krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Sinn Fein need to capitalise on this latest debacle.
Irish Politics Thread
- Thread starter Idris2002
- Start date
flypanam
Sausage to fortune
They are in a unique position of not having to say and do anything to capitalise on the situation. They just have to let FFGG continue to shoot themselves in the face.
flypanam
Sausage to fortune
Gene Kerrigan had a pretty good column yesterday in the Sindo. Not that it matters. I like the repeated use 'limited abilities' to describe FFGG. One thing that is striking is how Bacik has escaped without comment.
This is a new low in Irish politics. On his worst days, Haughey didn’t hogtie his own government, as Micheál Martin has just done. Neither did Brian Cowen, nor Bertie Ahern, as they stumbled towards the exit.
The FG/FF/Green clowns have agreed to corrupt their own capacity to govern in the midst of this still-dangerous pandemic. They have made themselves feeble at a time when purposeful government is essential.
There is no lobby group, no special interest, that is not gleeful at last week’s developments.
Micheál Martin’s Government put itself at the mercy of those interests as the price of helping Tánaiste Leo Varadkar escape the consequences of his reckless cronyism.
The Government’s capacity to take measures to protect the people has been compromised by Varadkar’s recklessness and Martin’s willingness to cover for him.
Suddenly, anything Varadkar did, we all can do — as though offering us goodies if we don’t ask too many questions.
Frankly, until the last few days I paid almost no attention to the Katherine Zappone matter. It was an example of the Dublin 4 mentality at work.
That sort of thing goes on all the time — people with a vague set of good intentions, but with limited abilities, stroking one another’s egos. It’s usually harmless enough.
Now and then it erupts into public view, at which point the decent thing to do is look away.
Appointing Zappone as Special Envoy to Something or Other is hard to get worked up about. It gave her something almost interesting to do, it might even be of marginal help to someone or other, and it was unlikely to cause too much bother.
She wasn’t a Fine Gael stalwart, but to the Leo/Simon set she was Our Kind of People.
The “job” of Special Envoy for This and That is the political equivalent of those glossy magazines you find on the table by the window in upmarket hotels. Something to pass the time, without being too demanding.
The notion that such positions should not be dispensed like sweeties seems to have taken Fine Gael by surprise.
Mind you, they might have got away with it. To object to Zappone’s appointment would require finding out what the job is and why Zappone should or should not get it, and who else might have been in the running for it — all tedious stuff, and it’s likely no one cared enough to ask such questions.
However, slipping Zappone into place — which I suspect mostly involved printing a few Special Envoy business cards — wasn’t enough.
Our Kind of People have to make an event of everything and so it was that 50 or so folks of good intentions and no compelling abilities gathered in the garden of the Merrion Hotel to attend the ritual ego stroking.
We don’t know exactly how dangerous the Merrion affair might have been. I find, in such circumstances, it’s safest to assume the worst.
The reason we don’t know is Leo Varadkar decided to evade questions about it. Suddenly, the man who lights up whenever a camera appears had become a shy wee thing.
Not as shy as Micheál Martin, who suddenly developed a severe case of Where’s Wally.
Varadkar kept his head down all week, and last Friday he went on RTÉ’s Six-One News. Sharon Tobin asked: “How many people were at the event, was there mingling between tables, was there music?”
To this Varadkar replied: “First of all, I just want to express my regret...” He went on at some length, apologising pointlessly to pretty much everyone on the planet.
He then made a speech — a rather incoherent, rushed effort to shovel out the various excuses he and his advisers concocted over the previous days.
This is a standard ploy, taught by media advisers. Don’t answer the question, just say what you want to say. Politicians — usually successfully — rely on the good manners and decency of the interviewer. And the fact the interviewer has other questions to ask, and time is limited as a result of the politician’s long-winded apology/speech.
They all use it, all the time.
Every such interview should begin with a warning from the interviewer: if the politician uses one of those media-adviser gimmicks the interview will be terminated.
In the middle of this, Varadkar said there was no music at the Merrion. I take this as an admission there was mingling between tables — breaching the guidelines.
People have for ages pleaded with the Government to see if there are ways the anti-virus protections could be loosened — to allow some more cultural and sports activities and more social drinking and eating.
People need to work, businesses need to revive, and we all need the joy of the things these people produce, whether music, a pint or eating out — or just trying on a new pair of shoes in a shop.
Every possibility of such normality needs to be cherished.
Now, when Varadkar needed an alibi for his Merrion capers, it turns out that for weeks it’s been fine to gather in hundreds.
I don’t know if this is a get-up, for the alibi, or if it’s real. The Government hid its excuses in a tangle of differences between laws, regulations, statutory instruments, guidelines, advice and road maps.
If Varadkar knew about the 200 rule, he negligently kept it secret. If he didn’t know until the AG told him, he deliberately broke what he believed the law to be.
We actually reached the depths of having a poor Fine Gael hack on RTÉ, explaining that although he broke the guidelines Varadkar didn’t break the law. Hooray, well done.
Then, of course, Varadkar made a fool of the hack by claiming he hadn’t broken the guidelines.
By the end of last November Covid had killed 2,053 of us. By the end of February, the deaths had more than doubled, to 4,319. Why? Partly Delta, partly the politicians playing fast and loose with scientific advice, so they could “save Christmas”.
Thanks to Nphet, casualties have been kept down — when its advice wasn’t befouled by politicians seeking media applause for “wresting back control”.
Thanks to the HSE’s achievement with vaccine distribution, deaths will be down in the coming months — though the effects of Covid illness can be long-lasting and life-changing.
We want our lives back, but safely. Viruses don’t play fair, and they don’t negotiate. An unexpected variant could tear apart everything we’ve gained, and leave us without defences.
The best way is to have experts assess how much breathing-in-the-vicinity-of-others is involved in various activities.
That, basically, is what virus transmission is mostly about.
Then, increase one activity, decrease another, as advised — pretty much what Nphet has been doing since January 2020.
We need such decisions to be made coolly, based on the evidence of outcomes — and in concert with other decisions.
The last thing we need is a Government of clownish people, playing power games in the middle of a health crisis.
But it’s what we’ve got.
The people of this country have made heartbreaking sacrifices to protect each other from the virus. Despite attempts to set us against each other, our solidarity is impressive. The truth is in the figures.
Not surprisingly, the vaccine uptake for those aged 70 and over is 99pc. For those aged 30-39 it’s 84pc. For those aged 18-29 it’s 73pc.
The scientists, health experts and HSE administrators can and will make mistakes, and have done so, but the figures show we trust the science, and those who are employing it in our defence.
As a result of Varadkar’s playacting, and Martin’s tolerance of it, the lobbyists and the opportunists will now push harder than ever. And the politicians are weak.
It’s in our interests that those whose work protects us from the virus should be defended from the messing by those whose buffoonery embarrasses us.
This is a new low in Irish politics. On his worst days, Haughey didn’t hogtie his own government, as Micheál Martin has just done. Neither did Brian Cowen, nor Bertie Ahern, as they stumbled towards the exit.
The FG/FF/Green clowns have agreed to corrupt their own capacity to govern in the midst of this still-dangerous pandemic. They have made themselves feeble at a time when purposeful government is essential.
There is no lobby group, no special interest, that is not gleeful at last week’s developments.
Micheál Martin’s Government put itself at the mercy of those interests as the price of helping Tánaiste Leo Varadkar escape the consequences of his reckless cronyism.
The Government’s capacity to take measures to protect the people has been compromised by Varadkar’s recklessness and Martin’s willingness to cover for him.
Suddenly, anything Varadkar did, we all can do — as though offering us goodies if we don’t ask too many questions.
Frankly, until the last few days I paid almost no attention to the Katherine Zappone matter. It was an example of the Dublin 4 mentality at work.
That sort of thing goes on all the time — people with a vague set of good intentions, but with limited abilities, stroking one another’s egos. It’s usually harmless enough.
Now and then it erupts into public view, at which point the decent thing to do is look away.
Appointing Zappone as Special Envoy to Something or Other is hard to get worked up about. It gave her something almost interesting to do, it might even be of marginal help to someone or other, and it was unlikely to cause too much bother.
She wasn’t a Fine Gael stalwart, but to the Leo/Simon set she was Our Kind of People.
The “job” of Special Envoy for This and That is the political equivalent of those glossy magazines you find on the table by the window in upmarket hotels. Something to pass the time, without being too demanding.
The notion that such positions should not be dispensed like sweeties seems to have taken Fine Gael by surprise.
Mind you, they might have got away with it. To object to Zappone’s appointment would require finding out what the job is and why Zappone should or should not get it, and who else might have been in the running for it — all tedious stuff, and it’s likely no one cared enough to ask such questions.
However, slipping Zappone into place — which I suspect mostly involved printing a few Special Envoy business cards — wasn’t enough.
Our Kind of People have to make an event of everything and so it was that 50 or so folks of good intentions and no compelling abilities gathered in the garden of the Merrion Hotel to attend the ritual ego stroking.
We don’t know exactly how dangerous the Merrion affair might have been. I find, in such circumstances, it’s safest to assume the worst.
The reason we don’t know is Leo Varadkar decided to evade questions about it. Suddenly, the man who lights up whenever a camera appears had become a shy wee thing.
Not as shy as Micheál Martin, who suddenly developed a severe case of Where’s Wally.
Varadkar kept his head down all week, and last Friday he went on RTÉ’s Six-One News. Sharon Tobin asked: “How many people were at the event, was there mingling between tables, was there music?”
To this Varadkar replied: “First of all, I just want to express my regret...” He went on at some length, apologising pointlessly to pretty much everyone on the planet.
He then made a speech — a rather incoherent, rushed effort to shovel out the various excuses he and his advisers concocted over the previous days.
This is a standard ploy, taught by media advisers. Don’t answer the question, just say what you want to say. Politicians — usually successfully — rely on the good manners and decency of the interviewer. And the fact the interviewer has other questions to ask, and time is limited as a result of the politician’s long-winded apology/speech.
They all use it, all the time.
Every such interview should begin with a warning from the interviewer: if the politician uses one of those media-adviser gimmicks the interview will be terminated.
In the middle of this, Varadkar said there was no music at the Merrion. I take this as an admission there was mingling between tables — breaching the guidelines.
People have for ages pleaded with the Government to see if there are ways the anti-virus protections could be loosened — to allow some more cultural and sports activities and more social drinking and eating.
People need to work, businesses need to revive, and we all need the joy of the things these people produce, whether music, a pint or eating out — or just trying on a new pair of shoes in a shop.
Every possibility of such normality needs to be cherished.
Now, when Varadkar needed an alibi for his Merrion capers, it turns out that for weeks it’s been fine to gather in hundreds.
I don’t know if this is a get-up, for the alibi, or if it’s real. The Government hid its excuses in a tangle of differences between laws, regulations, statutory instruments, guidelines, advice and road maps.
If Varadkar knew about the 200 rule, he negligently kept it secret. If he didn’t know until the AG told him, he deliberately broke what he believed the law to be.
We actually reached the depths of having a poor Fine Gael hack on RTÉ, explaining that although he broke the guidelines Varadkar didn’t break the law. Hooray, well done.
Then, of course, Varadkar made a fool of the hack by claiming he hadn’t broken the guidelines.
By the end of last November Covid had killed 2,053 of us. By the end of February, the deaths had more than doubled, to 4,319. Why? Partly Delta, partly the politicians playing fast and loose with scientific advice, so they could “save Christmas”.
Thanks to Nphet, casualties have been kept down — when its advice wasn’t befouled by politicians seeking media applause for “wresting back control”.
Thanks to the HSE’s achievement with vaccine distribution, deaths will be down in the coming months — though the effects of Covid illness can be long-lasting and life-changing.
We want our lives back, but safely. Viruses don’t play fair, and they don’t negotiate. An unexpected variant could tear apart everything we’ve gained, and leave us without defences.
The best way is to have experts assess how much breathing-in-the-vicinity-of-others is involved in various activities.
That, basically, is what virus transmission is mostly about.
Then, increase one activity, decrease another, as advised — pretty much what Nphet has been doing since January 2020.
We need such decisions to be made coolly, based on the evidence of outcomes — and in concert with other decisions.
The last thing we need is a Government of clownish people, playing power games in the middle of a health crisis.
But it’s what we’ve got.
The people of this country have made heartbreaking sacrifices to protect each other from the virus. Despite attempts to set us against each other, our solidarity is impressive. The truth is in the figures.
Not surprisingly, the vaccine uptake for those aged 70 and over is 99pc. For those aged 30-39 it’s 84pc. For those aged 18-29 it’s 73pc.
The scientists, health experts and HSE administrators can and will make mistakes, and have done so, but the figures show we trust the science, and those who are employing it in our defence.
As a result of Varadkar’s playacting, and Martin’s tolerance of it, the lobbyists and the opportunists will now push harder than ever. And the politicians are weak.
It’s in our interests that those whose work protects us from the virus should be defended from the messing by those whose buffoonery embarrasses us.
ska invita
back on the other side
Poll: Sinn Féin opens up 10-point lead as most popular party among voters
Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI opinion poll shows 7% drop in satisfaction rating of Government
"the highest ever rating for Sinn Féin in The Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI series." (not sure how far that goes back)
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Lankum and John Francis Flynn are on the case and there's a few petitions doing the rounds.
flypanam
Sausage to fortune
Needs more than a few petitions. But it’s a start I suppose. An Bord pleanala are corrupt and developers and vulture funds luxuriate in doing what the fuck they like. I’m not there but I do know that some of my mates are actually pissed off about this and may join any campaign to save the cobblestone and arch. Which in itself is remarkable.
Manners need to be put on the greedy.
Manners need to be put on the greedy.
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
Protest on Saturday.
People are taking to the streets to save Merchant’s Arch and the Cobblestone pub | JOE.ie
Don't matter that you aren't there. Every voice raised, wherever the diaspora is, helps a little.
Artaxerxes
Look out, he's got a gnu!
Dublin's housing in particular is a fucking mess by all accounts.
flypanam
Sausage to fortune
Sorry slow to this but the golfgate result is Grealish and co being told they did nothing wrong?
Is it just me that see ex TD’s as part of the elite in Irish society or maybe the judge is right that once they lose their seat or retire they are just normal joes with no access to any influence at all?
Is it just me that see ex TD’s as part of the elite in Irish society or maybe the judge is right that once they lose their seat or retire they are just normal joes with no access to any influence at all?
flypanam
Sausage to fortune
The far right meets the mad right Kilkenny founder of new Irish Unionist Party to continue campaigning despite death threats
splonkydoo
Well-Known Member
In his case, I think he seems more troubled than not.
splonkydoo
Well-Known Member
Hopefully it'll kick start a turf war between them and the National Party. I'd pay good money to see that.
splonkydoo
Well-Known Member
I've been informed by a reliable contact in West Cork that Harris is seeing the bright side of his recent sacking - much more time to focus on his own publishing. Can't wait to see the results.
With the far-right, I'd be more concerned with the IFP. Herman seems to be quite active again, doing some 'rallies' around the country. We tend on the left to laugh at them a bit, and with good reason, but it's yet unclear what the next 5-10 years are going to entail. I feel there is an increasing (but generally older) rural demographic that they may sweep under their wings. The current NP strategy seems to also suggest this as a bit of their target.
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
Stunningly brutal take-down of Fintan O'Toole's latest exercise in national navel-gazing:
Ireland, We Hardly Knew Ye | Jack Sheehan
Fintan O’Toole’s new history of modern Ireland repeats the same old story that the Irish liberal establishment tells itself.
thebaffler.com
Idris2002
canadian girlfriend
The far-right in Ireland is laughably small . . . now. But that review of O'Toole's latest book that I posted just now makes the point that small though it may have been (tiny in fact) it was the Irish hard left that was one of the very few voices raised against the various defects of Irish life, politics and society. Mosquito parties can come from both left and right - be sure to apply mozzie repellent.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
Top line thisStunningly brutal take-down of Fintan O'Toole's latest exercise in national navel-gazing:
Ireland, We Hardly Knew Ye | Jack Sheehan
Fintan O’Toole’s new history of modern Ireland repeats the same old story that the Irish liberal establishment tells itself.thebaffler.com
Not read the book but the review hits the flaws that have been present in O'Toole's writings that I have read.
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Even The Wolfe Tones made Fintan look like a twat. The fuckin WOLFE TONES!
petee
no gods, no malarkey
so.
www.irishtimes.com
Assembly election: North on brink of having first ever nationalist first minister
Sinn Féin on track to be largest party at Stormont, as Alliance experiences ‘surge’
spitfire
Walty McWaltface
This is the main one i know of, i mainly read though as not hugely up to date with goings on.
petee
no gods, no malarkey
ed moloney has thoughts.
thebrokenelbow.com
Some Thoughts On The Recent NI Poll…..
I will be honest and admit that the recent Assembly election in the North passed me by virtually unnoticed (I am also busy at another, more important project right now) and it was only the media…
thebrokenelbow.com
krtek a houby
Merry Xmas!
SF kept out of government in the south and (so far) now the north.
Fuck this shit.
Fuck this shit.
likesfish
You can't park here sir
isn't one of the major problems the loyalist vote is split between the DUP who are pretty batshit and the batshit on acid TUP 
sothey are only going to lurch to the batshit end of things as being responsible politicians is a fairly alien concept to them anyways?
sothey are only going to lurch to the batshit end of things as being responsible politicians is a fairly alien concept to them anyways?isn't one of the major problems the loyalist vote is split between the DUP who are pretty batshit and the batshit on acid TUP
They never lost it.
They're "superiority " in their own minds is still a huge factor.
How dare those underdogs dictate to them.
They do not know the meaning of the word democracy.
They reflect one voice only. And will not listen to anyone else living in NI.
They are dinosaurs who deserve to become extinct
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