Martin Cullen says: 'should go off to the bog and take the immigrants with him'

by Shocked Michelle Mon Jul 04, 2005 16:27

"reign in the Minister" ?
I would think that it is a resigning matter at this stage.

by ff watch Mon Jul 04, 2005 16:30

as shown by his recent veiled threats directed at vincent salafia

by b Mon Jul 04, 2005 16:33

even if some withdraws a statement it should be kept in

by redjade Mon Jul 04, 2005 16:38

Brenda Power:
Price of protest is always worth paying
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2091-1678566,00.html

And you can bet that where big business leads, politics will follow. Within a few years, we could well be putty in the hands of powerful political masters — a few carefully chosen words and images tickling the right synapses and we might obediently swallow anything. Which will be music to the ears of ministers Martin Cullen and Noel Dempsey and to Mary Harney, the tanaiste, who are among those who had to deal with protests against potentially dangerous and unsightly gas pipelines, carcinogenic emissions from phone masts, and motorways cutting through historical countryside. The current tactic — of shouting them down, jailing them or mobilising public antipathy towards them — will be redundant in such a political utopia of designer docility.

Last week the M50 motorway finally reached its destination, some 34 years after the project was first approved. Opening the last and most controversial section of the route, the portion passing over the ruins of Carrickmines castle, Cullen delivered himself of the view that protesters who make legal challenges to state infrastructural projects are “robbing money out of the taxpayers’ pockets”.

[....]

Just don’t expect everyone to like it. Motorists tailed back on the approach roads to Dublin each morning, with signs warning of 40-minute delays merely to negotiate an exit from the motorway, would have cheerfully lynched the Carrickmines protesters or the champions of those rare snails whose protected habitats held up proceedings. The mobile phone mast protesters are equally dismissed as flat-earthers blocking progress.

[....]

Dissent is essential to a healthy society, and if at times it is proven to be vexatious and groundless, that is a price worth paying. The Carrickmines protesters didn’t stop the M50 in the end, but they did succeed in generating debate on the quality and relevance of national monuments that are worth preserving for posterity.