While you are all busy fighting about the black block and the SP
national |
miscellaneous |
news report 
Tuesday June 10, 2003 17:29
by black & green
real news is happening!
Cuffe steps down as Green spokesman
The Green Party TD Ciaran Cuffe has agreed to step aside as the party's Environment Spokesman.
The move comes following the controversy over Mr Cuffe's ownership of shares in a number of oil companies.
He announced his decision at a meeting of the Parliamentary Party in Leinster House this morning.
Mr Cuffe, who represents Dún Laoghaire, inherited the shares from his mother three years ago.
The $1.3m share portfolio includes investments of almost $70,000 in six oil exploration companies.
Party leader Trevor Sargent, accepting Deputy Cuffe's offer to stand aside, said it was important to note that at all times Deputy Cuffe had been in full compliance with the law and all relevant regulations.
He described the incident as 'a lesson to all of us in the Green Party'.
Mr Sargent said procedures were now being reviewed to ensure that all public representatives and candidates can stand over any financial interests they may have, from the point of view of compatibility with the Party's founding principles and constitution.
He added that all members of the Parliamentary Party accepted Deputy Cuffe's explanation that the difficulties arose because he had inherited the shares from his late mother.
Comments (21 of 21)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21who cares??!! let's bash the CW's, its more fun!!
im kidding, ok?
so what stopped him from selling them for the last three years?
Sergant described the incident as "a lesson to all of us in the Green Party".
Similar to the lesson Ray Burke learnt? "Don't get caught" ?
hmmmmmmm
why did he only resign as ENVIRONMENTAL Spokesman, and not from either his position (TD - and stand in a by election) or from the ranks of the ENVIRONMENTAL party?
three years people, three years!
So now from the greens i have zero time for Cuffe or Gogarty (after the sit-down sell-out).
Maybe they'll chain themselves to a couple of Moabs and we'll be done with them.
Poor Mr. Cuffe, so busy that he didn't have time to call his stockbroker to dispose of his unethical shares.
He did however find the time to transfer his portfolio from All-First to another group for 'ethical reasons'. I presume these reason had more to do with the revelation that All-First were not the most trustworthy of fund managers and would probably be raising their transaction fees to cover the massive losses incurred by the casinio attitude of a certain Mr. Rusinack to the company's money than anything we would usually consider ethical.
Cuffe claims that he was niave. This is a pathetic excuse for so many reasons :
1. He showed that he cared enough about his portfolio to move it to a more secure management team.
2. My grandmother would have taken one look at his portfolio, noted that Exxon etc were on it, and gone 'They're a bit dodgy, aren't they. I remember something about an oil slick'. If Cuffe, not just a member of the Green Party but their environmental spokeperson, did not know, as he claims, that these companys records are not the best he is proving that he has no interest nor has he carried out adaquate reserach to be an environmental spokesperson.
3. Why does he say he is 'disposing' of his shares. Hes not disposing, hes selling them. He is personally profiting from them. Will he donate his profit to charity?
4. Assuming that he has recieved dividends from these shares how does the Green Party feel that one of their members election campaign was possibly partially financed by dirty money.
All in all it just shows the Green Party to be as hypocritical as all the other parties believing that we should all 'Do as they say, not as they do'.
Seen as Ciaran has all these shares in these various environment destroying companies,
maybe we could call him "Chemical Ciaran".
Just a thought. Also easy to blame the Ma when she's dead.
were earlier today pointed to ethical investment possibilities....
http://ireland.indymedia.org/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=51679
others with less cash have done the old stockbroking liffe thing b4.
So there are ·corrupt· greenies?
what shall we do.
hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
hassle Dermot Ahern the Minister for the Marine.
really like honestly this would be a good idea and if the greenies did areally good job of hassling Dermot Ahern I might forgive them for the ·we are really bourgois corrupt bastards whose "feastaí feasting" will have to stop.
your economic theory is in shite!
what are you going to do about it?
http://uk.indymedia.org:8081/local/webcast/uploads/j9media.wmv
http://ireland.indymedia.org/cgi-bin/newswire.cgi?id=51536&start=0&sid=73119
While it does seem like a major (and embarrasing) oversight put things in perspective. Before anybody points a holy finger look at your own bank accounts. Do you know what your money is being used for????. Ethical investment goes beyond capital shares and large investments.
If you use the major financial organisations you are part of the system of capital flow and dont try and kid yourself that your not.
All I have to say is hurry up Triodos bank with those debit accounts you are talking about.
Hey what about Indymedia and their suspect links? Do you all think Indymedia is whiter than white. Get real.
At least the Greens don't have censorship like Indymedia.ie
Free speech is ok here so long as your speech suits Indymedia.
1. "Suspect links" ? Name names.
2. "whiter than white"? News to me; we never claimed to be perfect and I'd be the first to say that we've a lot of room for improvement
3. Censorshp? Details, please.
Leave the poor lad alone....he just had a bloody child ffs
There are clear reasons as to why nobody reads the comments these days,
You all have too much time on your hands...and you never achieve anything anyways except bitch.
I clearly hate you all and cant wait for the next opportunity to burn you all.
Simon - "If you use the major financial organisations you are part of the system of capital flow and dont try and kid yourself that your not."
Ok, basically all my money is in the credit union, but that aside, you can't criticise people for putting money in a private bank. to do so is very elitist. many people need the backing of the banking/credit system (or at least things are seen in that way) to live. this does not mean that i AGREE with it - its just a fact of life, that anyone who wants to change the world cannot sweep aside.
So I don't see that someone who has money in a bank means is not qualified to commet on the disgracful/disgusting antics of a member of the green party. The facts remain the same, no matter how you spin them. The man had one and a half years to get rid of his shares. AND HE DIDN'T. he didn't even SELL THEM ON. I mean what the fuck? was he waiting for the post-war cash in OR WHAT?
And here's the part where I stick up for indymedia - you know you do a good job lads n ladies.
"At least the Greens don't have censorship like Indymedia.ie"
Oh yeah? If you konw so much about the internal life of the green party, them wjat can i say?
Obvioulsy we wre all mental and to criticise the internal democracy of the greens is taboo. Or maybe they have too much democracy - which is why they never come up with concrete ideas. (and i dont include feastá in this - but i still don't agree with them)
"Leave the poor lad alone....he just had a bloody child ffs"
- I really hope this is some kind of post-modern ironic joke that I'm too thick to understand. If that's not the case then there's no hope.
And Iosaf - I think I finally get your sense of humour. At least I hope I have. Or else Im just laughing away to myself for no good reason. Anyway - who cares, i laughed and hey fuck it, 'i had my fun, and thats all that matters'.
I have a bank account but I am aware of its impact. I was just finding that people who were pointing fingers at Ciaran Cuffe dont have a leg to stand on in terms of what they understand to be 'ethical-investment'.
Some of the charges that people were laying down dont make sense. E.g. if he was to give his shares to charity is it right that charitites would benefit from un-ethical investment??.
If he was to 'dispose' of them as some people think is possible where will the money end up??
I dont know the legalities behind his inheritance so im not going to rule out a oversight. i.e. that the portfolio was passed over without looking deeply at its contents and his investment manager was having a right laugh at the irony of it all!!
But crying corruption is a bit of a joke, really.
Has anyone done any research on this. Off-shore accounts, etc.
... between having money in the bank and owning shares in Exxon. Neither is completely 'clean', but one is obviously less of a problem than the other - you can't control what your bank does, but you can control whether or not you own shares in a particular company. Most people need a bank account to get paid, to pay their mortgage. Nobody needs to own shares in Exxon.
What should he have done? Aren't there 'ethical investment' portfolios out there, that put your money into renewable energy sources, fair trade companies, and stuff like that? Sure, they're still tainted by capitalism, but not to the same extent as Exxon.
(or he could have sold his shares and given the money away to charities, but I don't think that was likely to happen)
I have checked my own bank accounts.
I have instructed my stockbrokers to examine my portfolio for the previous years since i attained my majority to verify that my wishes on ethical investment have consistently been adhered to, and the have, and since learning about this slimey greenie scumbag I have commisioned a study on the investment patterns of all my family kith ad kin going back to the suspension of Gold Standard.
This activity has re-assured me of one lurking prejudice I have been long troubled by:
If you have less than 20,000,000€/$ to invest you have absolutely no excuse for this sort of thing.
It ·can not· be overlooked.
thus:
HE IS A SLIMEY GREENIE TRAITOR TO THE CAUSE.
pelt him with eggs.
(anyone lend me a fiver to next divedend?)
someone has something to hide...
the Triodos bank offer ethical investment service and they recently opened in ireland. They dont have debit accounts yet but they are in the pipeline.
They also act as a lending service to things such as community or environmental projects. They have guidlines to adhere to before lending and they try to be as transparent as possible.
www.triodos.ie : its a sub-directory of the english website.
the Triodos bank offer ethical investment service and they recently opened in ireland. They dont have debit accounts yet but they are in the pipeline.
They also act as a lending service to things such as community or environmental projects. They have guidlines to adhere to before lending and they try to be as transparent as possible.
www.triodos.ie : its a sub-directory of the english website.
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