General Election Roundup: February 18th

One Week Out.

The buzzword this week is 'Overall Majority'. Enda and crew, coming off a brace of debates in which Enda Did Not Make a Fool Of Himself, that is to say a pair of glorious victories, are looking into the home stretch with a real chance of forming the next government alone, or with the help of a few independents. If the People want a red tinge to the next government, they had better go and vote Labour.

Not to say that Gilmore necessarily deserves it. His attempt to position Labour as the stronger partner in the hoped for coalition has not payed off. The posters reading just 'Gilmore for Taoiseach', seem hopelessly naive. Boggling as it may be to accept, Enda has played a smart game, not engaging with his rivals and instead simply pushing policy at every opportunity. There seems a sense in the country now that Fine Gael are the party with ideas and competence, in addition to presumably a bag of fantastical magic dust that they will use to heal our finances.

Of more concern to Fine Gael is the alleged five billion euro 'hole' in their finance plan. What is the hole? Where did it come from? Is it here to harm us? Can we make use of it's advanced technology? No one seems to know the answer to these questions.

Fianna Fail seem to be going down the ah-sure-it-cant-get-any-worse route, with top ministers, (such as they are) coming out with full throated assaults on the policies of the two opposition parties. This approached farce during one of the debates when Micheal Martin alleged that the Labour party would not cut out corruption and cronyism, with the implication being that Fianna Fail have entrenched it so heavily in the country that none can move it.

The RTÉ debate alternated between astonishing boredom and Gerry Adams' occasional moments of Zen-like idiocy, such as when he explained in depth how you could get seven billion euro out of a three billion euro fund. The answer it seemed, was to establish a 32-counties socialist republic, and go on from there. The nation as a whole got sick a little in their mouths as he talked about 'human misery'. This was the one subject that Gerry was intimately familiar with, having caused liberal amounts of it throughout his long and storied terrorism career. All the while Pat hopped from one candidate to another, mangling the audience's questions into faux man-of-the-people soundbites. The whole thing was just like any other episode of the Frontline, except without even the distraction of a mentally unstable man shouting down everyone else because he wants to talk about the Jews, and he will not stop until he does.

Last week I appealed to any God who would listen for a spark of life to force this election out of the dreary forgone conclusion that it is. It appears I should have gone to Mass more.

General Election Roundup: February 13th

Well here we are. Well into the election campaign we at the PotC have finally roused ourselves to produce an article. The fact that we give our contributers no pay and even less respect sometimes leads to long absences, in which this site goes dark. I have had several angry phone calls from Mr. Prendergast over the last few weeks, which is saying something as he does not own a phone.

The election is at once explosive and inexplicably dull. With the result an almost foregone conclusion, we the People are forced to watch the side games, such as they are.

1. Fine Gael-Labour or Fine Gael-Fine Gael-Fine Gael?

For as long as anyone can remember, we have assumed that the next government would be a coalition of the centrist and centre-leftist of the aforementioned parties. For a time last year the Gilmore evangelists smelled the enticing scent of a Red C poll putting their man in front. Perhaps, they thought, this would be a coalition with rather more Red than Blue, and centre-left solutions would get pride of place at the Oireachtas Dinner Table. However with Labour fading in the polls slightly, and Fine Gael experiencing a bizarre and unexpected surge, the opposite may be true. While the actual odds of a Fine Gael majority are still slim, if Kenny pulls something spectacular in the endgame, or Gilmore is found snorting powdered kitten, the future could yet be blue.

2. Will we get fooled again?

Barely a week into the tenure of Micheal Martin and his 'Fianna Fail Nua' party, they had already experienced a modest recovery in support. The sensible among us gasped, surely we are smart enough to see past the thin veil of palaver and flim-flam that the magician from cork had spun? Surely we would not retreat back to the corrosive swamp that is Fianna Fail? Time will, of course, tell.

3. How farcical will Sinn Fein become, and will we vote for them anyway?

Sinn Fein, having ostensibly traded their Armalites for extra large ballot boxes, are throwing themselves head first into the churning seas of real policy. However it appears that the Sinn Fein brain trust is comprised of a number of uneducated former terrorists, possibly assisted by a balaclava-ed mannequin draped in a tricolour. After producing a ten-point plan rife with both policies defying the laws of nature and more typos than a drunk man's text message, each of the Sinn Fein bigwigs had a competition to see who could appear more foolish and out-of-their-depth in the national media. The polling however, does not suggest any dip in support as a result of this pseudo-socialist carnival, so perhaps we are forced to conclude that the people who vote for Sinn Fein are not the sort to let petty things like reality get in the way of their fantastical 32 counties pipe dream.

4. Will the election be hijacked by Abortion and the Irish Language?

In the last number of days we have been requested to vote for neither Fine Gael nor Labour, on the basis that they will murder our national language and our unborn, respectively. While you may question the relevant of issues like the teaching of the Irish language in the face of such commanding economic issues, it appears some do not. Whatever your views on the future of our native tongue, I would implore you not to listen to the hysterical voices of those who view tin whistles as more important than emigration.

As to the abortion issue, all that needs to be said is that the accusers are the IONA institute. I think Labour are safe.

5. Debates?

We have already had a single debate, such as it was. With Enda sitting this one out, it quickly became a forum for Martin to show off what a great speaker he is, and why you should pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, particularly when that man is Willie O Dea, returned to the FF front bench. Enda, bizarrely, came off well as he avoided the pummeling that Gilmore received and had only to face a bearded shouting man, angry at someone or about something, it wasn't quite clear.

The election takes place in less than two weeks. Here at the People of This Country, we are still waiting for the spark that will turn this genteel contest into a rollicking punch-up, with hopefully some pie-in-the-face, fight-up-a-telephone-pole action. Roll on February 25th.

NAMA BAILOUT NATIONAL GOVERNMENT CHILEAN MINERS MILLENNIUM CANDLES

We the People of This Country are Disgusted,

It was only a few days ago that all this bollocks we were getting from the Greens about an all party conference looked about as likely as Cowen giving up the drink but now its all we hear and sure isn't it the greatest bollocks we don't need a national government we need a general election sure I'm no fan of that Enda but he should be given a fair shot at it and we don't want everyone there just sitting down and agreeing and sure isn't it just another way of the Fianna Fail cronies to hang onto power as long as they can and then retire on their seven pensions as they're laughing at us and wasn't it fantastic to see all that about the miners and they're out and sure that's a government that knows it's priorities bailing out the miners instead of the banks and you wouldn't get that sort of thing here all you'd get is bailouts and NAMA and the Lisbon Treaty and fucking Millennium Candles sent around to every house.

ENDA KENNY NAMA BAILOUT FINE GAEL TRIGGS ALIVE

We the People of This Country are Disgusted,

So now we hear from that spineless wimp Enda that he'll take 10 years to fix This Country well Enda you might not even get 1 year you arrogant piece of shite if you don't get your act together The People wont vote for you thats not to say that they'll vote for Fianna Fail bunch of chancers wont get my vote ever again and neither will the Greens they should have pulled out long ago when they still had a scrap of decency to them and I don't care if they built a few windmills they stood idly by when the bailouts were in force and that John Gormless doesn't have enough brains to fill one of those Eco bulbs they keep forcing us to use and it turns out that Triggs is alive praise God but you scared the living daylights out of poor Roy Keane and sure hasn't he enough problems without saying his poor dog is dead and he's not half as dead as the Irish banking system and that robber Cowen is now saying we wont know the full cost until October well some of us cant just wait around and hope everything is alright Brian some of us have jobs and families and if you're not careful you might be turfed out in favour of Enda and then where will we be?