Irish Times

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Sorry, but I simply can't get my head around this current scandal with the gardai. It's so fucking insane. Half of our recorded breathtests never happened. and that's only the start of it.

[loose cannon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Amazing.
Sweeping cuts to funding and manpower result in collapse in management systems
Who would have thought of that ?

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

In the latest instalment of the FG slow bicycle race, An Taoiseach will address the leadership issue "today week".

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

It appears his successor will be elected over the June bank holiday weekend.

[Gangster Octopus]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

You have a Bank Holiday in June? Which bit, and why?

[elguapo4]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

First weekend in June, called whit weekend, don't know why we have it , don't care tbh

[Gangster Octopus]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Ah, Whitsuntide morphed into May Bank Holiday (last Monday in May) sometime in the sixties over here.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

The meeting has been brought forward to now - the Enda an era?

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

He's gone.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Continuity Kenny in the shape of Coveney surely. Can't see the big house membership giving it to Leo. Probably easier to run a safe pair of hands idiot in an election than a malevolent bastard.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

I don't know, that welfare scrounger campaign will go down well with both the parliamentary party and the grassroots. Coveney is marginally the more competent of the two in terms of accomplishments, but depends on how many parliamentarians they've both gathered at this stage (65% of the electoral college).

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Pure bastard Thatcherites like Paschal or Regina Doherty (who seems very lucky to have landed a good pinshun job, judging by her checkered pre Dail business career, almost as non compliant with the Companies Acts as Aine Collins) have been very quiet on Kill the Poor rhetoric this term. The election result last year, and wider Ireland's voters seeming to prefer income tax rises (not for them of course) to more cuts, might convince them to go with another barely sentient non-ideological non-Dub. And tbh, of all the parties I'd say the grassroots of FG will have the biggest (unspoken, good god they're far too polite on the hill to mention unspeakbleness, to someone's face) problem with a gay, mixed race Taoiseach.

I mean these are the folks that still act like Mikey Collins was chasing the skirt in hiding or not. (I'm not saying MC was necessarily gay, but he probably died a stranger to inside ladies' knickers).

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

You have to wonder what Lucinda Creighton is thinking at the moment.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Haha. She'd have been a fucking shoe-in. Imagine suddenly converting to Dana pro-life bollocks in South Dublin, post-Savita, and thinking you'd be at the vanguard of a new populist Irish right. You'd be chancing it kicking off that kind of movement in fuckin Roscommon ffs, let alone among the Geraldine Kennedy Concerned and Engaged types.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Michael Noonan announces his retirement - he has to get some credit for turning economic fortunes around, even if Lenihan had to implement the worst cuts, but both the Brigid Cole controversy and the Grace saga will dog his political legacy.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Varadkar gets a significant boost as Richard Bruton becomes the most prominent FG member to declare for a candidate.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Diable Rouge wrote: I don't know, that welfare scrounger campaign will go down well with both the parliamentary party and the grassroots. Coveney is marginally the more competent of the two in terms of accomplishments, but depends on how many parliamentarians they've both gathered at this stage (65% of the electoral college).

I'm not really sure how Leo's welfare scroungers tack is going to go down in the parliamentary party. it's Doesn't make much sense given how many people right across the population have recently had encounters with the welfare system, and it's not really an issue as we approach full employment.

The other thing is that any such problem is definitely severely overstated. the Department of Social welfare really got their act together under the last govt, Joan Burton lit a fire under them, The number of people in receipt of all forms of assistance skyrocketed while the number of people dealing with them declined. From my encounters with the Disability section waiting times are a fraction of what they were.

I was listening to Paschal O'Donoghue, and in common with Brendan Howlin, It would seem that the job of that particular department is to stare with horror at Ireland's population pyramid. There are very few people of sixty five here currently, because most of them live in the UK and the US. The number of people over sixty five is going to double over the next 25 years, and this was the stated reason behind all the civil service reforms that Brendan Howlin carried out. It's crucial that we act now, because this is the thing that has fucked italy and greece, and to a certain extent France.

We can't really afford to fuck around any more. Paschal Donoghue is by a considerable distance the most effective blueshirt. There is literally no-one else in his party who could do his job. It's his job to get a public sector pay agreement that fits in our fiscal space, without killing spending on the other parts of the economy. this is where Shane Ross's incompetence, and that Garda pay mess becomes a problem. The unions are going to look for what they can get, but the upper limit of what the govt can give the is bounded by the need to have money to spend on other things.

the thing that most people don't really seem to be aware of is that 75% of Govt spending is on wages and social welfare including pensions. and every thing else fits in the remaining quarter. the Pensions bill is a very big part of govt expenditure to start growing explosively.

As for what lucinda is thinking, lucinda doesn't think. that's a lot of her problem. there are plenty of very conservative people in her constituency. Unfortunately for her, not as many as when she entered politics, and nowhere near as many as in the nineties and before. Garret Fitzgerald's running mate was the sacristan of Donnybrook church. But that area is changing fast.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Diable Rouge wrote: Michael Noonan announces his retirement - he has to get some credit for turning economic fortunes around, even if Lenihan had to implement the worst cuts, but both the Brigid Cole controversy and the Grace saga will dog his political legacy.

I'm not sure that's true. Lenihan et all plucked a lot of low hanging fruit, made a bunch of promises about future behaviour and fucked off leaving the situation pretty much untouched. The Deficit kept increasing under Fianna Fail.

I think that whatever eventually comes out of Nama is going to define Noonan's legacy. He didn't set it up, or staff it, but a lot of very dodgy shit happened there on his watch, and I can't help feeling that it's going to be a big hue and cry in a couple of years time.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Current odds:
Varadkar 1/5
Coveney 3-1

That said, given the conservatism of FG, and the party's greater need to reclaim rural vote, I'm calling it for Coveney.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Humphreys, Paul Kehoe and Regina Doherty reportedly in the Varadkar camp now.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Paschal Donohue also reportedly voting for Leo - he certainly appears to have the party grandees sown up already.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Coveney is unphased: "I have fought a lot of elections, and I have never lost."

Yeah. With your daddy's name.

[anton pulisov]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Strategic head placement. One of my favourite things about Irish politics...







There's so much neck acrobatics going on the last one that you'd swear it was photoshopped.

[Diable Rouge]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Varadkar already on 40% of the total vote, talked about FG representing "the person who has to get up early in the morning", in other words the usual neoliberal squeeze of the disabled and unemployed.

[Lang Spoon]

The 2016 Irish election is over!

Diable Rouge wrote: Varadkar already on 40% of the total vote, talked about FG representing "the person who has to get up early in the morning", in other words the usual neoliberal squeeze of the disabled and unemployed.

Well if gaffs werent sprung up in Ongar Ashbourne and other parts of his manor that lack even basic public transport, plebs wouldn't have to get up at such ungodly hours. Mibees some pavements built to give public access through estates. Perish the thought.