Gardai’s well crafted raid on former Anglo Irish Bank chairman’s house a convenient diversion for Coalition

Hold on a minute. Am I missing something here?

The Gardai, descend on Sean Fitzpatrick’s Greystones home last week in a surprise dawn raid and now claim they found no ‘smoking gun’?

So, intelligent people, are you telling me that, a full 14 months after a well-crafted and much publicised ‘swoop’ on Anglo Irish headquarters, with photographers and television cameras in tow, the Gardai actually expected to find a ‘smoking gun’ (Garda spokesperson’s words) at the former bankers home last week?

So why now? Could it be to cloud the fact that our patrician and eloquent Minister for Finance Brian Lehihan has incredulously decided to backdate the value of all property loans being acquired by NAMA to November 2009, a move that economists claim may now cost taxpayers up to €5 billion. Latest information on house prices show that they have dropped significantly since November which means the taxpayer will have to pay billions more than the loans are worth. This Government is now engaged in ‘legislative price fixing’ on behalf of our financial institutions and developers.

Secondly, the raid has been carried out on the eve of the Government’s announcement of the first tranche of the transfer of loans to NAMA.

This timely raid for the Government has also come just before the nationalised bank looks set to announce what are expected to be horrific results which, when translated by our leaders, will mean the injection of even further massive wads of taxpayer’s cash ……just to plug the hole of a zombie bank.

Will someone, somewhere, please shout STOP!

More RTE Pravda-style rubbish dished up by Harry Crosbie on the Late Late last night

Once again we’re treated to more RTE Pravda-style output through a Late Late Show interview with businessman Harry Crosbie.

Crosbie’s output was along the lines of ‘it’s been tough for me too’, ‘all the best people are NAMAed’, ‘Harney is a great woman’, ‘nobody saw it coming’, ‘we’re all to blame for this’.

Now I have no problem with Harry Crosbie as a business man having a go, taking risks and publicising the launching of any of his latest projects.  (Note: This is the second time he’s been on the Late Late in less than a year.

What I do object to is being subjected to Harry’s worldview when not one single jot of this view is contested by the ever jocular Tubridy.

Of course, the audience clapped away nervously the way school kids laugh at an unfunny teacher’s jokes.

Government’s media strategy keeps public eye off NAMA

If I was asked to sum up the one definitive power the Government / Cabinet holds over all others, it is the power to set the national agenda. And events over the past two weeks only go to prove this.

As the NAMA debate raged in the Dáil chamber, the FF/Green coalition’s diversionary media strategy swung into action with Noel Dempsey’s proposals to bring Irish alcohol/blood ratios in line with our European counterparts causing apoplexy among who?  Why government-supporting Fianna Fáil backbenchers, of course.