Cooke and Government joined at hip.

As long suspected,the political strings in this Country are being pulled by tecknophopes who dictate to the political pygmies on all sides of the spectrum  not only the the appropriate moral approach to homosexuality i.e.to elevate it to a status above heterosexuality and sneer at those who think this is pure bunkum and to link the giant technological presence with a prevailing gay culture they inculcate,but also to dictate fiscal policy to the State and ensure that they pay as little tax as possible..
Let us put a few notions to the spotlight.
1.The Revenue Commissioners are independent only insofar as individual cases are concerned.Overall taxation policy is decided by the Government of the day .
I venture the opinion that even the dogs in the street knew and know that it is Government policy not to cross these mammoth super giants in any way for fear they will pull out of the country.
I am not suggesting that the Revenue persons who made the decisions that  permitted Apple to pay effectively no tax worth talking about was unduly influenced by the necessity to wear the Green jersey and have no doubt that the decisions were proper and in accordance with the law.
What I am saying is that the legislators who passed these laws are fully responsible for this scandal.
We should not forget that the Taoiseach in 1988 before ,the time of the first Revenue ruling  was taking handouts from his buddies .I am not suggesting that any of these Super Companies made any donations.
2.The Revenue Commissioners are not infallible.I remember Commissioner Quigley apologizing for Revenue mistakes decades ago... the Dirt scandal I think.
3.It would be interesting to ascertain if for example any senior Revenue Officials destroyed any documentation before their departure from office in recent decades and if so why.
4.The hundreds of thousands of persons registered with Revenue will be gobsmacked at the determination of the Government to throw back billions of Euros at APPLE ,while simultaneously the Revenue are horse whipping small businesses for little money and ,in my view ,contributing to many suicides,homelessness  and forced emigration.
THE FULL RANGE OF THE DRACONIAN POWERS THEY HAVE ARE BEING EXERCISED DAILY ,BUT THE POLITICOS TURN A BLIND EYE. and give more by the week.
Not only that but such politicians a Timmy Dooley wants the Revenue to take over all aspects of administration.His mantra for every emergency is to refer it to the Revenue.including the ALLEGED OLYMPIC TICKET AFFAIR,another item where the Pygmy politicians and drooling feminist journalists have behaved disgracefully.
5.Cooke the CEO of APPLE did his bit for the Government in the so called homosexual equalization campaign  and his like minded minions who populate cyberspace to a degree way in excess of their population created a genuine atmosphere of fear in those who legitimately opposed this bunkum .
The same population,it seems to m have been drafted in to again put logic on its head and refund billions of taxes legitimately due by  Apple.
These cosseted employees of the cyber space greed corporations will flood all public fora  with rhetorical nonsense in order to preserve their own greed filled status at the expense of everybody else.
Yet again the greedy will do their best to make the needy pay for their comforts and the pygmy politicians will play along.
And finally the politicians canot have it every way.They have blindly and with malice aforethought ceded sovereignty to the Eu at every hands turn,to the extent even of comically rerunning referrenda when they got the wrong result for them.hAVING GOT THEIR WAY ,NONE MORE RABIDLY THAN fINE Gael ,they cannot,if they have a shred of sense call foul if the mouth they they fed into bites the hand from them.
PS.Since I penned this I have listened to a nauseating interview with Cooke conducted by RTE in which Cooke considers his relationship with the Irish State as akin to a marriage and it has emerged that the Taoiseach of this Nation met Cooke the night before the EU Ruling was released.Clearly they are in Cookes opinion joined more intimately than at the hip.
You couldn't make this stuff up.
And by the way I fully expect the homosexual community on all sides of the political and journalistic communities  to fully back the man ..Cooke... who pushed their case in the recent referrendum in this matter.

Cooke and Government joined at hip.

As long suspected,the political strings in this Country are being pulled by tecknophopes who dictate to the political pygmies on all sides of the spectrum  not only the the appropriate moral approach to homosexuality i.e.to elevate it to a status above heterosexuality and sneer at those who think this is pure bunkum and to link the giant technological presence with a prevailing gay culture they inculcate,but also to dictate fiscal policy to the State and ensure that they pay as little tax as possible..
Let us put a few notions to the spotlight.
1.The Revenue Commissioners are independent only insofar as individual cases are concerned.Overall taxation policy is decided by the Government of the day .
I venture the opinion that even the dogs in the street knew and know that it is Government policy not to cross these mammoth super giants in any way for fear they will pull out of the country.
I am not suggesting that the Revenue persons who made the decisions that  permitted Apple to pay effectively no tax worth talking about was unduly influenced by the necessity to wear the Green jersey and have no doubt that the decisions were proper and in accordance with the law.
What I am saying is that the legislators who passed these laws are fully responsible for this scandal.
We should not forget that the Taoiseach in 1988 just beforethe time of the first Revenue ruling  was taking handouts from his buddies .I am not suggesting that any of these Super Companies made any donations.
2.The Revenue Commissioners are not infallible.I remember Commissioner Quigley apologizing for Revenue mistakes decades ago... the Dirt scandal I think.
3.It would be interesting to ascertain if for example any senior Revenue Officials destroyed any documentation before their departure from office in recent decades and if so why.
4.The hundreds of thousands of persons registered with Revenue will be gobsmacked at the determination of the Government to throw back billions of Euros at APPLE ,while simultaneously the Revenue are horse whipping small businesses for little money and ,in my view ,contributing to many suicides,homelessness  and forced emigration.
THE FULL RANGE OF THE DRACONIAN POWERS THEY HAVE ARE BEING EXERCISED DAILY ,BUT THE POLITICOS TURN A BLIND EYE. and give more by the week.
Not only that but such politicians a Timmy Dooley wants the Revenue to take over all aspects of administration.His mantra for every emergency is to refer it to the Revenue.including the ALLEGED OLYMPIC TICKET AFFAIR,another item where the Pygmy politicians and drooling feminist journalists have behaved disgracefully.
5.Cooke the CEO of APPLE did his bit for the Government in the so called homosexual equalization campaign  and his like minded minions who populate cyberspace to a degree way in excess of their population created a genuine atmosphere of fear in those who legitimately opposed this bunkum .
The same population,it seems to m have been drafted in to again put logic on its head and refund billions of taxes legitimately due by  Apple.
These cosseted employees of the cyber space greed corporations will flood all public fora  with rhetorical nonsense in order to preserve their own greed filled status at the expense of everybody else.
Yet again the greedy will do their best to make the needy pay for their comforts and the pygmy politicians will play along.
And finally the politicians canot have it every way.They have blindly and with malice aforethought ceded sovereignty to the Eu at every hands turn,to the extent even of comically rerunning referrenda when they got the wrong result for them.hAVING GOT THEIR WAY ,NONE MORE RABIDLY THAN fINE Gael ,they cannot,if they have a shred of sense call foul if the mouth they they fed into bites the hand from them.

Death of Mark Connneely,Curraghtown,Navan.

Living,as I do. opposite the Church in Dunderry,I get to attend and see an awful lot of funerals.Being the age that I am and respecting totally the many friends and neighbours that I have made and know ,attending funerals has become increasingly frequent for me the older I get.
I can say with certainty that I have never attended a happy funeral.Yes I have been to funerals where such was the suffering endured by the deceased that I was relieved that the person had died,but there was always regret at the passing of the deceased.
Death is no respecter of age nor status and it comes in many forms and for many reasons.
No matter what the age or circumstance there is no convenient time to die.
This little Parish we live in has had more than its fair share of tragedy in recent decades.
People have died well before their time by their own hand betimes ,by freak accident ,by hit and run and so forth.
It is desperate enough when people die after a decent life span but atrocious and difficult to accept even for the best of Catholics a situation where a child predeceases his or her parents.
By far the saddest funeral I have attended was that of Mark Conneely .
Mark Connealley's death was so bizarre and inexplicable that I cannot for the life of me make sense of it.
Here was a young guy,in his late twenties,with an expectation of a decent future ,as decent a guy as you could get ,going about his legitimate business on a quiet road at dusk ,when a stray cow appears from nowhere and he ends up dead as a consequence.A local nurse was first on the scene.
What bizarre forces combined to place the cow and the man on his motor bike in such a fatal embrace on a public road at precisely the wrong time for him.
It defies explanation and severely challenges my Faith I  must say.
Now something similar happened me maybe 30 years ago.But I  survived.I wish he too had.But no.
His parents attend Mass every Sunday in Dunderry.Both of them and his three brothers were devastated.
I don't know how they got through the day and are coping.
The Village was thronged for the funeral.No one knew what to say.All felt awful for the bereaved.
I saw several people in attendance who to lost children bleed salt tears in memory of their own  and in empathy with the family.
Prayer and time may heal.I don't know.
May the Lord Jesus grant solace to the family and those who love him.
Ar Dheis De go Raibh a anam dilis.

Shane Ross a disaster,Hickey pesumed innocent.

This guy must have a visceral hatred of Irish people of all ages.Firstly he has no regard for the damaged unborn and wants to see them treated as less worthy than  the undamaged unborn and less worthy than those lucky enough to have been allowed to enter this world..Why else would he want to see the repeal of the 8th amendment.
At the other end of the scale his loud mouth buffoonery ,presumption of guilt of Irish citizens while abroad and visit to Brazil to chastise a man of international repute must have been great encouragement to the Brazilian Police in humiliating an innocent Irishman of advanced years,a man still presumed Innocent in the eyes of the law,who was frogmarched from his hotel at 6.00am in cuffs for all the world to see.
Yep Ross is the sort of guy that any Irish person abroad can have confidence to protect them.Not.
Something about these ticket scalping charges smell to high Heaven.From what I see the stadia are invariably empty  of paying customers,You couldn't give the tickets away much less sell them at an inflated price.
And just how the Brazilian police have the time to persecute visitors who honoured their country by choosing Rio for the games in the first place ,given the huge social disparity and civil unrest that is prevalent there is amazing.
I don't get it.

Sean Byrne.Blanchardstown is dead.

When I recently visited Mulhuddard Cemetery for the Blessing of the graves I met Liam Byrne a former next door neighbour from Tolka View and a nephew of the aforesaid Sean and enquired after his health.Liam informed me that Sean had recently gone into a nursing home and at the venerable age of 95 years was still striking terror into the bookies of Blanchardstown with his forays into the horse betting markets.Nothing new there.
Well I got a message last Tuesday evening that Sean had died in his sleep and that his funeral Mass would be the next morning at 10.00 a.m. in Blanchardstown Church .I made it but only just having found a parking place difficult to find .I must say that I find the profiteering from funeral attendees by whoever is getting the parking money is a vile practise and condemn it outright.Seemingly nothing is sacred around Blanch. Church any more.
Anyway when I got to the Church it was filled to capacity and I  couldn't get in so I sat on  a ledge outside the back door.The fullness of the Church is testimony in itself to the esteem in which Sean is held around Blanch .and further afield.
I think that Sean was the oldest true Blanchie alive at the time of his death.He was steeped in Blanch .lore and his pedigree is truly impressive.
His granny was an O Driscoll whose family farmed at market gardening in what was later to become the Phoenix Park Racecourse,which they had to abandon to make way for the racecourse.
His mother was Annie Doyle who founded Doyles Shop at the junction of Main Street with Church Avenue ,which thousands of Blanchies will remember with fondness and which kept hundreds of families supplied with food and other life necessities on tick for generations .
Sean and his siblings were born into a house which stood where Tim Ryan's Garage now stands ,later moved down to Duckie O Brien's Blanchardstown Mills at the end of Mill Lane and thence to the top of Tolka View ,where they lived until 1958 when they moved to the house in Main Street ,where he lived at the time of his death.
It strikes me that his people lived through the Famine of 1845 to 1847 and all the crop failures of that damnable  Century.Perhaps the market gardening was the secret of their survival.
Maybe a half century ago I used inspect the headstones at Cavein graveyard near Dunsink and nearly cry at the huge numbers of the same families buried there who died from the hunger in that period.
Sean's siblings were ;-
Maureen ,who ran Doyles shop.
Una   Mrs FAGAN ...who live beside Sean on Main Street.
Patty   Mrs Carr who lived on the graveyard Road from Mulhuddart village.
Dessie ,who lived next door to us in Tolka View.
Benny ,who lived opposite the Wren's Nest in the Strawberry Beds and Carmel who lived with Sean in Main Street.
I grew up in Blanch.Nine kids were reared in our House in Tolka View.Ten,I think , were reared in Byrnes next door,4 Fagans were reared  nearby on the Main Street and 5 Mulhuddard Carrs spent most of their childhood around our neighbourhood.A further 5 Mac Donalds lived in Tolka View.
This was our core play group and we played together,fought with each other ,palled around with each other,some more than others,chased women with each other.learned to smoke and drink with each other ,and although never living in each others pockets kept up healthy and respectful relationships with each other.
Joe Mullery .a next door neighbour to Sean's on Main Street,was plumb in the centre of our area and spent most of his working life in Africa..His house was empty for months on end each year.
After he retired he returned home and I got to know him fairly well.
He often marvelled at the fact that his house was never broken into nor damaged by any of the kids during all those years.
This ,of course is down to the values inculcated in us by our parents and Sean and his family ,who were made of the right stuff.I like to think that we too are similarly constituted.
Now I was born in1951 and can remember Sean having  BIG SHED on Tolka View within which I never stood but in which was manufactured go carts which we could never equal and greatly envied.
Sean was the master of this shed as long as they owned it and it was a hive of manufacturing activity for the Byrne,Carr and Fagan clan and gave them mechanical superiority over us and the Mc Donalds.
Sean never gloated but was content with the output of his factory of endeavour.
I must say that I never heard Sean Byrne say a bad word to any of us kids nor our parents in all my years living there.
The space where the shed rested was sold to Martin Henry I think and he was just as nice as Sean Byrne,lucky for us kids.
In those innocent times the Gardai used try and summons us kids for kicking football on the lane outside our house and one neighbour in particular used keep any footballs which crossed into their premises.These were not nice people by any stretch of the imagination and I must say that the Gardai were worse for doing what they did.
Neither Sean nor Dessie nor any of the Byrnes were like this and they like our own parents had a good tolerance of all us kids and our lives were the finest given the times that were in it.
Dessie lived next door to us with his wife Betty and he was a hardworking plumber with one of the Hospitals I  think.He was a non smoker and a non drinker and a great man with the kids,his only leisure I  remember being playing music with the Blanchardstown Brass and Reid Band.
It was rumoured that he used help his wife bathe the kids every Saturday night and my mother used tease our Dad on account of this when he would return from the Pub every Saturday night full of the cheer of that week's nickser.He wasn't for turning and didn't.
Dessie always travelled on a Honda 50 with a superb toolbox built into the back.It was brought inside every night I  think.
Our family was GAA inclined and while PAT and Kevin CARR  and Liam and Desmond Byrne played a bit of GAELIC Football with Brigids the Fagans and the other Carrs were more soccer inclined.
Of course we used leather the shite out of each other at casual soccer in Cleary's field behind the Greyhound and at a patch of ground in front of Duckie O Brien's in Mill Lane.
Sean always kept Jack Russell terriers for hunting and was big into fishing and we all had a go at these pursuits.I m fairly sure he worked d in a fishing tackle and  supply store  at Mary's Abbey for many years so the aids to fishing and hunting were readily available.
Sean fished trout from the Tolka like us all,Pepper's pool at the bottom of Moy Mel and a willow tree at the bottom of our garden being fruitful spots for fish.
It is hard to believe now but I remember shoals of trout feeding at the bridge that spanned the Tolka at the entrance to the Hospital from Mill Lane.
The Byrnes were well into Blanch Brass and Reid Band ,Dessie being a stalwart and Sean---Foxy Fagan and maybe Bernard too being enthusiastic members.Don't think that Sean was a member but I  may be wrong.
Certainly Sean and Rory Mooney and many others of that circle used go off the sweets for Lent and save them up as prizes  for  the Grand National Races run at Easter on the impromptu racecourse erected by us all  each year in the field behind Byrnes and Fagans and all those houses.There used even be water jumps and the competition was ferocious.
Sean ,Carmel and Little Mo,their great friend were big into the Concerts staged in Brigid's Old School in the sixties and I well remember Brendan Hilliard,no chicken either and still to the good,singing there and a phrase from a homemade ditty "We have a fine doctor (Cooney) and Chemist (Hughes) here too,to make up the pills and the medicines too "being belted out by Carmel and Little Mo in the Hall to rave applause.
Sean didn't marry and it was rumoured that there was no shortage of admirers and in truth the Fagans,Dessie Byrnes and the Carrs were as much his kids as their parents.
He did take a drink but never to excess as far as I recall.
It is a tribute to him that all his nephews,nieces and the whole of Old Blanch was at his funeral.
I met Foxy,Tony.Bernard and Pau,er Fagan and the latter's fragrant wife Anne ,who I hadn't seen in decades and Pat,Johnnie ,Jem .Brendan Kevin  and Mary Carr and Betty,Jem's wife who hasn't changed a bit in 40 years,She confirmed to me that their son returned recently from Singapore to christen his child in Berkely Road Church where herself and Jem were married.
Mary is the most reluctant culchie I  ever met.
And I  met Mary,Dolores,Liam ,Dermot  and Brenda Byrne but missed the rest in the crush and I met PAT , BARRY and Finnoula mc Donald too.Pat was the last man to see my father alive and I hadn't seen BARRY in 40 years.
I also bumbed into Patrick o Reilly  ,former landlord of my brother Robert's offices and a man who was the essence of decency to him during his long illness.I won't forget.
It must have been hard on Sean Byrne,Old Sean's nephew .who is in Australia and is a friend of mine to miss this funeral and we cannot forget either Lizzie Byrne nor my brother Robert who too knew Sean well but were called ashore well before their time.
Sean was a nice guy,a fine neighbour full of good humour and brimming with decency.
Ar Dheis De go raibh A Hanam Dilis.

The cure of Bleeding.

Near enough 20 years ago an uncle of mine handed me down a prayer from the time of Jesus directed to Jesus that He might stop bleeding in a person when all else fails.Thankfully I have said the prayer many times since on request from the person suffering or a concerned friend or relative and it has always been answered save once in a situation where a person had a leg sliced off.
I am a Believer but the person suffering doesn't have to be in my experience.
I do not seek any remuneration of any kind for asking Jesus to work these miracles ,just a  Prayer for my intentions if possible and by God I need plenty of Prayer.
I know that the P/atheists who trool the internet will sneer at this information but such is life and death.
Anyone seeking help should contact me at 085 8452144 giving the name of the sufferer,their location and what ails them.
I have confined this information to a tight circle of friends so far but seeing as life is so short am sharing it with a wider circle .
I am the soul of discretion.