The Political Thread

[TordelBack]

Yeah, it's amazing how affecting even a small token can be. On my last job I shuttled colleagues to and fro down alternately muddy and icy roads from bus-stop to site in my tiny shitty car, multiple runs each day on my own time and expense, morning and evening for seven months, eventually becoming a bit resentful of the whole business.  But at the end of it all two of my passengers (out of a dozen) popped a bottle of Jameson and a DS game on my desk as a thank-you and it somehow made the whole thing worthwhile.

[The Legendary Shark]

Here's to the Little Things that make life so good!

[JayzusB.Christ]

Which reminds me, I must get a bottle of whiskey for my neighbour, who helped fix my boat engine. He was utterly shit-faced while he did it, but I didn't realise that till he told me a week later.
His mate, Can Al (Alan, who drinks cans every day) helped too, but I'd already done him a free mural on his barge .

I love this little boat community; sometimes it feels like a Walking Dead survivors' compound. With joggers instead of walkers.

[TordelBack]

Reluctant to cut across the warm feels,  but feck me this Peter Casey (failed Irish Presidential candidate and human of dubious merit) business is depressing. Ex-pat TV non-entity finds his campaign mojo by picking on a minority and thus rockets from 1% polling to 23% of the final vote, practically overnight,  but happily still loses more than 2:1 to the most inclusive, intellectual and eloquent of men, Miggeldy Higgins himself, who wins a second term with one of the highest proportion of first-preference votes in the history of the state. 

And what do we find splashed across every form of media today?  Is it a celebration of our collective wisdom at recognising that a virtuous cultured man should continue to represent us?  No,  you guessed it: it'd the Amazing Success of Peter Casey and His Shining Political Future.

Has no-one learnt anything? This is exactly how vile twats like Trump and Farage survive and thrive,  the media catapulting their vapid opportunistic faces into widespread acceptability, even when they are in the depths of their own failure and irrelevance. Let's be cool and edgy and legitimise a petty bully as a Force for Change,  a Mouthpiece for the Silenced Majority. Let's stick him on every discussion panel and opinion piece to Provide Balance.

Let's not, eh?  Just this once let's leave them in the rubbish bin, and forget they exist.

[IndigoPrime]

Quite. We've seen recently (eg Milo) that starving people of publicity kills their careers. That could have been done with Hopkins. It should be done now with Farage. But no. Instead, ol' tombstone teeth bangs on about 'traitors' like Vince Cable meeting with the EXACT SAME PERSON Farage himself met months back. He gets used as the dissenting voice by the BBC almost daily, despite not currently being anything other than an MEP. (And note that no pro-EU MEP has appeared on Question Time in recent history.)

Partly, this is down to the problem that news is about entertainment and eyeballs these days. Few people are willing to pay for anything, and so you justify your existence with audience reach, ad hits, etc. Which reminds me: time to finally chuck a few quid in the Guardian's tin every month. Money where mouth is, etc.

[JayzusB.Christ]

You're right, of course, Tordels. I suppose a part of me (the Irish half maybe, my mam's from Lancashire) was unconsciously congratulating myself that well, whatever awful right-wing bigot the Americans and British seem to be venerating, at least Ireland hasn't gone down that path.

But here we are, feeding the little shit the publicity he craves, rewarding him for being a racist.  I can only hope he's a has-been by the time the next presidential election rolls around, though I suspect that even if it's true, the ball is now rolling and plenty of other pricks will be taking notes.

It's not entirely surprising, I suppose, that his comments have boosted his popularity. At least a fifth of people I know are bigots too.

[IndigoPrime]

On the positive side, you've only woken up to find a fifth of people in your country are fuckwits. I woke up two years back and discovered over half in mine were.

[Tjm86]

To be fair, it was only 36% of the electorate but unfortunately just over half of those who voted.

Mind you, I think that the revelation on the F'wit front was pretty clear a few years earlier when they let Cameron near government.

[Professor Bear]

Cameron only got in because of the LibDems propping him up after a collapse in the New Labour vote.  Like Brexit, a lot of the votes in the 2010GE can be viewed not as an endorsement of the alternatives to the then-current government, but as a vote that the current state of affairs wasn't working for everyone, and much as I like Tory-bashing as much as the next man, I'm not sure that dismissing everyone who didn't vote the way you did as some sort of extremist or racist is helpful.

[TordelBack]

Veering back to positivity,  after watching this. Not bad for small fella. We may be a country of gombeens and nimbys but do we ever know how to choose a head of state.

[Professor Bear]

I remember some Irish Youtuber with about 30 subscribers doing a stout tasting in a local pub in the middle of nowhere and halfway through the video she suddenly turns abruptly to one side and nudges her husband to do the same, muttering "oh fuck me - don't look at him."  Enda Kenny was, I gathered, neither a regular nor a personal acquaintance of the Youtuber, but had landed in after cycling down to the place, and she was determined not to get stuck in a conversation with him.  This Father Ted* sketch is now my default image when thinking of Irish heads of state.


* which is a 1990s sitcom written by Arthur Mathews.  And only Arthur Mathews.

[maryanddavid]

Casey will be forgotten about in a few weeks, so I wouldn't get too worried about him or anyone following in his footsteps.
Great time for Michael D, probably not without his faults, but he is someone that I'd be happy too see represent Ireland. The kids all had faux elections in their classrooms, all four classroom voted Michael D, the youngest was because he looked 'nice', the oldest because he was 'obvious' 

[IndigoPrime]

Casey will be forgotten about in a few weeks

I'm sure people were saying that about Jair Bolsonaro at one point, when he was the punchline in ill-advised TV station jokes. Or we could pop back to 1997, when UKIP was led by Alan Sked, and only got 105,722 votes, but subsequently transformed the fabric of British society. In short: never be complacent.

[Steve Green]

Meanwhile in NI.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-46011779

[sheridan]

Reluctant to cut across the warm feels,  but feck me this Peter Casey (failed Irish Presidential candidate and human of dubious merit) business is depressing. Ex-pat TV non-entity finds his campaign mojo by picking on a minority and thus rockets from 1% polling to 23% of the final vote, practically overnight,  but happily still loses more than 2:1 to the most inclusive, intellectual and eloquent of men, Miggeldy Higgins himself, who wins a second term with one of the highest proportion of first-preference votes in the history of the state. 

Hadn't heard of him before (but then about the only news I've heard lately has been from this board and The News Quiz) - taking to Wikipedia I see that "He became the youngest district manager in [/size]Rank Xerox" so it's no surprised he's been copying the tactics of Farage and Trump!