of PR at British Airways in the early 1990s. Branson sued British Airways, BA sued back, the case went to trial and, in 1993, BA settled before the verdict, Burnside costing his company the best part of a million pounds.
Now David Wilson Wesley Boyd Burnside has told Scotland on Sunday that he’s is fronting a consortium of wealthy bankers in the City of London who want to buy the Ibrox set-up although it’s not clear who the mystery money men are.
Burnside gurgled:
“When you look at what is happening in England with Russian and even Icelandic oligarchs and venture capitalists buying up clubs, it seems that every Premiership club is being looked at, so why not Rangers?”
Or why not float this rumour to boost your election chances among hardline unionists in the week before electors go the polls and hang on to your seat?
“This has absolutely nothing to do with the election and I did not initiate the story being made public,” Burnside said.
An unnamed Rangers club official wasn’t so sure when talking to SoS.
“It’s the first we’ve heard of it and you would have to be sceptical about a possible buyer when the first you learn of it is from a newspaper.
“Is that the right way to do business?”
It is if you’re the notorious stroke merchant, David ‘BA’ Burnside, burned by Virgin.
Bet Richard Branson doesn’t believe Burnside.

Shooting from the lip

Looking up the files on Burnside’s old boss, Bill Craig, in the Nuremburg-style days of Vanguard, I was reminded that, in 1972 - while Burnside was press officer - Craig told a group of right-wing MPs at Westminster that Vanguard could mobilise 80,000 men to oppose any power sharing.
“We are prepared to come out and shoot and kill. I am prepared to come out and shoot and kill, let’s put the bluff aside.
“I am prepared to kill, and those behind me will have my full support.”
Did David write that script for his boss?
And, whether he did or not, has he ever repudiated that threat of violence from his old firm?
I think we should be told.

Tourist trap

It’s a pity that the five British sightseers kidnapped by uniformed men on the disputed border between Ethiopia and Eritrea didn’t heed the warning that it was a dangerous place to travel and should be avoided.
The travellers were said to be from the British Embassy in Ethiopia, which is run by the Foreign Office; the warning was issued by the Foreign Office.

Presidential put-off

In the United States, an ABC News and Washington Post poll asked voters what they think is the biggest liability in a presidential candidate.
Seven out of ten people said they don’t care if the candidate is black or a woman. What would put them off, though, is if someone running for election is a smoker, twice divorced, older than 72 or a Mormon. George W Bush can relax - that’s a Mormon with an ‘m’ in the middle.