Katherine Zappone Envoy Gig

On that we can agree.

The Sunday Times reported that a junior FG minister (Patrick o'Donovan) rang a senior FG minister (Simon Harris) and told him he had just been on his local radio station giving out about the Zappone appointment. This was disinformation and the radio interview never took place but a few minutes after o'Donovan was off the phone with Harris o'Donovan got a phone call from a journalist asking him about what he said about the Zappone appointment on local radio and trying to get a comment about it from him. So Harris had swallowed the lie fed to him by o'Donovan and also immediately spread it to a journalist. From that they (ie Vardkar and o'Donovan) identified Harris as the person who was texting the Zappone info in real time during the Cabinet meeting where it was first raised.

The 'feasilbility' report was produced by Ernst and Young the same shams who audited Anglo for years while they fiddled the books. It pulled this figure of the Americas Cup being worth 500m to the economy out of its arse and when the Dept of Tourism senior civil servants saw it they were rightly immediately sceptical as were senior civil servants in the Dept of Expenditure who read it too. This feasaility report by Anglos auditors also claimed that there would be a global tv audience of 900 million yet the New Zealanders reported that they had just 68 million people looking in and they were the ones selling the tv rights so they would kind of know.

So senior civil servants immediately spotted Ernst and Youngs report of being nothing more than a fluff piece designed to trick the reader into believing hosting the Americas Cup would be bigger than what it actually is. Also Coveneys mate on Joe Duffy claimed that 2.5 million people are going to arrive into Ireland for this which was the greatest load of sh1te Ive ever heard in my life, Auckland never got big crowds for their races so I dont know where he got this 2.5 million figure from, likely pulled out of his arse too.

Also the reason New Zealand want rid of the Americas Cup is becasue their team keeps winning it and it then falls on the taxpayer to host it and subsidise it. They are sick of this becasue they realise that there is little to no benefit to their overall tourism strategy, it doesnt attract big crowds becasue spectating yacht races in person is a frustrating affair, the boats are way off in the distance and spectators havent a clue of what is going on. Its a sport best left to watching on tv. So Team NZ and the government there are looking for some other schmuck to take the financial hit and Coveney fits the bill nicely.

You heard what I heard 😏 how anyone can seriously believe this event would generate €500 million for a tax payers upfront payment of €25 million is just la la land stuff, not even a ponzi scheme could promise such a return, €25 million upfront was mentioned, I had heard €50 to €150 million to include infrastructure costs, its utter madness .

But of course slightly off topic , we better leave it at that 🤫

For your information, the general election date has not been set. It can't 'change'. The Taoiseach can call the election anytime within the 5 years.

You will remember that Leo wanted a general election in May 2020 but was forced into having it in February, with disastrous consequences.

The last 15 months of the FFG omnishambles have proven beyond reasonable doubt that the 100 year power swap has harmed our democracy. The coalition with the Roman church didn't help our citizens either. This country could be so much better and fairer with more honest and future thinking politicians. For example, the FFG treatment of the mother and baby homes survivors makes me shudder - they tried to cover it up to save their legacy - utter cowardice. And they are still stalling, surprise surprise. FG got their chance in 2011 and they actually became worse than FF.

I would like at least 15 more months of this exposure and chaos before we are back at the ballot box. At least 15 more months.

Re Zappone cronyism - It's quite astounding that FFG have had decades of experience in abusing power and still make rookie mistakes. That's the arrogance of power I guess.

At best, that's a huge stretch. It is one thing to rat out a fellow TD to a journalist, it is another to leak from Cabinet.

The leak is known to have come from cabinet. Where do you think it came from?

You miss the point. Concluding that Harris is the one who leaked from cabinet (if these was a leak) because he ratted out a TD who disagreed with him to a journalist is a tenuous conclusion. One that SF went public with, and if they want to make accusations with as little evidence as that, off we go.

It was Philip Ryan and not Blue Hugh.

The narrative has unfortunately been stomped on by people in the media and politics who are against it for simplistic populist reasons. As i mentioned above 150 of the 200 million is to go directly on infrastructure that would have been invested in anyway this just makes it a priority in the next 3 years instead of 10. Also the projected benefit to the local economy was at the high ranges 500 mil+

Anyway it looks like the Americas Cup Committee want us to reconsider as the day we announced we werent going forward with the bid they out of nowhere extended the bid window so hopefully people see sense.

"Sting Operation." 😂

• - "I was on the radio talking about KZ"

That journalist mustn't be the sharpest tool in the box. All they had to do was ring the radio station or check out their website and see if they had an online playback section or listings.