Ireland General Discussion

[ObserverIE]

Gerry Adams is released without charge as expected.

Not quite out of the woods yet... PPSNI have been sent a file and may still decide to charge him.

It could also be seen as going into a holding pattern - that there may be insufficient evidence to make a charge stick (and the Sunday Times claimed today that the charge being considered was IRA membership) but sending it off to the PPS means that it remains in suspended animation rather than having to explicitly state that they don't have a case.

I'm not at all convinced that this is going to damage SF on either side of the border.

[ObserverIE]

http://www.rte.ie/news/2014/0506/615610-data-protection-law/

Should he go?

Will he go?

[ObserverIE]

Gerry Adams is released without charge as expected.

Not quite out of the woods yet... PPSNI have been sent a file and may still decide to charge him.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

https://twitter.com/williamcrawley/status/463372687088558080

[ObserverIE]

!!!!!!

[ObserverIE]

Courtesy of Cedar Lounge Revolution, here are some local election advertisements from the Celbridge/Leixlip electoral area of County Kildare. For non-Irish, Celbridge and Leixlip are fairly prosperous Dublin commuter outer suburbia/exurbia just beyond the Dublin county boundary, Leixlip being known as the site of a large Intel chip fabrication plant.





Which party label might be even more toxic than Fianna Fáil's in an area as relatively unscathed by the crash as anywhere in Ireland? Answers on a postcard to Ely Place, Dublin 2.

[ObserverIE]

Have they considered changing their name, perhaps to something more accurate?

While Lyinguselessgobsh:tes passes the Trade Description Act, it might be a little hard to fit on a ballot paper.

[ObserverIE]

Some more opinion polls in the lead-up to the local/European elections on May 23rd.

First a poll from RedC for the Sunday Business Post from earlier this month (a larger sample than usual because it was taken in conjunction with the European election opinion poll) but which only had headline figures published online :

FG 25 (-1)
Ind/Oth 23 (+3)
FF 21 (-1)
SF 18 (-3)
Lab 11 (+2)
GP 2 (-)

(GP figure assumed)

Now from this weekend:

Behaviour and Attitudes for the Sunday Times:

FG 26 (+5)
Ind/Oth 24 (-2)
SF 21 (+1)
FF 19 (-1)
Lab 7 (-2)
GP 2 (-2)

Another RedC, this time for The Sun (no data online that I can see):

FG 25 (-)
Ind/Oth 24 (+1)
FF 20 (-1)
SF 20 (+2)
Lab 8 (-3)
GP 2 (-)

(I think 8 is as low as Labour have ever been in a RedC poll.)

And finally, to throw the feline amongst the waddling grey flying rats, Millward Brown/IMS for today's Irish Independent. Gully may well be advised to look away now:

Ind/Oth 27 (+4)
SF 23 (+2)
FF 21 (-2)
FG 20 (-5)
Lab 6 (-)
GP 2 (-)

I think it's likely to be a rogue poll (with B&A's FG figure being a rebound to the mean from another rogue), much as I would love to see FG getting a hiding on Friday.

[ObserverIE]

I literally LOLed at that ad today. Talk of desperation...  although at least we can clearly see the 'Labour' logo this time.

You mean Labour? Lorraine "Unelectable" Higgins is fond of that one too, and has adopted a new tactic of changing her "diamond" signs from red to a purplish colour, to judge by what I saw in Maynooth this evening. When even colours are toxic, things are getting bad.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

?[/quote]

I was thinking of FF and SF both being ahead of FG.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

I don't know, that's the second rogue poll in the same direction in a couple of months. I think it's belatedly dawning on FG that the electorate don't actually like them very much, and that it's not just their doormat party who are going to get a beating.

Part of that is the standard FG personality type and its impact on the ordinary voter, part of it is the degree of obvious spin put on anything which means that people believe nothing they're told, part of it is the feeling that we've swapped one bunch of slightly corrupt gobsh:tes for a more snobbish bunch of slightly corrupt gobsh:tes (I'm being polite here).

They're on a downward trajectory and it wouldn't altogether surprise me if FF outpolled them on FPVs in the local elections, if not on seat totals.

[ObserverIE]

And BTW:

I literally LOLed at that ad today. Talk of desperation...  although at least we can clearly see the 'Labour' logo this time.

The young gentleman expressing his confidence in Emer's youth guarantee just happens to be the chairman of Labour Youth. There are some things even actors won't do.

[ObserverIE]

Is everyone else filling in their ballots in reverse order today? That seems to be the only way I can come up with a first preference.

For reverse preference allocation to work, you'd want to be sure that you'd counted the number of candidates correctly.

Local elections: Went through the entire list to put this work of art in last place. (Note: I performed exactly the same procedure in 1999, 2004 and 2009 - without success so far - but I'm somewhat more hopeful this time).

By-election: Voted for all the non-FF/FG/Lab candidates. Briefly thought about giving preference number 7 to FF in order to deliver a kick up the arse to the government but couldn't do it when the FF candidate was Son of Mammy.

Euro election: Left both Higginses and the hectoring a**hole from Direct Democracy Ireland unticked.

[ObserverIE]

Local elections: Went through the entire list to put this work of art in last place. (Note: I performed exactly the same procedure in 1999, 2004 and 2009 - without success so far - but I'm somewhat more hopeful this time).

Mission accomplished.

[ObserverIE]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

 Sounds like he knows that now he's not an incumbent, there's no chance Fine Gael will nominate him.

The rest of the local FGers detest him. He was added on as a candidate this time by party HQ. What he has been is an effective clientelist politician, which is not of itself a particularly bad thing at county council level.

Anecdote: I was tallying for the candidate who was just ahead of him (a friend and neighbour who I've known since primary school). After the elimination of Coyle (FF) we were five votes ahead and the next elimination was Keogh (Ind), an ex-FGer who had not been added to the ticket and is less personally pleasant than Frank. The time was 2.00am.

We had earlier that afternoon tried to do a tally of where Keogh's first preferences would go, trying to take account of where number 2's to those candidates who would be elected or eliminated before Keogh would travel. (We usually had about three seconds to read a ballot paper - upside-down - and quickly try to figure out where the number 2 - or possibly the number 5 - was going. This is not easy.)

Our figures had Frank at 52 and ourselves at 44, which would have put Frank three ahead, but there were ballot papers we'd missed, ballot papers which were being assessed as "doubtful" because there was an omitted or duplicated preference somewhere down the line (the vote would still be valid up to the point of the mistake), and of course those transfers which Keogh had subsequently obtained from other candidates. In total, we tallied 430 out of a first count figure of 510, and a total figure of 624. We knew it would be touch and go. I was not hugely optimistic.

Keogh's votes were sorted into pigeon holes labelled for each candidate, and the batches were brought over to be counted individually. Frank's were counted first and came to 70. We needed 65.

Our votes, a sizeable-looking pile, were now brought over to another table. I was leaning over the little barrier, largely surrounded by FGers, and the counting began.

"One... two... three..", I said aloud as each vote was laid on the table.

"Twenty-eight... twenty-nine...". I briefly lost count and tried to correct myself, hoping that I was still right and wasn't under- or over-counting.

"Fifty-four... fifty-five...". The pile was starting to look worryingly small.

"Sixty-one... sixty-two...". There still were a few left. But how many?

"Sixty-four... sixty-five... SIXTY-SIX..."

Behind me, from the surrounding massed ranks of FG-dom, I heard quiet yelps of delight.

[ObserverIE]

Devastation in the senior ranks of Labour as Gilmore announces his resignation:



For some strange reason, this comes to mind...

[ObserverIE]

It's being widely reported that Gilmore will be resigning shortly.

He's gone.

Didn't expect that. Joanie to succeed, I suppose?

That would be the most likely option although Alex White or even Brendan Howlin are outside possibilities.

Is Alex White a serious candidate? I mean, he's absolutely certain to lose his seat next time around. Also yet another Labour leader with a student-Trot/USI background?

He would be the first ex-Trot. The last two being Tankies.

More relevantly, White has been in the media for the last few months as the public face of the cluster that has seen medical cards removed from kids with Down Syndrome and sufferers from Motor Neurone Disease asked if their complaint has gone away.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Continuity Doormat Tendency.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Joan Burton is the favourite, so no, if her. There aren't all that many ex-WP TDs in the Parliamentary Labour Party, even if they include some of the most prominent members. Even that Gilmore has resigned shows that the leadership recognizes that something has to give... so my guess is probably not. Not sure who can save Labour now though.
[/quote]

The one dark horse, I suppose, would be Alan Kelly - young(ish), not associated with the various factions, not associated with the various ups of the last three years, and non-Dublin and not a culture warrior. Also not guaranteed to get on FGers' wicks, which may or may not be a good thing.

[ObserverIE]

Update: Kelly has declared for the Deputy Leadership position. He's being supported by Ann Phelan (Carlow-Kilkenny), who's also supporting Burton for the leadership and on the basis of last week's local results would be one of the few Labour TDs with a reasonable prospect of getting re-elected.

Two other TDs are going for the Deputy Leadership: Seán Sherlock (Cork East), who seems to be standing on behalf of the Sticky/Continuity Doormat alliance and is absolutely painful to listen to, and Michael McCarthy (Cork South West), who doesn't seem to have secured the necessary nomination of another TD to actually stand as opposed to talk about standing.

[ObserverIE]

Car crash interview with White supporter Derek Nolan as to why people should vote for White or what exactly he would do differently if elected on this evening's Drivetime (not on the RTE Player yet). Audrey Carville is no Vincent Browne but you still felt bad about the gratuitous cruelty to a poor dumb animal.

The time may soon come to put the Labour Party out of its misery.

[ObserverIE]

I almost (almost) wish I'd renewed my membership now. I'd be part of an increasingly rare and undistinguished club and would have the opportunity to vote against the ex-Trot and Sticky entryists that have nearly completed their apparent mission to destroy the party.

And ironically they have destroyed it, not by moving it towards Trotskyism or Juche, but by shifting it to the right (at least on economic issues) with the acquiescence of most of Old Labour and of an activist base that has been too preoccupied by social issues to notice (or seemingly care) what was going on economically.

[ObserverIE]

Trigger warning: Mauling of helpless Labour backbencher starts at 40:09.

http://www.rte.ie/radio/utils/radioplayer/rteradioweb.html#!rii=9%3A10286445%3A83%3A30-05-2014%3A

[ObserverIE]

Look, Collins is a Cosgrave-era Fine Gaeler. In Collinsworld, all parties need to turn into Cosgrave-era Fine Gael in order to succeed.

The intelligentsia, much like the electorate, is an annoying distraction.

[ObserverIE]

Look, Collins is a Cosgrave-era Fine Gaeler. In Collinsworld, all parties need to turn into Cosgrave-era Fine Gael in order to succeed.

No doubt. But where do they find these people?

If you're referring to Cosgrave-era Fine Gaelers, well, FG is full to the brim with them.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

In 20 years' time, will our successors be similarly gazing wondrously at today's material from Ruth Coppinger or from any one of a hundred SFers?

[ObserverIE]

Ciara Conway enters deputy leadership race on behalf of Culture Warrior wing with (what else?) tweeted support from Aodhán Ó Ríordáin. (Ivana is otherwise occupied getting onside with Joan Burton as next leader.)

Promises not to accept Cabinet or junior minister post if elected. Unlikely to be put to test.

[ObserverIE]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Is that a serious question because of course they will (Well... maybe not, Coppinger, she seems too much of a true believer).

I'm old enough to remember the Sticks or the likes of Emmet Stagg being true believers, but to be fair, Joe Higgins was always Joe Higgins.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

That doesn't answer my question.
[/quote]

OK, I misunderstood the question. There are still plenty of bubble-dwellers in the media, although Collins is more special than most.

[ObserverIE]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

It was more a joke on the "Where do FG-bots come from?" theme but this will also work.

When a Daddy FG-bot and a Mummy FG-bot meet...

[ObserverIE]

[ObserverIE]

Wow @ those numbers above.  The sharp drop jumps out at me too.  Is Noel Browne properly appreciated?  Seems almost forgotten rather than a national hero.

My guess is that the sharp drop (in both categories, but much sharper among "illegitimate") is due to the arrival of penicillin. Infectious childhood diseases were always going to hit harder in crowded institutions than amongst the general population, regardless of the level of care given.