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30 April 2012 Edition

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Straight Talking

Crossing the line

THERE’S NO QUESTION that the jeering by some of the Chelsea supporters at the FA Cup semi-final with Tottenham that ruined the minute’s silence to mark the 23rd anniversary of the Hillsborough semi-final between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest at which 96 fans died was a total disgrace – the question is what Chelsea and the FA are going to do about it.

Chelsea accused those involved of “embarrassing” the club and said they were “disappointed”. Like John Aldridge, I was sickened to the pit of my stomach. You all know that I don’t mind slaggin’ (I’m just back from my team Monaghan upsetting my old club, Bohs, at Dalymount!), and in football it can be particularly unforgiving but there’s a line that shouldn’t be crossed and those articles who brought shame on Chelsea’s name – and the game in general – should be rooted out of the game.

Shatter’s silence

WHY did Justice Minister Alan Shatter stonewall press queries every day for a week about his meeting with Michael Lowry TD when three other Fine Gael ministers admitted they’d met the man the Moriarty Tribunal described as having an “insidious and pervasive” influence on the competition that awarded the state’s second mobile phone licence to Denis O’Brien’s Esat Digifone consortium.

As an elected TD, Lowry is as entitled to any other member of the Dáil to be met by a minister (especially a former Fine Gael colleague), so why was Shatter staying schtum for so long?

Criminal delays

OLD BERNIE MADOFF is 73 but he’s into just the first two or three years of a 150-year jail sentence in the USA for fraud. Why isn’t there a rake of old Irish politicians or financiers like Madoff forming a Fianna Fáil cumann in Mountjoy or Arbour Hill?

I know the wheels of justice turn slowly but if they go any slower we’ll see Sinead O’Connor elected Pope before we see the Golden Circle behind bars.

Cash in the Attic

PEE FLYNN was given £50,000 (that’s pounds, not euros) for Fianna Fáil Head Office, he slipped it into his pocket, put it away, used it to buy a farm for his missus in Mayo and he still hasn’t been asked for it back by a Fianna Fáil party up to its oxters in debt.

Why not?

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