Enda Kenny in crisis

FINE GAEL leader Enda Kenny is losing the run of himself in his hyperbole in the Dáil over the credit crunch crisis.
Last Friday, angry Enda thundered to Taoiseach Brian Cowen about the lack of information or a Government plan:
“The people elected here represent people all over the island.”
No, Enda, you don’t. Brian Cowen doesn’t. John Gormley doesn’t. Eamon Gilmore doesn’t. Sinn Féin does.

Cutting remark

AND on Tuesday Enda was in a medical or a mixed metaphors mode when he hit back at the Fianna Fáil/Green Party cuts plan.
The Government is, he said, putting a “a sticking plaster on a gaping wound” that  “has not been treated at its roots”.
Stitch that gaping hole under Enda Kenny’s nose, please, nurse.

Forged in struggle

WORKERS’ PARTY ex-president Seán Garland (74) has had his collar felt outside the Sticks’ Dublin HQ on the basis of an extradition warrant from the FBI for alleged involvement in an international money forgery scam to make millions of high-quality counterfeit US dollars, so-called ‘super dollars’. Senator Eoghan Harris, though, has rallied to his former cause and called for his old comrade in arms to be given immunity for the “bloodless crime of forgery”.
Harris used to be the WP’s political guru in the old days when its fund-raising wing, ‘the Official IRA’ was producing dud fivers and tenners. But Brother Garland has had some uncomradely things to say to Harris.
“Seán Garland hates my guts; so much so that he was extremely threatening to me at the 1989 Ard Fheis when I left the Workers’ Party,” Harris said (oh, do tell, Eoghan). Harris is nevertheless sticking by the old Stick and the sage of the Sunday Independent wants him freed, no questions asked.
Harris is miffed that republican leaders are welcomed in the White House (and by Mandela and the ANC, the Palestinians, etc) while Garland is “apparently now the only senior IRA figure to be pursued by the American and British Intelligence... Why is this old republican still being pursued?”
Born-again Workers’ Party stalwart Malachy Steenson knows. According to the WP legal eagle, the arrest of the septugenarian Stick is an international capitalist conspiracy cooked up between the FBI and the Obama White House to bail out Brian Lenihan.
Speaking outside the court after Garland’s appearance, Steenson (a local election candidate) said the extradition warrant is being ruthlessly pursued by the Feds “to divert attention from [Ireland’s] economic crisis”. Yeah, right.

Race to the bottom

COMEDIAN Jo Brand is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police after a complaint about one of her shows on BBC TV by the neo-Nazi British National Party... under the Race Relations Act.
Brand’s Friday Night Live at the Apollo was broadcast as a filler while Jonathan Ross was suspended. As she opened the show, Jo Brand quipped:
“Let’s start with some important political news. Did you hear this right that BNP members and supporters have had their names and addresses published on the internet? Hhurrah! Now we know who to send the poo to.”
The audience loved it; the BNP didn’t.
BNP deputy führer Simon Darby said:
“The BNP is technically an ethnic group and, under Section 26 of the Race Relations Act, we would suggest there are grounds that an offence of incitement to commit racial harassment has been committed.”
I think, as usual, he’s talking poo.