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    bertie's gone

    or so they are saying - he's due to make some sort of announcement in the next couple of minutes. rte1 is showing live coverage of the front door of his office, so something is up...

    #2
    bertie's gone

    My editor has just told me Ahern is resigning in May.

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      #3
      bertie's gone

      He's delivering a statement now, live on RTE

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        #4
        bertie's gone

        What's he saying? Has he given a departure date yet?

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          #5
          bertie's gone

          Tuesday 6th of May

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            #6
            bertie's gone

            If only the FAI had waited another two points to make an appointment . . .

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              #7
              bertie's gone

              How will the successor be decided? Is it just the Parlimentary Party or will it go to grassroots FF?

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                #8
                bertie's gone

                The World's press has assembled at Newry station (foreign journalists have long been banned from the Republic- there just ain't enough cocaine to go around). Apart from John Simpson, who is undercover in a Cabra shebeen. Surrounded by horses running into blocks of flats.

                Opposition leader Enda O'Century claimed victory in the recent disputed election. His MDC (Many desolate culchies) claimed an impressive 103% of the vote in Cavan-Monaghan, confirmed by independent observers from neighboring Fermwana.

                Embattled dictator Robertie Ui Gabshite remained defiant. "It's all da Brits fault", he ranted. "Economic warfare, 800 years of hurt, dey stole Trevelyan's corn. So now we're the basketcase of Europe not the bread basket. Er, Gordon, can ye get me two tickets for Old Trafford next week?"...

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                  #9
                  bertie's gone

                  'Senator' Eoghan Harris is his usual sanctimonious self on RTE at the moment. A great and honest man has been taken down because journalists and opposition politicians wanted their man. He's a victim of a vilification campaign.

                  He's some gobshite, that fella.

                  It finally caught up on Ahern. Even his coalition partners finally lost patience with his behaviour at the tribunal, despite biting their tongue on the matter for some time.

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                    #10
                    bertie's gone

                    RTE has gone into spin mode, it's like they're commemorating a dead rock star.

                    Edit: I think an extremely stubborn and large ego-ed person like Bertie resigning indicates the precise amount of shit he is in. Now he can use any delaying tactics he wants in the tribunal to try and drag the thing out for as long as possible. I think he is seriously afraid of being made bankrupt and/or doing time.

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                      #11
                      bertie's gone

                      Fuck Eoghan Harris.

                      And fuck the entire Fianna Fail parliamentary party, fuck the O'Reilly press, fuck John Gormley and fuck what's left of the PDs. Fuck them all.

                      And especially Brass Balls Bertie. Fuck him into the sunset where he belongs, the robbing bastard.

                      As Ahern himself once said in a somewhat different context: “Many believed this day would never come, and many would say it should have happened a long time ago, but it has now come about."

                      There must have been another massive helping of dirt coming down the tracks for him to just suddenly quit this morning. I can't wait for the whole truth to come out, though we may have to wait until Ahern is an old man for the really interesting stuff to emerge.

                      Expect Micheal Martin to be given Finance now, just in time for the recession, to finish off any remaining prospects he has of being a future FF leader.

                      Anyway, farewell Bertie, and you can wave goodbye to the presidency of the European Commission while you're at it. Pity you didn't think of that when you were stuffing parcels of sterling into your bank account in the mid-1990s or raiding the coffers of Fianna Fail to pay for Celia's house.

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                        #12
                        bertie's gone

                        "raiding the coffers of Fianna Fail to pay for Celia's house."

                        That might have been a made up story. Which makes you wonder how fucked up the truth might be...

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                          #13
                          bertie's gone

                          Besides the secretary's thousands, there's still the small matter of the $45,000. And more sterling here and there.

                          This isn't finished yet. Let all who stood by him be tainted with the same brush.



                          I don't buy this "let's move on and concentrate on the problems facing the country" shite, cleansing these bastards from political life is the best way to improve all facets of Irish life.

                          Looks like Bertie spent all his sterling on make-up.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            bertie's gone

                            Enda just had a right pop at him:

                            this day would have come earlier had Mr Ahern applied the standards he expected of others to himself.
                            And then rambled off a list of examples like Haughey, Flynn, Burke and Lawlor.

                            Comment


                              #15
                              bertie's gone

                              hah, gormley and ahern= zaphod beeblebrox.

                              Phillip Bouchier Hayes from RTE was on and he was talking about how in the past whenever Bertie was going to tell a story to cover up something discovered by the tribunal, he'd get a phonecall from st Lukes floating the idea. in the last couple of days he got a phone call saying that bertie was going to tell everyone that the sterling came from bets that were placed for him in England.

                              On balance it's probably just as well he decided to resign. He must have been really fucked if that was the best that he could come up with.

                              Fuck him. I was standing outside government buildings with Belgianjohnny, in the hope that it was going to happen outside. It didn't. Afterwards we went for a celebratory coffee in and Eoin O'Callaghan hotel. It seemed fitting.

                              You'd swear the cunt was dead the way they are going on.

                              Comment


                                #16
                                bertie's gone

                                that make up is very important. Martin Manseragh was on the tv there on rte at 11 and he looked like an impressionist painting of himself. Without several inches of slap he was purple and blue and orange. It was very bizarre looking.

                                Bertie didn't raid the coffers of fianna fail to buy celia's house, that was his money. He made up that story (that fucked him with the party more than anything else) because to admit otherwise would be to admit to at least three counts of perjury.

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                                  #17
                                  bertie's gone

                                  Phillip Bouchier Hayes from RTE was on and he was talking about how in the past whenever Bertie was going to tell a story to cover up something discovered by the tribunal, he'd get a phonecall from st Lukes floating the idea

                                  I initially read that paragraph as Ahern receiving phone calls from the office at St Luke's to instruct him what he was to tell the press each time something happened.

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                                    #18
                                    bertie's gone



                                    Look at our new leader. He's so beautiful.

                                    Comment


                                      #19
                                      bertie's gone

                                      This isn't finished yet. Let all who stood by him be tainted with the same brush.
                                      Why is Gormley stood over Bertie's shoulder like that? He should have stayed at the back of the room, staring at his feet.

                                      This is a day for FF to come out and defend all the 'good work' Bertie has done - like Mary O'Rourke on RTE talking up the eleven years of 'peace and prosperity'. FG will spend the day with a typical lack of magnaminity...brave, brave FG.

                                      But for fuck sake, John Gormless, cant you use this opportunity to at least look like you are going about your business of running the country?

                                      Haughey once said of Bertie; "He is most cunning, the most devious, the best of them all." Just about sums him up perfectly.

                                      Bertie and Mugabe in the same day. Delighted.

                                      Comment


                                        #20
                                        bertie's gone

                                        some good drunken pics of cowen here

                                        http://www.mulley.net/2008/02/26/ahhh-the-ogra-kids-future-leaders-and-all-that/

                                        i heard the speech on the radio - it sounded as though B was close to tears at certain moments, as he was during that interview with dobson in 2006. was that put on? surely after 30 years in politics he is well able to control his emotions?

                                        then again, maybe not. in his TV debate with michael noonan a few years ago there were flashes of barely-suppressed anger, a snarling meanness that i was surprised to see revealed before the cameras (i remember wondering just how intimidating he could get in private). maybe bertie, despite his long experience, remains prey to overpowering bursts of emotion and maybe these public wellings-up are real. but what emotion underlay it today? was it shame? i suspect it was anger.

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                                          #21
                                          bertie's gone

                                          Ding Dong, Pharaoh's gone!

                                          Excellent news.

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                                            #22
                                            bertie's gone

                                            The local elections are coming up in a while. If Ahern had remained in charge for those, a lot of FF councillors would have bitten the dust.

                                            Yesterday, Ahern's legal team won a court battle against the Mahon Tribunal which forced the latter to hand over documents to them. I'd wager that one or two of those documents contained something very incriminating indeed, and that this is why Ahern quit today.

                                            The best you can say for him is that he didn't fuck up the Peace Process, although it is amazing how many people see him as the key figure in it. It's like John Hume and Adams and Trimble never existed, and that Ahern and Blair just cooked the whole thing up between them in early 1998.

                                            Ahern is given a lot of credit for the boom years too, as if he and prosperity are intrinsically linked to each other, but his governments did not handle economic success well. Our roads are still very poor (I went down to west Clare recently, my first trip to that part of the country in 15 years, and was shocked at the condition of some of the rural motorways), our health service is still grossly overloaded, our education system has big problems, our broadband infrastructure is very poor by European standards, vast sums have been overspent on infrastructural projects. The monetary waste has been incredible since 1994/95.

                                            And you'd have to say that a leader who lets his Thatcherite finance minister convince him to launch an initiative like the SSIA funds -- hey! let's give €5 billion to the middle classes to keep the economy going -- must have fairly poor judgement. Its aim was to keep inflation under control and in this it demonstrably failed.

                                            It's faintly incredible that he managed to cling on for 19 more months after the payments story broke.

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                                              #23
                                              bertie's gone

                                              You can do a quick balance sheet
                                              plus side:

                                              De Nort - thank God (and Tony Blair) that appears to have been sorted out.
                                              Economic stability due to good union relations

                                              Negatives
                                              Handling the boom - especially spatial development, we'll pay the price in long term inefficiency
                                              Capital investment in transport - badly managed
                                              (essentially the boom years have been held hostage by property speculation).

                                              Comment


                                                #24
                                                bertie's gone

                                                Don't forget Mo Mowlam, who seems to be getting wiped from history.

                                                Sure, Bertie did his bit in the North, but had Bruton, Reynolds, Noonan or whoever else been Taoiseach at the time, they would have done the same thing.

                                                As for the rest, he and his greedy developer friends have completely destroyed Ireland for many decades to come and made the country a depressing shithole that I would never want to live in. Save, perhaps, a couple of villages sufficiently remote from his policies. I think you have to admire just how successful he was in this endeavour and the sheer amount of pointless, grey housing estates he got built. He managed to make Dublin completely car dependent and choke in its own traffic. From Dublin to Los Angeles in only 10 years, albeit without the weather.

                                                Now you know what the government mean when they say that Mahon is a distraction.

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                                                  #25
                                                  bertie's gone

                                                  Mo who?

                                                  The single politician most deserving of credit for the 'piecemeal process'? I'd say Hume, who risked not merely his political career but also personal safety.

                                                  Why do you need a motorway in Clare? Shannon airport isn't exactly Schiphol.

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