08.29.07
News at One
I had parked the Shannon-Heathrow issue, but since I gave out so much about Morning Ireland I should acknowledge the efforts of Gavin Jennings on the News At One today. He questioned Noel Dempsey and finally finally we heard “if you are not going to interfere then why did you keep the 25%?” Worth listening to Dempsey audibly squirm. He coulda gone in for the kill, but 9 out of 10 and best effort yet (well that I have personally heard). See, you wouldn’t need opposition politicians on if the interviewers asked the tough questions.
The Limerick Blogger » Blog Archive » The Shannon-Heathrow controversy: 30.08.07 said,
August 30, 2007 at 1:12 am
[...] News at One – GUBU [...]
fmk said,
August 30, 2007 at 1:15 am
“you wouldn’t need opposition politicians on if the interviewers asked the tough questions”
is that why the oppo are keeping so quiet on this, leaving the meejah to ask the tough questions, except for that lonney-tune former mayor who called for a boycott of aer lingus?
you can almost make an excuse for labour, seeing as pat rabid has tossed the towel in and brendan howling doesn’t have the heart for the fight and most of the rest of them are still trying to decide when to announce they’re no interested in leading the party into the valley of death. but where are the fine girls on this? or the shinners?
(Totally off topic, but what’s the score on Bertie’s hair? I heard on the radio the other day that he’s done a Jason Donovan and taken the lemon juice to it. Is this true? Is there any picture evidence? It could explain why he’s been keeping such a low profile lately. A battle with the bottle is always hard to hide.)
ben said,
August 30, 2007 at 1:22 am
If someone had asked *before* all this, “how do you intend to direct Aer Lingus’s actions without holding a majority stake in it?” that would have been a hard question. This is just stupid.
Not as stupid as all this crying about a simple business decision made by an airline and demanding that the government *should* get involved in it. This is the last shreds of the outdated corporatism that we need to move beyond. We need to get away from having civil servants making political rulings on ordinary business decisions.
Sarah said,
August 30, 2007 at 10:25 am
Well said fmk. I’ve had enough of FG complacency. Through a mixture of loyalty and desperation for an alternative (primarily the latter) I’ve batted for them at the expense of what little credibility I have left. They were handed an issue on a plate (and remember Ben, my beef is not with the actions of a private company, its with the actions of a government who privatised a state asset while claiming that they would protect accessibility to Heathrow SPECIFICALLY – its the political accountability which interests me, not the route itself). And what do we get? Laziness, lack of anger, and second tier backbenchers sent out for embarrassing rants on national radio. They had an open goal and they passed the ball around for the last month. I do like Kenny and I do think he’s an honest and decent man who would make a good Taoiseach but his front bench are lazy beyond belief and lack the anger necessary to fight their way back into power. The only problem is, if you give up on them, there is still no alternative. So what do you do? Work on the garden and forget about politics?
Tomaltach said,
August 30, 2007 at 11:18 am
Sarah,
I agree about FG complacency, but it’s not surprising right now. They have just lost another election and the new season is hardly begun. I’m sure the old reserves of enthusiasm are pretty low.
The trouble with FG (in recent years anyway) is that they don’t take a stand, or bundle a few core principles together. They just say anything to critise the government, or when not doing that, make little populist runs. They really are an empty shell.
leon said,
August 30, 2007 at 12:28 pm
If FG did gives up the ghost and admit the civil war politics are over and unite with FF, this might open up a void for another party, but who? and perhaps stop FF wearing the clothes of the right and the left
Could one of the unionist parties should start running candidates in Dun Loaghaire and the south city wards, that would liven things up. I woud love Paisley to knock on my door. (After all there are 120,000 immigrants from the UK don’t they deserve representation in the Dail and Seannad? (on a realted point are there any english nationals in the Garda?)
Tomaltach said,
August 30, 2007 at 12:35 pm
Leon, the divide between FF and FG is no longer about who shot whom in 1922. Nor about the treaty or more recently the stance on Northern Ireland. The two parties have evolved as separate institutions with their own loyalty base, and to a certain extent different constituencies. And between the two there is above all an abviously intense rivalry, though sadly, not in the realm of ideas.
Your parenthesis after Paisley suggest you see him as a potential representative of our English friends who’ve come to live here. They’d rather have Robert Mugabe.
fmk said,
August 30, 2007 at 4:14 pm
“They were handed an issue on a plate (and remember Ben, my beef is not with the actions of a private company, its with the actions of a government who privatised a state asset while claiming that they would protect accessibility to Heathrow SPECIFICALLY – its the political accountability which interests me, not the route itself).”
But were they handed an issue on a plate? Or does this not merely reflect the fact that they failed to do their job when the airline was privatised in the first place? To shoot Bertie now they’d have to shoot themselves for what they failed to do then. Hence the need to keep quiet, unless you’re in the Shannon electorate area and need the votes in two years time. Maybe if the likes of Rabbit and Higgins hadn’t been so obsessed with being quick with a quip and landing a good soundbyte on Bertie they might have done their job properly. Entertaining this might have been, but effective?
For my part, it’s the media I hold to a higher standard on this one, not the pols. Of the pols, this shallow level of ‘debate’ has come to be expected, point scoring rather than point making. But where was the commentariat at the time of the privatisation, pointing out that the government holding a stake in the airline wouldn’t mean a thing as they’d have no choice but to support the management? Hindsight is brilliant, but did *anyone* – not just politicans – make this point at the time?
The Crewser said,
August 30, 2007 at 4:14 pm
I head Noel Dempsey dealing with the question referred to by Sarah in several different interviews that day and I must say his responses were excellent. The 25% was retained to prevent a hostile takeover (which it has done thankfully) and to prevent the Heathrow slots disappearing from Irish soil. That goal has been achieved also. But it all depends on the way you look at things. Some opposition politicians and their supporters would try to convince you of anything. Maybe Bernard Dunne actually won the fight last weekend.