The Sunday Times January 19, 2020 17 COMMENT Brenda Power Marked for death by their Hugo Boss tracksuits hile the murdered boy laces confiscated but your gangland feud, wasn’t enough to galvanise a their visible means of support, and we l Bringing the farmers’ pick up their children from was still a missing person, swagger intact. Such subtleties are response. It took the satanic murder of a have the Special Criminal Court to put tractor protest to Dublin creches 20 miles or more gardai compiled a scorned by modern gangsters, though. young lad, and the brazen distribution of them on trial without endangering city after the Dail had been down the road. And heaven description of what he Anybody can discard their shoelaces, footage of his mutilated body on civilian jurors. We may need some form dissolved, according to help any airline passengers was wearing when he but only “somebody” can afford to drop WhatsApp, to get the reaction seen with of emergency powers legislation to close Restaurant Association of trying to make a flight on went out last Sunday a grand on an overpriced ski jacket when the kidnapping of Quinn Industrial down the kingpins — and now, with a Ireland boss Adrian Thursday evening, with night. You didn’t need to everyone knows they’re claiming Holdings director Kevin Lunney. Youths general election under way, might be Cummins, was a bit like both the city centre be a detective working the jobseeker’s allowance of €200 a week. If you weren’t careful about what are their best chance to get it. travelling to Croke Park and the M50 snarled up Wgangland beat to suspect that Keane When he put on his Goose jacket and messages you opened on group chats Gardai also need local policing to spot on the Monday after for hours. Mulready-Woods was never coming his Boss gear and set out last week, poor, last week, you’d have seen that footage. I the likes of Mulready-Woods before they an All-Ireland final. Still, it’s debatable home again — all you had to do was look doomed Mulready-Woods must have did. And unless another young body was bought grow too embedded in gangs. They need Some city-centre whether a quiet mid- at that list of costly designer clobber. thought he had donned a fearsome recently desecrated in that exact communities and families to act when a restaurants, many of them January weekday for the Here is what an unemployed teenager, armour that at once distinguished and manner on the drab floral carpet of a by gangs jobless young lad comes home with a with Irish beef steaks and restaurant trade was who should have been home studying protected him. It didn’t protect him, but small sitting room, then this crime has fancy new phone, trainers or expensive burgers on their menus, entirely down to the for his Leaving Cert, had chosen from his it should have distinguished him to breached new depths of evil. Gardai say for the bike — Mulready-Woods was a skilled were entirely empty last farmers. In fact, I’d have wardrobe for an average evening out: a someone other than his awestruck it’s fake, while simultaneously warning scrambler rider, according to his sister’s Thursday evening, he said, thought at least some Hugo Boss tracksuit, worth about €300; younger associates, his ruthless that the video might deter witnesses. But price Facebook tribute. so the protest was not commuters might have Hugo Boss trainers (€150); a Gucci handlers, and his barbaric killers. it might also deter other young lads from Gangs prey on impressionable just futile but opted to eat in town and let Kingsnake baseball cap (€250); and a red Since the 17-year-old was tortured, deciding that a Goose jacket is worth the of a youngsters as they are mobile, eager and counterproductive. the roads clear. Canada Goose Macmillan parka (€875). murdered and dismembered, there has risk. The impunity these gangs must feel, biddable. They’ll move product, collect Staging a rush-hour That might have been a It’s known as a “Goose jacket”, and the been much hand-wringing from gardai to parade their wickedness so casually, designer money and carry out threats. Mulready- go-slow of hundreds of more viable option for your eye-watering price tag makes it an about the depravity of the perpetrators, shames the country. Woods reportedly strangled the pet cat thousands of euros’ worth average wage slave if the instant signifier of status and clout. and the need to bring them to justice. And the shame is that gardai have the jacket of an innocent woman he terrorised over of farm vehicles on the price of a steak, in the A surprising amount of street fashion But the people of Louth and of Longford, resources to tackle them, and the a relative’s drugs debt. Youths are gridlocked M50 was also a cheapest city-centre originates in gangland. The fad for where a similar type of drugs-based intelligence, and the special bought for the price of a designer jacket shortsighted move. restaurant, wasn’t about low-slung jeans and trainers worn feuding is terrorising the town, have investigations and armed response and the envy of former classmates You don’t win public 10 times the €3.50 per kilo — without laces came from the Los Angeles been crying out for help for months. The units. They have the Criminal Assets dressing out of Penneys. Then they’re as sympathy for your cause by 50c less than the British rate ghettos, and meant you’d just been freed shooting of an innocent taxi driver, as he Bureau to move in on gangland figures dispensable as the cheapest fast fashion. delaying commuters facing for often poorer quality from police custody with your belt and ferried a leading figure in the Drogheda whose lifestyles are not consistent with [email protected] lengthy journeys home, and meat — that the Irish beef some of them in a hurry to farmer gets. QUOTES OF THE WEEK “I’ve won the bet, but I’ve got rather fond of it” Gerry Adams explains how he made a deal to let his hair grow until a general election was called “You can’t eat cheese if you’re a vegan? It’s just a crime against cheese-lovers” I considered doing Veganuary, but I can’t give up my cheese, says UK prime minister Boris Johnson “Nobody ever reads manifestos during an election” Fine Gael minister Regina Doherty plays down her party’s impending promises “On my next tour, instead of taking 58 trucks, I’m going to take 57” And I’ll only use a private jet if I have to, says the singer Robbie Williams, mocking woke rockers “I want a family man running the country” Sinn Fein councillor Paddy Holohan has a dig at the taoiseach David Quinn Hopkins’s Benedict is played for liberal agenda Grossly simplistic caricature of former pontiff in The Two Popes is at odds with the real humble, gracious and courteous man f we were able to elect a pope, and song Eleanor Rigby, the German cleric In other words, not at all like last week because of an apparent row here nor there, though, because it is part more outspoken against abortion, the two candidates were the present still responds: “Who?” Hopkins’s brash portrayal of him. The between them over priestly celibacy. of a much wider debate within the gender ideology and euthanasia than is pontiff Francis and his predecessor The two men debate theology and the Two Popes goes right back to the Once again, we were given the narrative church about how it should position commonly supposed. He is noted for Benedict XVI, there is no question future of the church. Benedict is caricature of Benedict many people of Benedict the Traditionalist versus itself in the modern world. One side attacks on capitalism, and says we must about who would win. It would be interested only in preserving its envisioned before he visited Britain. Francis the Reformer. favours some sort of compromise, and do more to save the planet. But Benedict Francis — by a landslide. If he were a doctrines, while Francis wants to open Also, the film was made before we saw What happened was that a new book the other believes even steeper decline also criticised the excesses of capitalism, candidate in our general election, out the church to the people. Benedict Francis get tetchy with a woman in St entitled From the Depths of Our Hearts, lies down that path, because this has and when he resigned in 2013 was he’d win, too. Watch The Two Popes likes ecclesiastical ostentation; Francis Peter’s Square over Christmas after she which purported to be co-authored by been the fate of liberal Protestantism. named “the first green pontiff” by a Ion Netflix if you want to see why. loathes it. What we get from The Two grabbed his hand and yanked him Benedict and Cardinal Robert Sarah, a The debate is partly a subset of the prominent environmentalist. In that film Jonathan Pryce plays Popes, in other words, is a grossly towards her, earning an annoyed slap senior official at the Vatican, argued in ongoing battle in society between those There are some differences, of course. Francis, and Anthony Hopkins portrays simplistic caricature of Benedict. from the pontiff. favour of keeping priestly celibacy. The who think western history, and not Francis has definitely put less emphasis Benedict.