THE lack of officers in the PSNI has been worrying Chief Constable Jon Boutcher so much he’s decided to lend some of them out.
The same force which did traffic duty for a UVF show of strength on the Newtownards Road last summer flew an undisclosed number of officers to London to arrest elderly protesters who’ve had enough of seeing bits of babies hanging from telephone wires in Gaza.
Arresting blind nuns and retired nurses in wheelchairs has not proved as easy as envisioned, and so Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley decided to enlist some expert help. He had seen the videos of a PSNI special ops team successfully executing a hard stop on a 72-year-old Jewish Gaeilgeoir about to place a sticker on an ATM; and he had been tremendously impressed by officers from the elite Anti-OAP Unit subduing a dinner lady in a keffiyeh.
Met sources have told Squinter that Saturday’s ‘Operation Trafalgar Trevor’ had been a complete success and that all officers had returned safely to base. Claims that This Here Pravince had been left under-policed – or more under-policed than usual – were hotly denied. The following transcripts of the fully functioning Saturday evening 999 service proves that to be the case...
– Brrrr, brrr.
– Hello, 999, which emergency service do you require?
– Police. And for god’s sake hurry. (Loud banging, muffled shouting is heard.)
– One second please madam.
– Brrr, brrr.
– Hello, police, how may I help you?
– Come quick, he’s outside the bathroom door. (Loud banging, muffled shouting.)
– Who is?
– My partner. (Loud banging, muffled shouting.)
– I’m sorry, we’re currently understaffed at the moment due to resource deployment.
– Due to what? (Loud banging, muffled shouting.)
– Resource redeployment.
– What the hell’s that? (Loud banging, muffled shouting.)
– It means everybody’s over in London.
– Doing what? (Loud banging, muffled shouting.)
– Arresting baddies.
– What am I supposed to do? (Wood splintering, louder shouting.)
– We may be able to get someone along on Monday afternoon. Would that suit...? Hello... Hello madam? I said would that suit?
– Click. Brrr...
– Brrrr, brrr.
– Hello, 999, which emergency service do you require?
– (Panting heavily) Police, please.
– One second.
– Brrr, brrr.
– Hello, police, what’s your emergency please?
– Yes, (panting heavily), I’ve caught a burglar in my house and I’m sitting on his chest.
– Is the man armed, sir?
– He was (panting heavily), but I took the knife off him.
– We’re sending someone to your address. Do you think you can keep him there until officers arrive?
– I’ll try (panting heavily). When do you think they’ll be here?
– Tuesday any good?
– Tuesday?
– Yes, unfortunately those Cockney pensioners are kicking off again...
– Brrrr, brrr.
– Hello, 999, which emergency service do you require?
– (Whispering.) Police. And hurry.
– Brrr, brrr.
– Police, how may I help you?
– (Whispering) There’s two men in the front of my shop demanding money for the UVF.
– Are they armed?
– (Whispering) I don’t know. Can you send someone right away?
– Hmmmm, good question.
– (Whispering) Look, do you want to catch these guys or not?
– In an ideal world, yes. Let’s try this a different way. What do they look like?
– (Whispering) One’s baldy, has a big gold chain and he’s wearing a North Face puffer.
– You’re not helping me much here.
– (Whispering) Oh, he has a lightning bolt tattoo on his neck.
– That’s Stewarty. He’s pretty harmless. Unless you don’t give him what he wants. What about the other one?
– (Whispering) Baldy, gold chain, North Face puffer, big purple vape.
– Ah. Pliers. He’s just there in case there’s trouble.
– (Whispering) Trouble from who?
– You, probably.
– (Whispering louder) Look, are you going to send anybody or not?
– Let me just check officer availability here (keyboard clicking)... return flight... easyJet London Gatwick to Belfast International (keyboard clicking)... Wednesday (keyboard clicking)... oh nine forty-five (keyboard clicking).... Bear with... Thursday any good?
– (Whispering) Not really.
– Pity.
– (Whispering) What do I do now?
– Put Stewarty on, will you?
Golden Boy Gavin’s past landlord problems weren’t the issue
SO you’re telling me Jim Gavin’s gone because he was a terrible landlord? You’re telling me that Fianna Fáil booted their Croke Park Golden Boy over the bar and out of the Presidential race because he has a debt of €3k to a tenant from 16 years ago and because he didn’t officially register the flat he owned as a rental?
If you really believe that, Squinter’s got a bridge to sell you; and you can rent out the one-room former workman’s hut at the north end of that bridge as a compact bijou for €4k per calendar month.
Let’s be completely honest about this before the official story becomes carved in posterity: If people got booted out of the Fianna Fáil for being awful landlords, party meetings could be held in Leinster House’s new half-million Euro bikeshed.
THE WAY WE WERE: Jim Gavin (left) in happier times with FF director of elections Jack Chambers, the man credited with throwing the former Dublin coach under the bus
Squinter’s not one of those who write every landlord off as a Castle Rackrent villain – there are very genuine people renting out properties who do everything the law and decency expects of them. There are even some who do more. But it’s simply a matter of fact that the business of landlordism attracts more than its fair share of unpleasant and deeply unpleasant individuals. And it is further a simple matter of fact that while you’ll find precious few TDs and senators working at food banks or delivering pizzas for a second job, the number of them renting out property is grotesquely out of proportion to the number of landlords in the general population. 20 per cent of the members of the Oireachtas are landlords, while just over one per cent of the Irish people rent out property.
It’s almost as if there was some dynamic, beneficial connection between being a lawmaker and a landlord.
Worse than that, the online news service The Ditch in 2022 reported that 75 per cent of politicians in Leinster House haven’t declared their properties as rentals. And there’s answers to be had in that statistic if you’re asking yourself why the relatively trifling matter of an old €3k debt was considered by Fianna Fáil a worse sin on Jim Gavin’s part than not declaring his property as a rental.
So let’s stop kidding each other here. Being a shit landlord is not a Fianna Fáil no-no – it’s a badge of honour. And in the hurly-burly of a presidential campaign a strategy could easily have been concocted to save Gavin’s bacon because Fianna Fáil have huge experience of explaining away money and landlord issues. But Gavin had proven himself completely and utterly incapable of articulating and selling that strategy because anyone who viewed even the shortest social media clip from the two presidential debates so far can only have winced at how awful he was at public speaking.
Bertie Ahern got away with not having a bank account in which to put his profits from ‘backing horses’ (no sniggering) because he knew how to talk to people. If Fianna Fáil had asked Jim Gavin to go on Prime Time and recite Mary Had a Little Lamb he’d have made a balls of it. And the cute hoors at the top of Fianna Fáil knew better than anyone that asking him to communicate a reponse that would of necessity have included technical elisions and sly distractions would have been akin to asking Daniel O’Donnell to play Lear at the National.
