No moral high ground in Apple mess of our making

Since the EU’s ruling on Apple’s €13bn in back-taxes was announced on Tuesday, the ramparts have been rushed, with all and sundry making definitive statements.

Almost immediately, Finance Minister Michael Noonan said the EU was wrong. How could he know? He might say he disputes the findings, but he made a definitive declaration without approval from cabinet.

On Wednesday, Ryanair boss, Michael O’Leary, said that the Government should tell the EU where to go.

“Frankly, the Irish Government should turn around — they shouldn’t even appeal the decision — they should just write a letter to Europe and tell them politely to fuck off,” said Mr O’Leary.

This is the same EU that facilitated the rise of Ryanair by banning State aid for faltering airlines. Like everybody else, Micko wants it both ways.

The EU itself has been all over the shop. Initially, it said the €13bn was due to the Irish Exchequer, but then claimed other countries could share in the pay-out.

In the US, the treasury department had a pop at the EU.

“We believe that retroactive tax assessments by the commission are unfair, contrary to well-established legal principles, and call into question the rules of individual member states,” it said.

Yet much of the massive global corporate tax-avoidance is engineered by American companies, facilitated by domestic laws, and enacted by American politicians who receive money from those same companies.

The high moral ground is unoccupied on this matter. On RTÉ Radio yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook gave an impassioned defence of his company’s tax arrangements. He might well be correct about the legal position, and genuine about Apple’s commitment to this country, and Apple might not have broken any laws, but its position on tax avoidance is morally indefensible. Apple may be getting a raw deal on this issue, but some would see it as natural justice for paying a fraction of the tax that it should.

The EU’s competition commission has adopted the stance of policeman for the citizens, ensuring that big business pays its fair share. But what cared the EU for the citizens of this country a few years ago, when it decided that the debts for much of Europe’s banking crisis be borne by us? Would the EU be as forceful if this matter involved a multinational’s relationship with France or Germany?

The ruling could be interpreted as Brussels again using a small, peripheral country as a handy experiment in forging a new path. During the recession, that path involved beating a way out of a potentially ruinous financial crisis. Today, it signals the new dispensation, under the OECD, that is determined to go after corporate tax-avoidance.

Back home, credibility is also in short supply. Successive Irish governments have bent over backwards to facilitate foreign companies using Ireland as a base for tax-avoidance. Little ruses such as the ‘double Irish’ ensured that money could be funnelled through this State, filtering out the requirements to pay tax anywhere.

In 2004, then finance minister Charlie McCreevy went one further with legislation allowing foreign companies to set up headquarters, or holding companies, here.

Thousands of brass-plate operations were opened up, facilitating major tax-avoidance in other jurisdictions. The only real benefit to this country was fat fees for a platoon of lawyers and accountants to set everything up. In recent years, the facilitation of special-purpose vehicles for vulture funds to hoover up cheap property has continued the trend.

All of this has added to the perception that Ireland is a tax haven. Technically, it might not be, but the righteous indignation from Cabinet voices about potential reputational damage from the Apple ruling rings hollow. The damage has long been done, and any appeal won’t change that. The EU may not be correct in its ruling, but Ireland has lived dangerously for a long time in facilitating tax-avoidance.

Then, the opposition are mounting their high horses. Parties such as Sinn Féin want the State to bend to the EU’s agenda this time, a complete U-turn from the party’s position when the EU was one element of the Troika. Back then, Gerry Adams told the Troika to go home.

Different position this time, same empty populism.

Anybody suggesting we should take the €13bn has another impediment en route to the high moral ground. Even if the ruling is correct, this country has no right to the money.

If it represents tax that should have been paid, then it must go to the countries in which Apple made the profits that generated the tax. If Ireland facilitated Apple in avoiding tax in other jurisdictions, it should not be rewarded for doing so with money that rightly belongs to others.

Michael Clifford

Ashford Castle, the Abbey and Cong: An 800 year relationship of blood, sweat, tears and kisses

                                                            A view of Cong

William De Burke was a Norman invader who was born in 1160 and became the founder of the Burke/Burghos dynasty in Ireland and the conquerer of the Kingdom of Connacht without actually ruling there. Cathal O’ Connor, younger brother of Rory and the 2nd last High King of Ireland, kept him busy fighting to keep it that way, which saw De Burke’s title watered down later to Lord Of Connacht. At best, De Burke had a foothold in the West rather than a dynasty and managed at least to build a few fortresses about the place, and one of these was a fortress built in 1228 at what is now known as Ashford Castle today, right beside the village of Cong and its famous Abbey. These three places have been an appendage to each other throughout written history of what is known to us, then and now, and continues to be a positive and mutual dependancy of interrelated needs and wants of a benign commercial nature today, leaving out the blood and sweat of yesterday.

Cong Abbey was built in 623, by, you guessed it, Conobite Monks. Cong village grew up naturally around the Abbey afterwards and both fed off each other and the Lough Corrib and Lough Mask that coiled through them. The Abbey burned down in 1114 but the O’ Connor clan threw their weight and money about to rebuild it again over the next two decades. Unfortunately it was destroyed again and likewise the O’ Connor’s rebuilt it once more. In fact, the elder brother, Rory, lived the last 15 years of his life in the Abbey and was buried there in 1198.

                                                           Ashford Castle

The pesky De Burke was not too far away though and attacked the Abbey in 1203 and again it was rebuilt. In the winter between the end of 1205 and the beginning of 1206 William did the only decent thing in his life: he died at the age of forty five years old, and it may be agreed that at the very least it was a painful death as chronicled in this piece just after his demise: “William De Burke plundered Connacht, as well as churches and territories; but God and the saints took vengeance on him for that for he died of a singular disease, too shameful to be described.”  

Of course there was still the matter of the De Burke/Burghes clan descendants who still had that Ashford fortress that was built on the borders of the Abbey and that had cast a silhouette over it’s grounds and a greater shadow over the West of Ireland for almost the next 360 years. The bloody honeymoon was finally about to be over for the De Burke’s and a bloodier one was about to begin in the form of the British forces in 1589, not to liberate, but just enough to make a changing of the guard an English one. 

Cong Abbey

Over time, Ashford became a Castle rather than a fortress and passed through different private ownerships through the succeeding generations because of a pen rather than a sword until Benjamin Guinness purchased it in 1852 along with 26,000 acres. Ben also turned his hand to restoring Cong Abbey yet again and did. Finally in 1939, Ashford Castle was gifted back to the Irish Government from a grandson of Ben. 

Today, Ashford Castle is one of the finest hotels in the world and run by one of the best hotel dynasties in the world: the Tollman family. The only tears shed here these days are for the loss of a daughter to marriage and kisses for the son that they have gained at the many weddings ceremonies played out at the Castle every month and at it's cousin hotel, The Lodge, done the road on the same grounds. The Tollman's reign may very well last even longer than the De Burghos and their relationship with Cong and the Abbey is sure to flourish with it. 

'The scenery around Cong never alters with the passing of time unlike man who ages with the years.'  Oscar Wilde in 1878

Barry Clifford

We need a change of culture for An Garda Síochána, not a new code

Into the breach once more. Another process, another code, another forest of trees to be felled in the name of procedure. Above all, another journey into the dark heart of gobbledegook.

The Policing Authority has sent a call out to the general public for input into a new code of ethics for An Garda Síochána. This process began last April with the invitation for “preliminary views” on a code.

There followed a period of “research and consideration of the submissions received” which led to the development of a draft code.

Now the time has come to reach out and touch the public once more to finalise the code. Thus the journey to publication of a code of ethics will be completed by December 31, in time for the new year. Was it for this the Policing Authority was set up?

There is much within An Garda Síochána which requires addressing, but a code of ethics is most certainly not on that list. A lack of resources continues to dog the force. Efforts are afoot to address this, but there’s a lot of catching up to do.

The plight of new recruits has still not been fully addressed. Why should new gardaí be subjected to inferior pay levels than their colleagues, and deprived of the allowances that ensure they can for the first decade or so of service actually afford to maintain a basic standard of living?

There continues to be problems with organisation, particularly in the area of applying responsibility. A decade on from recommendations in the Morris Tribunal that superintendents “should physically review files of inspectors, sergeants and gardaí to show an interest in cases”, there is grave doubt as to whether this is being fully implemented.

Above all, the outcome of the revelations from the O’Higgins Commission and its report suggests that the negative aspects of garda culture continue to fester.

Some of these matters are beyond the remit of the Policing Authority, but there is still plenty to be going on with instead of engaging in a redundant exercise to establish a new code of ethics.

Not many people know this, but An Garda Síochána already has a code of ethics. It was brought in around 15 years ago when Pat Byrne was commissioner. The code was contained in a little booklet, which included on its second page a declaration of personal commitment, which left a slot for each officer to sign their names declaring that, “I do hereby adopt, accept and commit myself to this Garda Declaration of Professional Values and Ethical Standards.”

At the time there was a row with the Garda Representative Association over whether officers should be compelled to sign up, but that got sorted. The old code is full of the sort of basic common sense statements that apply not just to policing but nearly every walk of life.

For instance, under the heading “moral duty”, it is stated that: “Emphasising that in the performance of our public duties, every staff member of An Garda Síochána is obligated to adhere to and be guided by the ethical, legal and professional principles which are applicable to public policing.”

One would have thought that such a statement would be drilled into every new recruit on day one in Templemore, but there’s no harm in putting it down on paper.

Now turn to the new draft code, in this bright new era of policing. “I will be honest and always act with intergrity; I will pursue the whole truth in establishing and reporting facts in an honest and objective way; I will not commit any act of corruption and will have the courage to oppose and report all such acts.”

Essentially, the code is looking for a commitment not to break the law, which is fine and dandy, but is it really necessary?

Was this the kind of stuff that took six months to formulate before handing it over to the public to have their say on this journey to an ethical force?

In general, garda officers are as honest and harbour as much personal integrity as the average plumber, accountant, carpenter or journalist. Some within the force have higher standards, acutely conscious of the power that has been vested in them since their first day in the job.

A new code of ethics is going to do nothing to change that scenario one way or the other.

The problems within the force are cultural, and will only be addressed through a robust and enforced code of practice in which buck passing and the cover-up of incompetence or laziness is not tolerated.

In order to fulfil its obligation to draft a new code the authority would be much better served in simply replicating the old one with a few bells and whistles attached.

The code will make little difference to policing or the application of ethics and wasting time going through such a torturous process does little to enhance confidence in either the force of the authority.

The authority might be better served examining the detail of policing that does matter.

Following the publication of O’Higgins, the authority had what sounded like a robust meeting with the commissioner, Nóirín O’Sullivan, behind closed doors.

The tenor of the press statement following the meeting suggested that the authority was going to get properly stuck into its brief.

At the next public meeting, all had changed. The commissioner outlined the “journey” the force was on while her team introduced a series of process documents and various bits and bobs that was supposed to illustrate that the whole job was just oxo.

The priority for the authority should be to get past that gobbledegook and identify the real issues that need to be addressed.

A good starting point would be a series of excellent reports from the Garda Inspectorate. Get cracking on that and ethics will take care of itself.

Michael Clifford

Where does employment drift into exploitation?

LITTLE things provide clues as to the direction the country is going.

This week it was revealed that there are 2m people in work for the first time since 2009.

There was also positive news about immigration.

A total of 79,300 people of all nationalities moved into the country in the year to last April, up from 69,300 the previous year. Of the new arrivals, 21,000 represented Irish-born people returning home.

The figures demonstrate that a new day has well and truly dawned after the night of recession.

The Government, and Fine Gael in particular, can with some justification claim that policies it pursued are now bearing fruit.

And the growth is not confined to any one sector — such as construction — but occurring throughout the economy.

Similarly, the growth is not confined to Dublin, but can be seen across the main population centres of the State. Unemployment remains a reality for around 8% of the population but opportunities continue to open up.

There was further proof of this in the CAO offers which were made last Monday.

The courses associated with the economic recovery are in much higher demand. Architecture, engineering and other construction-related courses, along with business, are all attracting greater numbers.

Notwithstanding the rain clouds of Brexit gathering on the horizon, or the fragile nature of the world economy, there are reasons to cheerful. Not everything about the labour market, however is positive or welcome.

For one thing, the nature of employment has gone through some serious changes. It is now accepted in most quarters that the concept of a job for life is past its sell-by date.

“Flexibility” is the buzz word in the labour market, and making it easier for employers to hire and fire in the modern economy makes sense. But where does flexibility drift across the line into exploitation?

Some recent high-profile cases of changed work practices raise questions about the quality of employment for those who are at work. Recently, a high-tech delivery company attempted to change work practices which would see delivery drivers paid per delivery rather than by the hour.

The company, which operates in five Irish cities, attempted the new work practice on a pilot basis in parts of Britain, but pulled back in the face of major opposition, which came even from a Tory government.

Deliveroo was just the latest start-up tech company to attempt to change work practices which effectively force employees to operate as self-employed. This is, in effect, bogus self-employment and is prevalent right across the economy.

At home, a report from the think tank TASC in June outlined how this was a growing problem. In the area of construction alone, according to TASC, those classified as self-employed increased from 25% in 2006 to 38% today.

Last Monday 96FM’s Deirdre O’Shaughnessey reported on how the practice is now growing in the tech sector. The story concerned Cork-based firm Globetech, which employs 480 people in developing high-tech solutions for areas like processing parking tickets.

O’Shaughnessy interviewed “Marie” who has worked in the company for nearly four years on short-term contracts. She would like to be employed, but has been told that she must remain self-employed and work on that basis.

“When it started I didn’t know how long it would go on,” she said.

She attempted to have her situation regularised. Others doing her highly-skilled job in the company are treated as employees, yet she has remained on short-term contracts. “When I asked they said ‘no, I can’t have my contract reviewed’.”

(Globetech issued a statement in which it said that fewer than 10% of those working for the company are classified self-employed).

Marie is among the thousands coming to this country to work, but her predicament is not confined to those described as non-nationals. She is highly skilled and a mother who would like to settle down here.

Despite being officially self-employed, workers like Marie are effectively employees. A genuinely self-employed person would be free to offer their services to more than one entity, but that is not the case here.

To all intents and purposes, the classification of “self employed” is entirely bogus, but perfectly legal.

As solicitor John Boylan, who works in the area of employment law, points out: “Self-employed people pay their own tax, their own social insurance, they are not entitled to sick pay or to holiday pay and if the position doesn’t work out they cannot take any action for unfair dismissal.”

The self- employed person would also run into problems in qualifying for the job-seeker’s allowance in the event of not having a contract renewed.

What effect does this have?

On the employer’s side it saves on costs, including PRSI and pension contributions. For the employee it heightens job insecurity.

Also, crucially, it prevents the prospect of long-term planning, such as buying a home. Banks will not lend to somebody whose employment is so insecure.

That, in turn, has an effect on society at large. Preventing a considerable cohort of maturing people from putting down roots can only have an adverse impact on the character of communities.

The State is not blind to any of this but the worrying thing is its response.

The system of bogus self-employment ensures there is a loss to the exchequer of huge sums in employer PRSI contributions, from €20m in the construction industry to an estimated €80m across the economy.

Yet an employer can decide to classify an employee as a self-employed contractor by merely clicking an option in the Revenue’s online system.

The classification of whether a worker should be an employee or self-employed is called Scope and located in the Department of Social Protection. “

If a subsequent investigation deems that the categorisation was effectively bogus and the person should be reclassified as an employee, there is no penalty for the employer.

For some, the classification of self-employed suits perfectly and is appropriate.

The problem is the growing number that are being forced into that category. It represents a small but significant shift in wealth from labour to capital at a time when in equality is growing exponentially.

This, in turn, is being reflected across the world politically through disaffection with mainstream politics and flight to the extremes.

More jobs in the economy are welcome, but it’s time the Government began addressing the drift in employment practices that are unhealthy for society.

Small things show where the country is going, and it shouldn’t take much to correct an obvious wrong.

Michael Clifford

Ireland's Mideast origins for our hunter-gathering genes

Now is the time to find big, ripe, juicy blackberries, fresh and unwormed. Picture: Damien Enright

I wonder were the bones found in a cave in Co Mayo earlier this month those of hunter-gatherers, or are they that old? Once the archaeologist have dated them, the geneticists might decide to DNA analyse them, and find their genetic history. Who knows what information about the journey of mankind to this sacred isle such bones might reveal.

In 2015, study of the remains of a woman who died 5,200 years ago in Co Down revealed that she was of Middle Eastern extraction. She would have been a member of a group of Stone Age farmers, our forbearers, themselves descendants of the first agriculturists in the fertile crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers that flow into the Persian Gulf. She had black hair and brown eyes, typical of Middle Eastern people. Middle Eastern DNA —perhaps Syrian? — is in our blood.

The first cereals were grown in Syria 9,000 years ago; the first hybrid trees in Jordan, 2,000 years earlier. Her ancestors arrived in Ireland, bringing with them cereals, livestock and pottery, and the colourful, edible snail we find everywhere, but often close to the sea.

The banded snail, Capaea nemoralis, most likely arrived in Ireland with Mesolithic migrants moving west. Evidence of its presence begins 8,000 years ago, and there is a continuous fossil record from that time. Its DNA matches that of banded snails found only in the Pyrenees, on the route Mesolithic migrants would probably have taken to Ireland. They may have carried them as a fresh food source.

In tandem with the study of this Stone Age woman’s remains, the Trinity College/ Queen’s University team studied the DNA of three men buried on Rathlin Island, Co Antrim 1,000 to 1,500 years after she died.

Using a technique called whole- genome analysis to ‘read’ not only the unique characteristics of individuals but to compare the DNA from all four bodies, the scientific teams aimed to arrive at a broader understanding of migration and settlement.

The three men in Rathlin lived in the Bronze Age and were descendants of peoples that originated in the Pontic Steppe in southern Russia, the Baltic States, Poland and Central Europe. That we have some of their DNA sequences is beyond doubt.

They carried a distinctive genetic disorder called haemochromatosis, a hereditary variant which causes the body to store too much iron in the liver, heart and pancreas. The variant is evident in almost all Irish DNA, so universal that it has been called the Celtic disease.

They also carried the gene that allows adults to digest milk —useful in the largely dairy-product economy that Ireland has become. Many other races become intolerant to milk after infancy. They were more like the Irish of today. Their eyes were often blue; their antecedents, the farmers, had brown eyes. Their language may even reflect an early form of our national language.

Early newcomers did not compete with those already on the land but became Irish themselves.

These northern Europeans brought the Bronze Age — bronze ploughshares, metal tools and craftsmanship in gold. By the time of their arrival, the farmers would already have subsumed, or integrated with, the hunter-gatherer population that preceded them.

So, the ‘Irish’ moved from hunting-gathering, to farming, to a metal age culture.

The human story is a narrative of movement and migration, and an exchange of genes and cultures that over-ride border controls.

After the Bronze Age came the Iron Age and the legendary Celts, with their flowing hair and flowing robes. They began their migration out of Central Europe in 1,000BC, possibly under some pressure from the Roman Empire, and began to reach Ireland from about 600BC onward. Before long, the old Bronze Age culture was supplanted but, of course, farming never stopped.

Another migration, another step forward, added DNA and, possibly, hybrid vigour. With the Celts, we became more technologically, artistically and linguistically sophisticated.

What these lately-discovered Co Mayo bones will tell us is not known. Perhaps their owners were Stone Age farmers, Bronze Age metal workers, bardic Celts or perhaps they lived in the ancient days of picking berries and hunting giant elk, or knocking trees and creating arable land, like the Ceide Fields in Mayo, 6,000 years old.

Damien Enright

Cost of going to court reinforces inequalities

Like a posh hotel, the civil courts are open to everyone, but only the wealthy can afford to go   there. Michael Clifford highlights some recent cases that show the prohibitive cost of justice

High Court Judge Mr Justice Max Barrett. Picture: Courtpix

Maureen Lawless is in her 70s and in danger of losing her home. She was not among those who made a disastrous decision to buy property during the years of the bubble. She did not drink herself into debt. She is not a gambler.

She did, however, take what in retrospect was a huge gamble. She sought justice through the courts on the basis that she felt she had been grievously wronged. Such a course of action is supposed to be a cherished right for citizens in a democracy. In truth, it’s a sham.

Last month, the High Court granted a judgement against Maureen Lawless for €176,433. This was money accumulated in legal fees by her former solicitor who had taken on her case in 2010. The case involved a land auction in which Ms Lawless felt she had been wronged. The case was subsequently settled. Ms Lawless had made an initial payment of €5,000 to the solicitor, Larry Burke of Cavan firm Burke, Hunt and Co, but hadn’t coughed up anything else since. The accumulated bill also included fees for a senior and junior counsel, coming to about €64,000.

At the hearing in which judge Max Barrett granted the judgement against Ms Lawless, she couldn’t even afford representation, the court heard. Judge Barrett also noted that she was in danger of losing her home as a result of her foray into the legal world. Despite all that, the judge said he was legally bound to grant the judgement. Ms Lawless was a competent adult who had retained legal counsel and that comes with a cost.

However, the judge is not an island and he couldn’t help noticing the injustice of a system alleged to be route to justice. Of the size of the fees he said: “These are enormous, though not at all untypical, fees which point to a continuing deficiency in our legal system… proper legal representation, at least in civil proceedings, is increasingly a boon that is properly affordable by the few who are rich, and a bane to be feared by the many who are not.”

That, in a nutshell, is the kernel of the scandal of legal fees in this country. The courts, like the Ritz, are open to everybody, but confined to the wealthy.

In this, the system in which civil law is administered serves not as a great leveller but an instrument to reinforce inequities in society.

Judge Barrett’s intervention in the Lawless case was the second time in recent months that he referenced the cost of going to court. In April, he ruled on an application for a firm to provide security of costs, which involves putting up money that can be used to pay legal fees in the event of losing an action.

The action involves a Cork-based training company called Euro Safety which is suing Solas, the state training agency which was formerly Fás. Euro Safety claims it has lost business as a result of blowing the whistle on bad practices in Fás in 2002, which led to a damning report on the state agency.

The Cork firm believes it is entitled to compensation for the manner in which its business has allegedly suffered.

In response, Solas asked the court to force Euro Safety to put up €600,000 as security in case it loses the case. This figure includes €220,000 in solicitor’s costs and €108,500 for a senior counsel for an estimated 20-day hearing. That’s over one hundred grand for the barrister for a month’s work.

The judge pointed out that Euro Safety did not have access to those kind of funds. “The case highlights, yet again, the need for a systemic solution to the present crushing cost of High Court litigation,” he said.

He refused the Solas application on the basis that the case was in the public interest. But what of a case that was just in the interests of a private company seeking justice?

Legal practitioners get all sniffy when judges like Barrett comment on what is plainly obvious before their eyes. It’s regarded as letting the side down or, more often, bad grace from somebody who toiled in the lucrative vineyard themselves before accepting a state job and plum pension. An alternative view might be that the bench provides a wider lens to examine what citizens are subjected to when they opt to go to court.

The sniffy attitude was also deployed against former Justice Minister Alan Shatter when he made attempts to reform the system. In parallel to his political career, Mr Shatter had enjoyed a lucrative legal one. And now he was spoiling the party for everybody else. Again, perhaps the former minister was in a position to look at the system from the point of view of citizens, rather than partitioners.

Mr Shatter’s grand plans were shredded through assiduous lobbying by the business and, while the former minister was not up to the job in other areas of his brief, his drive to reform the system was sadly lost on his departure from office. What emerged instead was a watered down Legal Services Regulation Act which is due to come into force in the coming months.

One of the few reforms in that act will ensure that costs will have to be more transparent. No longer will citizens find out well into a process that they have accumulated crippling debts.

The act makes provision for a review of fees, written notice in clear language, and a new set of principles for adjudicating on costs. The whole thing, however, is a long way from the changes initially envisaged by Shatter.

His plans were lifted to a large extent from an excellent Competition Authority report in 2006 which highlighted the problems with the restrictive practices and lack of transparency within the two arms of the business.

Another recent case illustrated another aspect to the charging of fees. Costs in a medical negligence case have been contested in both the High Court and the Court of Appeal over the last year. At issue are elements to the cost bill which include a claim for a solicitor’s instruction fee of €485,000, which the taxing master originally reduced to €276,000. The firm in question, Augustus Cullen Law of Wicklow appealed the ruling in the High Court, where it lost, and more recently in the Court of Appeal, where it won.

Another element of the costs was the fee for the senior counsel involved Denis McCullough. He had claimed a “brief fee” of €125,000, because of the “novelty and complexity” of the case. A brief fee is awarded for reading oneself into the case. Thereafter, his daily fee was €3,500 per day.

The court heard that Mr McCullough subsequently accepted a reduced brief fee of €65,000 and that was no longer contested. So the senior counsel accepted his fee to be about half what he had originally charged. This is not particularly unusual in the Law Library, and there is nothing whatsoever wrong with it.

But is there any other line of work where a practitioner simply drops their initial fee by about half for no particular reason other than its size is contested? One thing’s for sure, that’s nice work if you can get it.

Michael Clifford

Remembering John Wayne

"Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday."

"I suppose my best attribute, if you want to call it that, is sincerity. I can sell sincerity because that's the way I am."

"Courage is being scared to death... and saddling up anyway."

"Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity - and I don't mean simple - it'll be good, and the public will know it."

On my tombstone write: ‘Ugly, strong and dignified.’

John Wayne (1907-1979)