Sunday Independent (Dublin, Republic of Ireland) back issues from August 2007:
Minister must earn his keep.(COMMENT & ANALYSIS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... BRIAN Cowen, the Minister for Finance, is in danger of tripping over his own complacency. It has, perhaps, all been too easy for Mr Cowen from the moment he stepped out of the Department of Foreign Affairs and into the Department of Finance. A booming economy allowed him to ...
Fianna Fail may need to find new heir if Tweedledee Brian blows it.(COMMENT & ANALYSIS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Jody Corcoran MICHAEL McDOWELL attended a party at the home of an eminent (is there any other kind?) lawyer in south Dublin (where else?) a few weeks ago. By all accounts, he was in fine form. The former Progressive Democrats leader and former Tanaiste and ...
Katy would make us a model senator.(FRONT PAGE)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: BRENDAN O'CONNOR NEVER let it be said that Bertie Ahern forgets a favour. Never let it be said that he doesn't pay off his debts to supportive journalists. No doubt people will be up in arms about it, but the fact is, Bertie has done the right ...
Cocaine princesses on the nose as high society hits new low at Galway Races.(NEWS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan 'THIS is getting way too dangerous. We have to land now," the pilot said, as he banked the helicopter so steeply that I was starting to feel physically sick. Actor Liam Cunningham and Ronan Ryan, proprietor of Town Bar & Grill, with his girlfriend ...
Garda watchdog to probe deaths.(NEWS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: DON LAVERY AS GARDAI launched a crackdown on speeding motorists this weekend, the Garda watchdog began its first investigation into the circumstances surrounding two separate road deaths in Galway. The Garda Ombudsman Commission pointed out that, by law, the ...
Peace process just starting - Harris.(NEWS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: JODY CORCORAN THE Sunday Independent columnist Eoghan Harris has said that he will "continue to promote the peace process" when he takes up his position in Seanad Eireann, following his surprise nomination last week by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern. Mr Harris ...
The Clancy Brothers, and Tommy made 'em.(NEWS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Willie Kealy Tommy Makem, who died last week from cancer, was one quarter of the most famous musical export from Ireland in the Sixties -- The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem. The older Clancy Brothers, Tom and Paddy Clancy, had left their native ...
O'Leary and his flights of fancy key to his success.(NEWS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Liam Collins IN THE past few weeks hundreds of thousands of people will have been struck with a sense of despair as they passed through the chaos of Dublin Airport. This pervasive feeling of inefficiency, crowds, queues and the sheer madness of the baggage ...
'Come back, Kate, I still love you' says Pete Doherty. . .to the media.(PEOPLE)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Larissa Nolan AS INTERVIEWS go, it was bizarre, shambolic, childish, contradictory, completely bonkers and ultimately revealing. But then it was Pete Doherty who was doing the talking. And it was Kate Moss he was talking about. The one-time musical ...
Dining out at the Candy Crossroads.(PEOPLE)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Brendan O'Connor THE NATION is at a crossroads this weekend. Specifically we are at what I like to call the Eye Candy Crossroads, or the Candy Crossroads. We are at what I believe will be looked back at as a seminal moment in the development of Irish culture, the moment ...
Land rights from Dalkey to Dunsink.(ANALYSIS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: John O'Keeffe WHEN it comes to claiming land as our own in Ireland, we all appear to want the same thing -- more of it. Take Pat Kenny, for example. Pat is the last person you would imagine might claim squatter's rights over land that is not registered as his ...
There's no Power point here for Bertie.(ANALYSIS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Liam Collins SHE MAY be a one-woman think tank on American foreign policy, but Dublin-born Pulitzer prizewinning author Samantha Power does not rank the Taoiseach up with the greats. Power, author of Woman for Dark Times, left Dublin at the age of nine, but ...
Size is just an estate of mind, says Volvo.(NEWS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Campbell Spray NOT SO long ago, a Volvo presentation would be made by very serious-looking, besuited Swedes in half-moon glasses who would bore their way through your brain, extolling the marque's safety features, as if they were selling a tank rather than a car. ...
City living at a country pace.(PROPERTY)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: John O'Keeffe THERE you are now lying on the beach in Spain or Turkey, and all you can think about is foreign ownership and how nice it would be to say to the Yammy Mammies at the school gate in September that you and Feeergus ''have just bought that dahling property in ...
Toxic threat of summer gold.(OBITUARIES)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: JOE KENNEDY THE COUNCIL man jumped down from the tractor and began pulling tall yellow spikes of a bulky weed -- easily from a bankside softened by the rain -- to throw into the high-sided trailer being towed. Each year, this growth shows its yellow teeth on ...
It's better inside the tent, spitting out.(ANALYSIS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Gene Kerrigan THAT'S the spirit, lads - spit in the eye of the whingers. Screw the begrudgers. Last week, Fianna Fail's most steadfast loyalists rallied round and saved the Hospitality Tent, and all the builders and donors therein. Well done! ...
Permo slips in EU20bn war for new mortgages.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: NICK WEBB THE State's largest mortgage lender Permanent TSB is seen as one of the principal losers in the shake up for new business in a slowing market. It is thought that the new entrants such as Halifax and National Irish Bank are taking market share from ...
Ecocem EU18m stake sale nets green IIB clients huge profits.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: NICK WEBB SUPER-RICH private clients of IIB Bank have turned a massive profit from their EU18m sale of a 30 per cent stake in "green" cement firm Ecocem to the world's largest building materials group Saint-Gobain. It is understood that the high rollers ...
BoI eyes EU460m Anfield.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: NICK WEBB DESPITE having been involved in financing the failed attempt to fund a Dubai takeover of Liverpool Football Club, Bank of Ireland is back in the running to do a deal for the club's proposed new EU460m stadium. Financial sources suggest that Bank of ...
Beaumont's EU1m boo-boo.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: NICK WEBB BEAUMONT Hospital has made one heck of a spectacular cock-up. They didn't chop off the wrong leg or anything, but management have scored a spectacular own goal. New documents from Beaumont provide gruesome details of a horrendous admin-sitrative ...
CRH on track for Tarmac.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: NICK WEBB LIAM O'Mahony's CRH has been widely linked as a possible bidder for the EU4.5bn road building firm Tarmac, which was put up for auction last Friday. The vast multi-national, Anglo-American (above), is selling the company as part of ...
Old investment tactics prop up our new rich-list status.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Brendan Keenan SLIPPERY concept, wealth. No sooner had we read that our national wealth is now over EU800bn, than EU8bn of that was wiped out by stock market falls. One would not want to take such figures too seriously. Much more serious is the connection ...
Insider dealing here? Never.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Nick Webb WITH the greatest respect to DCC's Jim Flavin, you'd want to be a complete eejit to get done for insider dealing in Ireland. Most of the really hooky stuff is not done through plain vanilla share trading. CFDs (contracts for difference), options, ...
Could Maurice Pratt be the new Homer Simpson?(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Nick Webb C&C BOSS Maurice Pratt is running the risk of becoming the Homer Simpson of Irish business, with one D'oh! after another for the cider chief. Pratt sold Ballygowan to British fizzy drink firm Britvic for EU250m a couple of months ago. At the time it ...
Green Minister's crude tax measures.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Nick Webb THE news that Xerox was going to zap 900 workers in its Dublin plant wasn't entirely unexpected. Ireland has been plummeting down the global competitiveness chart for years now, as higher costs vapourise profitability. The IDA and Enterprise and ...
Nigel Orr.(BUSINESS)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: SHANE ROSS NIGEL Orr was a star of the fledgling Irish gilt market of the early seventies. He led the field in one of the most lucrative financial areas of the day. And then he gave it all up to become a West Wicklow sheep farmer. After a degree in economics ...
MAIN EVENT.(SPORT)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: John Greene and Sean Ryan THERE were some whimperings last week about the 'insult' to Kilkenny and Wexford in using their All-Ireland semi-final as a curtain-raiser to the Cork v Waterford replay, a mere quarter-final. Well, the expression that came to our minds when the ...
SUB PRIME.(SPORT)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: John Greene and Sean Ryan PATRONS at last Sunday's All-Ireland hurling quarter-finals in Croke Park were badly served by the team announcements before the Limerick-Clare game. Clare had two changes from the selected 15, plus a positional switch. None of these were ...
DISASTER DAY.(SPORT)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: John Greene and Sean Ryan THIS has not been a good year for Kevin Dilleen, Clare's left-corner-back, and last Sunday turned out to be a day to forget. Troubled with hip and back problems all year, he wasn't named to start against Limerick, but he got the nod, ...
BIN THERE.(SPORT)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: John Greene and Sean Ryan IN this texting age, no sooner has an event occurred, be it a tragedy or comedy or just a plain natural disaster, than the comic texts start flying. It's hard to say under which heading Tipperary's defeat by Wexford should be filed, but it had ...
SHOCK HORROR.(SPORT)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: John Greene and Sean Ryan THE GPA is becoming more proactive in recent weeks, with statements on most issues of concern to its members. One such dealt with Fermanagh hurler Darren Graham and the sectarian abuse he suffered. However, the last ...
Wexford a work in progress under Meyler's guiding hand.(SPORT)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: SEAN RYAN JOHN MEYLER doesn't mince his words, neither does he deal in bland answers to direct questions. However, there was one question he had some difficulty with. It wasn't his treatment of Declan Ruth in the Leinster final. Taking him off after ten ...
CLUB BY CLUB: AIDAN O'HARA'S GUIDE TO THE NEW SEASON.(SPORT)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: AIDAN O'HARA Best case scenario: Beat Barcelona in Champions League final. Philippe Senderos outpaces Thierry Henry for a match-saving tackle to prove Wen-ger was right to sell him. Decide not to concede first in every game meaning they have an interest in the league ...
'Drogheda can do a job on Helsingborgs'.(SPORT)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: SEAN RYAN PAT WALKER is bullish about Drogheda United's chances against Helsingborgs in the second qualifying round of the UEFA Cup . . . and that's good news for the Boynesiders as Walker is one of the most knowledgeable coaches in Sweden. For years, Irish ...
Lone shark horror.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Evan Fanning AS WAS pointed out elsewhere on these pages last weekend, while we think we have it bad here this summer, it's nothing compared with what those across the water are facing. Or given the floods we might call them those under the water. And if they ...
Nicole baby spin is self-serving in the extreme.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Julia Molony GIVEN that she's almost four months gone, you have to give credit to Nicole Richie for keeping quiet about her pregnancy before her court case for driving under the influence, where she was sentenced to four days of jail time last week. Surely ...
Moore or less, she's the sanest girl in la-la land.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Evan Fanning MANDY Moore is renowned for being nice. While her celebrity peers go off the rails, shaving their heads, crashing cars and jumping in and out of rehab or even prison, Moore just seems to get on with her multitude of jobs while remaining almost ...
Cavorting on the kitchen table the talk of the tent.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan THE talk of the Fianna Fail tent in Ballybrit was not the absence of Anna Bogle but the unexpected appearance of a millionaire builder's wife in Galway. She came home last week when she was supposed to be away and caught him in an intimate embrace with another ...
The Minister for Misfinance not at the races.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan IT WAS the wild west all last week in Galway. Well, Roy Keane was in town. Admittedly, he was with his team, Sunderland, who played Galway in a soccer match. Meanwhile, at Ballybrit race course and around the town, the sense of abandon was palpable. Well, ...
Tara and Trevor in a happy little Cocoon.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan CLODAGH Kean has been keeping such a low profile over the summer that social diarists and party organisers alike have been weeping into their Dom Perignon magnums. D4 needs Clodagh back. Her VBF Tara Logan, meanwhile, is keeping tongues wagging. ...
Brian's blues.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan CHARITY You're a Star judge Brian McFadden has had the Delta blues last week after saying goodbye to his awesome Antipodean, Delta Goodrem. She headed off to LA last Sunday to work on her new album. Delta was at the Helix to support Brian on the ...
Blonde beauty gives Million race legs.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan THIS story has legs. Legs Lawlor, I mean, as what story about Irish fillies would be complete without the blonde bloodstock manager? The 6ft 1in tall --or 5ft 13in as she describes herself -- Amazonian beauty was in the penthouse of the Radisson in ...
Shock as Gerald and Lisa split.(LIVING)
Aug 05, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan LISA Murphy and Gerald Kean are no longer doing a pas de deux. As a matter of fact, they had their last waltz 10 days ago. Lisa -- exactly as she did when she and Michael Flatley split -- is keeping a dignified silence other than to say that "life ...
More heat in the kitchen.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Julia Molony GORDON Ramsay once compared the experience of working with culinary legend Marco Pierre White as like "sitting with your pants down on a meat cleaver". So ITV producers behind the upcoming series of Hell's Kitchen might well be feeling a little disappointed ...
Prison-cell sex sells.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Evan Fanning PARIS Hilton and Nicole Richie's all too brief sojourns in prison are to be made into a movie and, knowing these girls as we do, there's only one kind of movie it could be. I'm just a little surprised it's taken this long. Paris and ...
'During the break McFadden tells me I'm in trouble. Sure enough, we have raised voices in the dressing room afterwards'.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: BRENDAN O'CONNOR And here we go again. It's like a bad addiction. Twice now I've walked away and said never again but still you come back, thinking you can actually make a difference. And so, in a triumph of hope over experience, I'm doing Charity You're A Star again. ...
Politics - the second-oldest profession.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan POLITICS is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I'm starting to realise that it bears a very close resemblance to the first. The entire Fianna Fail party -- minus Brian Cowen -- made their slow retreat from Galway last week, clutching their hangover ...
Sailing on a Cristal sea.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan AS YOU get older, three things happen. The first is your memory goes . . . and I can't remember the other two. Brett Desmond, chilled-out son of Dermot, may have reached the ripe old age of 30 last week, but he remembered to order a case or two of Cristal in ...
Gerald and Lisa; a couple in love again . . . and again.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan ARE Gerald Kean and Lisa Murphy becoming the new Katy and Marcus? Or have reports of the demise of their relationship been greatly exaggerated? This weekend the nation awaits news with bated breath of what the star-crossed lovers will do next . . . ...
Leigh's heart in need of a love remedy.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan ACTRESS Leigh Arnold, who plays Dr Clodagh Delaney in The Clinic, has broken up with her boyfriend, restaurateur Sasha Evans. What's up, Doc? Is it terminal? Leigh -- who stars with Brian O'Driscoll's girlfriend Amy Huberman in RTE's successful ...
Beware, all you in crass blouses.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan AMANDA Byram has just bought a penthouse in Santa Monica beside the Loews Hotel (she hosted FOX's racy Paradise Hotel, so she clearly likes such establishments) with her boyfriend Matt Novello. Novello? Does she get an award every night just for turning up? ...
Irve reveals his inner adult.(LIVING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan WHAT'S happening to Eddie Irvine, the lascivious lothario of tabloid legend? His exploits were such that five years ago in this column I named him Irve the Perve -- and he didn't object. Has he gone soft in his middle age? (There are, of ...
Put your house on Bertie.(FRONT PAGE)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: BRENDAN O'CONNOR SO THE biggest pyramid scheme of all time is coming undone. Someone had to call a halt to the madness. The sub-prime credit squeeze, which is at the heart of all this, was kind of an accident waiting to happen. Essentially it seems that people ...
Expectant dad among five killed last week.(NEWS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: DON LAVERY A MAN who was about to become a father for the third time has become another victim of Ireland's continuing road carnage. Alexander Mayhew of Portrane, Co Dublin, had two daughters, Arminta and Honor, and his wife, Elizabeth, is expecting their ...
Robbery victims 'have a right to attack intruders'.(NEWS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: DON LAVERY JUSTICE Minister Brian Lenihan was wrong to withdraw a proposed law which would have allowed people greater freedom to defend themselves in their own homes from burglars, most people believe. And a huge majority of people are in favour of the gardai ...
Fear of Ryanair stopping State action on Aer Lingus.(NEWS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: JODY CORCORAN THE GOVERNMENT'S reluctance to become involved in any attempt to persuade Aer Lingus to change its mind on moving from Shannon to Belfast may be based on fears that Ryanair would use such a move to accuse the State of political interference, it emerged last ...
SBB outshines me as a man the nation loves to hate.(PEOPLE)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Brendan O'Connor EVERYWHERE I go I hear the same refrain. Little children, old ladies, the eastern Europeans around Talbot Street. All of them just want to ask me one question: "Who is that pr**k?" I answer them with a question: "Which one?" But they know, and I know, ...
Farmer says his 'Punk Rock' art installation was 'sabotaged'.(ANALYSIS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Liam Collins THE owner of land containing an ancient dolmen has claimed that hillwalkers "sabotaged his "art installation". The dispute involves the famous Labby Rock historic monument in Co Sligo which was covered in tin foil. Now the farmer and ...
Preparing the pampered for school of hard knocks.(ANALYSIS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: John O'Keeffe IT'S started. Mere days before the release of this year's Leaving Certificate results, the wailing and gnashing of teeth has begun. The points race is set to continue, we are told, as applications through the CAO shoot skywards. Hopes are dashed ...
Girls take on boys at own game.(NEWS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Larissa Nolan IT MAY be a man's game, with 15 sweaty blokes battling it out on a pitch over a ball, but from our point of view, the surprise star players of this summer's hurling and football championships have been RTE sports reporting duo Joanne Cantwell and Evanne Ni ...
Thin line between public interest and prurience over peccadillos.(ANALYSIS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Jody Corcoran BERTIE Ahern told last weekend of how he was the recipient of hate mail, the nature of which was sufficient for his security detail to be beefed up while he was on holiday. His disclosure provoked the usual scepticism, from the usual sources, who seem to ...
Rocker Ronnie comes to paint the town black.(ANALYSIS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Liam Collins FOR RONNIE Wood, coming to Dublin is killing two birds with one rolling stone. On the eve of the Stones concert in Slane, wrinkly rocker Wood will be more concerned with launching his very own art exhibition than performing before tens of thousands in Lord ...
The antique rogues show is on its way.(ANALYSIS)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Barry Egan SYMPATHY for the devil? There is a spooky scene in Donald Cammell's 1970 film Performance where James Fox, in the role of an east London hoodlum, sizes up the rock star Turner, played by Mick Jagger, and sneers, "You'll look funny when you're 40". ...
Get your Seat in a hot hatch.(MOTORING)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: Campbell Spray AS MARTIN Love found out with the Honda Civic Type R, hot hatches have an uncertain time in their lives. Beloved of boy racers, they have received a bad press over the years, yet when they are built and driven properly they are both safe and ...
A royal house fit for a Queen.(PROPERTY)
Aug 12, 2007 ... Byline: John O'Keeffe Where? Sovereign House, New-man's Hall, Kinsale, Co Cork How much? Asking EU1.7m Why buy? A rare seven-bed Queen Ann home of 3,500 sq ft dating from 1706 which has been fully refurbished to its ...