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Iam reading a book on Rudolf Hess’s doomed peace mission to Scotland. In May 1941, N**i Germany had conquered most of we...
30/07/2025

Iam reading a book on Rudolf Hess’s doomed peace mission to Scotland. In May 1941, N**i Germany had conquered most of western Europe; Adolf Hi**er was planning to invade the Soviet Union the following month. But the United Kingdom was still at war with Germany, still a threat in the rear. Hi**er’s deputy, Hess, depressed by his political marginalisation in a regime at war, decided to change things

He flew to Britain with a peace plan to put before King George VI that would circumvent Winston Churchill, deliver peace between Britain and Germany, and allow the N**is a free hand to crush Bolshevism. Unfortunately for Hess, it’s parliament and not the head of state that controls policy in the UK. Churchill had, just that month, won a parliamentary vote of confidence by 447 votes to three

Worse still, as Hess later revealed when asked whether his flight had been approved by Hi**er, he thought that his trip had been approved “by a higher power”. A firm believer in the occult, Hess had consulted with various fortune tellers before embarking across the North Sea. As Joseph Goebbels, Hi**er’s propaganda minister, later noted in his diary, not one of these fortune tellers managed to foresee that Hi**er would react to the episode by locking them up in concentration camps. Hess remained imprisoned until he took his own life in Spandau Prison, Berlin, in 1987

Could the government have extracted more value from the banks it rescued during the financial crisis? It’s a question th...
30/07/2025

Could the government have extracted more value from the banks it rescued during the financial crisis? It’s a question that Pearse Doherty won’t let go. The Sinn Fein finance spokesman recently raised the issue again in a somewhat mischievous parliamentary question he submitted to Paschal Donohoe, the minister for finance

How much money, he wanted to know, would have been raised had the government imposed a cap of 25 or 50 per cent on the tax relief the banks could claim on historical losses if it had been introduced last year?

It’s an intriguing hypothetical, not least because 2024 was a record year for profits at both Bank of Ireland and AIB, with the two pillar banks generating €4.6 billion in pre-tax earnings between them. Moreover, the question landed on Donohoe’s desk just weeks after he authorised the final disposal of the government’s shareholding in AIB, which generated a €19.8 billion cash return on an original investment of €20.8 billion made between 2009 and 2011. And in that short period (and for many years afterwards) the Irish banks clocked up big losses which they were able to carry forward and offset against future profits. That’s standard practice across the OECD, as Donohoe made clear in his answer, because business cycles do not neatly match accounting years

Ireland’s sluggish progress on national infrastructure is being hampered by an overly complex regulatory regime, legal b...
30/07/2025

Ireland’s sluggish progress on national infrastructure is being hampered by an overly complex regulatory regime, legal bottlenecks and a failure to prioritise key projects, according to a new government taskforce report

The accelerating infrastructure taskforce, set up in May, identified a lack of “co-ordination” and “consistency” across the planning and delivery system. An action plan is due to be published in the autumn

It is seen as the first step in this government’s objective to cut red tape. A senior source said: “The last two governments haven’t looked at this need to accelerate the lifetime of a project and we’re paying the price for it now.”

Deep in the bowels of Croke Park, far beneath the stands, in the week between last Sunday’s pulsating All-Ireland hurlin...
30/07/2025

Deep in the bowels of Croke Park, far beneath the stands, in the week between last Sunday’s pulsating All-Ireland hurling final and this weekend’s mouth-watering football final, there is a clatter of hammering, sawing and drilling

New television studios are being built that will look out through a glass window upon Jones’s Road, one of the main thoroughfares by which fans make their way into the stadium

According to Peter McKenna, the GAA’s stadium director and head of commercial, the plan is to prepare the association for a time when it becomes its own broadcaster — at which point it might be making as much profit from broadcasting games as it does from getting fans through the turnstiles

A revised version of a controversial wax figure of the late Sinéad O’Connor is to be unveiled next summer to mark the th...
30/07/2025

A revised version of a controversial wax figure of the late Sinéad O’Connor is to be unveiled next summer to mark the third anniversary of the singer’s death, the director of the National Wax Museum has said

O’Connor, whose 1990 cover of Nothing Compares 2 U catapulted her to global fame, died on July 26, 2023, at the age of 56. A waxwork of the singer was revealed last summer, but it drew significant criticism from fans who said it bore no resemblance to O’Connor

Paddy Dunning, director of the National Wax Museum, said that the wax figure unveiled on the first anniversary of O’Connor’s untimely death was intended as a commemoration, but sculptor PJ Heraghty had health issues and Dunning had been travelling

A man who made legal history by becoming the first person convicted in Ireland of recklessly endangering lives by infect...
30/07/2025

A man who made legal history by becoming the first person convicted in Ireland of recklessly endangering lives by infecting two women with HIV has been deported by the Garda National Immigration Bureau

The man, an African national who cannot be named in order to protect the identities of his victims, was convicted in 2018 of intentionally or recklessly causing serious harm by having unprotected s*x while knowingly carrying the virus

One of the women he infected was his wife. The offences took place between November 2009 and June 2010. Residency rights have been granted to the man’s wife and family, who were considered victims in the case

He personified the high spirits, deep pockets and frenetic socialising of the Celtic tiger era. Now, more than 20 years ...
30/07/2025

He personified the high spirits, deep pockets and frenetic socialising of the Celtic tiger era. Now, more than 20 years after the self-styled It boy Gavin Lambe-Murphy disappeared from the Dublin party circuit and the social pages of every glossy magazine and weekend supplement, the 49-year-old is back in the media with his new venture, a concept store called Baggotonia

Located on Leeson Street Upper in Dublin, the bijou boutique/deli/exhibition space quietly opened in spring with its “eclectic mix of stylish items”, from pantry goods and plimsoles to perfume and ceramics, and is, Lambe-Murphy declares, his first “proper job”. He’s on the shop floor every day, he explains, though not nine to five mind you; from about 10.30am to 3pm you can catch the former poster boy for early Noughties excess selling Italian olive oil and Kinsale-made candles to Dublin 4 locals

“It’s quirky and it’s different,” Lambe-Murphy says of the venture, which he established with his longtime friend and business partner Noelle McCarthy, owner of Blow hair salons and holder of the lease to the Baggotonia premises (it sits next door to Blow’s flagship salon)

Gardai are investigating a previously unknown paramilitary group that has issued threats to kill far-right activists and...
30/07/2025

Gardai are investigating a previously unknown paramilitary group that has issued threats to kill far-right activists and criminals in Dublin. The security services believe the group is a front for the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA­), a proscribed organisation heavily involved in organised crime

The group’s existence was revealed after an image of three masked men holding fi****ms was uploaded to a private online forum used by fringe republican activists

The photograph was accompanied by a message in which the Dublin group said it had been monitoring far-right figures and gangland criminals, warning that action was imminent. It also claimed to have carried out attacks in Crumlin

Secrets of Ryanair: make-up rules, beard limits and snack commissionCabin crew whistleblowers reveal the ups and downs o...
30/07/2025

Secrets of Ryanair: make-up rules, beard limits and snack commission

Cabin crew whistleblowers reveal the ups and downs of traversing the skies with Michael O’Leary’s famously penny-pinching budget airline

Read the full story in the comments 🔗

Police do not expect ever to be able to arrest any suspect in a triple murder and attempted su***de investigationA man s...
30/07/2025

Police do not expect ever to be able to arrest any suspect in a triple murder and attempted su***de investigation

A man suffered life-changing injuries and remains unconscious in hospital following the gun attack at a house in Maguiresbridge, Co Fermanagh, last Wednesday morning

Vanessa Whyte, 45, a highly regarded vet and her daughter, Sara Rutledge, 13, died at the scene. Her son, James Rutledge, 14, was rushed by ambulance to the South West Acute Hospital but did not survive. The injured man from the same household was taken by air ambulance to Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast

Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair chief executive, has said President Trump is “economically illiterate”The comment came as O...
29/07/2025

Michael O’Leary, the Ryanair chief executive, has said President Trump is “economically illiterate”

The comment came as O’Leary condemned the American leader’s tariffs, ahead of an August 1 deadline for a trade deal between the US and the EU

“Tariffs are a mad idea that ultimately penalise US consumers but we have to live in Trump’s world for the next three and a half years,” O’Leary told The Sunday Times

Gardai have launched a criminal investigation into the alleged abuse of a government healthcare fund by a consultant at ...
29/07/2025

Gardai have launched a criminal investigation into the alleged abuse of a government healthcare fund by a consultant at Children’s Health Ireland (CHI)

The inquiry was triggered after the HSE referred to gardai a copy of an internal 2021 report, which found the consultant was paid €35,800 to run weekend clinics, funded by the National Treatment Purchase Fund (NTPF) in breach of guidelines

The National Economic Crime Bureau is now investigating possible offences involving the collection of NTPF fees relating to about 180 cases. The development raises serious questions for Lucy Nugent, the embattled chief executive of the CHI, who did not refer the report to gardai when she became aware of it

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