It Occurs To Me: ‘A bit mouthy and pompous’ - Ivan the Terrible?

I always found Ivan Yates a bit mouthy and pompous…Ivan The Parable?

It might be unfair to name him after a 14th-century Russian genocidal maniac - as my title suggests - so let’s be totally fair.
Until recently, he was Ivan The Airable, as he popped up on every oul’ wireless and box with regular abandon.

Suddenly he became Ivan The Shareable, as every big party (well, two of them anyway!) wanted to use his genius and motivational expertise to inspire their presidential hopefuls.

He then upset Matt Cooper and Newstalk and became Ivan the Unbearable, and the way things are shaping up, he’ll soon be Ivan The Irreparable!

 ‘Ivan Yates upset Matt Cooper and Newstalk and became Ivan the Unbearable’

Maybe a new Star Trek might consider him as a character…alongside Jabba The Hutt and Yoda The Master, he could play an alien from the planet Wexford called Smear The Bejaysus.

‘Hurled’ into jail

Back in 2014, Kilkenny Live reported that: “For a man who is, at first glance, quite shy, Jack Carey has a CV that is amazing. A qualified farrier, a good hurler, excellent hurley maker and also a highly regarded singer-songwriter.

Jack Carey from Gowran and, yes, brother of DJ, has just won first prize in the lyrics category of the 2014 USA Songwriting Competition with his collaborator, Paul Kealy, for their song Fall Before You Fly. This is one of the most prestigious songwriting contests in the world and it is a great accolade for the Kilkenny man.” Indeed.

Last April, Jack and his sister Caitriona were sent forward for trial accused of breaking company laws.
They face prosecution following a Corporate Enforcement Authority (CEA) investigation. Previously, Ms Carey was sent forward for trial on other money laundering charges, along with two others, who were accused of deception and acting unlawfully as solicitors while not qualified, from July 2019 to February 2022.

As for their brother DJ, Judge Nolan has sentenced him to five years and six months for his “reprehensible” cancer fraud. Among many scams was pretending to be in a Seattle clinic while spotted at a local hurling match.
‘Fall before you fly’?

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The ex-admiral… formerly known as Andrew
I see where Andy ‘Batten Down The Hatches’ Windsor has lost his last title of vice-admiral. Personally, I think he should have retained those titles that had the word ‘vice' attached!

Meanwhile, Trump responds: “It’s a terrible thing that’s happened to the (royal) family. That’s been a tragic situation. It’s too bad. I feel badly for the family.” Not a word about the victims. I wonder why?

The paras didn’t discriminate
Nine months after Bloody Sunday, the Paras shot two innocent Protestants dead in the Shankill Road. Robert Johnson, 50, a labourer, had just come out from the Wee House bar on Manor Street somewhat drunk.

He was waving his arms and shouting “the meek shall inherit the earth” when he was hit in the heart from a rifle lethal at 1,000 yards fired from just across the street.

Richie McKinney, 49, a father of five, who worked at Mackie engineering, was shot in the heart as he drove along Matchett Street.

As Eamonn McCann outlined recently in The Irish News: “Bloody Sunday soldiers F and J fired the fatal shots. If they hadn’t gotten away with it in the Bogside they might have thought twice before pulling the trigger on Mr McKinney and Mr. Johnson.

“The Paras are non-sectarian killers. They’d slot anybody the top brass told them it would be okay to slot. If they hadn’t got away with it in the Bogside they might have thought twice before killing Mr McKinney and Mr Johnson. Bloody Sunday gave them the go-ahead to kill rings round them.”

What is equally disturbing is that Unionist politicians virtually ignored the murders. Their leaders, including one elected Shankill representative, pressed by Bloody Sunday campaigners at the time of Saville to take up the case of Mr McKinney and Mr Johnston replied: “You don't understand the Protestant people.”

Last week, Derry Alderman Darren Guy (UUP) paid tribute to the Bloody Sunday families. He said they had “shown dignity throughout this long ordeal and would no doubt be deeply disappointed with the judge's decision”.

Alderman Guy added: “I have always maintained personally that the Parachute Regiment should not have been deployed on the streets of the Bogside in January 1972, just as they should not have shot two innocent individuals in the Shankill Road. This is why you will never see a Parachute Regiment flag flying anywhere on the Shankill Road.”

Darren is his father’s son. The late Jim Guy, a UUP Mayor of Derry, was a good friend of mine and a decent honourable man.
He was chair of the Somme Association and went to the ends of the earth to find a Galligan grave from the first world war I’d been looking for.

Meanwhile, former police officer and UUP Councillor Linzi McLaren has quit the UUP over the party’s “grave errors” on “Irish language and inclusiveness”. Linzi and Darren are exceptions. The DUP however is a different story…they deem intransigence as a badge of honour. Paul Givan is a case in point.

Educating the minister?
The Northern Ireland Department of Education’s blurb read: “Education Minister Paul Givan today visited Ofek School in the Jerusalem District to learn more about Israel’s innovative approaches to gifted education and inclusive learning.”

Optics aside, it is incomprehensible that a minister purportedly at the reins of northern children’s education and welfare would visit a country responsible for at least one Palestinian child’s death every hour on average by Israeli forces in Gaza.

Over two years of slaughter has seen the number of children killed now surpassing 20,000, according to Save the Children. At least 1,009 of the children killed were under age one, with nearly half (450) of these babies born and killed during the war.

At least 42,011 children have been injured, many horribly maimed.

As Councillor Pat Murphy of Derry City and Strabane District Council pointed out: “The grotesque images of a minister who presides over the education of every child in the North giving moral and political cover to a regime that has murdered 19,000 school children, according to conservative estimates, and wounded tens of thousands more, is truly appalling.
“Not far from where the minister is in Gaza, 90.97% of all school buildings have been either destroyed or critically damaged. Hundreds of teachers have been slaughtered. 625,000 pupils have had no school for almost two years.”

A motion calling for Givan’s resignation said his visit was “a deeply abhorrent propaganda stunt for the purpose of whitewashing genocide in Gaza”.

Councillor Shaun Harkin, who proposed the motion, added: “The minister says he went to Israel to see their wonderful and great education system because it’s a democracy. Now, there are more than two million Palestinians living within Israel’s 1948 borders. They don’t live in Gaza and they don't live in the West Bank. They live in Israel and they are second-class citizens in Israel and when it comes to education, they are completely second-class citizens.

“Their schools are underfunded. The students are underfunded. The curriculum denies the existence of Palestinians and tells Palestinian students that the Nakba never happened. The Palestinian flag doesn't happen. It is an attempt to eradicate their existence.

“This is not a wonderful education system run by the Israeli Ministry of Education. It is an apartheid system and it is an absolute disgrace that our Education Minister is there right now and is using the official Department of Education social media to promote this event.

“I also believe we have to send a very strong message from this council. We should condemn this visit. We should support the Teaching Council and the teaching unions and their demand that the posts be removed from the Department of Education social media platforms. We should also call on the Minister to resign.”

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Cllr Shauna Cusack asked: “Why, of all the education systems in the world, exceptional education systems we could learn from such as Scandinavia, did the DUP Minister, in his wisdom, choose Israel to visit? I think the Education Minister ironically needs educating himself.”

He may survive the Stormont vote of no confidence next week, but in the eyes of many teachers and parents alike, his tenure is tainted forever.

The Celtic revival
Funny old game? Who would have thought that a County Derry man would take over from a County Antrim man as manager of Scotland’s greatest football club?

I wish Martin O’Neill well and great to see Sligo’s Johnny Kenny in scoring form.

Martin’s right-hand man is Gavin Strachan, son of the legendary Gordon. I loved Gordon’s surly responses to inane questions years ago…like Roy Keane, he didn’t do bullshit.

A reporter once shouted: “Can we have a quick word, Gordon?” Strachan growled: “Velocity,” and walked off. Another asked him: “Do you take your work home with you?” to which he responded: “Na…the stadium widnae fit in ma car boot!”