When Harry met Barry

BARRY McELDUFF told the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis that Prince Harry was in Afghanistan but wasn’t with the British Army in the Six Counties and he swore everyone to secrecy.
The question is: who did tip off the Drudge blog site about the third in line to the British throne being a little too close to throat-cutting Johnny Foreigner for comfort. The fact that Mummy (“Commander-in-Chief” of the British Army) and the Brit military’s spin doctors were delighted with all the positive PR they garnered without a hair on Harry’s crown being touched by the Taliban might give us a clue or two.

Biased Broadcasting Corporation

“HERE is the news from the BBC,” announcers used to say at the BBC; after their collusion in covering-up Prince Harry’s posting to Afghanistan, maybe they should change that to: “Here is some of the news from the BBC.”
So much for the unbiased BBC. And if the BBC is prepared to withhold the truth in the interests of the security of one member of the British royal family, what might BBC chiefs be prepared to do to protect the security of other elements of the  British state, such as MI5, MI6, Military Intelligence and the SAS?

Madam Editor’s news values

AND while we’re on about bias...
The political blog, Cedar Lounge Revolution (For Lefties Too Stubborn to Quit), challenges the Irish Times’s news values the day after Raymond McCord Snr addressed the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis, Orange Order sash and all.
Under the headline “Here’s something you don’t see every day...”, CLR notes that the Raymond McCord pic was on page 6 of Saturday’s Irish Times.
“It certainly made me look twice. So I turn to page 1 to see what the image there was. Well above the fold was a photograph of members of Kilkenny Gospel Choir with Carrie Crowley doing a Daffodil Day press event. A very good cause indeed and one close to my heart. But, nonetheless, surely the McCord photograph is visually more interesting – not to mention politically. Which raises the question as to why it wasn’t on the cover.”
Why wasn’t it, Madam Editor, former aspiring TD for the Progressive Democrats. Why ever not?

Young Fine Gael’s Little Englander

FINE GAEL MEP Jim Higgins has been keen to claim that right-wing wing-nuts like the United Kingdom Independence Party and the French National Front support the Sinn Féin stance on the Lisbon Treaty. Apart from it being a load of Blueshirt bunkum, Jim might be grimacing at the new playmate of Young Fine Gael.
The Dublin Regional Council of YFG has been whooping it up in Westminster on a trip hosted by ultra-right Tory MP Andrew Rosindell MP. Rozzer campaigned in the 2001 general election with his Staffordshire Bull Terrier, Spike, wearing a Union Jack waistcoat (Spike, that is, not Rozzer). A Thatcher groupie, he still has a photo of himself with the Wicked Witch of Westminster on his official website. Rozzer was forced to resign from the pro-apartheid, pro-racist Monday Club in 2001 by new Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith but he still upholds the old Monday Club ideals by being fiercely anti-immigrant and wanting asylum seekers locked up. Oh, and he opposes the EU in that Little Englander style the Young Fine Gaelers’ elder statesman claims to loathe so much.

Freedom for Nasty Nev and the Blue Baron

THEY’VE gone and done it! The silly burghers on Peterborough City Council have bestowed on Neville  ‘I’m fed up of paying taxes to cover for lazy bastards in Ireland’ Sanders their highest honour by making him a Freeman of the City.
The Tory former council chief officially received the award at a service in Peterborough Cathedral last Sunday.
The nine nominees included Baron Mawhinney of Peterborough, the Belfast-born Conservative Party former direct rule junior minister in the Six Counties from 1986 to 1992. One Freeman received the tribute in recognition for their work on race and community relations. Needless to say, it wasn’t Nasty Nev.

Republican spirit

SPIRITS were high at last weekend’s Le Chéile event to honour republicans who have made an outstanding contribution to the struggle.
Indeed, the outpouring of republican conviviality led to one bon viveur’s slip of the tongue almost getting the crowd to their feet to honour Ella Fitzgerald. It wasn’t, of course, the late, great First Lady of Song and it was hastily corrected to An Phoblacht’s very own and usually well-known Ella O’Dwyer who is still great and never late.