The Race for the ARAS.....

[lynchbhoy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_bomb I suppose Catholic cooks can be classed as the enemy alright.

dont know the background and being pedantic the the target wasnt the cooks !!

still if this guy was innocent, that was disgraceful.

I still say that the IRA did not target innocents. One swallow not making a summer etc - but thats of no consolation to this guys poor family if he was indeed an innocent as you say.

[lynchbhoy]

he claimed that it was an honest mistake and an accounting error was responsible.

As Mandy Rice Davies famously said " he would say that wouldn't he "

What false claims?

Don't understand you quoting that - he admitted taking a loan that was in breach of company law.

f'ing hell Dec, you are going all out against poor gallagher these days !!

[highorlow]

But there are plenty other business people around the place who have created much more.

Considering the election is on Thursday this is a bit late for the "plenty other" to run!

[Declan]

f'ing hell Dec, you are going all out against poor gallagher these days !!

He's well able for it LB - you know those FFer's necks like bockey's jollixes

[Bingo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxy_bomb I suppose Catholic cooks can be classed as the enemy alright.

dont know the background and being pedantic the the target wasnt the cooks !!

still if this guy was innocent, that was disgraceful.

I still say that the IRA did not target innocents. One swallow not making a summer etc - but thats of no consolation to this guys poor family if he was indeed an innocent as you say.

Canary Wharf, Warrington, Manachester bombs - who was tragetted then? You put a bomb in a busy city centre location its not the pigeons you are hoping to kill.

[Shamrock Shore]

Just saw this on another forum:

[cicfada]

"still if this guy was innocent,".................

[Main Street]

Where's Waldo Gallagher?

I hear he might be interviewed on the Last Word with Matt Cooper. What station is that on?

[Shamrock Shore]

What station is that on

Today FM

[Declan]

Just saw this on another forum:

- Borrowed that

[Applesisapples]

Hugh Morgan did absolutely nothing wrong. He gave a donation to the ruling party in the Republic so that he could attend a function with Brian Cowan. This happens all the time in business, Chambers, Lions Clubs etc ask leading politicians and personalities to events to raise funds. FF were within their rights to run this event...nothing to do with some of the strokes pulled by some FFers. Sean Gallaghers problem is that he lied about a number issues. Had he put his hands up and admitted he collected the check so what. But instead he attacked Hugh Morgan's renting the office to SF and then had to about turn on his meeting of Hugh.

Gallagher's problem is he's not a politician so wouldnt be used to how to deal with these petty arguments.
And this 5k cheque is an absolute nothing.

Gallagher was caught on the hop. You could see at the debate that he didnt know what to do because he probably couldnt remember what had happened.

Given the poor quality of all 7, he's still the best man for the job though IMO. The only one who we could send to meet foreign dignitaries and businesses and could sell Ireland as a place to do business. Which is the main positive thing a president can do in my view.

Higgins would be one of the worst. It'd be a retirement home for him and he'd be a joke/parody figure for his term.

Has McGuinness actually apoligised for his IRA past, as lynchbhoy said a few times in the last couple of pages? If so, that would push him up my list. But previously on this thread (during the Michael Collins comparisons!) the IRA lads on here said that MMcG has never apoligised for being in the IRA and stands over what was done?

He has never apologised for being in the IRA and why should he when the founding fathers of the Irish Republic didn't either. You will see from previous posts of mine that I am no apologist for SF or the IRA but the circumstances in which Martin McGuinness joined the IRA in the '70's where quite different to what they became in the mid '80's onwards. McGuiness has described some IRA activities surrounding innocent victims as, murder and indefensible but given the broad costituency he is bringing with him it would be unrealistic to expect him to cast the IRA adrift. That said some of the commentary on here from both sides regarding northerners and southerners is a bit ott.

[seafoid]

I can't understand how anyone could vote for FF after what they did to the country.

Time to show we are no longer suckers

FINTAN O'TOOLE

We have to decide that if you're part of a toxic past, you're not well placed to represent a decent future


THE IRISH motto: avoid disappointment, expect nothing. Usually, when a society's institutions implode, three things happen: revolution, disappointment, counter-revolution. There is a wave of change. Its results don't match the more utopian expectations. The old regime attempts to strike back.
In Ireland, it seems, we've decided to short-circuit this process. We'll move straight from the implosion to the counter-revolution, missing out entirely on the revolution and avoiding the disappointment. Who says we're inefficient?
Two things are at stake on Thursday: our political culture and our political institutions. As things stand, the likelihood is that we will end up with a resounding statement that we're happy both with our existing political culture and with the way our political institutions work.
Given the catastrophic failure of that culture and those institutions, this is quite astounding.
The political culture that got us where we are today was characterised by the dominance of Fianna Fáil, by a cynical populism in which voters are told whatever they want to hear, by a toxic intimacy between business and politics, by the encouragement of a business ethic that valued property over sustainable innovation, and by a lax attitude to legality. If you wanted to embody that culture, you would have to find someone who has boasted of his association with Charles Haughey, long after it was known that Haughey was a kleptocrat; who promises to create jobs even though he knows very well that he cannot do so; who has been up to his neck in the system of political fundraising that sidelined the interests of ordinary citizens; who rode the property boom and who has declared himself "happy" with transactions that were in flagrant breach of company law. Finding someone who ticks every one of those boxes is almost as amazing as the idea of making him president.
But perhaps equally extraordinary is the straight-faced intervention of a consortium of former attorneys general urging us to vote against the referendums on judges' pay and on Oireachtas inquiries.
Their opposition to the first of these referendums should in itself be a warning not to take their views on the second with too much gravity. But there is a good chance that they will in fact help to defeat the referendum on Oireachtas inquiries and therefore to stop the process of modest political reform before it has actually begun.
Now, I'm sure all of these men have acted out of a genuine sense of public duty. But three of them might have had the grace to point out that they could possibly have a little bit of a personal stake in the issue.
Peter Sutherland was criticised by the Dirt inquiry in relation to his role as chairman of Allied Irish Banks, and the experience is unlikely to have endeared him to the notion of Oireachtas inquiries. He also opposed the idea of an inquiry into the banking catastrophe ("We need to look to the future"). Dermot Gleeson, as chairman of AIB through the years of madness (chairman's speech to the agm, April 2006: "Asset quality, that's to say the quality of our loans, is at a historically high level"), would certainly have been called before such an inquiry, had the Oireachtas been able to mount one. And Michael McDowell just might be called to account for one of the most spectacular wastages of public money, the €45 million we've so far spent on his grand prison project at Thornton Hall, which may never house a single prisoner.
The fact that such men oppose the referendum on Oireachtas inquiries (albeit for the purest of reasons) is not a bad argument in its favour.
A common theme in the votes on Thursday is the infantilisation of politics and politicians. Public contempt for the way politics has been conducted is entirely justified. But it translates, not into a demand for sweeping change, but into that old Irish fatalism: sure, what can you expect, aren't they all the same? We're locked in a vicious circle. We have very low expectations of politicians, so we don't let them do anything serious. And the fact that they don't do anything serious confirms that we were right to have contempt for them in the first place.
The other common theme is accountability. We don't do accountability. So we're suckers for anyone who pops up from Fianna Fáil to tell us to forget the past and "look to the future" – precisely what Peter Sutherland told us in relation to a banking inquiry.
Never mind that lack of accountability is precisely what has destroyed the lives of so many Irish people – in our culture, amnesia translates into optimism. Never mind the notion that if you don't deal with the culture that created the catastrophe, you're doomed to repeat it.
We have to break these cycles some time. We have to decide that if you're part of a toxic past, you're not well placed to represent a decent future.
We have to stop having low expectations of politicians and then whingeing when they amply fulfil them. We have to risk disappointment by having some hope of real change

[Jim_Murphy_74]

I still say that the IRA did not target innocents. One swallow not making a summer etc - but thats of no consolation to this guys poor family if he was indeed an innocent as you say.

The Balcombe Street gang (or as they were presented by Gerry Adams to the 1998 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis as 'our Nelson Mandelas') carried out an indiscriminate campaign in the westend of London.  They didn't give a shíte about innocents because they wanted to prevent "ordinary life" for Londoners.   Even the day of the siege that ended in their capture they shot up  Scotts Restaurant in Mayfair.

I'd read a bit more about their activities before I'd say that the IRA didn't target innocents.

/Jim.

(And I though Martin was their "Nelson Mandela")

[Nally Stand]

Hugh Morgan did absolutely nothing wrong. He gave a donation to the ruling party in the Republic so that he could attend a function with Brian Cowan. This happens all the time in business, Chambers, Lions Clubs etc ask leading politicians and personalities to events to raise funds. FF were within their rights to run this event...nothing to do with some of the strokes pulled by some FFers. Sean Gallaghers problem is that he lied about a number issues. Had he put his hands up and admitted he collected the check so what. But instead he attacked Hugh Morgan's renting the office to SF and then had to about turn on his meeting of Hugh.

Gallagher's problem is he's not a politician so wouldnt be used to how to deal with these petty arguments.
And this 5k cheque is an absolute nothing.

Gallagher was caught on the hop. You could see at the debate that he didnt know what to do because he probably couldnt remember what had happened.

Given the poor quality of all 7, he's still the best man for the job though IMO. The only one who we could send to meet foreign dignitaries and businesses and could sell Ireland as a place to do business. Which is the main positive thing a president can do in my view.

Higgins would be one of the worst. It'd be a retirement home for him and he'd be a joke/parody figure for his term.

Has McGuinness actually apoligised for his IRA past, as lynchbhoy said a few times in the last couple of pages? If so, that would push him up my list. But previously on this thread (during the Michael Collins comparisons!) the IRA lads on here said that MMcG has never apoligised for being in the IRA and stands over what was done?

He has never apologised for being in the IRA and why should he when the founding fathers of the Irish Republic didn't either. You will see from previous posts of mine that I am no apologist for SF or the IRA but the circumstances in which Martin McGuinness joined the IRA in the '70's where quite different to what they became in the mid '80's onwards. McGuiness has described some IRA activities surrounding innocent victims as, murder and indefensible but given the broad costituency he is bringing with him it would be unrealistic to expect him to cast the IRA adrift. That said some of the commentary on here from both sides regarding northerners and southerners is a bit ott.

+1. He has voiced his disgust at numerous IRA attacks but to expect him to class the IRA as mere murderers and apologise for joining it is total fantasy talk. Ten Hunger Strikers died to face down the idea that they were criminals and to expect Martin McGuinness to now effectively class them as such is absurd in the extreme. I wonder do those who think he should, also think that Collins/Dan Breen etc were mere criminals and murderers? Would they have pressed their own grandparents for an apology had they been involved in IRA activities back then?

[lynchbhoy]

I still say that the IRA did not target innocents. One swallow not making a summer etc - but thats of no consolation to this guys poor family if he was indeed an innocent as you say.

The Balcombe Street gang (or as they were presented by Gerry Adams to the 1998 Sinn Féin Ard Fheis as 'our Nelson Mandelas') carried out an indiscriminate campaign in the westend of London.  They didn't give a shíte about innocents because they wanted to prevent "ordinary life" for Londoners.   Even the day of the siege that ended in their capture they shot up  Scotts Restaurant in Mayfair.

I'd read a bit more about their activities before I'd say that the IRA didn't target innocents.

/Jim.

(And I though Martin was their "Nelson Mandela")

I'd disagree Jim, as unpalatable as it is.

I can see yours and bingo's perspective though - I just dont agree that the overarching mantra was one of targetting innocents. Quite the opposite despite the examples given.