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On August 11, the Sunday Times reported that the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, was under fire for a ‘fawning’ letter to Iran’s new president:
Irish president sent his ‘best wishes’ and congratulations to Masuoud Pezeshkian in a communique that has drawn criticism from Fine Gael.
If the story had ended there, I would have been on the Irish President’s side. Diplomacy inevitably involves sending polite greetings to despots. Though looking at a screenshot of the letter, I do think that President Higgins was a little more oleaginous than he needed to be. Perhaps he felt it would protect the staff of Ireland’s new embassy in Tehran from being taken hostage.
The story did not end there. Yesterday, 22 September, TheJournal.ie reported that, “Michael D Higgins has accused Israel of leaking his letter of congratulations to President of Iran”.
Higgins was asked by a member of the press today about the criticism he received for the letter to which he responded: “Yes, why don’t you ask where it came from?”
The President then accused the Israeli embassy in Ireland of circulating the letter.
When asked how he thought the embassy obtained the letter he said he had “no idea”.
Fortunately the rest of the world does have an idea. The whole controversy started when a woman called Karen Ievers saw the letter and and commented unfavourably about it in this tweet on 28th July. And if you are wondering by what dark arts she saw it, the Iranian embassy in Dublin put their nice letter from President Higgins on their website.
The other day I was having a congenial chat with a landlord with a portfolio of ten properties in the Czech Republic. I asked him about the local rental market and he mentioned he had just rented an apartment to a middle class Jewish family from Dublin. They had relocated to Prague permanently because “Jewish people have no future in Ireland.”
I have rarely felt so horrified by a casual remark.
I was going to write a post about the riot in Southport that followed the random knife murders of three young girls in that town carried out by Axel Rudakubana. Prior to Rudakubana’s name being released, a false rumour spread on social media that the perpetrator was a Muslim, leading the rioters to attack a mosque. Then I remembered I had already made the same points in this post about the riot in Dublin that took place in November 2023 following the attempted knife murder of three young children by Riad Bouchaker. I am not re-using the old post merely to save time: I am doing it to demonstrate that the two incidents have a great deal in common.
“Despite police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive”
In the following quote, replace “Irish” with “British” and “would-be child murderer” with “child murderer”:
It does not excuse the riots in the least if the rioters are correct to think that the would-be child murderer is any or all of a migrant, legal or illegal, or a Muslim, or from an ethnic minority. But the obfuscation from the Irish authorities and media on this point is making the situation worse.
The usual flashpoint for riots throughout history has been a rumour of crimes committed by a member of Group A against Group B. The riots in the Lozells district of Birmingham in 2005 have been almost forgotten because whites were not involved, but they were a typical example of the type, having been sparked by a completely unsubstantiated story that a black girl had been gang-raped by a group of South Asian men.
Sometimes the rumour is true, sometimes it is not.
If, as in that case, the inciting rumour is not true, the best tool for squelching the false claim and quelling the violence is a trusted press, taking the term “press” in a wider sense than just newspapers. If the rumour is true, the best tool for quelling the violence is still a trusted press. It can do things like publicising condemnations of the crime from leaders of the group to which the perpetrator belongs. What a pity that Ireland, like much of the Western World, no longer has a trusted press because it no longer has a trustworthy press.
It’s not “Despite police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital”, it’s a damn sight closer to “Because of police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital”. If the official sources of information won’t do their jobs, don’t be surprised when people turn to unofficial sources instead.
JEREMY CORBYN MEETS KNEECAP Last week, @jeremycorbyn sat down with @KNEECAPCEOL for a quick chat about their music and the importance of artists to speaking up for Palestine. #MusicForACeasefire
Just lovable Grandpa Jeremy, the one who wanted to see a “kinder, gentler politics”, having a friendly chat with a band who talk about “the Resistance” in Palestine and named themselves after the trademark form of mutilation and torture carried out by the IRA.
At 3:22 Corbyn asks the lads to explain why they have joined his campaign called “Music for a ceasefire” (I’m sure that slogan will resonate with young people who go to music festivals), and the one on the right says, “It’s mad that we have to even take a stance on people being blown up”, and the guy in the knitted tricolour gimp mask nods along.
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Added later: Regarding the choice of “Kneecap” as name of a hip-hop band from Belfast, commenter John said, “Presumably they will be touring universities with their South African support act The Necklaces and middle eastern special guests The Gay Free-Fallers.”
For any Irish readers asking themselves, “What is a victim impact statement?”, the office of Ireland’s Director of Public Prosecutions has guidance:
If you are the victim of a crime you may make a Victim Impact Statement. A Victim Impact Statement is an account in your own words of the effect that the crime has had on you. You may, for example, have suffered a physical injury, be affected emotionally or psychologically. You might also have lost out financially.
But what if the victim cannot speak because the crime was murder? A later section of the guidance, “Who can make a Victim Impact Statement?” says that “a family member of a victim who has died, is ill or is incapacitated because of the crime” may speak in their place”. Ryan Casey fell into that category. He was the boyfriend of Ashling Murphy, who Wikipedia describes as “a 23-year-old Irish primary school teacher and traditional Irish musician … who was attacked and murdered by 31-year-old Slovak Romani father-of-five, Jozef Puška”.
In his Victim Impact Statement, Ryan Casey said that he and Ashling…
…had talked about how many kids they would have, and imagined they would be “little hurlers and camogie players and even better – musicians”. He said it did not make sense to him that someone who is “a burden to society can completely and permanently destroy someone… who is the complete opposite”, describing Ms Murphy as “a light with dreams, compassion, respect, a person who contributes to society in the best way possible”.
Mr Casey told Puska: “Because of you, I’ve lost my Ashling. Because if you, I will never get to marry my soulmate. Because of you, I will never see her smile again… I will have to somehow carry on without her.” He accused Puska of smirking, smiling and showing “zero remorse during this trial”.
Powerful words. Too powerful for some:
In case it disappears, the tweet is by @griptmedia and says,
Irish Times journalist Kitty Holland says the Irish media “were right” to not publish the full comments of Ryan Casey, boyfriend of murdered 23-year-old Ashling Murphy, claiming that his remarks were “incitement to hatred” and that it wouldn’t be “helpful” to share them.
The video clip within the tweet is taken from an edition of the BBC Northern Ireland programme “The View” shown on Thursday 30th November 2023. The presenter is Mark Carruthers.
To be frank, I have never been quite comfortable with the idea of Victim Impact Statements, or Victim Personal Statements as they are called here in the UK, occurring as an official part of the trial. Back in 2005, I quoted a letter to the Independent by one C. Lehman that said, “If we allow victims’ families to speak to judges about the effects of someone’s death, we risk creating a hierarchy of murder based on sentiment, the willingness of family members to speak and their fluency in doing so. Sentences should rightly vary according to the nature of the crime, but surely not according to whether a victim had a family who loved him, or whether the victim’s family can speak fluent English.”
The letter writer was not alone in their concerns – though no one seems to have anticipated the opposite problem, that the words of the family members of deeply loved victims would be so eloquent that they might actually change things – but their arguments did not prevail in either the UK or in Ireland. So be it, but if a society is going to make a point of giving an official platform so that those bereaved by murder can express their pain to the world, for God’s sake, let all of them be heard.
The Irish government would have us believe that the most destructive riot in Dublin in living memory was not a symptom of failed governance, but the result of an ideological fringe group going on a looting spree. That is a suspiciously convenient narrative for the powers that be, for it absolves them of all responsibility for losing control of the city. By fingering a Far Right fringe, public officials can wash their hands of any role they themselves may have played in bringing the city to the brink of anarchy.
But blaming these riots on the “far right” only serves as an excuse for not engaging in serious reflection about the deeper causes of this incendiary atmosphere, and the ensuing events. These events did not come out of nowhere and cannot be simplistically reduced to the work of a fringe “far right” mob. “Far right” talk is an excuse for not thinking hard about what led up to this and how public authorities lost control of Dublin’s city centre.
– David Thunder
“Violence in Dublin after five hurt in knife attack” reports the BBC:
There are violent scenes in Dublin after an earlier knife attack in the city centre in which five people were injured
It is not clear exactly what caused the disturbances – involving clashes, and reports of a number of vehicles set on fire
The BBC’s line about it not being clear exactly what caused the disturbances is disingenuous. It is entirely clear what they are rioting about. From the Telegraph:
Violent anti-immigration protesters descended on Dublin city centre on Thursday night after five people were injured in a knife attack outside a school. At least three small children were injured in the attack in the Irish capital, as well as a man and a woman. A five-year-old girl sustained “serious injuries” and was receiving emergency treatment, police said. Despite police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital, setting fire to a police car, a tram and a double-decker bus, among other vehicles, and throwing fireworks at officers.
The only thing that is not entirely clear is whether the rioters are correct in thinking that the man who stabbed the children and adults is an Algerian migrant, as believed by those replying to this tweet by Micheál Martin, the Tánaiste (the deputy head of the Irish government).
It does not excuse the riots in the least if the rioters are correct to think that the would-be child murderer is any or all of a migrant, legal or illegal, or a Muslim, or from an ethnic minority. But the obfuscation from the Irish authorities and media on this point is making the situation worse.
The usual flashpoint for riots throughout history has been a rumour of crimes committed by a member of Group A against Group B. The riots in the Lozells district of Birmingham in 2005 have been almost forgotten because whites were not involved, but they were a typical example of the type, having been sparked by a completely unsubstantiated story that a black girl had been gang-raped by a group of South Asian men.
Sometimes the rumour is true, sometimes it is not.
If, as in that case, the inciting rumour is not true, the best tool for squelching the false claim and quelling the violence is a trusted press, taking the term “press” in a wider sense than just newspapers. If the rumour is true, the best tool for quelling the violence is still a trusted press. It can do things like publicising condemnations of the crime from leaders of the group to which the perpetrator belongs. What a pity that Ireland, like much of the Western World, no longer has a trusted press because it no longer has a trustworthy press.
It’s not “Despite police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital”, it’s a damn sight closer to “Because of police not revealing the suspected knifeman’s identity or motive, far-Right thugs emboldened by “misinformation” descended on the streets of the capital”. If the official sources of information won’t do their jobs, don’t be surprised when people turn to unofficial sources instead.
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Related posts: “Try not lying” – about the sexual assaults in Cologne and other German cities during the New Year celebrations of 1 January 2016, “If you do not want to see the BNP vindicated, try not proving them right”, and “Politically correct evasiveness fails on its own terms”.
Here are three articles I saw over the last couple of days, one about Canada, one about the UK, and one about Ireland.
Jordan Peterson writing in the Telegraph:
As a professional, practicing clinical psychologist, I never thought I would fall foul of Canada’s increasingly censorial state. Yet, like so many others – including teachers, nurses, and other professionals – that is precisely what has happened. In my case, a court has upheld an order from the College of Psychologists of Ontario that I undergo social media training or lose my licence to practice a profession I have served for most of my adult life.
Their reason? Because of a handful of tweets on my social media, apparently. Yes: I am at risk of losing my licence to practice as a mental health professional because of the complaints of a tiny number of people about the utterly unproven “harm” done by my political opinions.
Bill Goodwin writing in Computer Weekly:
Plans by the government in the Online Safety Bill to require tech companies to scan encrypted messages will damage the UK’s reputation for data security, the UK’s professional body for IT has warned.
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, which has 70,000 members, said that government proposals in the new laws to compromise end-to-end encryption are not possible without creating systemic security risks and in effect bugging millions of phone users.
John McGuirk writing in Gript.ie:
Yesterday morning my colleague Ben Scallan attended the Electoral Commission’s announcement of the new constituency boundaries for the next Irish general election. While most of the focus of the event was on who would be voting where, Ben asked a question of more general relevance to the commission: It has been granted significant powers to regulate so-called “misinformation” in Irish election campaigns. If this was a power it needs, we reasoned, then surely it would have examples of the kind of misinformation that it intended to regulate in future elections. Ben asked for such an example, and here is what happened:
That the commission does not have examples of the kind of misinformation it intends to correct is hardly shocking if, like me, you are a cynic. It’s quite hard to genuinely shock us cynics.
And yet Mrs. Justice Marie Baker, the Chairperson of the Commission, did indeed manage to shock me at 3.15 in the clip above when she said “we’re also going to have to learn how to deal with the balance between the right to freedom of expression on the one hand, and on the other hand, the right of persons not to be misinformed”.
This is shocking firstly because Mrs. Justice Baker is a judge of the Supreme Court, and should know that while the right to freedom of expression is in the Irish constitution, the right not to be misinformed appears nowhere. Even granting some allowances for the fact that she was speaking off the cuff, it’s objectively remarkable to see a Supreme Court Judge essentially making up a law, and a right, that nobody has ever voted on – and more than that, assuming for herself the right to enforce on everyone else a right or a law that she’s just invented herself.
To do that is one thing – to do it while speaking of “defending democracy”, when democracy is about having the people choose their own laws, is quite another.
“The right of persons not to be misinformed” is a truly Orwellian inversion of the meaning of “right”. It describes the withdrawal of a right as the granting of one.
I would like to think that the absence of any news stories about threats to freedom in Australia, New Zealand or the United States in today’s little collection was because there were none to report. I would also like the figure and eyesight of a twenty year-old and a billion pounds.
– Irish Green Party Chairperson Senator Pauline O’Reilly, speaking on Tuesday, 13 Jun 2023 in the Seanad Éireann debate on the second stage of Ireland’s Criminal Justice (Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences) Bill 2022.
I transcribed the words she speaks in the clip as follows:
“When you think about it, all law, all legislation is about the restriction of freedom. That’s exactly what we are doing here, is we are restricting freedom but we are doing it for the common good. You will see that throughout our Constitution, yes, you have rights but they are restricted for the common good.
Everything needs to be balanced. If your views on other people’s identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”
The official record of the whole debate can be read here. Note that, just as Hansard does for speakers in the UK parliament, the Official Report of the Oireachtas presents a slightly cleaned up version of what was actually said, though not enough to change the meaning.
According to that record, just after that clip ended she made another remark which I think needs to gain wider publicity:
One cannot do and say whatever one likes in our society, which is a society governed by laws. This is very fundamental to a legislative system. It should be one of the very fundamentals for any legislators who sit in this Chamber that they understand what we do is restrict freedoms.“
Senator O’Reilly is wrong by every moral measure – but on that factual point she is not wrong.
Reporters without Borders seem to be of a similar mindset — they don’t know how anyone could object to these laws either and can’t see how anyone could consider them limiting. Is their assessment of our level of press freedom wrong? As of today, it’s probably not. That’s not to say that a wide variety of different opinions are available in the mainstream media or that dissent is encouraged; more that things restraining dissent and argument are philosophical and held in place by an unspoken consensus amongst the powerful. Hate Speech laws will, ironically, change that. Suppressing speech through arrest that you were mostly successful in suppressing through consensus might prove a tactical error. Who knows what next year’s rankings will hold?
– Conor Fitzgerald
There is much anger in Ireland over the country’s ongoing housing crisis. The Dail put in place an eviction ban over the winter. It got them some good headlines for a while, but the ban had the usual effect of driving smaller landlords out of the market, making the crisis worse. The ban is due to expire on 31st March. This will result in many people being evicted simultaneously on 1st April. Reddit Ireland is outraged. Here is a thread titled “Disgraceful” about how many Airbnb properties are available compared to how few long term rental properties. In fact the comparison is false. As a commenter called “Th0rHere” says, “Airbnb shows listings even when booked (to make future bookings possible). Daft [a property website] shows only available places to rent right now, as your not going to advertise place to rent if it’s already being rented. These numbers are not comparable.”
Even so, it is true that an awful lot of Irish properties that used to be let to long term tenants are now given over to Airbnb. I have posted about the issue a couple of times. Why is this happening? Why would anyone choose the constant work and uncertainty of letting out their property as an Airbnb over the stability of having a long term tenant?
On that same “Disgraceful” thread, a Reddit Ireland commenter called “RestrepoDoc2” explained why:
If I was a property owner with an apartment or flat in a popular tourist area I’d have to weigh up the benefits of renting to someone on a long term rental compared to short term lets on Airbnb.
I can’t really come up with any benefits of a long term rental agreement other than less property management logistics ie. getting cleaners in, checking the property for damage or stolen items between guests and providing keys, codes etc.
The benefits of Airbnb to the property owner are nearly too abundant to outline in any real detail but just off the top of my head.
Security of your property, card details and passport details held by Airbnb, guest history, can meet them in person. Any antisocial behaviour in the property can be dealt with by local police as they can enter your property with your permission and make people leave (I assume).
You can rent it out as suits you, can stay in it when you want, store your property in a locked storage room there, let family or friends stay in it sometimes. You can do repair work or refurbishment when you want.
You don’t have to worry about if a tenant has job security, you don’t have to tiptoe around the subject of HAP or any disabilities a prospective tenant might declare to you at a viewing. You don’t have to consider arranging inspections of your property by RTB agents. You don’t need to pay for a professionally drawn up rental agreement, or drafted legal letters in case of non payment, damage to property, refusal to allow reasonable access for inspection, anti-social behaviour, notifications in writing of rent increases or end of tenancy etc. Then there’s the rent a mob crowds like CATU being legitimised by attention seeking opposition party TDs and local councillors. They will literally turn up to intimidate any property owner once a dispute is raised by a tenant whether they’re refusing to pay rent, squatting, changing the locks of your property etc.
There’s been several local councillors and a partially state funded organisation in Threshold literally advising people to break the law by refusing to move out of someone’s property even when given relevant notice and for permitted reasons. This is forcing property owners to seek a court order which could take another year etc. With the upcoming vote about extending the eviction ban and talk of further infringing on property owners rights. Realistically it may soon not even be possible to sell your property, to move a family member or yourself into the property, to carry out refurbishments on your own property.
Basically it would be madness to choose to provide a long term rental lease to somebody. Instead of fixing that mess of a situation caused by government intervention, they are trying to ban Airbnb or regulate it out of existence.
RestrepoDoc2’s comment got 3 upvotes, one of which was mine.
A comment from “Irish_drunkard” saying, “We banned Uber because it would effect our taxi business, why can’t we ban AirBNB?” got 985 upvotes.
A couple of months ago John McGuirk asked that question:
Landlords have fled the market. They are selling up at an unprecedented rate, or finding other uses for their accommodation. There has been an explosion, meanwhile, in institutional landlords: Big companies and pension funds buying up properties, because unlike the small landlord, they have their own legal offices and in house accountants and the funds to constantly refurbish properties to bring them up to regulatory standard. Ireland’s left wing approach to rental regulation has been – again, predictably – an absolute bonanza for this biggest capitalist institutions.
Government must take the blame for this. It is Government, after all, which passed all these obscene and stupid laws. But the opposition – mainly the noisy left – are the ones who campaigned on it, and for it, and who want to go ever further down the road to disaster. As of today, there are about 700 homes left available for rent in the entire country. About 22 in every single county.
Emphasis added. 700? In a nation of five million people? Could that really be true? It seems so. This video from Sky News says the same.
I hate to say it, but the answer to Mr Guirk’s question is that the misery of would-be renters in Ireland will probably go on for decades, like it has in Stockholm. Rent control is the Japanese knotweed of bad policy: the horrendous difficulty of removing it once it is established becomes an incentive for people to close their eyes to the damage it is doing. The failure of rent controls in Ireland was already several years old when I wrote a post in 2018 called “And why might that be?” It was about how one of the Guardian‘s better journalists could not understand why landlords in Dublin had vacated the long term rental market en masse in favour of Airbnb.
One might think that this clear demonstration of how rent controls work in practice would at least deter us from repeating the folly on the other side of the Irish Sea… I jest, of course. Seen on Guido Fawkes the other day: “New Scottish rent controls crush hopes for 11,000 affordable homes”.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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