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IN A STINGING press statement released this afternoon, Justice Minister Alan Shatter criticised the Irish Independent for its front-page headline today. The headline, “Shatter – I refuse to reveal if I met Lowry”, has been described by Shatter as “predictably a grossly misleading headline”.
The minister said that the headline “quotes me as saying that ‘I refuse to reveal if I met Lowry’” but that what he had actually said was “As Minister for Justice I am not participating in Independent Newspapers agenda”. This second quote is included in the copy of the Irish Independent article twice.
Shatter claims that the newspaper article is part of “an agenda that has been in play for some time” and that he was subject to a “loaded question” from the Independent’s political editor Fionnan Sheahan. (You can read Shatter’s full statement here).
He goes on to say that the question of whether he met Michael Lowry or not in the days following the publication of the Moriarty Report is “an unethical media project of compiling a blacklist of elected TDs that ministers should not meet on legitimate official business and also with whom no conversations should ever take place”.
He added:
Should Ministers only legitimately engage with those TDs with whose words and deeds, both past and present, they agree or with those approved by the media?
This, he said, is a “slippery slope” with “echoes of the discredited McCarthy era of the 1950s in US politics”.
While the exact nature of the “loaded question” is not clear, the Irish Independent is not the only news outlet that has been posing the question of whether Minister Shatter met with Michael Lowry. TheJournal.ie and other media outlets have been asking that question since Saturday – we were told yesterday by a spokesperson for Shatter that “The Minister hasn’t provided me with an answer”. Juno McEnroe of the Irish Examiner reported on Tuesday of last week that Environment Minister Phil Hogan had with Michael Lowry six days after the release of the Moriarty Report.
When asked by TheJournal.ie if this and other media outlets could then conceivably be included in the minister’s allegations of “an unethical media project of compiling a blacklist of elected TDs that ministers should not meet on legitimate business”, a spokesperson for Minister Shatter said that they were “not sure that the minister will have anything further to add” to today’s statement but understood that the statement was “very specific” to the Independent article.
In March of this year, Alan Shatter, speaking during a debate in the Seanad on privacy legislation, accused some Irish journalists of working toward a “contrived narrative” in their articles. He alleged that some journalists left out details in stories to further this agenda.
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Talk to your doctor first!
Never self medicate with aspirin, especially if you are on any other medication!
I second this. I know someone who took an aspirin a day because he read it would be good for him, and he had to go to the doctor when he got a paper cut because it wouldn’t stop bleeding for hours as a result of the aspirin affecting his blood’s ability to clot.
Yeah, it makes you bruise like a peach and causes gastrointestinal bleeding too.
Take it when you NEED it. It’s a medication not a vitamin tablet. It thins your blood,there may be pros but guaranteed to have cons too
Do not take it though if you are on any other medication, just ask your pharmacist for advice – it’s free!
I dont know. As an ex smoker a 37% drop in the likelyhood of developing cancer for me is about as good as its gonna get. Sign me up red thumbers!
While any treatment to help treat cancer is to be celebrated, wasn’t there a link between aspirin and stomach cancer before? All be it with underlying medical problems such as ulcers. Great if it does help some people in their treatment.
Isn’t this article a little irresponsible ? Considering there are people who will take any news report to heart. Should The Journal not include a disclaimer when publishing headlines like that ?
True…until two years from now and the doctors are telling you oops it’l actually give you herpes… Watch this space,you heard it here first
They already said last year that all those people taking it for stroke and heart problems shouldn’t be because of the side effects..
I wonder who paid for these studies and how many of the researchers are connected to the manufacturers of Aspirin? Sadly, industry funded marketing – I mean, research, is a tad too common..
This can’t be healthy! I think it takes quite a bit to do it but doesn’t it feck up your kidneys?
Not really on 75mg a day, you need to have renal impairment.
If you want your best shot at beating cancer stop eating any processed food including bread, stop eating red meat, try and stick to fish and as much veg as you can, you could even going vegan if you did it right, then your risk of heart disease and cancer is HUGELY reduced, and you would add years to your life.
Huge stigma in the Western world regarding smoking yet there’s no stigma with processed food fair enough it’s not as obvious and extreme as smoking but it is still a huge cause.
If anyone feels like changing their lives id recommend Joel furhman, “eat to live”.
I don’t live by this policy 100%, but even get yourself half way there, and not only will you reduce your risk of cancer, you will look and feel a whole lot better.
To sum up, im the past few 100s years humans have gotten themselves addicted to crap and dangerous food.
True, being overweight (even moderately) and lack of exercise greatly increase your risk of cancer.
Our addiction to high processed sugar in foods, along with high levels of bad cholesterol is killing all of us.
But it’s well to remember genetics, if you have relatives with certain forms of cancer such as colon-rectal, get yourself checked out regardless. Too often by the time symptoms start showing, there is a lot of damage done.
Anyway, back on topic, aspirin and it’s derivatives are some of the best pharmaceutical products ever discovered by mankind, but there is no need for a healthy individual to be taking them long term.
Humans have been eating red meat for thousands of years. I agree with you about processed foods though. Bake your own wholemeal bread, use fresh produce where posible and maintain an active lifestyle to keep healthy and live longer.
A real life miracle drug… And I’m allergic!
Aspirin sales must be down for the pharmaceutical corporations
I have to agree with Ciaran – there is not enough balance in this article warning about the dangers of taking daily asprin. Below are quotes from another article on the subject
“But experts warn that there is still not enough proof to recommend it to prevent cancer cases and deaths and warn that the drug can cause dangerous side effects like stomach bleeds.
Prof Peter Rothwell, from Oxford University, and colleagues, who carried out the latest work, had already linked aspirin with a lower risk of certain cancers, particularly bowel cancer.”
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