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I'm not really sure what else you were expecting?  Great to get a win?

Can't remember a 14 win

Tommy Murphy Preliminary Round 30/06/2007
Antrim 3-32 Kilkenny 1-00

The local media have gone to town on this "John George aka John Hardy aka He was no angel" case big time.  You'd think it was a missing child

The Poor people in the 26 getting called bad names when they have a partitionist mindset, I'm not going to sleep tonight with the guilt of all they have had to endure. 

Again, just throw out shite like this but cry your lamps out when so much as a murmur is raised by someone in the south not wanting Mary Lou to be their overlord.

That's where I think SF need to step back a bit of the United Ireland bit.

Lets get the UI first before we consider the socialist republic bit.

Part of what SF could do in opposition, in regard to the North, is to ensure that FF delivers its manifesto commitments to the Shared Island Fund, all of which I support.  Also remind them now and again that this is in the manifesto "The unity of all the Irish people within a shared state is, and shall remain, a founding value and objective of the Fianna Fáil party."  OK, its says "shared state" not "unitary state" and it's the "FF Party" not "FF government", but on the other hand it's an objective, not merely an aspiration.        

The calling of a "Border poll" is in the hands of the Brit Sec of State if it appears to him/her there might be a majority in the North in favour of a UI.

All very vague and subjective, probably deliberately so in the context of 1998.
No guidelines or criteria laid down anywhere.
Different Secs of State will have varying ideas of what might appear to them as a majority in favour.

Possibly only come about as a result of Court proceedings taken by someone from the Nationalist community.

Yes, as I've said before this was the part of the GFA where SF/SDLP were asleep, though maybe the vagueness of this was the price for prisoner release and SF realising they would have to play the long game, who knows?  But trying to force the SoS into calling a border poll is like trying to eat soup with a fork.  There are no solid criteria.  Labour (the British version) have already said a poll won't be called during their tenure, so there's no chance before 2030.

I do think that rates in Belfast are ridiculous and the city council are taking the piss too which doesn't help.

Like wobbler says people pay it. It's like hotels in Dublin - I don't know how anyone stays there at that cost.

Stayed midweek in the Marlin Hotel behind Stephen's Green Shopping Centre a couple of weeks ago. £90 for a double room.  I thought that was OK.

Hotels, pubs and restaurants in Belfast are just taking the piss.

Well, that all took off while I was at a Christmas do!

Yesterday was the anniversary of the McGurk's Bar bombing in North Belfast in 1971.  Micheál could do worse than read up on some of the detail of that, just to see who "imposed" what on whom.

I watched a far bit of that game.  It was really low quality.  Wales were brutal and Ireland were worse.  The complete hype of the media is now getting embarrassing.

Why do certain people in the south hate SF? They've never been in government to even justify the level of vitriol of some people. Is it the media bias? Or is it the fact they are connected to the north?

Had great admiration for them a decade or so ago. The last 5 years they joined the mainstream, ran with the herd. They provided no opposition and look now to be a worse option to FFG. And that's bad. The United Ireland they want is not the United Ireland I'd want.

Not saying I disagree with you but times change and so too everyone with it or get left behind. The Ireland we grew up in has changed immeasurably and if there is to be a united Ireland, expect it to be very different to what you might have envisioned. It will be shaped by our grandchildren and the grandchildren of unionists. And it might be no harm their views be very different to ours.

Mary Lou got 11,223 first preference in 2020. She got 6,389 in 2024.

That's a loss of 5k votes! She got 57% of the vote of her previous run out.

Last time around she had nearly two quotas.

She has lost her mojo in her electoral area.

She does not represent a vast majority of them anymore.

A second SF candidate this time around, and Hutch account for most of that drop    To be fair Hutch's vote may have hurt Janice Boylan more than ML.

[By 1922, the Southern Government was planning to publish Father Hassan's report in a book, Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom 1920-1922, under the pen name G. B. Kenna. Yet not long before it was published, the Civil War broke out, and the Free State Government adopted a peace policy towards the Northern Government. The book was ordered to be pulped]

This might be worth a look

https://northernirelandscreen.co.uk/news/pogrom-bheal-feiriste-new-tg4-documentary/

"A new documentary from Clean Slate Television tells the story of a book written in 1922 that was deemed too dangerous to publish.

After violence broke out in Belfast in 1920 a Catholic priest, Fr John Hassan, who was based in St Mary's in Chapel Lane, began to collect accounts of what he witnessed and was reported to him.

By 1922, the Southern Government was planning to publish Father Hassan's report in a book, Facts and Figures of the Belfast Pogrom 1920-1922, under the pen name G. B. Kenna. Yet not long before it was published, the Civil War broke out, and the Free State Government adopted a peace policy towards the Northern Government. The book was ordered to be pulped. Only 18 copies of the book survived. It was almost lost forever until one of the surviving copies was found in the 1990s."

"Adopted a peace policy" doing a lot of heavy lifting here.  Good to see censorship and abandonment of the North started right away in the Free State

Nobody hates them, unless you're from the Hand, Clerkin, Stack, Kelly, Sheehan, Ryan, McCabe, Oliver families among others.

As for me I don't like their
holier than thou preaching of schoolmistress McDonald,
Unashamed populism,
Cut taxes and increase spending
Economic illiteracy
Their unashamed grab for fascist transfers in their manifesto
And while Clare Kerrane seems a fine person there are some total scumbags among their numbers

Remiss of you not to name check the McConvilles for the full Southern bingo card of Troubles victims.

Just four seats to be filled. All in the Cavan/Monaghan area and at the moment it looks like two more seats for FF and one for SF and 1 for AON.

It will be 2 FF and 2 SF, AOntú best runner up. This gives 
FF 48
SF 39
FG 38

So SF second biggest party after 'collapsing' with their highest seat share in modern times. Yes they may not have had the election they had hoped for but it was ok.

Interesting to see all the loyalists and unionists on socials celebrating it as if it's the death knell for a border poll. Do they not realise that the border is going to be a key policy for all parties and it's going to continue to be. And the reality is that it makes no real difference anyway as what happens for the north will be directed by the people up here. The timeline will not change

Yeah, the amount of Unionists/Loyalists (and a couple of journalists) who showed that they haven't a clue about Southern politics, elections in general, how PR STV works, and the GFA.

Just four seats to be filled. All in the Cavan/Monaghan area and at the moment it looks like two more seats for FF and one for SF and 1 for AON.

It will be 2 FF and 2 SF, AOntú best runner up. This gives 
FF 48
SF 39
FG 38

Yeah on the figures from the last count Aontú need divine intervention to take that last seat.

In Cav-Mon it looks like Carthy and Bennett will be elected for SF plus 1 FF, sitting TD Pauline Tully of SF has been eliminated.  Last seat will be tight between AON and FF.  AON need v. big transfer from SF.  FF probably slight favourite.