And so, to protect vulnerable government advisors struggling to get by on a mere €92,000 a year, I'm calling on someone else to take decisive action to do something...
It’s everywhere, so pervasive that we don’t actually notice it, or at least, if we do, we pretend not to. it’s almost as if we tolerate it because we feel that’s what proper countries do, even though most of it has no relevance to our daily lives. It is guff.
For the non-Irish readers of this blog, guff is waffle, cant, hot air, meaningless noise that comes from public officials and those associated with them, and the Irish excel in its creation. It is quite possible that perhaps 85% of what comes from the mouths of Irish parliamentarians and county councillors would be completely unmissed if were never spoken. From reading out speeches that no one listens to to “calls” to county managers to do things, it’s all inspiration free remarks centred around things that people feel they should be staying, such as cramming the word “vulnerable” into sentences. The problem is that speeches are used to convey ideas and values, two things which don’t actually exist in Irish public life, where politicians go into politics to, well, be in politics. The truth is that Irish politicians would be of more use if they actually made useful statements explaining how to work SkyPlus or set the timer on the boiler. Because, at least people would actually keep those speeches, and know that they were telling the truth, assuming Richard Boyd Barrett actually does know how to record Boardwalk Empire. Put it another way: supposing politicians were given a quota of words they could use, and were taxed on every additional word they used. Would we, as a country, be better or worse off?
Given that the upper house is flailing about with this sort of nonsense again, I thought I’d give our old friend yet another runout.
“He has spent years in the Seanad blocking even the slightest of changes. What’s worse, he has pretended that he hasn’t, participating in every debate and report on Seanad reform and slowed up every reform with the “need for consensus” and “all-party agreement”. The truth is, the little people, the PAYE drones who pay his generous salary, expenses and pension should shut up and know their place, which is existing to fund him, not elect him.
On the other hand, just watch him with his councillor electorate, whom he treats like members of the Court of the Sun King, grovelling and forelock-tugging like an extra on Downton Abbey. If he had to carry a bottle of Listerine in the car for use after ensuring that the lonely farmer councillors had been satisfied, he would.
And now, abolition is on the cards, and suddenly, he’s calling for reform, proposing passionately the same tinkering minor changes that he stalled years ago. Calling for a third of the Seanad to be elected, or the Institutes of Technology to have votes, or some other gracious concession, he can feel his heart racing as he sees the ground possibly go out from under him. He knows it won’t be enough. Either the Seanad will be elected 100%, by real vocational voters, farmers and teachers and workers and artists, or it will be abolished, neither of which fills him with cheer. The Seanad has always been the preserve, for the most part, of the politician’s politician, and now the rabble are going to have a say?”
- He used to be a contender.
You frown as you look at the face. Isn’t that…your man? Of course, the face is ruddier now, plump and full and the hair is thinner and greyer, but didn’t he used to be..? Fifteen or twenty years ago, he was the coming man. Fron a long political pedigree, you can still remember him being lifted up at the count centre when he took his old man’s seat, a younger, slimmer version of Senior. There was no question: He was cabinet bound, who knows, perhaps all the way to the top job.
But the booster rocket never kicked in, and he seemed to coast on the family name, and no one ever remembered anything he ever did. He kept the seat with a moderate if unspectacular vote at the following election, spending that term in the Dail bar, and finally being ejected at the following election, full of bluster about the service his family gave to the state but remembered for drunkenly stepping through a plate glass door in the Gresham.
After life in politics, the TD’s pension keeps him going and he is seen in the constituency, stumbling from a hostelry with a few auld boys who used to be his father’s henchmen, usually in a suit that looks like it came free with its own park bench. Is that dried sick on his tie?
- The Aras: Where our Florida style president lives.
The elction was clean. He won a clear majority of the votes, after preferences were distributed, and his opponents have conceded and rung to congratulate him. Ireland has elected a new head of state. Everything should be hunky-dory.
Except for the fact that the most popular candidate was barred from the ballot paper by the political establishment. Except that he got a smaller first preference than polls indicated the barred candidate would have received. In short, he’s the first Irish president ever elected despite the fact that he didn’t beat a more popular candidate. Can anyone name the more popular candidate barred from the ballot in the Robinson or McAleese elections? Probably not, because there weren’t any.
He is the legal president. But he is not legitimate, because we have never had a more popular candidate actively campaigning and barred from putting his name before the people before. He deserves legal recognition. But does he deserve our loyalty?
Doesn’t matter, his supporters say. He was duly elected under the rules set out in the constitution. They are, of course, correct. He is the legal president, according to the constitution.
The same way George W. Bush was deemed the legally elected president in 2000 by the US Supreme Court. He got less votes than the other guy too.
Oh No! He's "called" for something!
It’s all about the headline. He’ll issue the statement, calling for something that sounds decisive, and it’s only when you look closer you realise it’s all guff. For a start, he’ll pick a huge target, normally a multinational that’s never heard of the Irish Senate, never mind him. Then he’ll issue an ultimatum, and possibly demand that an Irish state agency back him up. It all sounds tough and brave and leadershipy.
Except it’s a bag o’ shite. He picks an issue that he claims is important, and a product that he claims causes or could cause huge harm to consumers, whilst ignoring drink, the most serious health issue facing Irish society, because his constituents actually want the right to harm themselves with that particular product. Even his threat is weak. He doesn’t actually have any intention to do anything if the multinational just ignores him. He won’t try to get the governing party, of which he is a member, to ban the product, because that would actually be quite a serious thing to do, and he doesn’t do serious. More than that, it would show that he’s actually of minor influence in the party anyway, a cause, at best, of eye-rolling in the PP and Dail bar.
He’s not a serious person. He’s just a collection of inane press releases. You could actually replace him with a preloaded iPad with a good wifi connection. Would have the same effect.
