Top Issue 1-2024

5 June 2008 Edition

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Fifth Column

Dodgy business about Lisbon

BIG BUSINESS has come out overwhelmingly in favour of the Lisbon Treaty, according to a poll carried out by the business busy body, the Irish Business and Employers Confederation. Okay, so that’s not exactly earth-shatteringly unexpected (it’s a bit like a Sinn Féin survey finding a majority of members in favour of a united Ireland – hot news for the Irish Independent, huh?) but the IBEC non-news story does hold a nugget of news that escaped headline writers on Tuesday.
Amongst the 89 per cent of captains of industry claiming that they’re happy the Lisbon Treaty will allow Ireland to continue to set its own tax rate, only 20 per cent claim to be “very aware” of what the treaty actually says (15 per cent admitted that they are clueless). So, nine out ten trust the treaty even though only two of them pretend to have maybe read it.
And they expect us to trust them to run the economy?

CEO walks on water

WATER COMPANIES are notorious for leaks but recently-resigned NI Water CEO Katharine Bryan is proving she’s no drip.
Kathy was running NI Water when the company announced it was £30 million short of its financial forecast – £30m that families will have to dig deep for in higher water bills.
The rising water charges won’t worry Kathy, though. She was on a salary and bonuses of almost £200,000 a year and, besides, she’s thrown in the towel and walked away from NI Water after the cock-up. And just to make sure she can keep her head above water, clumsy Kathy was given a golden handshake of £266,000 for pension payments and pay in lieu of notice when she floated out the door.
Union official Albert Mills (Unite) said the quarter-million-pound pay-off is “a disgrace”.
Ms Bryan is crying all the way to the bank.

 

Soft soap for Dr Paisley

TOMMIE GORMAN’S soft-soap interview on RTÉ Radio at the weekend saying farewell to Doc Paisley must have been a joy for the old boy.
No ‘hard’ questions (so beloved of RTÉ executives for republicans) about Dr Paisley’s influence on Gusty Spence and the UVF, the 1974 Ulster Workers’ Council strike enforced by UDA/UVF muscle, the Klan-style midnight rallies of the Third Force, or the red berets of the Ulster Resistance paramilitaries.
Now if he’d been a republican leader would RTÉ have been so shy of asking about the IRA?

Willie Frazer’s friends

NOW we all know that Willie Frazer’s self-styled Families Acting for Innocent Relatives unashamedly believes in a hierarchy of victims (no one vaguely opposing the Orange state whose relatives were killed by British forces need apply), but Willie’s odd ideas of who is a victim was thrown even more sharply into focus by last week’s funeral of James Mitchell (88).
James Mitchell died at Daisy Hill Hospital in Newry last Saturday week. Willie Frazer stood proud last week at the funeral in Tullyallen of James Mitchell.
Mitchell was an RUC Reservist. He was also a farmer. Nothing remarkable there, except...
When Justice Henry Barron was investigating the 1974 loyalist bombings of Dublin and Monaghan (which killed 33 people, including a pregnant woman), RUC Reservist James Mitchell’s farm at Glennane was identified as the probable base for bomb and gun attacks against Catholics. These deadly attacks were launched by a gang made up of members of the illegal Ulster Volunteer Force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British Army’s Ulster Defence Regiment.
The Glennane Gang is held responsible for the Miami Showband Massacre and the murder of the three Reavey brothers at their home in Whitecross. Three members of the O’Dowd family were shot dead in a co-ordinated attack the same night in Gifford.
None of this seems to bother Willie ‘Law & Order’ Frazer. He insists Mitchell was innocent.
“It was all hearsay and nothing was ever proved against him.
“He was a police officer and probably did know individuals who did get caught up and get involved in certain things but we have checked into his background and, while I’m not saying we know everything about him – we don’t – I know a lot of allegations against him were disproved.
“I’m not saying he was lily-white but he was a decent man who was never known to be involved in the Reavey murders.”
Perhaps when Willie Frazer is next down in Dublin to organise one of his Love Ulster parades, journalists might to care to ask him a few more probing questions about his links to James Mitchell and what he knows about the Glennane Gang and state collusion with unionist death squads.


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