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GERRY ADAMS AND PEARSE Doherty are in New York today for the annual Friends of Sinn Féin fundraising dinner.
The event is expected to attract a crowd of around 600 with a ticket for the event costing $500 or around €403. The dinner was raised several times by Tánaiste Joan Burton in the Dáil today.
During exchanges with Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald during Leaders’ Questions, Burton said that the cost of the dinner was more than what the average family would have to pay in water charges.
Sinn Féin has confirmed that Adams is in New York along with the party’s finance spokesperson Doherty. The party also confirmed the $500 price of the event which is taking place at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown Manhattan.
Sinn Féin is reportedly expected to raise around $350,000 (€282,000) at the event.
A spokesperson said: “The Friends of Sinn Féin dinner is key fundraising event for the organisation and is well published and promoted in advance. The dinner garners media coverage every year. Friends of Sinn Féin is an open and transparent body.”
This afternoon the Labour TD Michael McCarthy said there needed to be transparency around Sinn Féin’s fundraising activities and an assurance that the money raised does not “leak into the coffers of the party here”.
“Sinn Fein like to portray themselves as a party with the common touch, but that doesn’t prevent the likes of Gerry Adams and Pearse Doherty from jetting off to New York tonight for a €500-a-plate fundraising dinner, so that they can rub shoulders with some super-wealthy Americans,” he said.
“There are genuine concerns about this that I believe Sinn Fein must address. Under Irish law, political parties can only accept donations from Irish citizens and I wonder how many of the Manhattan party-goers qualify in that regard.”
In response to McCarthy’s comments a Sinn Féin spokesperson said that the Friends of Sinn Féin is “fully transparent and compliant with US law”.
They added: ”It appears that Michael McCarty has dusted down someone’s old press release in regard to the visit by Gerry Adams and Pearse Doherty visit to New York. Every year Friends of Sinn Féin host a major fundraising dinner and every year a political opponent rolls out the same old line.”
According to IrishCentral.com, Sinn Fein set up its US fundraising organisation in the late 90s with other Friends of Sinn Fein (FOSF) organisations in Canada, Australia and Britain.
Returns filed in the US show that FOSF raised $369,445 from November 2012 to April 2013 and $326,918 between April and June of last year. Total expenditure – which was mainly in travel and in maintaining a full-time office in New York – was listed as $258,486 from November 2012 to April last year.
Adams is also due to address American labour movement leaders at an event in New York tomorrow evening.
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If they allowed customers to download content at very slow speeds so they would be able to play it offline later, then people in rural areas would subscribe in their droves. Big opportunity there.
That’s the difference between Netflix and a Torrent
“We don’t need to change our service, the entire infrastructure for net access needs to change” exceptionally short sited view from a company who pride themselves on being forward thinking. Nevermind the fact that the ability to take things offline is practically an industry requirement, it’s incredibly simple to just cache the content for a period without needing to offer the user the choice. Bad move.
Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons where Skinner is looking for Bart after he bunked off and he goes to the “abandoned 4H Club”? “Am I so out of touch? No. It’s the children who are wrong.”
Sky go extra is great for off line activity. Download in a wifi area, watch at your own leisure while commuting or seat.
Exactly,
And do you feel confused by that option?
This comment from Netflix makes no sense.
Pirate Bay tbh lads.
The issue is that any time you allow content to be downloaded, you increase the risk of the files being copied and shared. Even if you load it up with DRM, chances are it will be cracked or circumvented at some point.
Netflix are using the excuse of consumer confusion to control the supply of their content, and by extension, their revenue stream. They’re in the dominant market position, so they have to. Amazon, being a smaller player (backed by a much bigger company) trying to catch up, can afford to take the risk – even just for the publicity boost.
There’s no risk, Grigori. The worst case scenario already happens everytime a new show is put up on Netflix. It wasn’t even a day after the most recent series of Orange is The New Black went up on Netflix that it was also up on TPB, KAT or whatever other popular torrent sites you like, in HD quality, with the intros cut.
All Netflix are doing here is harming their less tech savvy customers. There’s culchies and people in rural America and developing nations out there who have internet connections hitting 1mbps at a push, they can’t stream Netflix but they could download from it. I’m still baffled that Netflix ever took off to be honest. Torrenting is so much better.
Grigori,
That’s preventing a problem that already exists, with a method that doesn’t work.
Makes zero sense.
Sure recording onto the Sky+ box is doing the same thing but very few bother their balls to convert the filetype and upload it to tinterweb
The Movie HD App let’s you download and watch later. http://moviehdapp.com/
Yeah and it being illegal and liable for shutdown at any time is a great selling point. Good lad.
If I recall correctly there was one released that required you to have a Netflix account to download the Netflix content
The US courts declared that it was against the Netflix terms of service but not illegal because you were merely watching what you paid for
It’s been working well for the last few months.
Maybe they can beat piracy by selling us content that’s invisible. Then you won’t know if it’s worth copying or not, but you’ll just have to use your imagination a bit more.
The real reason is obvious, it converts Netflix . You download the media to watch offline, there’s nothing stopping you then uploading the files to your favourite torrent site.
That’s really not the case.
You can already capture streamed media, so they aren’t preventing anything that isn’t already possible by not allowing downloading of content.
have your say