That was the week that was! The last days before close of nominations were a mad scramble for Norris and Dana. Your humble blogging scribe was present at South Dublin County Council in Tallaght when Fine Gael and some Labour people voted down the Norris bid. (more…)
The news that RTE’s presidential debate will be broadcast on the Late Late Show says it all – this is a showbiz election. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and it is even, in a way, heartening to think that a political race could have the same crowd-pulling power as The X Factor. (more…)
Sadly, I was unable to attend the funeral of Brian Lenihan since I was in Cork, covering the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly. However, I would not like to let the opportunity pass wihout paying tribute to his courtesy, civility, eloquence and intelligence.
Labour was the cutting edge of the new Coalition in the last 24 hours. We had Pat Rabbitte, Joan Burton, Ruairi Quinn and Brendan Howlin all emphasising the need for stringency and there was a particular emphasis on the importance of real change under the terms of the Croke Park public sector pay and reform agreement.
Fine Gael and Sinn Fein are the parties which appear to be doing best in the election campaign. FG are advancing steadily but apparently inexorably in the polls. SF are holding up too. A lot of people will be alarmed by these two phenomena but it’s a time unlike any other that we have known.
Not really sure about this Fianna Fail proposal that ministers should cease to be serving members of the Dail. They would be substituted from a list of alternates in the same way as Members of the European Parliament when they retire, etc.
So the race will be on at last when Brian Cowen fires the starter’s pistol on Tuesday afternoon in Dail Eireann. There has rarely been such a long lead-in to any poll. There seems to have been an endless overture before the grand opera finally began. (more…)
There are few spaces in the world, visual or aural, that are now free from prying eyes and ears, most of them electronic.
It’s more dystopian than the world poor old Winston Smith encountered in George Orwell’s 1984.
Gordon Brown found that out to his cost yesterday. The video above give the full narrative of the toe-curling episide with pensioner Gillian Duffy in Rochdale. (more…)
… because all his rivals know they will meet a similar fate if they take over.
Unless Fianna Fail can do something similar in the next 12 months with the loaf of stale bread and the five rotting fishes that a fellow did 2,000 years ago, they are goners. (more…)
I’ve written a piece of analysis for the online edition, which should be going up about now. Here is it (written slightly less informally than the blog).
There was never even a remote possibility that today’s Cabinet reshuffle would emulate Albert Reynolds’s sacking of eight Ministers when he became Taoiseach in 1992.
