Irish student considers taking YouTube to court over cab-fare fracas

Eoin McKeogh

A 22 year old Irish student from Dublin is threatening to sue one of the internet’s biggest names, the now Google-owned YouTube, for alleged defamation arising out of online comments linking him to not paying a taxi fare.

The incriminating video -- removed after Eoin McKeogh successfully obtained interlocutory injunctions against both YouTube and Facebook in the Irish High Court -- showed a young man and a group of friends exiting a taxi without paying what was owed.

The petty criminal in question has since emerged as none other than Eoin Black -- an obscure South Dubliner who has now reportedly settled the fair with the driver in question, but McKeogh and his family seem determined to take their surprisingly dogged legal battle to the next level, with a threat to bring the chief executive of YouTube, Salar Kamangar, to court.

If instigated the highly unlikely lawsuit will be McKeogh’s third court action in almost as many weeks.
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A High Court judge has already commented that the spiralling legal fees headaches resulting from McKeogh’s unsuccessful second legal battle -- a failed attempt to bring an effective gag-order style superinjuction preventing almost all major Irish national newspapers from reporting on the case-- will leave the young student with costs probably large enough to be able to buy him a new house, leading to speculation that the 22 year old’s latest court threat is a thinly disguised damages action hoping to recoup some of what is owed, but whatever the purpose behind the latest threat, it seems unlikely to success.

McKeogh’s first injunction against YouTube and Facebook may have been successful, but signs of judicial ire were already hanging in the air when the second action prompted comments that the Court didn’t have a ‘magic wand’ able to rectify the damage.

However as the real criminal has already come forward, and the Court has accepted as true indisputable evidence that McKeogh was in fact in Japan at the time the video was shot, the obvious question remains what kind of ‘defamation’ there is left for a lawsuit such as McKeogh is contemplating to remedy?

An argument that the case will have any sort of lasting impact on McKeogh’s reputation will be very hard to buy, and a personal action against the chief executive of YouTube seems like a strange sort of action to take.

One thing that will have a lasting impact on McKeogh’s future, though, is probably the legal fees.
And for that it’s hard to feel sorry.

Second bailout for Ireland or not? Irish government split on what comes next

Irish Times cartoon

The Irish Government itself now seems divided as to whether or not Ireland will require an embarrassing second bailout from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund.

Although it’s only been a few days since Prime Minister Enday Kenny vehemently ruled out the possibility of that happening on a State visit to London, Social Protection Minister Joan Burton has once thrown a spanner into the works by claiming that the possibility of Ireland having to have recourse to a second bite at the institutions’ bailout fund hinges largely on the stability of the Eurozone as a whole, and the resolution of the sovereign debt crisis.

"I can't predict the future. If you are asking me to crystal-ball gaze to the end of next week, I can't," Burton told the Sunday Independent.

The minister said the deepening crisis in Europe had "significantly added" to the difficulty faced by Ireland in emerging from the EU/ECB/IMFprogramme in 2013, according to the interview with the popular Sunday newspaper.

However Burton said that if the debt crisis were to resolve itself, then Ireland may be able to emerge from the programme on schedule.
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"If the eurozone comes together then we can work to the other side of the crisis and that would be of great benefit to Ireland, who could then leave the programme in an orderly fashion," the Minister said.

Chief executive of the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) John Corrigan had more or less the same to say on the possibility of a second Bailout coming Ireland’s way.

"When we meet potential investors, we don't get that many questions about the Irish situation; it tends to be more about the euro itself, or the wider European picture,” Corrigan told the Irish Independent.

"US investors don't know what to think about European policy at the moment, and the shifts on things like private sector losses on Greek debt.

Some in the financial services industry, however, have expressed their view that a second bailout would actually be in Ireland’s best interests.

“Willem Buiter of international financial services giant, Citi, said instead of returning to the debt markets and borrowing money at a rate of 8%, Ireland should consider continuing borrowing from the troika at a rate of 3%,” the Irish Examiner reported earlier this week.

Buiter also believed that that 2012 will see "downgrades for most, likely all EU/Eurozone triple-A economies" despite Ireland having survived the latest round of downgrades from Standards and Poor, maintaining its BBB+ rating.

The European Commission, however, hit back at Buiter, saying that speculation of a second bailout ‘wasn’t helpful’ at the current time.

Amadeu Altafaj, spokesman for Commissioner Olli Rehn told a daily news briefing that the talk wasn’t helpful according to the RTÉ website.

"It is not particularly useful to open a public debate on a successor programme when the first programme is delivering," he told the European Commission's daily news briefing, RTÉ.ie reported.

Meanwhile the man at the center of the situation, Finance Minister Michael Noonan, said talk of a second bailout is ‘ludicrous’

"It's ludicrous to be talking about a second bailout," the country’s Finance Minister told the Independent a few days ago.

“We’re a year into the rescue programme which was negotiated by the previous government and we’re fully funded until the back end of 2013.”

“So it’s really speculation by economists who at the start of the year speculate on these matters,” the Minister claimed.

Irish colleges blows through €750k on cabs -- university expenses under review again

The more things change, the more things stay the same.

If there was one adage that could sum up public sector spending in Ireland, that could quite possibly be it.

The latest expenses revelation concerning Ireland's publicly-funded university sector is that they've managed to spend a stellar €750,000 ($952,000) on cabs in the last two years alone.

And given that there are just seven of them doing the spending, that works out at a fairly substantial $107,142 a piece.

The worst culprit was University College Cork (UCC), which saw fit to dish out €263,000 -- or 35% of the total spend -- on transporting the likes of lecturers, visiting academics, and other motley recipients of the massive funding dish-out, followed by the University of Maynooth (€128,038), and DCU (€95,000).

"One has to question if that is the case in respect of all the universities, but particularly in UCC, given its proximity to the train station and the airport," Cork South West Labour TD Michael McCarthy said, commenting on the news."

"There have to be consequences and the minister must take action to prevent wastage of money if there is found to be unjustified spending."

Unfortunately, while desirable, that's hardly the way things currently stand.

The universities and the Department of Education seem perfectly happy to engage in a continuous game of passing the buck and shirking responsibility for whatever (and there have been many) funding blunders are found to occur.

This was neatly exemplified in a quote from the Irish Examiner outlining the Department's reaction:

"A spokesperson for Mr Quinn said the universities have their own governing authorities and accountability structures to determine how their funding is spent," the newspaper's chief education correspondent, Niall Murray, reported.

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The problem goes beyond universities' spending, however.

At a time when one now-deposed think tank member warns that Ireland is facing into a potential ten years of further austerity Budgets, it's hardly reassuring for the general population to know that Departmental and public service spending is largely dictated by the whims of those in charge of the Budgets, with seemingly very little in the way of checks and balances available to right the many wrongs that have been found on the part of those administering the systems.

While the Government seems to have no doubt about the consequences attending not paying the much hated householder tax, the consequences for making reckless use of the taxpayers' money on the part of the government and its quangos seem to be - at best - a cursory drag through the Public Accounts Committee, but more often than not a drag through the media, after which the media moves on to dealing with the next bout of recklessness.

The news also adds strongly to the feeling of hypocrisy surrounding those at the pinnacle of higher education in Ireland, who seem happy to vouch for raised student contributions, but unhappy to address the often endemic spending crises that go on in the institutions over which they govern.

UCC's Michael Murphy has been one of the strongest advocates for increased fees, and drew heavy criticism for elitist remarks about disadvantaged students' right of access to third level, but increasingly seems happy to ignore realities such as these, his salary (Murphy is the highest paid university president in Ireland), or the generally high wage-base at the top of UCC.

While I'm an admirer of Murphy as a president and the fantastic work he's done on furthering UCC's global reputation and research clout, I believe that his strong pro-fee position will only prove tenable if he's willing to make a real bond-fide effort to tackle spending on the part of staff of UCC. Otherwise, talk of increased expenses will only continue to draw the obvious retort of what the university is doing to minimize costs.

More than anything, though, it's the Irish people who deserve better than this.

Maybe this small scandal will make a ripple of a distance.

Occupy Cork moves camp, as local councillor calls them attention seekers - VIDEO

Cork's contribution to the Occupy movement has moved camp, prompting Fine Gael councillor Des Cahill to label them as attention seekers.

The motley group of what by now must be veteran, if not professional, protesters, has relocated to just a few hundred meters away on Oliver Plunkett St.

The camp has staged a months-long protest against a wide variety of themes, most recurring among which seem to be the bondholder bailout, ongoing austerity and consequent misery of the masses, and have even supplied a husband to one 'Gaelic Girl' from this website (congratulations to Alisa on her whirlwind romance, I hope it goes well).

Their new surroundings will be more commodious (it's indoors after all), but will also afford them the chance to take their evangelizing to the next level: sources on the street report that the protesters intend to take a more proactive role in their 'occupation', including handing out flyers and holding informal advice sessions for similarly disaffected citizens, while RTÉ reports that they movement plans to offer financial and legal advice from their new HQ.

The protesters' move hasn't struck a fond note with everyone, however, with one local politician calling them attention seekers.

“This is purely attention seeking. It’s a child throwing his toys out of the pram. I believe these protestors realised that the camp on the South Mall was achieving very little so they have now decided to step up their campaign by taking this action," Des Cahill (Fine Gael) told the Irish Examiner.

“What will they do next? What is to stop these protestors taking over the Elysian Tower to try to reduce the housing waiting list? Will they take over AIB to hand out free money?”

“This is Robin Hood stuff and it’s completely unacceptable.”

General mood from the populace seemed to be more or less the same: a thread on the popular Peoples Republic of Cork forums included commenters calling the movement' protesting for the sake of protesting'.

A spokesperson for the movement however labelled Cahill's comments 'daft'.

The building is currently vacant, which prompted the camp to move there, but police said that they expect the property's owner to take out a court order against their presence their in the near future.
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A representative of the building's owner has reportedly visited the protesters informing them that they have no right to be there.

The protesters for their part are claiming a (very dubious) legal 'right' to be there, and demanding that they view the rightful proprietor's documentation.

NAMA, the national asset management agency at the center of the post-boom disaster, has denied ownership, but the identity of the rightful owner remains, as of yet, unknown.

Personally, the latest development in the Occupy Cork saga has exhausted whatever last dram of sympathy I had for their 'occupation'.

Besides the fact that they turned the environs of one of the nicest pubs in Cork into a glorified shantytown of makeshift tents and 'general assembly' meetings, their protest ultimately achieved nothing, and curried little sympathy with the average man-on-the-street in Cork.

The protest, like the rest of the Occupy movement, campaigns against a massive panoply of social ills, but comes across as more of a general groan at the state of our now rather dilapidated society rather than a focused and unified attack on one specific issue, of which, needless to say, there are many.

More than that, though, what's done is done: the banks have been bailed out; white-collar criminal legislation fixing legal responsibility to those guilty of corporate crimes has largely not been forthcoming, and the bondholders were never 'burned' as many would have hoped.

Austerity may well last for the frighteningly long period of ten years, but sitting in a building isn't going to help anything.

Most of all, though, by moving into somebody's property -- before the inevitable serving of a court order to evict them -- the Movement has turned itself into a band of criminals, albeit petty ones.

Their explanation for how they took possession of they key (quote from an article in the Examiner):"Santa left it to us, I wouldn’t argue with Santa... On Christmas morning, a box was found under the tree on Grand Parade with a key to the building, along with instructions that this building is a gift to the people of Cork".

In the interest of fairness it should be pointed out that, at least according to a source with the camp, that most of the initial protesters were not involved in the takeover of the building, but those who were involved have done no favours for the protest as a whole.

Enda axes former Taoisigh expenses - but too late to reclaim Bertie's €367,000 windfall

Taoiseach Enda Kenny has followed through on his commitment to streamlining public costs and cutting back on prime ministerial excess, but not in time to prevent former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern from claiming €367,000 in 'expenses' since leaving power in 2008.

The move will see a cutback in a wide range of formerly claimable 'expenses', which could be sought back by former heads of state: computer equipment, telephone costs and airport VIP facilities, are just some of the 'administrative' expenses cited by the Irish Times as having gotten the axe.

News-aggregation service TheJournal.ie reports that the cuts also extend as far as personal cell-phones and (the main cutback) secretarial assistants.
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The end of the former Taoisigh's administrative expenses entitlement has also thrown up some interesting figures on who claimed the most under the bizarre regime: the main culprit, unsurprisingly, is Bertie Ahern -- last seen, as Irish Central reports, hiding in a cupboard for a tabloid newspaper advert -- who managed to bill the long-suffering taxpayer a smashing total of €367,000 for 'secretarial' expenses incurred since he made an ignoble departure from public office-holding in 2008.

Bertie's spending, according to the Times was: €75,000 in 2008, €114,000 in 2009, €107,000 in 2010 and €71,000 last year, although an itemized breakdown unfortunately doesn't appear to be forthcoming.

Other claimants under the scheme - not availed of by every former head of state - include Brian 'Biffo' Cowen, who has billed us for a comparatively meager €32,000 since (also) leaving office ingloriously in 2010; the late Dr Garret FitzGerald, who claimed €30,000; Albert Reynolds, who led the country as far back as 1994, who claimed €25,000, and John Bruton, the most modest expenses-seeker, last in office in 1997, at €16,000.

The total claimed, and paid out by the Department of the Taoiseach, came to a whopping €1.16m. The scheme was introduced at the end of the brown-envelope-pushing Ahern regime, which ended in 2008, at which time 'Bertie' re-directed his efforts to sports columns and cupboard-hiding, although he was apparently still happy to claim the generous entitlements.

Despite knowing the broad range of the figures, and the biggest claimants, we have little idea what, exactly and in what amounts, the taxpayer's money was spent on.

Brian Cowen apparently billed us for a computer system worth €2,000 (whether this was merely a very lavish desktop, or had some State function, is not stated, but the former seems a safer bet), while some of the money (€4,000) went on the now cancelled provision of VIP facilities at all three of the Republic's international airports.

However it remains clear that at a time of unprecedented austerity measures for the Irish populace, the vast bulk of the money, paid entirely and unfairly out of the public purse, remains unaccounted for, and pending further Freedom of Information probing, may well stay that way.

The move follows the popular elimination of the (now revoked) right to a State car upon retirement, which was abolished last year.

Former cuts, it can be expected, may follow.
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