My Favorite Irish New Year Tradition

[fishfoodie]

I've never really,"Got", New Years; but over the last while there is one tradition I do look forward to, over the week of the turn of the year ... the release of Irish Government, "State Papers", i.e. the release, & de-classification of Cabinet minutes, memos, etc, from 30 years previously. There's always at least a weeks worth of interesting stories; at a time of year, when there's bugger all else interesting to read.

How is it that other Countries, that essentially have the same kind of FOI legislation; don't seem to have Journalists raking over the coals, & telling the voters, why this decision; that was made thirty years ago, is still impacting their lives today ?; or are they; but I'm just not getting it in my news feed ?

Some Summaries for this year:

https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/1228/12680 ... 12-things/
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/1228/12679 ... -reynolds/
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/1229/12680 ... rs-bruton/
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/1229/12680 ... en-things/
https://www.rte.ie/news/2021/1230/12681 ... ern-blair/

It's only the second of the year, & I may already have found my favorite article

3. Doublespeak in the Department of Foreign Affairs

"In war", the saying goes, "truth is the first casualty". To illustrate this, and the fact that civil servants in the Department of Foreign Affairs appear to have a black sense of humour, a document was circulated during the Gulf war in 1991, entitled "Middle East Information Centre – Telephone Handbook (Or how to lie convincingly)".

The document offers a series of statements, and then explains what each of them really means. For example, "That is an unconfirmed report", means "We know that, but we don’t want you to know yet".

"We are monitoring the situation" means "We are watching the news", while "We are seeking clarification" means "We have switched over to Sky News".

The phrase "Contravening International norms" means "he’s not doing what we want him to do", and our personal favourite, "That is media hype", which means "We know that, but we didn’t know that they knew that".

[Uncle fester]

Some great stuff in there.
Reynolds tends to get forgotten when it comes to the NI peace process.
I love the quashing of the engineers report in the Aras.
Pee Flynn managing to make himself look like a total cock as usual.

[tabascoboy]

I've never really,"Got", New Years; but over the last while there is one tradition I do look forward to, over the week of the turn of the year ... the release of Irish Government, "State Papers", i.e. the release, & de-classification of Cabinet minutes, memos, etc, from 30 years previously. There's always at least a weeks worth of interesting stories; at a time of year, when there's bugger all else interesting to read.

How is it that other Countries, that essentially have the same kind of FOI legislation; don't seem to have Journalists raking over the coals, & telling the voters, why this decision; that was made thirty years ago, is still impacting their lives today ?; or are they; but I'm just not getting it in my news feed ?

We have what is now the 20 year rule having been reduced from 30 a few years ago, but it's true that it doesn't tend to hit the headlines very much. Some recent ones relating to NI

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... t-assembly

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news ... 96436.html