Irish politics discussion thread

lol am not gonna get near spitting out the remainder of most of this today, but cmere

golly what a day of politics we have planned for you, folks

xp in most of the country you do both state exams, maybe not in the wesht though

I look forward to yr response

when twas the inter cert, boys would be on the boat to london the next day, bedad

yerra youd be lucky man to do your inter cert

my aul fella had to be compelled to sit even the inter cert with promises he could go out on the fishing boats if he did his best

he landed up to the house with the results, second in the school, "chrisht" his aul man exclaims, "you'll be a priesht!"

he ran away that night to dublin, hopped aboard the first vessel that would take a 15 year old on and spent two years in norway on the boats.

he had made peace over the phone with the parents in the intervening, but hadn't returned until his 18th just in case

en route down the island home he spotted that it was biker's weekend, says jaysus ill have a look, spent from friday thru sunday night on the piss down the sandybanks and passed the house on the back of a harley wavin hallooo to the mother cos he was late to get back to dublin, disnt see them again another two years

thats my inter cert story now. an awful man.

explains a lot

xp this story is so similar to An Béal Bocht that I am moved, not for the first time, to compare you to yr civil service predecessor Brian O’ Nolan.

great names the family had as well

Brian was the third of 11 children, Gearóid, Ciarán, Roisin, Fergus, Kevin, Maeve, Nessa, Nuala, Sheila, Niall, and Micheál.

solid names def

Looking good

Join Sinn Féin.https://t.co/wqMzYkWBZv pic.twitter.com/XxtgyiAYQp

— Gerry Adams (@GerryAdamsSF) February 11, 2020

Still incandescent with rage that there’s no link to that video of him doing results chat in his Antrim GAA jersey and opening the chat with “coola boola”.

youve the pics at least

i caught it live, look theres no point denying it, it was glorious tbh

non-emigrant privilège at its worst

I've no words for this 🤷‍♀️ pic.twitter.com/nNF0JcSvFp

— Fíona Ní mhistéil 🇮🇪 (@fionamitchell56) February 11, 2020

never....forget?

I'm finding it difficult to parse what point he thinks he's making

listen again!

So when do the bids get unsealed

Oh my God I just burst out laughing at your man. The head on him! Very reminscent of my JC history class where a friend’s answer to the question “Why wasn’t De Valera shot by the British?” was “He gave them a bribe.”

Constant Mark O’ Bhich indeed

conn markobitch gave his life fyi

the FG no to sf has remained firm

the FF no looked v weak but is firming up

the odds on FF/FG/Green halved over night

total agreement, here we gooooo

best political system in de wordeld, obv

They’ll be laughing on the other side of their faces when it inevitably collapses & SF wins 120 seats in the rerun

theres so much in play

as far as i can think it through, it all rests on the nebulous expectations each of the three main players have for the coming term of govt, which is gonna be a matter of political calculus that theyd each want to be very certain of getting right

ff most to lose, for all of the reasons. theyre the party most suited to, best placed to, with the most pressing political reasons (michéal taoiseach, biggest party, running out of time to recover, and losing imo (by roundabout via fg for a decade) their voters to sf) to enter sf coalition

fg best off out of govt but if they think they can snatch back (and i think, even to other parties like ff/sd/lab tbh) that 12% from sf by:

forming a stable (big assumption) four/five year govt:

that provides large amounts of affordable homes for those swing voters, ie

-not rental (not bought wholesale by funds)
-not at or near current prices
-and, i cynically think tbh myself, not swallowed up in large part by social housing nor approved housing bodies

and just for fg (obv for ff this is lifeblood stuff) i dont think they actually *want* to do any of this stuff. they dont think everyone deserves a house, but if its in the rules and they ~have to, jeez~ then owning is for our lot, and renting is for your lot, buy in or fuck off has been their approach for the past three years when things became viable again

ok, take a breath, phew, thats a lot for a coalition (surely would have to be a full coalition govt this time, which would still be a significant step for the lads) to manage and bank on, who have we to get the numbers....

the greens? jesus thats optimistic. not very likely, seeing the progress theyre enjoying in this moment, to sign up to a programme that puts emphasis on houses! now! quickly! anywhere!

independents? more prone than most to fracture and in particular towards the popular momentum, besides which will the electorate tolerate a FF led clientelism based govt again? FG hardly got away with that, and at least had the appropriate sniffy air towards the whole sordid setup

lab/socdem? i mean, if i knew what they were for i could make an argument against it, but....?

the amount of things that would have to be agreed so firmly to hold it together, and then go perfectly......i think its a mad risk.

and so obviously a grand coalition of keepball against SF that the optics are not good.

im surprised this is swooping this way, but id be more surprised if its not kites, nor if its not the strangest kites we see flown between now and mickey d signing off on a rabble.

still think ff will form a stable govt with sf

sf, as you note, only lose in the least likely scenario- a coalition govt, starting out on an awful footing optically, gets everything right over a long enough term to win back voters, and over a short enough term that something unseen (or their own pretty likely failings as a group) doesnt intercede to ruin it all anyway.

Was last week's result despite a great amount of teh electorate not being able to vote before next Saturday or did that get taken care of?
Heard a sizable chunk of people couldn't actually vote before 15th of February and would probably vote more left after taht point so the election was pushed forward to prevent them counting.
So if there was a need for a revote or anything it would be difficult to keep them excluded. Or did they get earlier clearance or something?

update

still no govt, and little more than feints not even fully developed into posturing just yet

still feel FF/SG plus at least one smaller party and a few IND seats is the likely outcome

i skipped briefly over it

for as far as i got in it, it was nothing that hasnt been said by any analyst in one of their simpler presentations over the past two years

the only thing that struck me was the global/international angle, which i may be overemphasizing on a skim read.

but does anyone else want to read dermot fucking desmond writing an opinion piece in the irish fucking times lecturing us that housing is now unaffordable and shouldn't be a tradeable asset as well as a citizen right to let me know whether- as twitter insists on telling me all morning- he is now a socialist, or is it the baldest effort ive ever seen of "fuck out all them funds, i want this sweet market to myself"

Absolutely not, I’m planning on a nice Saturday, I’d rather not have a brain haemorrhage before I start drinking ty.

My first job out of college was for a small campus company which had recently been bought by a Dermot Desmond company (under a business magnate who'd previously disguised his tech talents by (checks notes) managing the National Women's Football team).

We ended up with some people who'd worked with DD in previous companies, one of whom told a story about a few lads who'd gone up to install the new version of their flagship software on his PC, and then had to take an unscheduled holiday for a few weeks because it had remapped the function keys, which were the main conduits of his executive function.

Which is to give another angle from which to say: fuck Dermot Desmond.

(not slagging the National Women's Football team of course, or saying that it doesn't take talent to manage them, just that he was talking himself up as the next Bill Gates shortly after buying the company)

im a close personal friend of a womens all ireland football winning coach, he is full of mantras and blather wisdom but an ok fella all told

Tiny country

k¸ (darraghmac) wrote this on thread Euro 2012 Qualification (pre-empt to handball cheat phase) on board I Love Football on 09-Sep-2010

packie bonner paid for my first ever pint

They may take our freedom but they'll never take our SALADS....#coronavirus #Coronavirusireland #COVID19ireland pic.twitter.com/TjFts61220

— Caolán Mc Aree (@Caolanmcaree) March 19, 2020

hes as much a mocker of the underclass he doesnt care about as any of the clichés

a prick

looks like an orderly and cautious wind down, with plenty of provisos

seems sensible

haven't gone near any details of what a programme for govt between fg/ff/greens would look like, nor been keeping tabs much tbh

Back in the High Court today - Gemma O’Doherty and John Waters as they ask for a judicial review of the Covid-19 restrictions pic.twitter.com/uIM2kKNY1Z

— Dominic McGrath (@McGrathDominic) May 5, 2020

thread of the continuing Waters/O'Doherty idiot show, some of their thick as fuck cheerleaders defying social distancing outside the courtroom. I used to associate John Waters with some funny movies and a foul-mouthed xmas song comp, this clown has brought the name into disrepute.

A source incorrectly recalled to the Irish Examiner that Finance Minister Paschal Donohoe requested pineapple on a pizza during negotiations. Mr Donohoe has confirmed through a spokesperson he did not request that pizza, and is “a ‘New Yorker Pizza’ kind of guy” with bacon, chicken and barbecue sauce.We apologise to Mr Donohoe for any offence caused.

The Irish love their pizza so much and they are so fucking shit at it

interesting red c poll today

new opinion poll suggests a slump in support for Sinn Féin with the party down four points since the previous survey two months ago.

The Business Post Red C poll puts the party at 25%, down from 29% in the most recent poll at the end of November.

Support for Fine Gael was unchanged at 20% while Fianna Fáil has gained one point to 17%.

Independents are on 15%, up two points, while the Social Democrats are unchanged at 6%.

Support for Labour remains at 4% while the Green Party is also unchanged at 4%.

People Before Profit/Solidarity is unchanged at 3% while Aontú is up one point to 3%.

Others are unchanged at 3%.

makes you think about what FG/FF could do if they even tried to solve housing

Feels like SF are losing votes cos of Gaza a bit?

from the left?

maybe

also immigration from the farther right tho

they are finding it difficult to be enough things to enough men the longer they spend as first opposition, but thats expected generally id say

the breadth of anti-govt opinion that they rode last election couldnt be held together for long and they managed better than i thought they would

but i think theres a big tension between their new young support, their new middle aged support, their traditional report and staying quiet on actual positions is eventually starting to show the joins

its still a surprise too see this drop and i doubt it will be carried to the next poll tbh, back up towards 28% maybe and fg to see the same drop.feels more like it

the measure will be seats on the day

maybe the new racists farmers party will change the game

Yeah, true. They were pretty bad on reproductive rights on the other side of the border

im not sure if "look at what their positions are in NI" carries an awful lot of weight, for two reasons (this is all just "i think")

i. having to govern with these loons, tbf

ii. not sure how many potential sf voters down south *really* think of sf ni and sf roi as an entity like that

i think at present they are weighing up the arithmetic between showing how pragmatic theyd actually be in govt across the range of issue that have gained them poll points vs their own internal priorities as an all island party, because theyve reached the limit of growth as far as saying "we'll definitely do what you want that the current govt isnt" to a very wide range of opinion goes

id still be surprised if ff/fg/greens carry the next election tbh but the fracturing of further left and right offers a somewhat changed set of rules there?

The noise about them earlier this week was them taking some lumps from PDP because SF are planning on going to the states for St Patrick's day (and.. meet the President? did they do a lot of this pre-Biden?) for what will presumably be a big fund-raising trip for them?

i dont see it being a 4% issue but combine it with SF confirming quite strongly of late they are an open borders party like fg/ff on immigrants (this ofc is how its being viewed and described by the right wingers) might be.

dropping from both sides basically