i think youre missing a P there flatty, but its highly likely thast mcmanus took it 
Rod rod rod
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While a bunch of ye want to measure your Tan/Ra allegiances and shout the odds about dickheadsmouthing off in the DĂ il, itâs good to see some politicians are actually, ya know, working. This bill passed its final report stage wednesday night and will be passed into law in the next few weeks. 40 odd years after people started talking about legislating for it, numerous governments refusing to touch it or help, adopted people of this country will have a right to their information. Fair play Roderic.
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Heâs a top man
Has Pearse come out from under the bed yet.
Maybe he is having a chat with the Waterford hurling team under the bed
Fair play to Gary, he has a good Tweet game at least.
Peadar ToibIn is only gagging for the right to essential healthcare to be removed from not just the women of Meath, but women everywhere on the planet.
A very dangerous man who leads a horrible racist rump of a âpartyâ.
Could someone post up Una Mullalys piece from Irish times? It seems to have caused quite a stir. Anton Savage, Joe Brolly, Neale Richmond et al are all taking issue with it.
Sounds like a meatier piece than the usual complaint about having to go to the Northside to access her favourite hipster pub.
FG completely disconnected and doesnât even realise it
In campaign mode in recent years, Fine Gael has often been nasty. From its Trumpian attack videos slamming the party it is in government with, to the election-time red alerts about working-class people voting, it has dragged political discourse into the gutter. Itâs hard to look like the adults in the room when you act with such petulance, but on it goes. We will begin to see a hardening of this messaging, a self-destructive drive to rile up the partyâs depleting base, instead of uniting people and reaching out to the floating voters it abandoned by creating the Fine Gael housing disaster.
When one is at fault, a classic defence mechanism is to lash out, blame other people, and obsess over those calling you out. Isnât it funny that the TĂĄnaiste, Leo Varadkar, was once viewed as a good communicator?
Newstalk, in particular, has always been a refuge for Varadkar. To celebrate the stationâs 20th birthday in April, the guest who joined Communications Clinic managing director and radio presenter Anton Savage was, naturally, Varadkar himself. On the show, Savage played Varadkarâs first appearance on the station, as a Young Fine Gaeler, advocating for a Yes vote in the Nice Treaty referendum. âIâm kind of wondering if we should legislate for this right to be forgotten,â the TĂĄnaiste joshed when he heard the clip, to laughs from Savage.
Collusion
There followed a 20-minute softball chat allowing Varadkar to riff in a simplistic manner without any degree of insight. âWhat you have with Fine Gael and Fianna FĂĄil is more of the centre,â Varadkar said on party political ideologies in Ireland, followed up, unchallenged, with the Leo-fact that Ireland never really had a party of the right, a fiction spun by both Fine Gael and Fianna FĂĄil to absolve themselves of their collusion in the oppressive right-wing theocratic deal between Church and State that moulded this country for a century.
Savage asked the TĂĄnaiste for his favourite Newstalk memories. âItâs been very valuable to have an alternative, if you like, to RTĂ when it comes to news and current affairs. Thereâs been some really good documentary programmes. Patrick Geogheganâs one on history is really great, one I try not to miss.â Varadkar failed to mention that he in fact hired Geoghegan as a speech writer.
âI think in the morning, Iâve always felt the Newstalk programmes, whether itâs now, or before with Chris [Donoghue, now one of Simon Coveneyâs advisers] and Ivan [Yates, who has acted as a communications adviser to Fianna FĂĄil] were a little bit more optimistic, a bit more chirpy, maybe for a younger audience, which I think was a good balance. Down the years, a lot of good people provided some very good programmes. One that springs to mind â and I know the end was controversial â with George Hook, he did bring a different form of broadcasting and a different view.â Hook was suspended from Newstalk in 2017 for comments he made about a rape case, later returning to present a weekend programme.
In a column in the Irish Examiner in 2018, Terry Prone, Savageâs mother, joined the dots between Donald Trump, Leo Varadkar and failed presidential candidate Peter Caseyâs communications tactics as all embodying that old cliche that they âtell it like it isâ. This is how Varadkar built a media profile for himself. He was seen as a âstraight talkerâ. Varadkar continued honing this method to the point that even when he was a minister discussing issues under his brief, he frequently came off as a commentator. As minister for health, in particular, he sometimes lambasted the state of the countryâs health service on the airwaves, despite the fact that the buck stopped with him.
The thing about âtelling it like it isâ is that you need to know what the âitâ is. Fine Gael is profoundly disconnected, and Varadkarâs leadership and personification of that disconnection has been electorally disastrous for his party. And it continues with his failed tactics of attacking the most popular party in the country.
The electorate knows what Fine Gael is against (Sinn FĂ©in), but is mystified as to what the party itself stands for. The main charge levelled at Fine Gael, existentially, is that it doesnât âget itâ. So what is âitâ? Well, âitâ is everything: how people live, what they want, what their values and desires are, what their vision for the future is, how they want things to be, and how they relate to politicians who are meant to understand where theyâre at and what they need and want.
Failed tactic
Because so many of Fine Gaelâs policies have failed so badly, and because it doesnât have any ideas that actually chime with people, its âtelling it like it isâ capacity has evaporated. Instead, it will continue to resort to the failed and alienating tactic of attacking Sinn FĂ©in, which ironically is also Sinn FĂ©inâs favourite thing, because it bolsters its popularity immensely.
But no one cares about macho bluster and performative spats in the DĂĄil. People have real problems. This tripling down on attacking Sinn FĂ©in only plays to those within the deflating Fine Gael bubble. Presumably, because the Fine Gael fanboys on Twitter think itâs great, and because Fine Gael appears pathologically incapable of self-examination, this echo chamber will give the party a false sense that it is doing a great job, without realising that itâs not just the message that has failed â itâs the messengers.
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Id be offended too if I had the fork.out âŹ3 to read that bland shite
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Itâs fairly on the money. Leoâs biggest achievement or failure is the acceptability of SF to the Irish electorate under his watch. A windbag and waster.
FG have destroyed the gains they made in 2011 by blindly following him
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There was nothing in it though that was particularly offensive. If anything it was an unintended swipe at dinny oâbrien and a half accusation of nepotism.
Ivana Bacik on Newstalk here. Although she speaks well and is good at making her point, youâd feel sheâs too nice to make any real inroads in the opinion polls
Plus sheâs in one of the most fickle constituencies in the country
doubt it, shes done nothing for her constituency, and shes not in power so her seat will go to the shinners next time out
She was organising a protest outside the US embassy after the US supreme court decided to let individual states decide their abortion stance. Really has her ear to the ground does Bacik.
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