Rhymes with . . . . . .  skunk!

JEREMY Hunt MP is a grammar schoolboy holding the South West Surrey constituency for DeeCam's commons' coalition.

He's had to dump one on his special adviser, Adam Smith, to keep his front row seat for now, following a 'too close for comfort' show of support for NewsCorp's desire to take full control of BSkyB broadcasting.

Hunt is being hounded, if not hunted, out of his job by those who dislike his friends from down under who control a global media empire of their own.

Hunt has been called many things by friends and foe but nobody got it so badly wrong as BBC Radio Four's James Naughtie.

Where's Maddie?

Madeleine McCann 2012?

YOUR guess is as good as mine but probably not as dark as my thoughts on the affair.
I doubt Maddie McCann breathes fresh air in real time, it is a sad conclusion to hold.
It might be difficult to believe the abduction theory, as outlined by the parents, but it is the only scenario which describes how a 3-year-old daughter disappeared from a holiday apartment in Portugal on a May evening 2007.
A child is allegedly taken from an unlocked bedroom whilst her parents dine with their seven friends at a poolside tapas restaurant.
Were Maddie's parents not minded enough to mind two infants and a toddler aged three? Did the McCanns abandon their small children?
A child snatcher disappears into the dead of night with the biggest child.
It is like a scene from the British film 'Chitty Chitty Bang Bang' - but much worse, it really did happen.
It would have been easier to secrete a smaller infant into a sports bag and get away faster than an MI6 agent stuffed into a bathtub holdall?  But just like Bond movies, truth is stranger than fiction.

Blogs and jobs

THERE'S not much to blog about today.
I'm waiting for god knows what, or when, to drop through my snail mail or email postbox.
PFO's have been arriving faster than an interview offer but we wait and hope, remaining optimistic.
'A PFO', you inquire?
"Many thanks for your recent application but would you ever please feck off with yourself as we've already selected someone for that position. We wish you all the best in your future career'.

Dublin's 'child soldiers'

Popular image of 'child soldiers' on Dublin's Kildare Street
during a Palestinian support rally against Israel (2008)

DUBLIN's 'child soldiers' look nothing like Africa's 'Lord's Resistance Army' or Palestine's Hamas' 'boy toy soldiers'.

The capital's teenage killers and shooters exist in a parallel universe where the 'laws of the urban jungle' excite juvenile sensibilities.

Slights, grudges and revenge murders preoccupy streetwise 'hoodies' who leave school without qualifications but whose criminal credentials are well honed by their mid-teens.

Dublin's 'north inner city' is where this urban 'army' execute and undertake their criminal activities.

Located somewhere north of the river Liffey, but without a specific geographic location, it is a term used by media types to define and delimit the area where urban 'gougers' menace their neighbours without fear or conviction.

Stepping on the toes of the city's urban 'gangsta skool boyz' can seriously endanger the health of those who are engaged as active citizens.

Breaking up an organised street fight involving a third year uniformed schoolboy would appear sensible and perceived as the action of the 'reasonable man' until the ugly 'nitty gritty' of such clashes is known.

Having videotaped the street fight between 'scholars' and passing the tape onto the school, the following advice was given by a concerned teacher.

He advised that the uniformed schoolboy's half brother is a 25-year-old career criminal facing a murder charge for the killing of a convicted drug dealing rapist at the North Circular Road, 2010. The accused is a former pupil of the school but did not sit any formal examinations and drifted into criminal activity as a juvenile.

Clearwater murder crime scene

One of the fight's spectator's relatives had been murdered at the Clearwater petrol station in Finglas, during November 2010. Security commentators suggest dissident republicans wrongly targeted two cousins that night, aged 19 and 23, in a case of mistaken identity after attaching a tracking device to the cousins' car.

Ireland's Celtic Tiger has come and gone but has spawned, as its legacy, a monstrous army of natural born killers in the constituency of the former Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern TD.

Six fatalities in Cork plane crash

SIX fatalities at Cork airport as Belfast plane crash landed during fog Thursday morning.

Manx2 airline's turboprop aircraft smashed into the ground next to runway 17 on its third attempt and flipped over on its roof, busting into flames.

The cockpit and front half of the Metroliner SW4 aircraft were destroyed on impact and early indications suggest that's where the fatalities occurred.

Airport fire tenders rapidly extinguished the fire engulfing the airframe's engines and spared trapped passengers further injury.

Six passengers have been ferried by ambulance to Cork University hospital, four with severe but non life threatening injuries. Two passengers seated to the rear of the aircraft walked away from the fatal crash with soft tissue injuries only.

The scheduled service, flight NM7100, departed George Best Belfast City airport at 8.10am and was due to land at 9am.

The 19 seater aircraft circled the airport for 45 minutes and crashed on its third attempt to land during poor visibility.

Flightline BCN, a Spanish company, operated the service on behalf of Manx2 whose primary hub is located at the Isle of Man's Ronaldsway airport.

The Irish Department of Transport's air accident investigation branch has launched an inquiry into the circumstances of this morning's crash.

Cork Airport flight chaos following fatal plane crash

Cork Airport remains closed until 18.00hrs with all inbound flights diverted to Shannon.

'Paddy's Day' paddywhackery

'An auld sod' for you Mr President

BRIAN COWEN'S reluctance for pre-March elections might have had something to do with shaking Barack Obama's hand.
With everything else slipping from his grasp, Brian must have hoped he'd have one last 'shindig' at The White House handing over a bowl of shamrock on March 17th.

The Maghreb's Citizen Kanes

THE Maghreb's Citizen Kanes have facilitated street protesters demands for societal freedoms already experienced by those who have internet access.

The virtual anonymity of social media facilitates a kind of free-flow of comment and opinion for citizen journalists without fear of peer group censure or any requirement to conform to social norms.

The disjointed story told by a reading of such frenzied uploads by cyber hacks, out of context and out of sequence, has wrong footed the region's dinosaur leaders as technology enabled agitation outpaces their ability to control dissent.

The diffusion of raw, unedited, mobile phone images to our TV screens is a mix of political and social dissent mixed in with public spectacle.

The street killings and recent hanging by Iranian authorities of 'dissidents' for alleged involvement in street protests three years previously indicates a personal sacrifice paid by demonstrators.

The ownership or control of cyber comment in western democracies will challenge their citizens tolerance for freedom and liberty when such countries are already engaged in an aggressive campaign to close down comment or viewpoints framed as 'politically incorrect' or perceived as being out of step with societal norms.