Fintan O' Toole on Bertie Ahern's soft furnishings

FOT nails the disgusting hypocrisy of attitudes towards the man sentenced to seven years in prison for the theft of a laptop from Ahern's Drumcondra constituency headquarters:

"It is not at all surprising that the E85,000 spent on carpets and furnishigs for Bertie's office should be almost three times the maximum grant of E30K available for the adaptation of a house occupied by a person with disabilities. It's hard to muster much oturage at the fact that the total spent on the office is almost 40 times as much as the maximum that the taxpayer will spend adapting a house for an older person with mobility problems. Or that it's more than 20 times the maximum allowble to an elderly person "living in poor housing conditions to have esential repairs or improvements carried out."

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/opinion/2008/0701/1214857997373.html

That guy has 25 convictions! How much has that cost us between traumatised victims, items stolen, free legal aid, Gardai spending time in Court and keeping him locked up? FOT seems to think drugs are an excuse for any sort of behaviour - that everybody who takes drugs has been failed. The Dumbrells have been on drugs since they were young. Are we to consider them to be poor unfortunates? I don't see the correlation with the Bertie story.

"....This is not a criticism of the judge in the St Luke's case, who obviously applied the law in the circumstances as she saw them and took account of Bewley's long list of previous crimes and the fact that he was also charged with robbing a petrol station. But the presumably unintended effect of the sentence was to suggest that Bertie Ahern's office is some kind of sacred domain whose violation represents an assault on the moral order, on a par with, say, a violent rape...."

FOT's article is based on what he himself agrees is a misinterpretation of the sentence. It is an article that justifies its whole point on the basis of an admittedly false premise. That is weak writing indeed. FOT has made some good points about Bertie's affairs but the weak writing in this article suggests a personal agenda. Justified outrage does not take the form of such jesuitical rambling. I think FOT is a very genuine guy, but he'd want to take a look in the mirror if that is what he is churning out.

Perhaps he should leave the interpretation of the people's instincts on this matter to John Waters who called it right that Carruth's evidence left Ahern damaged because he did not lash back.

I totally disagree with that Zhou. The kid glove treatment in the media of the disgrace that is Ahern could hardly be better exemplified. O' Toole is not suggesting that this man should not have been dealt with appropriately by the law. If you sexually abuse young children you can get off with a lesser sentence than if you steal the laptop of an utterly disgraced Taoiseach - a many who has turned himself into one of the worst political embarrassments the country has seen in recent years. 85K on soft furnishings for Ahern's office is disgusting. O' toole is absolutely right to contrast and compare that to the miserly treatment of people with genuine need.

Which case do you think was decided incorrectly - the sex abuse case or the breaking and entry case?

EDIT: I cannot find reference to what the €85,000 is but I am guessing it is money the OPW decided to pay for the refurb of ex Taoiseach John Bruton's offices, which offices belong to the State not Bertie Ahern. I am further guessing that Celia was not in charge of selecting the items.

Was this his office in LH (Taoiseach's office) or in St. Lukes ?

I'm a bit unclear as to what was spent on each office.

Presumably the St. Lukes expenditure came from FF funds ?

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Was this his office in LH (Taoiseach's office) or in St. Lukes ?

I'm a bit unclear as to what was spent on each office.

Presumably the St. Lukes expenditure came from FF funds ?

If you read through the article you quickly will only see mention of money spent on Bertie's office and then St. Luke's special status.

however, I think it is the office beside LH that John Bruton previously used when he became a backbench TD. It seems the OPW put it back in good order before Bertie moved in. Any St. Luke's expenditure appears to have no relevance

In effect FOT is comparing somebody being given a fancy place to work in their employer's building with somebody (who needs it) being given a grant to refurbish their own home at the state's expense. He then throws in a junkie, a robbery and a rape for effect.

Zhou, This indo link confirms it was the office used by Bruton. In spite of how much I dislike Ahern and Co., it does appear to be a very propagandist way to report a story.

What concerns me more than this kind of bullshit is the total disconnect of the electorate from the hard earned cash they handed over in taxes, and the apparent inability to see all Govt. funds as THEIR money.

I think the problems is that some of the civil servants spending it look on it as "other people's money". That story in the Indo suggests the cost of the refurbishment was €220,000. The whole country would go out of business if that was the cost of kitting out a decent office, especially when it is not that long since the office was previously used.

Were all the old furnishings just ditched instead of being repaired? The Government should call in an independent person to investigate if such a massive spend could possibly be justified for a modest enough office suite: toilet, waiting room, storage room and 2 offices.

Zhou_Enlai wrote

Quote :

In effect FOT is comparing somebody being given a fancy place to work in their employer's building with somebody (who needs it) being given a grant to refurbish their own home at the state's expense. He then throws in a junkie, a robbery and a rape for effect.

But this points out just how disingenuous the article is - or else how cursorily FOT read the court report.

Quote :

Garda Kevin Keegan said Bewley was on temporary release from prison when he and an accomplice robbed €530 in cash and €22 worth of cigarettes from a service station three months later.

Bewley pleaded guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court to the burglary of Mr Ahern's office on March 10th, 2007, and to the robbery of the Maxol service station, Richmond Road on June 27th, 2007.

He had 24 previous convictions, the majority of which were for burglary, along with one of escape from lawful custody.

Judge Katherine Delahunt ordered that the laptop be "returned to its owner", and imposed seven years in consecutive sentences, with the final two suspended on conditions.

Seán Gillane, defending, said Bewley had a 20-year criminal history which dated back to an appearance in the Children's Court where he received six months' detention for his first conviction.

He said Bewley had exhibited a "pattern of delinquency" which culminated into a criminal history. "His life has been pockmarked by offending, serving a sentence, reoffending and serving a sentence."

It's unfair in the first instance to take any criminal sentence out of context, BUT, to imply that seven years was imposed for the laptop crime (when it clearly wasn't)and that he'll have to serve the entire seven years (which he clearly won't, because two are suspended), is inaccurate and shoddy.

It's a poor article, all in all - and it does no favours to any of the groupings that FOT thinks he's advocating on behalf of.

Fintan O'Toole had his finest hours in the beef tribunal days when he gave a single handed demonstration of how to serve up painstaking, evidence-based journalism at its best. It would have saved us a lot of pain if we had more of that kind of hard working and serious journalism. Then he went off to the States and I don't think has ever produced at the same level since.
The best bit of his report is when he describes the history of the offender.

Quote :

He first appeared in the Children's Court 20 years ago when he was 16. Since then he's settled into an orderly pattern: rob stuff, sell it to buy drugs, get caught, plead guilty, do some time in prison, get out, rob stuff, sell it to buy drugs. He now has a grand total of 25 convictions. He's a poster boy for the failures of public policy on drugs and for the inability of the prison system to help most of those who come into it to clean up their lives

F O'T. seems to be out of his depth trying to write about the yawning gulf between the people who have worked (and cheated) the system to their own benefit for the last 20 years and some of the people they are supposedly representing, but imho he shouldn't be criticised for trying. I suppose Paul Bewley was one of Bertie's constituents?

cactus flower wrote:

Fintan O'Toole had his finest hours in the beef tribunal days when he gave a single handed demonstration of how to serve up painstaking, evidence-based journalism at its best. It would have saved us a lot of pain if we had more of that kind of hard working and serious journalism. Then he went off to the States and I don't think has ever produced at the same level since.
The best bit of his report is when he describes the history of the offender.

Quote :

He first appeared in the Children's Court 20 years ago when he was 16. Since then he's settled into an orderly pattern: rob stuff, sell it to buy drugs, get caught, plead guilty, do some time in prison, get out, rob stuff, sell it to buy drugs. He now has a grand total of 25 convictions. He's a poster boy for the failures of public policy on drugs and for the inability of the prison system to help most of those who come into it to clean up their lives

F O'T. seems to be out of his depth trying to write about the yawning gulf between the people who have worked (and cheated) the system to their own benefit for the last 20 years and some of the people they are supposedly representing, but imho he shouldn't be criticised for trying. I suppose Paul Bewley was one of Bertie's constituents?

It's a conceit, in the metaphysical sense whereby the writer does what Johnson described as making a comparison in which the most heterogenous ideas are yoked by violence together.'

You're right, cf, F O'T shouldn't be criticised for trying write about that yawning gulf - in principle at least.

But he does a huge disservice to Mr Bewley by not telling us that he was on temporary release when he robbed the petrol station, that crimes such as the theft at the petrol station which may have involved interaction with people behind the counter get a harsher punishment if this is shown to be the case (we don't know from the court report).

Sentencing isn't a throwaway one-line decision and I think he's grossly unfair to the judge and condescending to boot. And the sentence is what his piece turns on - that a guy who has never had or has never taken or has never been successful in taking a chance to better himself, ends up in Mountjoy for seven years because he stole from the lap of the political gods, so to speak.

Except that he doesn't.

In fact, I don't think that the way to show Mr Bewley is the poster boy for the failure of government and governors (what an honour!) is to reduce him to his vital statistics.

And then by some feat of prestidigitation make those numbers correlate to the money that is spent on refurbishing an office, entertaining foreign dignitaries or paying for a Lisbon poster campaign for example.

What he's doing in this article is trying to take two wrongs and twist them to highlight what he considers to be a moral right. And it's a conceit that just doesn't work.

Will somebody please return the real Fintan O'Toole to us?

Lovely post there Kate. Do you ever find yourself writing lower quality reports/articles because of time pressure/exhaustion? I can't imagine you sinking as low as FOT but maybe that par for the course when you have to write to short deadlines.

In any event, I think this is the real FOT. He is a genuine character but he is prone to adopting false logic. Like the rest of us he has his flaw.

Thanks Zhou_Enlai.

Edna St Vincent Millay wrote that someone who publishes a book wilfully appears in public with his pants down. Journalism isn't much different, though some pants fall further than others. I feel semi-naked most days of the week. It's a different kind of buzz.

I'm rarely happy with anything I write, especially if it's done under time pressure. News bugs me that way. Has to be done today and means nothing tomorrow. I'd rather be doing something a bit more long lasting and meaningful. But there's such variety in the job that it hardly matters really. As yet I don't have the opportunity to write the kind of opinion pieces that FOT does, so that's a moot point. But that day will come and I'll let you know when it does, Zhou and you can take your red pen to it...

Everything can be improved. Usually I see how the minute after I press 'send'. I don't usually read my stuff when it's published either, because I've spent so long realising how it could have been better, I don't want to associate with it. I'm a very reflective writer... I wrote an awful piece for a national daily last week when I was incredibly ill - my mother read it when it came out and told me it made no sense, but then another weekend paper rang to see if they could have it, as it was. Go figure. I rewrote it for them. And again for another publication.

I had a peculiar feeling in a shop fairly recently to see a piece I'd written in a different context make it to the font page of a newspaper - banner headline. I hadn't realised - when it's gone, it's gone and I have zero control over what the Ed team does. I picked up the paper and there underneath was another with my story on it. It's hard to beat the feeling you get knowing that thousands of people will read your story first, at breakfast tables and in toilet cubicles across the country. And it was a story that mattered and that makes it even better.

It was a straight factual report on something - but if I'd known they'd use it for the front page, I might have been inclined to be a bit more stylish. But that's hindsight and I probably couldn't have changed it anyway because of the nature of the piece. But I always think it can be better. Usually because it can.

Sometimes features get picked up by radio stations, which is nice and a mention on It Says In the Papers is a nice way to start the day - especially if it's a feature I've worked hard on. I even got quoted and namechecked regarding a news article on p.ie, which was strange.

Very ironically I heard that my old fifth year class got to deconstruct a feature I wrote for a national paper in their English class in sixth year this year. I'd like to have been a fly on the wall for that. You teach them how to take something apart and then wonder how well you'd fare when you apply those standards to your own work.

I don't think it's a case of FOT sinking low - though I do think that this was a poor article. Sometimes, when you feel something intensely, you're better off not to write about it in that moment. 'Emotion recollected in tranquility' is how Wordsworth described Romantic poetry. Maybe writing opinion pieces should be the same.

Kate P wrote:

Sometimes, when you feel something intensely, you're better off not to write about it in that moment. 'Emotion recollected in tranquility' is how Wordsworth described Romantic poetry. Maybe writing opinion pieces should be the same.

I do wish someone would tell Kevin Myers. Every morning must be like a hangover for him, as he reads the nonsense he wrote the day before.

I am delighted you are having your fair share of success Kate; I have no doubt but that it's well deserved. I understand what you mean about doubting something you have written. I imagine it is a tough job having to write to deadlines although I suspect it can contribute to good result as people sometimes edit out the good bits in error. The author may not always be best placed to judge his or her own work. I suppose you rely on your editor a lot in those circumstances.