I realised today that I haven’t seen any Google Adsense delivered Libertas ads in a while – hopefully they started costing them too much and they had to pull the plug. I suspect that they’d simply set a fairly small budget aside for it and the valiant efforts of those of us who piled on the clicks had the unexpected benefit of actually getting rid of the damn things.
Anyway following that wonderful success I figured I had to go and see who was actually putting themselves up in my constituency to see if there’s anyone at all I’m going to want to vote for.
Elections Ireland is the place to go for the lists. And we have some class suspects lined up for our consideration.
Ray O’Malley: Libertas. Complete loon. Actually he seems like an opportunistic political wannabe in addition to being a Catholic Fundamentalist and part time xenophobe. Apparently he once ran for leader of the IFA but now is happy to cosy up with a party that has almost no policies apart from eliminating the CAP which is the lifeblood of those he wanted to lead in the past. Anyway as a Libertas candidate he gets my absolute final preference. And when you see the rest of the list that’s saying something.
http://raymondomalley.blogspot.com/ – Worth a laugh. Ray wants the Turf Cutters of Ireland to have the right to cut their own turf which is good to know. More importantly he’s on the side of the “No to Pylons” campaign which would have put him in the total fruitcake camp for me even he hadn’t been buried up to his nostrils there already.
Tomas Sharkey: Sinn Fein. I think the two things that most strongly inform my opinion of him are “Tomas Sharkey has been active in the Republican Movement since he was 9 years old” and “I was 11 years old when I set myself the goal of getting into the all-Irish class in the Christian Brothers Secondary School in Dundalk”. Oh please, when I was 11 years old I set myself the goal of being a cynic and escaping from the Christian Brothers, thankfully I succeeded. Anyway if you feel up to it you can read more about how brilliant he thinks he is in this interview in An Phoblacht if you want but for me if Ray O’Malley wasn’t running he’d be bottom of my list.
http://www.sinnfeineu.com/en/sf-eu-candidates/entry/18 Well the party built him a nice home page, just like everyone else’s but there is stuff in there.
http://www.sinnfeineu.com/en/entries/18/0/campaigns – Yeah now we get to the improtant stuff his Blog is – “Work in Progress” AKA “Somebody else does all that web stuff for me”
Kathleen Funchion: Sinn Fein. One of the new crop from the SF youf activist movement. Apart from my basic distrust of SF’s rather simplistic nationalist fundamentals she seems far too chirpy about last years “No to Lisbon” campaign for my liking and I dunno about the rest of you but being part of an “SF delegation to Colombia” last year is monumentally bad style, even if she was over there to adopt orphaned bunny rabbits. Sorry Kath you’re going to be lumped down with the FF’s although you’ll be glad to know that Ray is definitely going to get a lower preference than you. You can get a pretty good flavour of her from the interview in An Phoblact linked above.
http://sinnfein.ie/elections/candidate/206 – Your top hit on Google delivers a 404 a week before the election. Epic Techno Fail.
Liam Aylward. Fianna Fail. Sitting MEP. A TD since 1977 who had to step down from the Dail after winning an EU seat at the EU Elections. He seems to be a low key fundamentally uninteresting lifer in the FF establishment with lots of family connections in “The Party”. That alone puts him fighting for the lower places in my preferences.
http://www.liamaylward.com . Dig around and you will get a flavour of the man. Loves his meat [industry] obviously. And hats off to him for delivering speeches about Israel and Palestine as Gaeilge.
Thomas Byrne: Fianna Fail. Sitting TD it appears (since 2007). So what’s up with that? Anyway he’s even worse than a FF lifer in my book – he’s one of the latest crop who wanted to get on the gravy train only to discover that all the good scams are now busted. Bottom third. Apparently rumour has it that he drew the short straw as FF felt they had to put up some candidate to run alongside Aylward but nobody really wanted it and Byrne ended up on the list although nobody really wants him to win as that would trigger a by-election in Meath and the Government really don’t want that. That might be enough to want to get him elected out of spite.
Hey he has a Blog! http://thomasbyrne.blogspot.com/ which is very promising however I found this there:
“I agree with Deputy Beverly Flynn on the issue of mortgages” - Aaargh!! run for the hills.
Paddy Garvey: Independent. Basically all I can find out about him is that nobody knows who he is and there are supsicions that he’s taking the piss. Well frankly if he’s not a member of Opus Dei and hasn’t been abducted by aliens he might get a vote because the rest of the field is piss poor.
Micheal E Greely: Independent. Again bit of a mystery candidate. Some rumours that he is “anti-establishment” which could be code for “total nutter” but then again who knows? Hopefully I’ll run into him on the street and find out more.
Jim Tallon: Independent. Now this guy is total class. He’s run in almost every election since 1981 and never got more than 163 votes. I don’t care how much of a nutter he is, frankly he could be running for Libertas and I’d be tempted to give him a vote just for his persistence. Some great videos up on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pQX2bi0TFEY.
John Paul Phelan: Fine Gael. Sitting Senator from the Agricultural Panel. I strongly suspect that I have basically nothing in common with the man, even if I am a culchie. Gotta see what his policies are but I suspect he’s also heading for the bottom third. http://www.johnpaulphelan.com/ is a fantastic website JP – there is no mention at all there that you’re actually running in an election. Yep he definitely isn’t getting my vote.
Mairead McGuinness: Fine Gael. Sitting MEP. I quite like Mairead and she seems to actually be doing a decent enough job in Europe however she catastrophically failed to take the direction I wanted my MEP’s to take on the Telecoms Package. As it happens that sort of worked out (or at least it hasn’t been a complete disaster yet) so I might give it a skip. She is Fine Gael though and there’s an uncomfortably strong link between that party and the Catholic Hierarchy. For the moment I’ll put her in my undecided bucket.
http://www.maireadmcguinness.ie/ Nice website for a politician. I’d like to see a list of votes too BTW but not bad.
Nessa Childers: Labour. Local Councillor in Blackrock. A psychoanalyst, former Labour Party then Green Party and then she switched to Labour after she resigned from the Greens last August when they asked her to run for this election nomination (as far as I can make out). Daughter of Erskine Childers. Interesting background and although I’m always a bit suspicious of people who change party political allegiance she might actually be a politician who believes in principles more than parties which would be pretty goof. Anyway personal speculation aside she seems worth checking out to see if her policies are OK and to make sure she’s not harbouring some nutty granola bar flavour of greenery. With any luck she might be all right. In any case she’s the only person guaranteed to be considered for a vote.
http://www.nessachilders.ie/ It’s pretty basic to be honest and frankly it doesn’t exactly tell you what she stands for. Oh well.
I’m now adding another question to my standard list for candidates – who the fuck are you and when did you last actually update your website with information that tells me real stuff about what you stand for. I’m amazed at how bad most of the above pages are.