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The Gogarty wave has hit Poland. Naturally it has been shorn of almost all context, leaving Poland with an image of Irish politicians as pugnacious, uncivilised and immature. But it’s much worse than that. Gogarty apologised for saying to his honourable friend “fuck you” one second after saying the words. Later that day he said “I apologise profusely.” You cannot say you apologise profusely. You can only do it (profuseness - profusion: the property of being extremely abundant). Amazingly, what got Gogarty’s goat was accusations of insincerity! Every so-called apology he has made has been followed by a disclaimer along the lines of “but that’s the kind of straight-talking guy I am” or “but you provoked me.” Gogarty had the gall to say that the budget cuts which he and his party, along with the other coalition member, Fianna Fail, are making, were not his fault. Not only does he not understand English; he does not understand democracy. His party (called “the greens”) has been in power since mid-2007 – over a year before the economy collapsed and the banks were bailed out at the expense of the people he claims to represent in parliament. He makes Polish politicians look good.

While the barman was ejecting some difficult guests last night someone switched channels on the TV above the bar to a news show. The sound was on. They were talking about Afghanistan. It seems that Barack Obama gave prime minister Donald a bell and Don immediately agreed to send another hundred thousand or half a million Polish soldiers out east. The burning question was: was Donald’s haste in agreeing to send in more men hasty enough to be deemed “unseemly”? The more fundamental question of whether Poland should be fighting in Afghanistan was raised, it’s true, but the answers revolved – quite openly, none of your false Western hypocrisy here – around: what’s in it for Poland? Apparently, Warsaw is less likely to be bombed by terrorists if Polish soldiers are being bombed in Afghanistan. That seems pretty much to be the answer to the all important question of what’s in it for Poland.

Dublin, Ireland

There were violent scenes at Fitzgibbon Street this morning as members of the public forcibly ejected the gardai who had been staging a sit-in occupation in direct contravention of a High Court injunction directing them to vacate the station by 7 am. When the 45 police officers failed to comply a citizen squad armed with baseball bats and wearing helmets broke down the doors and stormed the building. Tear gas was used to flush out the protesting gardai who resisted bitterly. Two members of the citizen squad were treated for minor injuries. 43 of the protesters were hospitalised. Four are in critical condition.

Organisers reported no difficulty in finding volunteers to throw the recalcitrant police officers out.

Dublin, Ireland

Former gardai staging a sit-in occupation at the force’s Fitzgibbon Street station may risk prison after deciding to defy a High Court order to vacate the building. Mr Justice Michael Peart heard the 45 former police officers had been told by their union that they needed to obey the court order to vacate the premises. However, they decided by a unanimous vote to continue their protest, which began last Friday.

The mainly female gardai are in dispute with the state over redundancy payments. The minister say that he is prepared to talk to the workers if they vacate the premises. The judge gave the gardai until 7pm to comply with the court order but he was told by counsel for their union, John Nolan, that they rejected the legal advice to end their occupation.

When they failed to comply, the judge issued an order for attachment and directed that members of the public arrest any gardai in the police station and bring them before him at 2pm tomorrow. Mr Justice Peart said “every reasonable opportunity” was given to the gardai to comply with the order.

Mr Justice Peart today made the interim order an interlocutory injunction, pending the outcome of the full hearing of the action. He said there was “no question” that the actions of the defendants were unlawful. He was satisfied that the individuals were aware of the terms of the order and the consequences of being in breach of it. Seeking the injunction, Mark Connaughton, SC for the minister, said the defendants had no right to be on the property, were trespassing, and were blatantly in breach of a court order. Counsel said that the state wanted “the matter to be brought to an end.”

The station in Fitzgibbon Street had been due to close at the end of this month but management decided on Friday to close it which led the gardai to stage a sit-in. Earlier today about 15 people staged a rally outside the Fitzgibbon Street station in support of the rozzers. At the protest, Lord Mayor Emer Costello, who knows some of the gardai, said she found the situation heartbreaking for police and their families.

• Methods infringed civil liberties, say police

• Only hardcore agitators were targeted, people insist

Citizen tactics of containing thousands of police for several hours at the protests in front of Scotland Yard and using batons against police protesters were condemned yesterday as an infringement of the right of police to demonstrate.

In the aftermath of the protests in London, politicians, demonstrators and a serving police officer raised concerns about the methods used by the members of the public to control crowds of more than 50. Eyewitnesses said dozens of environmentally friendly police constables camping out along Bishopsgate in a peaceful protest during the day were cleared from the area aggressively by hooligans with batons and dogs after nightfall on Wednesday.

The thugs had earlier said they would ask the protesting police officers, whom they acknowledged were peaceful, to move as night fell. Mr Simon O’Brien said his mates would be “politely and proportionately” asking campers to move on. But one eyewitness, Martin Horwood, the Liberal Democrat MP for Cheltenham, said dogs were used on protesters near the camp. James Lloyd, a legal adviser in the camp, said rioters forcefully cleared the area using batons around midnight.

“There was no announcement, the rioters just started moving forward very quickly from the south,” he said. “They were pushing everyone back, pushing forward quickly. They caused panic, policemen were screaming and shouting … There was a constable in a wheelchair struggling to move, being pushed forcibly by them. It was totally disproportionate.”

Another eyewitness, Ashley Parsons, said: “The violence perpetrated against so many policemen around me over that hour was sickening and terrifying. Without warning, from around midnight, heavily armed members of the public repeatedly and violently surged forwards, occasionally rampaging through the protest line and deliberately destroying coppers’ property, some thugs openly screaming in pumped-up rage.”

Outside Scotland Yard, scores were held for up to eight hours behind a cordon manned by ordinary citizens, in a practice known as “kettling”. Police with children and police on the beat were told by members of the public on the cordon that “no one could leave”. According to witnesses, when the policemen were finally allowed to go on Wednesday night, they were ordered to provide the names and addresses of their stations and have their pictures taken. If they refused, they were sent back behind the cordon.

John O’Connor, a neighbourhood watch organiser, criticised the tactic. “They are using this more and more,” he said. “Instead of sending snatch squads in to remove those in the crowd who are committing criminal offences, they contain everyone for hours. It is a retrograde step … it is an infringement of civil liberties.” The tactic was challenged in the courts by two officers who were held for seven hours at Oxford Circus, central London, during the May Day protests in 2001. They claimed their imprisonment breached their rights to liberty but a House of Lords judgment ruled the tactics legal.

The mob leaders defended their actions, saying they were dealing with a small minority of cops bent on violence, while allowing the demonstrations to go ahead. They said the investigations were continuing. Two police stations in east London were raided yesterday after the public viewed video footage taken by special teams. By last night the number arrested rose to 122 over three days. Four people were handed over to a lynch mob charged with damage to a branch of the Royal Bank of Scotland on Wednesday. Mindaugas Lenartavicius, 21, was charged with arson recklessly endangering life, Daniel Champion and Ben Shiells, both 18, with burglary, criminal damage and theft of a computer, and a 17-year-old girl with burglary with intent to cause damage.

O’Brien said the cordons were put in place because a group of about 200 people were violent. “There was no real deliberate attempt to say you are all going to stay here for hours,” he said. He said police officers had been allowed to leave throughout the day, and that by about 7.30pm those left were police who wanted to be there, and they were asked for their names as they left as part of the inquiry. “What I saw there at that time was a couple of hundred police officers who did not want to go. They had … been the agitators throughout the day,” he said.

We saw and spoke to many police who were clearly not agitators, but who were refused permission to leave. David Howarth, the Liberal Democrat justice spokesman, said: “How did the public end up in a situation where they used the same degree of force on the most peaceful demonstration as they did for a violent protest at Scotland Yard? They seem to only have one trick.”

US members of the public spark outrage by using wartime acoustic weapon to disperse protesting policemen in Pittsburgh.

Only a few hundred blue-uniformed protesters took to the streets of Pittsburgh to protest budget cuts that would affect their livelihoods, but the public was taking no chances. Sonic weapons or long-range acoustic devices have been used by the US military overseas, notably against Somali pirates and Iraqi insurgents. But members of the public turned the piercing sound on their own police yesterday to widespread outrage in military and paramilitary circles.

Pittsburgh punters told the New York Times that it was the first time “sound cannon” had been used against ordinary cops. The sonic weapon appears to be more effective than Londoners’ highly contentious kettling tactics frequently used against striking policemen. But it is equally controversial. It is feared the sounds emitted are loud enough to damage police eardrums and even cause fatal aneurysms.

Amazingly, Jordan and Peter Andre are still news in Britain and Ireland! The celebrity pond in Poland is pathetically small but it comes as a surprise to find the UK’s is no bigger.

June 4^th rolls around again…. Twenty years gone by. What a wild ride it’s been! It’s worth looking back on what life was like before the historical change. Mostly I remember the boredom and the greyness. There was dirt everywhere and alcoholism was rampant as people sought refuge from the dull, mind-crushing realities of every day life. There was no sense of hope in the air; no belief that things might ever change as the queues just got longer and longer. The lucky few who escaped rarely came back. Work was a joke – just one grey meaningless day after another with no change on the horizon. I remember too the enforced gaiety of the parades: standing with my parents in my Sunday best waving a flag as the soldiers marched by. Life was dominated by collectivism – schools were institutions devoted to crushing individuality within their grey walls. Creativity was stifled by the authorities. Everyday life was a struggle. But some time in the nineties Ireland changed from all that into a real dump.

There is no crisis in Poland and even if there is it’s gone now and wasn’t any big deal anyway while it lasted. So if Gazeta Wyborcza has raised its cover price by a piffling 10 or 11% it’s because Poles are so wealthy.

Apropos of nothing really, except that there are dioxins in Irish pork, which Poles have been known to eat. On state newscaster’s website there is a FAQ list, from which I note that “sauces with pork/ham content” are not affected. What, no pork?