The front pages
Money, money, money is the theme on today’s broadsheets as the rags bring us more news of how the ordinary taxpayer is continually being shafted by those who have already brought the country to its knees.
The Sunday Independent leads with the revelation that NAMA, rather than being a means of cleansing the banking system of the huge amounts of debt it has acquired over the years, in fact solely functions as a bailout for beleaguered builders and developers.
As some of the country’s leading banks, including EBS and AIB head ever closer towards nationalisation, NAMA chairman Frank Daly announced that the core objective of the Asset Management Agency will be “to recover from the taxpayers whatever it has paid for the loans in addition to whatever it has invested to enhance property assets underlying those loans. It is expected that NAMA will have a lifespan of seven to ten years and when it has achieved its core objective, it will be wound upâ€.
Granted that technical babble is a bit hard to digest but the the Sunday Indo have done it for us, suggesting that Daly’s comments mean that developers, including the ten largest who owe a staggering €16 billion, will be expected to pay back only half of what they owe.
The Sunday Times leads with reports of anger amongst government backbenchers over the proposals to cut welfare benefits for single mothers that were announced under the radar on Friday night.
The proposals suggest that single mothers will cease to receive payments when their youngest child reaches the age of 13. Presently, single mothers receive payments until their youngest child is 18, a figure which increases to 22 if that child is in full time education.
The proposals have been met with outrage by numerous backbenchers and by Irish Congress of Trade Unions president Jack O’Connor, who labelled the proposals ‘reprehensible beyond belief’.
The minister of the Department of Social Protection, Eamon Ó Cuiv, has defended the proposals on the basis that they won’t come into effect for current claimants until 2016. Lobby groups, however, have expressed fears that the age of thirteen is only a starting point as when the measure was first proposed in 2006, a starting age of seven was envisaged.
Tales from the tabs
The Sunday World and Star Sunday have both gone big with a picture of drug baron, Christy ‘the dapper don’ Kinahan being hauled before a Spanish court on various criminal charges. ‘BUSTED’, shouts the Star on its main page, while the Sunday World laud themselves for laying bare Kinahan’s rap sheet for the world to see.
They claim that four Kinahans were involved in a €650 million drug cartel, that Kinahan had a Brazilian property empire worth €500 million and that the Dapper Don held sex and drug parties for South American criminals.
There’s more standard fare inside the red tops today, including news in Star Sunday of Meath man Eamonn O’Donoghue, who as you might have heard, was thrown in jail in Chesterfield, England last week for drinking eight pints and driving home.
Fair enough you’d think, but when you hear that the man in question was on a mobility scooter which he relies on for getting around and was making the 200 yard journey from the local pub to his house, then it all seems a tad ridiculous.
O’Donoghue was slapped with a three year driving ban for his troubles, but he has branded the sentence ‘utterly ridiculous’, because as he doesn’t even own a car and the ban doesn’t affect his mobility scooter, he is free to continue getting around exactly the way he used to.
“Who ever heard of anything as ridiculous so ridiculous as a disabled old age pensioner being arrested, finger-printed and photographed like a murderer or a terrorist over a few beers and a jaunt home on a mobility scooterâ€, the bould Eamonn told the paper.
“I really don’t know what the world is coming to,†he continued. Here, here.
The Sports pages
‘Cheik Mate’ in the Star is the catchiest of headlines to describe last night’s Magners League Final, but had you not watched the game, you might deduce from said headline that Leinster had indeed won the game and Michael Cheika’s last game in charge of the blues was a successful one.
Alas, that was not the case as Tommy Bowe’s Ospreys came away from the RDS with a memorable victory on a night when their star-studded backline clicked into gear and Leinster’s big guns failed to show up. ‘Bowe aims true’ is the more appropriate headline in the Sunday Times as the Monaghan man, along with team mate, Lee Byrne, destroyed Leinster’s much vaunted defence to help secure a 17-12 victory.
Sticking with the oval ball, the Sunday Independent tell of Paul O’Connell’s frustration with a persistent groin injury that has dogged the big second row since the end of the Six Nations in March. O’Connell has been excluded from the summer tour to New Zealand and Australia as a result of the problem, which the big man calls ‘the most unbelievably frustrating and annoying thing I’ve ever had’.
O’Connell refuses to blame the injury on too many games, telling the paper, “It’s funny when you read about people saying it’s been a long year. Well, not for me. I never did more than three games in a row this season – maybe three once and then two and that was it. So it’s not like I was knackered or anything like thatâ€.
The same paper flashes the headline, ‘Tribesmen display their All-Ireland credentials’, after Galway disposed of a battling Wexford at Nowlan Park last night. To this observer, Galway’s performance was nothing more than solid, but that will no doubt please Tribesmen supremo John McIntyre who wouldn’t want expectations raised any higher with Kilkenny probably awaiting in a Leinster final.
With the world cup still a couple of weeks away, the tabs need some soccer stories to fill the back pages and they haven’t disappointed this morning. The Star report that Giovanni Trappatoni has rejected the alluring overtures of Inter Milan and eh, Celtic and will remain loyal to the boys in Green ahead of the Euro 2012 qualifying campaign which kicks off in September.
The man himself said, “Someone close to Celtic approached me and asked would I be interested in the position but I said no, I am with Irelandâ€. Bless him.
A couple of Manchester United stories to wrap up the morning for you. The Sunday World reports that Wayne Rooney will be offered a staggering £9 million a year, the equivalent of £180,000 a week to fend off any approach from Real Madrid. Should Rooney be awarded such a lucrative contract, he would eclipse United’s current highest earner, Rio Ferdinand by a whopping £50,000 a week. Financial crisis? What crisis?
Finally, ol’ red nose himself, Sir Alex Ferguson, has shown no signs that he will step down in the near future despite the fact that he’s nearly pushing 100 at this stage.
The Star, or rather Marcelo Lippi claim to know the reason why Fergie continues to point at his watch and bark at fourth officials even when his peers are collecting the pension and spending their days drinking tea and collecting stamps, it’s because he’s too scared to quit. The paper carries quotes from the smooth chain-smoking Italian, who said, “Alex is terrified of retiring. He doesn’t want to be at home doing nothingâ€.
