newspaper

by

King Charles, Treason and ‘Romantic’ Fox Hunting

Now that Charles Philip Arthur George is King, will I be tried under Section 32 of the Treason Act of 1842 like teenager John Morgan who tossed a nine-pound breeze block at the Queen’s Rolls Royce in Belfast in 1966?

A few years ago Charles tried to sue me in Romania when I was editor of a national newspaper after I published an article based on British newspaper reports saying Charles had stated publicly he would leave England and give up his rights to Royalty if the Government passed a law banning fox hunting.

The then Labour Government did indeed pass such a law but Charles didn’t follow through on his promise.

Rather, he bought vast tracts of land in Transylvania, the birthplace of my wife, which he still owns today.

In view of fairness, I contacted Charles directly through his private secretary at Buckingham Palace by email asking him if he had purchased the land deep in the Romanian countryside simply to pursue his love of killing foxes for sport (which, for the record, I consider to be merciless and cruel in the extreme).

I received a prompt response.

But not in answer to my question.

Instead, it was in the form of a letter from one of Charles’s organisations in London – the Mihai Eminescu Trust, named after the poet laureate of Romania, which with the grandiosely named ‘Prince’s Foundation’ is under Charles’s supervision – threatening me with a lawsuit if I did not publish an immediate apology, the exact text for which it provided – but with still no answer to my original question. The letter also pointed put that the apology it wrote and demanded to be published was the very same word count as the original article in my newspaper.

Naturally, I politely declined to do so, quoting freedom of the press, which Charles had said previously he fully supported. After this exchange of love letters, no lawsuit ensued.

Now that Charles is the new-crowned King, is my liberty at risk? Must I seek political asylum aka Julian Assange in an endless array of Embassies worldwide?

I’m delighted since then that in April the UK passed a law declaring all animals as sentient beings with rights to a normal, decent life like the rest of us, thus protecting foxes from this awful ‘blood sport.’

In view of all this, it is despicable to learn of stories about unethical fund-raising schemes by Charles and the ‘Prince’s Foundation.’

For example, from oil-rich people in the Middle East. Charles’s foundation offered to help a Saudi Arabian billionaire obtain a knighthood and UK citizenship in exchange for generous donations, with police investigating this money-making ‘cash-for-honours’ racket. It must be remembered, Jamal Khashoggi, a US-based journalist and critic of Saudi Arabia’s government, was murdered recently by Saudi officials inside its own Embassy in Istanbul and his dead body cut into pieces and dumped, allegedly to be eaten by dogs.

Charles also raised money by offering free accommodation and private dinners with him at Dumfries House, a Palladian mansion in Scotland he purchased and renovated with public money. Such people included former Russian bankers and the wife of Turkish billionaire, Cem Uzan, after the couple donated 400,000 pounds to the ‘Prince’s Foundation.’ It emerged Uzan was under investigation for fraud-related offences in the US.

Charles’s foundation was also found to have taken millions of euros from high-ranking Qatari officials – all in plastic bags – a total of three million euro (2.6m pounds) from billionaire Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, former prime minister of Qatar. The cash was handed to Charles in a suitcase on one occasion, a hold-all on another, as well as in Fortnum & Mason carrier bags, the up-market department store which holds a royal warrant to supply Charles with groceries. 

Jaber al-Thani, one of the richest men in the world who stayed regularly at Charles’s Royal castle in Mey, Scotland, also gave Charles a horse named Dark Swan worth around 200,000 euro.

On a political level, not being a Royalist, I cannot accept Charles as King. But on a personal level, he has my gravest sympathy upon the death of his mother.

by

Yet another Irish political fiasco

I was shocked to read in a leading Donegal newspaper editorial over the last few days that John McNulty had behaved ‘with dignity’ over his recent Fine Gael botched Senate nomination.

Let’s call a spade a spade.

The last thing Mr. McNulty behaved with was dignity. He condoned the onward march of cronyism and ‘stroke politics’ thus giving his full support to this age-old blight on Irish society.

John McNulty – guilty as charged, complicity to hoodwink. Photo courtesy Independent Newspaper.

Selling Mars bars at a Mace grocery shop in Stranorlar hardly qualifies Mr. McNulty to contribute much, if anything, to the development of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) (unless his business is merely a front for a secret network of art collectors storing priceless Van Gogh’s under the petrol pumps). There are many throughout the country with decades of high-level experience in the arts sector and thus much more qualified than he.

Yet when Fine Gael spin-doctors whispered in his ear they’d pull a few strings and shove him on the (already full) board, thus giving him an easier ride into the Senate, he leapt like a deer in heat, omitting to point out the simple fact that he was completely unqualified for such a key position.

In doing so, the 37-year-old Kilcar man is as guilty as those people – mainly under Fianna Fail’s governing stewardship – who greedily grabbed places on other boards such as FAS and the Central Remedial Clinic and proceeded to claim hefty payments and generous expenses on the backs of struggling tax-payers. (Fianna Fail actually rushed 182 of their members on to public boards in the dying days of its last reign).

It must also be remembered that, far from being a credible Senate nominee, Mr. McNulty failed to even get elected to Donegal County Council having won just over 800 votes in May, less than half of the quota required for the six-seat electoral area. In fact, he finished the race at the rear of the pack at a distant 10th place.

Choosing him shows just how desperate Fine Gael are to shore up its political representation in Donegal, especially with the additional failure of John Curran, its choice for the Udaras board, to get elected to the local council (in great part over his willingness to hand over more than a million euro of tax-payers money to the Catholic nuns to run an addiction center in Falcarragh when there’s already one in Donegal, and after the dead babies scandal in Tuam). With Donegal South-West deputy Dinny McGinley due to retire at the next election, Curran’s failure and now McNulty’s means there’s nobody in place as a successor.

John Curran – until recent local elections, was being groomed as potential successor to TD Dinny McGinley?

Public boards or private clubs?

In a bizarre twist to the tale, Fine Gael Arts Minister Heather Humphreys said in the Dail this week that Mr. McNulty was appointed to the board of IMMA “on the balance of talent and experience.” That’s a joke. The minister then added that she and her party were committed “to using the public appointments procedure in line with the guidelines.” That’s an even bigger joke. It recently emerged that at least two of the six appointees to the Board of the Heritage Council last year were made by her colleague Minister Jimmy Deenihan in contravention of that very same formal application process.

Further, a 2012 report by the Institute of Directors In Ireland on state boards showed concern at the lack of transparency around the appointment process and the lack of consideration given to the skills required to fill them. Since then, board positions have featured on Government department websites and advertised via the Public Appointments Service but some describe this as ‘pure window-dressing’. The McNulty situation, and perhaps the Curran one too, are cases in point.

Plain-speaking (maybe too plain) Minister for Health Leo Varadkar said election to the parliament of a candidate who has withdrawn – as McNulty has done to avoid further embarrassment – would not be good thing for the political process. Duh, really?

Obviously, the only way forward is to make the recruitment process entirely transparent, minimise government involvement in choosing appointees, and actively engage individuals with the appropriate skill set to fulfill these positions.

Fine Gael’s Arts Minister Heather Humphreys in the Dail struggling to deflect accusations of cronyism and stroke politics. Photo courtesy RTE News

No crying over spilled milk

Ultimately, however, we have only ourselves to blame.

Most of those who voted for Fine Gael over Fianna Fail three years ago knew deep in their hearts exactly what they were doing. Being conservative, as we Irish are by virtue of our Catholic upbringing, we voted for one party knowing full well deep down it was little different to the other. Then we deigned to pat ourselves on the back for ‘taking a bold stand.’

What baloney! Ours was nothing less than a cowardly act.

To make matters worse, when we had the chance to regain some degree of pride and do away with a Senate that is, and always has been since the foundation of the state, a complete and utter waste of public money, we declined to follow our instincts and put pen to paper. How could any of us vote for such an anachronistic and discriminatory institution highlighted by the fact that with so many worthy universities and colleges throughout Ireland, only two – Trinity College Dublin and the National University of Ireland – are permitted to have Senators? Not to mention that 11 Senators are simply appointed on the whim of the Taoiseach. No elections, no vote.

Padding expenses? Investigations well underway on shenanigans of Fianna Fail’s Brian O’Domhnaill: Handsome salary as Senator not enough?

Today the Irish Senate, unlike the American one, stands as a perfect model of cronyism and stroke politics, with even appointed party members such as Donegal’s very own Fianna Fáil Senator Brian Ó Domhnaill under investigation for milking the system by duplicating expenses.

We tossed away the opportunity to fling the Senate into the bin of history where it firmly belongs. Let’s not now cry over spilled milk. Like McNulty’s reluctance to apologise publicly for his complicity in attempting to hoodwink us ordinary folk, it’s so undignified.