My Trip to the High Court

How we are played, in five easy lessons 5. THEIR SATANIC MAJESTIES                                                                              Smyth  Brendan Smyth was finally imprisoned by our state in 1997, after more than four decades of child molestation and rape. The Gardai knew about his activities as far back as  1973  but chose to protect him and he was first arrested by the RUC in 1991. He fled south and his trust in the southern authorities was rewarded at first. Then he became a political problem for them.  While on the run, Smyth stayed for the longest time at Kilnacrott Abbey in Co. Cavan, which was run by the Norbertine Fathers. He had a history of protection in Cavan, with the Bishop's secretary and canon lawyer Sean Brady going so far in 1975 as to  - wh...

 How we are played, in five easy lessons 4. BALLS  The Irish parasite class no longer fears scandal. It may even be willing to create scandal for the sake of scandal, given the opportunities for gain which often follow the infamy. Whatever its motivations or none, it knows it will be looked after and that is all it ever needs to know. Being an Irish parasite is a no-brainer.  And nobody does no-braining quite like the FAI. The 2019 FAI  scandal took a while to explain itself, and the central issue of its St. Patrick's Day introduction is still not fully understood. That was a E100,000 bridging loan from its CEO John Delaney to (he and it claimed) keep the association afloat. It was small change for a rich man who would soon get the money back, but it gave him a nice coating of sincerity to weather the yet to be revealed meat of the scandal.  That would happen properly on 6 December 2019, when honest accounts  revealed undeniably criminal misrepresentat...

How we are played, in five easy lessons. 3. CHAIRMAN MAO ''Everything under heaven is in utter chaos. The situation is excellent'' - Mao Zedong                                                                              * The Athlone Town Athletic FC match-fixing scandal kicked off in May 2017. While it is the smallest of these five scandals on a national level, it is the one which is broadest in international scope.   It was all kind of simple. The club was caught fixing matches and the FAI was caught facilitating the operation. Step up, Irish law enforcement authorities ... sorry, what?                                                           ...

  When I was seven years old, I did a bad thing. I defied authority in school and opened a door I was told not to go near. I received a series of punishments for this which had a bad effect on me. I quickly became a burden on my parents, who had fallen on hard times around the same time due to our dairy herd being decimated by disease. They had managed to build a new house before this happened and were rightly proud of it and the comfort it provided - running water and everything.  One of the great joys of my life was to look after them when they were no longer fully able to look after themselves. They stayed living in their home, a place where they were almost always happy.  My mother went into a coma, isolated and extremely distressed (the night nurse's report doesn't make for pleasant reading), on a Covid ward in Mullingar during Christmas 2020. She died a day later. My father's death was not much more natural. Though I had become very close to both of them, they'd h...

How we are played, in five easy lessons.   2. A LITTLE MORE PEE It is 1990 and Ireland is in dire need of a makeover. The West Coast Americans are coming and we're can't stop singing 'ole ole' - for reasons nobody knows. Five things need to happen, and happen fast.  A: the brazen brown envelope corruption has to be seen to be tackled, then replaced by a more restrained and universal corruption.  B: the Troubles have to end.  C: a corporate tax evasion scheme has to be put in place.  D: the raw connection between priest and people has to be severed, without endangering the power and wealth of the corporate Vatican.  E: a secular (neo)liberal priesthood has to be introduced to fill the void.    All the above was done, with un-Irish efficiency, within a decade. For (A), see Scandal 1. (B) was a simple affair, directed from London. (C) was largely the brainchild of Athlone man Feargal O'Rourke, who invented the Double Irish , the largest tax evas...

How we are played, in five easy lessons  1. PEE ''The Judges will decide/ The likes of me provide ...'' - Agnetha Faltskog                                                                             --     Every good scandal, and every profitable tribunal, needs a foundational event. A happy circumstance which grabs the attention of the public and guides it into a holding centre where its mind is blown and pockets emptied.                                                                                                         ...