Eavesdropping on a conversation on an escalator

A woman in her 50s is heading down an escalator at the Mater Hospital, she gets talking to a man, who asks her if she worked in the hospital. She said she did; he asks her if there were any nuns now working in the hospital; she replied: "if there were I wouldn’t be working here. The two get talking and she explains she was taught by nuns and her experience was one of cruelty. 

The conversation continues off the escalator.

The man listens and then tells her he is a priest. She responds, saying that she had never come across an unkind priest. He assured her there were indeed unkind priests.

All in a day. More proof to ask what’s it all about, does anything make sense?

Joe Egan’s 'Church, Sacrament of the World’ a great read

 Fr Joe Egan’s recently published Church, Sacrament of the World should be mandatory reading for every church leader.

The book underscores the need for continuing church reform while also insisting on the importance of mutual engagement between church and world, even when the relationship between them is strained and the questions arising are divisive.

The sea can drown out our unease and anxiety

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper

Michael Commane

You may have forgotten, but last Monday week was a horrible day, at least in Castlegregory, where it rained all day, although swimming in the rain can be a fabulous experience. 

But the following day, Tuesday was a different story, blue skies and sun; full tide was 10.00, the perfect time to swim. You could loll about in the water as you would in a bath but the expanse and wonder of the sea at Castlegregory is an infinity away from a tiny bathtub. I was able to swim, jump, even roar in the waters.

Well done to Kerry County Council, who  have placed a number of timber benches and picnic tables in the parking area. 

It was my first time to avail of the new seats, where I sat down and looked across at Kerry Head. I even got a hint of Loop Head, away in the distance.

The council have also done remedial work at the carpark, placing large boulders in an attempt to protect the area from further erosion, another of the many symptoms of our changing climate.

It will be great if it works. No doubt the engineers and designers know what they are doing, but it is all of us, in conjunction with our political leaders, who have to make a better effort in protecting our planet.

The simple pleasure of sitting down on a timber bench looking out to sea and sky, was a moment of extraordinary wonder and pleasure. 

I know it’s not always swimming weather in Ireland but however wintery or miserable it may be on a summer’s day, the water for the majority of people is easily warm enough for a swim. My father kept insisting that September was the best month for swimming in the sea in Ireland as it had the heat of the summer in it.

The sea has a special charm for me and evokes great memories. I recall swimming with my father at the strand in Castlegregory when he was 92. He walked down to the water in his flip flops, I holding one hand, he had his stick in his other hand; as soon as he was afloat I threw the flip-flops on to the sand along with his stick, and off we went a-swimming. How can I forget such a moment. 

That Tuesday I was swimming in Castlegregory, looking out to sea, I kept thinking how it must have looked just like that when my grandfather was swimming there in the 19^th century. And then my father learned to swim in that same spot before the 1916 Rising.

Maybe even my great grandfather or great grandmother were swimming there before my grandfather.

With all our advancement, our technological knowhow, and now the approach of ever more sophisticated AI, isn’t it ironic that the simple pleasure and fun of swimming is hard to beat.

Austrian poet and novelist Rainer Maria Rilke (1875 - 1926) gets it when he says: ‘When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.’

Inspiring words to keep us swimming all year round.

The daily scourge technology places on people

Below is a story about how a customer is treated by Vodafone and Revolut. It appeared in The Irish Times yesterday and written by Conor Pope. 

But before The Irish Times

story, another annoyance.

It is becoming a daily battle between the individual and large corporations. 

Lidl is introducing self-service tills in its stores. This appears on my self-service till yesterday.

Anyone any idea what it means?  And then the misspelling. It’s a small detail, nevertheless it’s another example of the daily battle people have with modern technology.

Conor Pope

On May 22nd a reader’s mother, a woman in her 70s, contacted Vodafone Ireland to report poor wifi and was promised a call back from a technician.

The following day the call she was expecting came – or so she thought – but what happened next has left her traumatised and substantially poorer.

The caller referenced the wifi issue “and said she was eligible for a refund,” he son writes. “She was sent a text link and asked to click it to “verify” the refund.”

She did as she was asked to do by the person claiming to be from Vodafone but after following the link and inputting some key details her banking app was compromised and her Revolut account was remotely accessed and €1,850 sent to a sterling account in the UK.

“She immediately reported it to Revolut, Vodafone, and An Garda Síochána, submitting screenshots of all the suspicious activity, a signed statement and the full context of the scam,” her son writes.

He tells us that she was asked by Revolut “to upload this same dossier five times [and] Revolut never called her, despite promising to”.

He describes Revolut’s support system as “opaque and evasive, consisting of scripted replies and AI loops, with no clear case management or human escalation”.

He says that when he asked “a basic admin question – what documents are needed to file a fraud report in Ireland – they refused to answer, citing GDPR, even though I never asked about her account,” he says. He also says Vodafone has “not yet explained how someone knew about the wifi complaint and used that to engineer the scam”.

Our reader points out that the funds “were sent to another Revolut account, raising questions about their fraud controls and whether the funds were frozen.

“At this point, we just want honest answers and a fair process. My mum has done everything asked of her, but she’s getting nowhere – and it feels like the system is built to exhaust people into giving up.”

He says that “everything is handled by bots with repeated requests for the same info, vague timelines, and generic cut-and-paste responses. Even now, weeks later, she still hasn’t received a proper update, and it’s genuinely shaken her confidence in using digital banking at all. It’s an insane system and the fact you can’t talk to a human is ludicrous.”

He says that when Revolut wanted his business account, “the office would receive regular phone calls and emails from reps looking for the business. How could they not provide the same support to existing clients. Has Revolut quietly built a wall between customers and accountability?”

There are two troubling strands to this scam.

Did the criminals know she had contacted Vodafone and were able to time their first contact with her to coincide with the exact time she was expecting a call from that company?

And why are the systems that Revolut have in place so opaque, and why has it proved to be impossible for this family to speak to a human being or even get a sense that Revolut is addressing this issue with the seriousness that it deserves?

First we contacted Vodafone and shared the details of this scam with them. The company checked its systems and said that there was no evidence of a data breach on its side and a spokesman could not definitively say how it was that our reader – or at least their mother – would receive a call purporting to be from Vodafone less than 24 hours after she had contacted the company.

It could be simple coincidence. Scammers make many, many such calls everyday and they must sometimes get lucky.

We also contacted Revolut.

In a statement the company said it was sorry for this person’s experience “and any instance where our customers are targeted by ruthless and sophisticated criminals. Revolut takes fraud, and the industry-wide risk of customers being coerced by organised criminals, incredibly seriously. Each potential fraud case concerning a Revolut customer is carefully investigated and assessed independently of other cases.”

The statement stresses that it has “a fervent focus on improving the customer experience at Revolut, and the protection of our customers’ money is paramount to that. We provide customer support 24/7 in-app via chat because it is the most secure method to communicate with customers, and helps to ensure that they can be certain they are connected with a member of our team.

“Any reported fraud automatically triggers human intervention from our customer service team, ensuring a user’s case is handled by skilled live agents with expertise in financial crime.”

It said that in recent months it had introduced in-app calls “to give users a secure way to engage with our customer service team over the phone and help them to expose phone call scams.”

Revolut said that last year it had prevented more than €700 million in potential fraud against customers by implementing in-app calls, real-time AI fraud-detection systems, transaction limits, in-app warnings and delayed payments for suspicious transactions, biometric authentication requirements, and providing educational resources to help consumers remain informed about potential risks.

“Revolut’s financial crime prevention team now represents almost a third of our global workforce and, alongside many other payments firms, we deploy a number of different interventions that are solely designed to ‘break the spell’ of scammers and fraudsters,” it said.

“Whilst Revolut is unable to comment on the specifics of these interventions, so as to not provide any insight that could help ruthless criminals socially engineer their victims and bypass these, we are constantly innovating and testing a range of eye-catching warnings.

“While we are fully determined to protect our customers as best we can through our fraud prevention technologies, and go to every length to ensure scams are avoided, there is no denying that fraud is an industry-wide issue that needs to be tackled at source, particularly by the telecoms companies and social media apps that are enabling this. Banks and financial institutions should be the last line of defence, not the only line of defence.”

The story does have a happier-thanexpected outcome. Initially the company wrote to her and outlined its processes and the steps it had taken to prevent any suspicious transactions taking place before determining that it was not at fault and as such no money would be refunded.

A day later we heard back from our reader again. “You won’t believe this. We went from that email yesterday to my mother getting her cash paid back today.”

In a letter the company sent to her a representative said: “upon further investigation of your case, we have identified a mistake in how it was previously handled. Subsequently, we have reclassified the situation as an account-takeover fraud and organised a full reimbursement of €1891.50 along with €150 as a compensation for the stress caused by the whole situation. The payment was sent directly to your Revolut account.”

DJ Carey’s former partner not happy with gardaí

The  lead story in the Sunday Independent yesterday was  how a complaint about DJ Carey was not taken seriously.

His former partner, Sarah Newman argues that gardaí failed to act when she reported his theft.

She says that she complained to gardaí that he allegedly stole money from her - years before he was charged with defrauding other people out of thousands of euro while pretending to have cancer.

Ms Newman made formal complaints back in 2012 about DJ’s conduct, lies and deception.

She believes that she was not fully listened to, given his status as a hurling star at that time.

How often that happens, we give people names, titles and status and they can so easily manage to receive special treatment from whoever the relevant authority might be; while at the same time those who report or whistle blow are so often considered to be trouble makers.

It’s an old story. One must admire Ms Newman; in spite of her loss and pain she tells her story with a wonderful degree of magnanimity. And that’s not easy.

Nonsense or wisdom, either or

 “I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying.”

                                                                 - Oscar Wilde

McGuinness got €800k EU expenses to use her own office

The story below is from The Irish Times of yesterday. The article is written by Arthur Beesley. On face value this is a shocking story and it’s this behaviour that turns people away from traditional politics and makes them supporters of either the far right or far left.

Then there’s the salary, the pension and all the freebies. And no doubt Ms McGuinness is no exception; all paid for by the tax payer.

If this story is correct, surely Fine Gael could not think of electing Ms McGuinness as their candidate for the upcoming presidential election.

Let them eat cake.

Prospective Fine Gael presidential candidate Mairead McGuinness claimed hundreds of thousands of euro in MEP expenses for office rent and other costs when using family property in Co Meath as her constituency office.

Ms McGuinness’s expenses claims were within European Parliament rules. But they are seen by some in Fine Gael circles as a potential point of discomfort in the autumn presidential election campaign because of the prospect of questions being raised.

In her 16 years as an MEP, she is estimated to have received more than €800,000 in unvouched “general allowance” payments to cover “office rent and management costs” and expenses for phones, computers and other political representation costs.

During most of that period, Ms McGuinness located her constituency office in a building adjacent to her family home at Mentrim near Navan. Land Registry records show she and her husband, Tom Duff, own the office property.

“The Mentrim constituency office enabled her to serve the constituency, and have an easily accessible office for the regular and out of normal office hours’ work she engaged in every week as an MEP,” said a spokesman.

“The office was advertised to the public as her constituency office. Her financial details as an MEP were published on her website and regularly updated, including those in relation to her constituency office.”

Although the presidential election must be held within 60 days of Michael D Higgins leaving office on November 11th, prospective candidates across the political spectrum have been slow to come forward.

However, Ms McGuinness is widely expected to seek Fine Gael’s candidacy when the party opens nominations on Monday. She has long been considered one of the most likely contenders and has never ruled herself out.

A former journalist, she made her mark in European politics as a member of the parliament’s agriculture and rural development committee.

She became first vice-president of the parliament in 2017 but left in 2020 to become Ireland’s EU commissioner in succession to Phil Hogan after the “Golfgate” affair. Her term as commissioner for financial services ended last year.

According to the European Parliament, the general allowance “is not paid automatically”. MEPs must request payment.

“Members are free to request all or part of the amount of the allowance, and/or to reimburse amounts that have not been used,” the parliament’s rules state.

The monthly payment was set at €3,700 when Ms McGuinness was first elected an MEP in 2004 and had risen to €4,950 when she left in October 2020.

Her website is no longer online, but partial records remain on archived web pages. She is estimated to have received €222,000 in the 2004-2009 parliamentary term, €255,762 in the 2009-2014 term, €261,192 in the 2014-2019 and €79,200 in 2019-2020.

There was no comment from Ms McGuinness on these figures after they were put to her.

Comment on recent statements made by Mr Michael Kelly

This blog began in June 2007. Like everything in life it has changed over the years, maybe even grown up and today looks at reality through different lenses that it did back in 2007.

At the side of the blog the following appears:

Readership

This blog is read around the world, on all five continents. 

The blog was launched in June 2007. 

It attempts at getting past staid, predictable comments and opinions, especially on church issues. 

Hopefully it is funny, provocative, skittish, sometimes a little irreverent but never rude or insulting, always watching out for all sorts of humbug, especially of the clerical kind. 

Maybe a counter balance to pious piffle and holy humbug.

__________________

The blog is often critical of organisations and institutions, and makes no apologies for such comment. It remarks on ideas expressed by individuals but it never intends to be snide or make nasty comments about people. Indeed, if it has done that, then it profusely apologises.

In early June, Catholic commentator, Michael Kelly wrote the following on his X account: "A friend just told me there is some fella[sic] who keeps a blog commenting on my social media posts is[sic] a sneery kinda[sic] way. What a curious way to live your life - some people really do need to take up a hobby. Oddly flattering to live rent-free in his head! 😊"

At the time no comment was made, it was felt best to ignore such an impoverished and sad comment. Obviously it was directed at this blog.

Yesterday the comment below, again from Michael Kelly, appeared on his X account: "Sean 'Diddy' Combs, Conor McGregor, D.J. Carey and Bro. Kevin Crowley - four very different men in the news this evening. I know which one we should follow and encourage our young men to emulate."

Surely such a sentiment has little in common with the Christian message. One is reminded of Pope Francis’  words that the church should be like a field hospital.

Again, it must be stressed this is not a personal attack on Mr Kelly but it is an opinion criticising his comments made in the public forum.

If this blog has ever offended or insulted Mr Kelly, it takes this opportunity to apologise to him.

This blog wishes Mr Kelly every good fortune and success in his work.

Channel 4 gives a glimpse of McGregor followers

Channel 4 News last evening carried a special report on Conor McGregor.

One of his supporters said that she had no confidence or trust in politicians. The journalist asked her did she know her local politicians; no, she did not know who they were, know their names or anything about their politics. 

Mr McGregor was not available for comment.

United workers have nothing to lose but their chains

This week’s column in The Kerryman newspaper.

Michael Commane

The Lauren Sanchez Jeff Bezos wedding has been in the news. Neither of them is in the flush of their youth, it happens to all of us. Lauren is 55 and Bezos is 61. It is reported that they spent €48 million on the three-day splash. 

The next time you have an Amazon package delivered to your door you might ask yourself do I really need this or could I have bought it elsewhere, where the profit margin might be less.

What’s going on in the world? Was it always as crass, vulgar and mad as this? Then again if royal families have accumulated such wealth over generations why can’t commoners? It baffles me how we tolerate such inequality to exist.

Is raw capitalism good for society? How can we say yes to that if there are one billion people starving in the world?

Is the dollar bill all about greed and trying to make a fortune? At least in most countries in Europe there is an attempt to control runaway capitalism.

No matter how much we criticise our health service in Ireland, medical treatment is available to all, irrespective of how much money one has.

A cousin of mine was on a cycling holiday with her husband in France in late June and on the last day of their cycling she broke a bone in her leg. With her European Health Insurance Card (EHIC, formerly known as E111) she received all her medical treatment without having to put her hand in her pocket. 

An EU agreement allows all EU citizens free medical treatment in any of the 27 countries they visit. If you are travelling anywhere in the EU in the coming months make sure to apply for your EHIC, which is available online or at any local health office.

Yes, we pay for it in our taxes and that’s the way it should be.

That’s just one example of the many great benefits afforded us by being a member state of the European Union. A couple I know who are planning a trip to Canada and the US have just discovered that he cannot get private travel health insurance as a result of his medical history. 

Not too long ago he had a minor stroke and has one or two other less serious health issues. He lives a normal life for a man in his 70s, plays golf and travels around Ireland with no difficulties whatsoever. Why can’t he obtain travel health insurance? 

The answer is simple; insurance companies consider him too high a risk, in other words insuring him would reduce their profits. It’s as simple and grubby as that. Indeed, why should there be age premiums on health insurance? Is that not ageism? It clearly is. 

Why do we accept such rules?

Whatever about the merits of capitalism, it must be curbed to serve the people. There is no sense to a €48 million wedding splash; it adds nothing to the good of humanity. Looking around a world filled with suffering and pain there is something toxic about the Sánchez Bezos wedding.

I’m not a communist but Karl Marx’s words have always held a special place for me: ‘Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains!’ 

Three interesting European dates in the 1990s

Three interesting dates:

On this day, July 1, 1990 The German Democratic Republic accepts the Deutsche Mark as its currency; later that year on October 3, German reunification was completed.

The following year, July 1, 1991 the Warsaw Pact was dissolved at a signing ceremony in the Polish capital. 

Closer to home: on July 1, 1999 the Scottish Parliament was officially opened by Queen Elizabeth II.

Trump's bombs aid Iranian dictatorship

One result of the US bombing in Iran is to unite the Iranian people.

There is an excellent history of the Iran Israel conflict in the Weekend section of Saturday edition of The Irish Times.

The piece is written by Dr Vincent Duran, who lectures in Middle East politics in the UCD school of politics and international relations.

How the West has created such chaos and turmoil in the region, and all to do with power, control and money.

The Irish Times does not know who our taoiseach is

Wrong tánaiste and misspelt

This caption appeared in
The Irish Times on Friday.

Might it be that the real tánaiste knows a sub editor in the news desk who’s working on his campaign? 

Note the newspaper’s misspelling of the word tánaiste. This from the paper of record.

It’s also worth noting how poor the newspaper’s digital customer service system is.

And all from the paper of record.

No more wars if women ruled the world? Give me a break

Justine McCarthy in The Irish Times yesterday. The writer of this blog may not agree with all of what she says but it is an interesting piece and well worth a read.

If women ruled the world, there would be no wars. True or false? False, if all the women were Ursula von der Leyen. Because a hawk in sheep’s clothing is still a hawk.

The president of the European Commission was the most petite participant at the G7 summit in Canada last week but she landed with the force of a grenade packed with testosterone. “I spoke to prime minister Netanyahu today,” she announced after Israel had bombed Iran in an unprovoked attack. “I reiterated Europe’s commitment to peace and stability in the Middle East. In this context, Israel has the right to defend itself.”

That same day, Israeli air strikes and gunfire killed dozens of starving Gazans, including at least 17 people seeking food from the grotesquely named Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the honeypot for daily massacres of visibly emaciated civilians by the Israel Defense Forces.

What the f***, in the parlance of the president of the United States of America, is the European Union’s chief executive doing, phoning a fugitive from the International Criminal Court to egg him on with his killing crusades? Who gave her the authority to adopt the G7 statement of “support for the security of Israel”, a statement which, by the way, three permanent members of the UN Security Council also signed up to. “Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” they claimed.

Neutrality policy

Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Ireland, one of the 27 countries that employ von der Leyen, is currently unhitching its neutrality policy from the UN mandate because the Security Council has persistently obstructed peace initiatives. Ireland is also proposing to outlaw trade with illegal Israeli settlements, something the EU has failed to do despite an explicit requirement by the International Court of Justice that UN countries must not support the settlements in the Occupied Territories.

This is not the first time von der Leyen has given the EU’s blessing to Binyamin Netanyahu’s massacring of innocents. The day after Hamas’s murderous incursion into Israel in October 2023 left 1,195 people dead and nearly 250 abducted, she ordered that the Israeli flag be projected on to the commission’s head office in Brussels. Then, as the Israeli government announced it was stopping supplies of food, water and electricity to Gaza, she flew to Tel Aviv to assure Netanyahu he could “count on” the EU’s support in waging war on Gaza. Josep Borrell, the bloc’s high representative for foreign affairs at the time, clarified that she was not entitled to decide EU foreign policy. As a German citizen, von der Leyen may be well motivated by her country’s history to ensure the protection of Jewish people, but it does not justify siding with a genocidal regime.

Spain and Ireland’s request in February 2024 for an urgent review of the EU-Israel trade agreement does not appear to gone anywhere significant.

The woman who was Germany’s minister for defence for six years and was tipped to lead Nato before her appointment as president for a second term seems coated in Teflon-strength immunity. Nothing sticks. Even when the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, Francesca Albanese, accused her of complicity in Israel’s war crimes, EU leaders failed to censure her. If they need evidence, here are some facts to start with:

Israel has slaughtered more than 56,000 people in Gaza since October 2023;

Israel has attacked Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Qatar and Iran this year;

Israeli soldiers and settlers killed 938 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem between October 7th, 2023 and the end of last month;

Israel is the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons;

Israel has fired in the direction of Unifil soldiers, including Irish – ergo EU – peacekeepers in Lebanon;

Israel has fired in the direction of EU officials and diplomats in the West Bank.

Mark Twain described an uneasy conscience as “a hair in the mouth”. In her acceptance speech when she was conferred with an honorary doctorate by Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2022, von der Leyen said the Holocaust was “an indelible stain” on her country’s conscience and it must never be forgotten. No rational person would argue otherwise. The Nazis’ systematic extermination of Jews in Europe spread its stain beyond Germany’s borders and the world must be forever vigilant in countering anti-Semitism, but not at the price of Islamophobia. The hair in the mouth turns the heart to stone when a guilty conscience can condone thousands upon thousands of children being strafed with gunfire, blown apart by air strikes, starved to death and dying of thirst.

Human rights conditions

A new EU report has stated there is evidence that Israel has violated human rights conditions agreed in its trade deal with Europe. News so stale it is an affront to the people of Gaza. About 26,000 more have been killed there in the 16 months since von der Leyen dismissed the request from Dublin and Madrid. This week, the EU’s foreign ministers decided to postpone any decision about the trade deal until they next meet on July 15th, by which time – judging by the current daily death toll – hundreds more people will have perished. Surely Fianna Fáil MEPs who voted against von der Leyen’s reappointment as president last year are kicking up a stink with their Fine Gael government partners who are in the same EU alliance as her and who backed her nomination. It is noteworthy that more than 90 per cent of the alliance’s party leaders are men.

The creation of an EU army is central to von der Leyen’s vision for Europe. Heaven forbid that it should happen on her watch. For she is living proof of the foolishness of the hypothesis that there would be no wars if women ruled the world. See also Margaret Thatcher, darling of the Tory fraternity, who sentenced 320 people to death on board the Belgrano. 

As long as the patriarchy keeps choosing the women, the world will not be in safer hands. The question that will always need to be asked is which women?