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Historic defeat of Fianna Fail

Enda's actually much more chubby in real life than he appears in the media (I observed this when he came to my great-Aunt's funeral).

And he's not the lightweight people think he is - he proved that when he slapped down the heave against him last year.

'No more nibbling at my leader's bum'.
 
Idris2002 said:
That's not a bad way of putting it, except that FF lost their populist mojo in the Ahern and Cowen years.

And FG are quite obnoxious enough without having to label them fascist. They did absorb the Blueshirts in the 1930s, and that's always been a handy stick to beat them with, but in fairness the original leadership swiftly moved to exclude Eoin O'Duffy and his clique from positions of leadership.
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You're right, I should have said fascist antecedents.
 
I've done some sums and combined electoral support for Lab/SF/ULA/Green/Indies in Dublin looks roughly like this.

Dublin North West: 70%
Dublin Central: 65%
Dublin South Central: 65%
Dublin South West: 60%
Dublin West: 55%
Dublin Mid West: 50%
Dublin North: 50%
Dun Laoghaire: 50%
Dublin North Central: 50%
Dublin North East: 50%
Dublin South East: 40%
Dublin South: 30%

The rural areas of the country are for the most part swamped with blueshirts and pocked with FF holdouts, Mayo being the starkest example, 80% support for FG/FF there. What are we going to do with them at all at all.
 
copliker said:
The rural areas of the country are for the most part swamped with blueshirts and pocked with FF holdouts, Mayo being the starkest example, 80% support for FG/FF there. What are we going to do with them at all at all.
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They're the lads to worry about to be sure, so they are.
 
One ring to rule them all,

One ring to find them.

One ring to bring them all,

And in the darkness bind them.

In the County of Mayo, where the shadows lie.
 
Spanky Longhorn said:
Anyway never mind Fianna Fail, how did the independent TD Peader O'Phile do?
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1850.jpg
 
Hate to say this about the nasty little shitebag but Enda Kenny's inspirational speech today in response to the Cloyne report on child abuse and the failure of the Holy See was unbelievably important. There really is no going back to the days of FF slavish devotion to the church. Growing up in Dublin 40 years ago How many of us could imagine a Taoiseach using language like:"the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism....the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day."

In my day the FGers were timid liberals at best and well I remember the number of times my FG classmates would abandon me and the other socialist atheist when we dared to stand toe to toe with Father Declan on abortion or contraception. So I know Kenny and his ilk haven't been at the forefront of our fight to secularise the Republic. And no doubt his passion today reflects the absolute revulsion of the vast majority without which he'd be as timid as the likes of Fitzgerald and other FG 'liberals' were in the past.

But fuck it, for whatever reason, that was one hell of a speech.
 
bolshiebhoy said:
Hate to say this about the nasty little shitebag but Enda Kenny's inspirational speech today in response to the Cloyne report on child abuse and the failure of the Holy See was unbelievably important. There really is no going back to the days of FF slavish devotion to the church. Growing up in Dublin 40 years ago How many of us could imagine a Taoiseach using language like:"the dysfunction, disconnection, elitism....the narcissism that dominate the culture of the Vatican to this day."

In my day the FGers were timid liberals at best and well I remember the number of times my FG classmates would abandon me and the other socialist atheist when we dared to stand toe to toe with Father Declan on abortion or contraception. So I know Kenny and his ilk haven't been at the forefront of our fight to secularise the Republic. And no doubt his passion today reflects the absolute revulsion of the vast majority without which he'd be as timid as the likes of Fitzgerald and other FG 'liberals' were in the past.

But fuck it, for whatever reason, that was one hell of a speech.
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http://www.rte.ie/news/2011/0720/cloyne1.html
Fair play to the Blueshirt.
 
That's stirring stuff. And I think the school that both I and Enda went to would have been more hardcore RC than bolshiebhoy's (we were De La Salle brothers, b'bhoy - what was yours?)

Will the Church be pursued for monies to compensate the victims, though? Will there be a serious attempt at reform of education, to produce a genuinely secular system? Will the FG/Labour cuts that attack some of the most vulnerable children in the state be reversed? Enda's made a very good speech - but I'd like to see it backed up with action.
 
Franciscans Idris. Not the worst in fairness though our sex education priest (sic!) was recently done for years of abuse.

Obviously yes it is one thing to make this speech and another to do anything. And the section where he talks about how precious our children are despite the harsh economic circumstances is clearly a pile of tosh. But there's no getting away from the symbolism of this speech. My mum is gobsmacked by it and she's a third generation atheist :)
 
Idris2002 said:
Will the Church be pursued for monies to compensate the victims, though? Will there be a serious attempt at reform of education, to produce a genuinely secular system? Will the FG/Labour cuts that attack some of the most vulnerable children in the state be reversed? Enda's made a very good speech - but I'd like to see it backed up with action.
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That's the point imho, it's albeit, new, words in the aftermath of the scandals but what will actually get done by Kenny and Co, what will actually happen other than his words being re-hashed every time he wants kudos?!
 
Fedayn said:
That's the point imho, it's albeit, new, words in the aftermath of the scandals but what will actually get done by Kenny and Co, what will actually happen other than his words being re-hashed every time he wants kudos?!
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I don't have a lot of faith in them but there is a possibility that they will seize church land in order to force the church to pay for their half of the billions being paid as compensation to abuse victims. If this happens, the church land will be the land that many state run schools were built on. This means that those schools will become multi-denominational or even non-denominational. Either way they will be free of church interference.

If this does happen it will be enormous. Most new Irish parents baptise their children in order to secure a school place as well over 90% of Irish schools are Catholic. If the child's religion stops having an influence on their education a lot less people will choose to baptise.
 
Iguana said:
If the child's religion stops having an influence on their education a lot less people will choose to baptise.
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Personally I don't think educatiion has that much a part to play. I think it's just more of a cultural norm to baptise your child. All of my friends who have children have baptised them but not one of them has mentioned doing it for educational reasons.
 
N_igma said:
Personally I don't think educatiion has that much a part to play. I think it's just more of a cultural norm to baptise your child. All of my friends who have children have baptised them but not one of them has mentioned doing it for educational reasons.
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All of my friends who have or plan to baptise say they are doing it for school places. If you look through Irish sites like Rollercoaster.ie or the parenting sections of Boards.ie or even Weddingsonline.ie, etc, you'll find constant discussions about baptising for school places.
 
The parish gobshites calling Kenny Hitler ( please can we put this blueshirt nonsense to bed once and for all!) make it clear to anyone with half an ounce secularism why we have to be foursquare with Kenny on this issue: "Is this the new Ireland? Is this the fulfilment of the dreams of the founding fathers? ‘No Pope here’. Is this the way forward for a new and better Ireland?" Yes father it bleeding well is.

Is Kenny going to do anything useful? kind of beside the point. He's made it very, very difficult for the Irish ruling class to lean on the clerics for support when the going gets tough. That is a huge step forward for those of us interested in radical change in Ireland. He may come to regret not having that crutch in struggles ahead with Irish workers. You could argue that his willingness to cut the priests so totally adrift verbally is a sign of the confidence of his class in their battle to break Irish workers from 'dependency culture'. Dependency on public welfare and jobs as well as dependency on the church as a certain type of neo-liberal middle class type would see it. But whatever his ultimately nasty, austerity imposing motives for this incredible attack on the church it's helped 'our' side.
 
Iguana said:
If this does happen it will be enormous. Most new Irish parents baptise their children in order to secure a school place as well over 90% of Irish schools are Catholic. If the child's religion stops having an influence on their education a lot less people will choose to baptise.
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Most Irish parent baptise their kids because they are catholic, nothing to do with school places. Schools don't turn away kids for being non-catholics anyway - there isn't the same pressure on places as there is over here.
 
sleaterkinney said:
Most Irish parent baptise their kids because they are catholic, nothing to do with school places. Schools don't turn away kids for being non-catholics anyway - there isn't the same pressure on places as there is over here.
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That hasn't been the case for the last decade. Non-catholic children not getting school places has been a huge issue here for years.
 
Gingerman said:
http://www.independent.ie/national-...-got-him-and-sunk-to-a-new-depth-1339720.html
Oh dear,this piece of fawning idiocy, written in the Sunday Indo after Ahern resigned, will be all but impossible to surpass....:D
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That's from 4 years ago, and Mr.O'Connor has out-twatted himself many times since.

Then.
It should be shut down. It should be shut down now. There is no appetite for it, no real interest in it. We cannot afford it in financial terms and we can no longer afford the virtual paralysis of affairs of state it has visited on us. We bitch and moan about the Dail only sitting for 70 days of the year or whatever. But the fact that much of that 70 days is spent with the same old tired people rehearsing the same old tired arguments about the minutiae of Bertie Ahern's financial affairs is the real scandal.

We have seen the greatest minds of our generation destroyed by madness and we have seen the greatest politician of our generation and his government rendered impotent by that madness at the very time we need them most. Mark my words, we are only beginning to count the cost of this madness.
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And this cracker.
Bertie looked the country in the eye and told us he had not cheated us and I think most people believed him. The details will be pored over again and again no doubt but in essence, since Wednesday, no one really believes Bertie Ahern was corrupt.

I think people looked at him on Wednesday, this rather odd, unknowable, lonely man, whose only vice seemed to be a lust to run the country, and they felt sorry for him and sorry for themselves a bit.

People could not but help thinking that it was a seedy, dirty, ignominious end, not only for this man who had devoted himself to doing so much for us, but for the whole Bertie era -- a time of such confidence and wealth and fun and progress in this country.
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Now.
DON'T like Bertie Ahern. Never did. Never got it. Tried to respect that other people did, even though I found that hard. I had one personal experience with him and I thought it and its fallout revealed him and his people to be a fairly tough crew.

Whatever about the tribunal exposing the culture of corruption that was endemic in Fianna Fail in Dublin and beyond, its failure in proving Ahern corrupt suggests that much of the work of the last 15 years has been misguided and wasteful.
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