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I think FG are vulnerable

Even if Harris hadn't messed up, FG were never going to have a great election imo. Too many new candidates. I actually don't think Harris will impact in any material way the seat numbers they end up with, but now he will be blamed for it!  Which is probably a good thing for FG in the long run. Get Paschal in for the next election. The person who is qualified but doesn't want it, is often the best person for it.

For all the wealth Ireland has, the place is a complete mess - housing, health and education etc. Never mind immigration. I watched Katie Hannon's Up Front programme last night and you'd swear that FFG were new to the whole experience in government. It was just a mess.

'The place is a complete mess' is a very confusing statement for me.

I think it's a great place to live and land of great opportunity. Now, it's not perfect, by a long way. A&E is horrendous and there are long waiting lists for various things that should be better. Personally I have had a number of procedures since COVID and been treated very well

The homeless situation is worse than it should be. Prices of houses are expensive. But those issues are no different to the vast amount of economically successful cities around the world. Personally I think there should be more focus on decentralisation and I think there has been a bit of a lost opportunity post Covid in that regard and not too much in manifestos about it.

I think the education system is really good. We are producing lots of bright students. My kids worked hard for the Leaving (in a non-fee DEIS school), are working hard in university and hopefully should have great opportunities when they graduate. I have a nephew who dropped out of college recently (first year) as it wasn't for him. But he immediately was out looking for work and already picked up a job in a FinTech outfit in Dublin paying about 35k. As an 18 year old with zero experience, I can't imagine what he'll be doing but it's a foot on the ladder into the real world

If people want to vote for change, then so be it. But the very most important thing is the economy. Once you have full employment like we have now, then you have the opportunity to spend tax revenues and try to make a positive difference. And while Cowen and Lenihan had a monumental fook up with the banking crisis, we otherwise have about 40 years of really good decision making from FF and FG to put us in the super economic situation we are in now

What  Is the reason for FF/FG's hatred of SF? It just seems strange, given FF and FG  are opposing parties historically , but they obviously  hate SF  a lot more

I have my own suspicions , but just interested in  others thoughts on it


Btw, what was the  reason for the position of each  candidate in the line up last night? Is this usually the order they  stand? Seemed to me it was deliberate , so that MM/SH could  give it to Mary Lou  from both sides (I'm not a  SF voter btw)

There's a lot of middle aged people who remember SF's support for the provos and remember the Provos being involved in organized armed robberies, violence against Gardai and indiscriminate killings of innocent people. I know that is scoffed at by many in here, but it's a fact that some people still would not vote SF because it's still in the memory banks of voters, but getting less important every election.

More important for FF and FG is economic policy. SF are far to the left of FG and FF, they espoused Marxist policies,  anti EU policies and anti enterprise policies. But SF have definitely moved in a bit from their far left positions, so I think they are no longer unpalatable to FF. I think MM would reluctantly accept a coalition on a 'will of the people' basis, if that's the way the electorate voted. But only if FF are the biggest party. Otherwise if FF went into coalition with SF I think he would stand down as leader.

FG are still far away from SF, so it would be a bit of a nonsense for FG to want to go into a coalition with SF, and vice versa of course.

This lad deserves his own thread and not to be stinkin up the UFC one anymore.  I saw his statement about getting back to fighting.  Let's be honest, his UFC career is over.

He's finished in Ireland as well...
https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2024/1126/1483087-musgrave-no-longer-stocking-products-linked-to-mcgregor/

He is definitely done in Ireland, but he's not done in the US. They just elected a similar dude as President.

He'll defo do a YouTube fight with one of those bellends, and I think he'll probably do a UFC fight before that (unless Joe Rogan blackballs him - not that he makes the decisions but he influences those who do. JR has never been a massive McGregor fan, but he'll probably give him the benefit of the doubt).

FF would prefer to go in with FG alright as their economic policies are quite closely aligned and have had extraordinary success. (Albeit you can debate how successfully they have used it)

If however FG do badly and there is enough seats for FF-SF to form a government (with some others perhaps), then I do think FF will take the plunge. However, if they have 10 seats more than SF then FF will hold all the cards. So both shared Taoiseach and Finance won't be on the table. It'll be Health and Housing and Foreign Affairs and some junior posts. Then SF can decide whether to take it and finally get into government or go for another election (which would be risky).

 If it's neck and neck, then that's a different story

If you were raped why would you go on to have sex with another random man shortly after?

Why did she lie about having consensual sex with said man?

Why did she lie to her boyfreind about her whereabouts?

Why did she claim she was the only one there - Then once her friend came forward and said she was also present and she seen/heard anything to cooperate with a rape taking place?

Is it not strange for the first thing for her boyfriend to do when she arrived home was record their conversation? Why wait to go to the police?

Why did the taxi driver also confirm she preformed oral sex on McGreogor in the back of the car?

It just doesn't add up to me. I think she was caught being a coke whore and eventually when she had to go back and face the music she see an opportunity to throw out the rape card.

There was seemingly compelling evidence on both sides. You are making the mistake of believing everything you read on social media from McGregor fans!

The taxi driver wasn't brought forward as a witness by McGregor's lawyer. Why not?
When McGregor was recounting what happened in the car, he never mentioned it. Why not? (He only mentioned it when aggravated by her lawyer, and his wording was interesting, he said 'the tax driver said...', he still didn't say 'she gave me a ...')
From what I've heard from a barrister friend, the talk around the courts was the taxi driver was most likely mistaken and wasn't deemed a believable witness by any side.

The lying to the boyfriend is totally irrelevant! 
The CCTV evidence was clearly bad for the plaintiff and the main reason I would say as to why the DPP didn't bring it to court.
Whether or not she had sex with the other lad was not decided by the jury. They just found that he did not assault/rape her. There was no mention in the judgement about whether they had sex or not. It took a while for McGregor and him to come up with that story at the time, which makes it less believable.

It is one of the mysteries of the case as to why her legal team decided to include the other lad in the charge.

At the end if the day, the jury heard all the evidence and decided the most compelling was the medical evidence. Whatever about how drunk or high she was, and that she clearly had memory black outs,  he wasn't entitled to rape her and cause the damage he clearly did.

[a jury at Dublin's High Court found McGregor assaulted her]

Sc**bag McGregor was found liable for rape. If there is an appeal a few posters here could apply to give evidence on his behalf. Knuckleheaded misogynists...

Wrong, he wasn't found liable for rape, he was found guilty of assault. Seriously, if your going to pontificate, at least get your facts right, stop making shit up.

Then he'll have a lot of media companies to sue. Don't be an apologist for a rapist.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/conor-mcgregor-speaks-after-losing-civil-rape-case-as-feminist-march-held-in-dublin-13260789

You would do well to read the link you posted, and I quote from your link 'The MMA fighter was accused of raping Nikita Hand, who was awarded €248,603 (£206,000) in damages on Friday after a jury at Dublin's High Court found McGregor assaulted her in a Dublin hotel in 2018'. He was not found guilty of rape.

Also don't assume I am apologist for anything because I pulled you on inaccurate reporting of information. Its obvious he is a horrible individual. I wouldn't be in the slightest bit surprised if other woman now came forward with similar stories. The time he hit the old man in the bar said it all.

You have totally mis-interpreted that and are putting out false statements. You may not have been following it closely.

McGregor was found liable for assault and that assault was rape. The judge was very clear in his instructions to the jury, that if they found him guilty, damages would have to be substantial (which was taken to mean 6 figures) because the assault in this case was rape, which was a very serious type of assault.

Costs to be decided this week.

General rule is that the loser pays. I think the judge has some discretion, but that it's rare they veer from the general rule.

So while McGregor would be on the hook for Hand's costs, she could be on the hook for Lawrence's costs. That would take a mighty chunk out of the 250k. Also you'd think McGregor's lawyers would argue that a portion of her costs related to the Lawrence case so they should only cover maybe 70-80% of her costs.

McGregor said he was paying Lawrence's legal fees to maybe that changes things. Also he made some disparaging tweets against the judgement, including calling it a kangaroo court (now deleted) but no doubt Hand's lawyers will be able to show them to the judge, and that surely won't go down well.

There's also rumour that McGregor may have made an official compensation offer and notified the court of it. There is nothing to support this so far, so I'd take with a pinch of salt. But if there was an official offer lodged with the court prior to the start of proceedings, and it was turned down, and it was more than the compensation awarded by the jury, then the plaintiff would be on the hook for all costs.

Last night's fights were not PPV. Existing Netflix subscribers could watch without any extra payment. Of course, it will be interesting to see if they increase their subscription price again to recapture the costs, or if new subscriptions make it worthwhile.
Netflix were advertising that they have two NFL games live on Christmas Day, again no extra cost for existing subscribers

Absolute gold TV moment when Iron Mike was interviewed between rounds during Katie's fight. And not relating to anything he said!

Hard not to be swayed towards Serrano there, with all the production, commentary, crowd all in her favour,  but if you were to watch the fight back with no volume,  Katie had more cleaner shots and just about won it in my opinion. Plus the point deduction was crazy.

Absolutely. I was surprised when the result was called, but I didn't score it round by round, and it's so easy to get swayed by the commentators, especially when Serrano's punches were more eye-catching and at times they were just commentating on one fighter. The punches landed stats don't lie and they were heavily in favour of Serrano, but one dominant round (like the first) can skew that too.

The Netflix scorer had it 6-4 to Serrano, whereas all 3 judges had it 6-4 Taylor, so whatever it was, it was a tight fight which could go either way. BBC have reported that ' world champions Claressa Shields, Terence Crawford and Shakur Stevenson all thought Taylor was a narrow winner'.

So we certainly shouldn't be embarrassed by the victory or swayed by all the crying from the Serrano camp in the post fight interviews.

Yep, it's the trade war that will hurt Ireland moreso than Trump's tariffs (noting of course that it would be Trump's tariffs that cause the trade war and EU will have no choice but to retaliate). I do think that Danish study has forgotten about how 'leprechaun economics' artificially inflates our GDP and they have inflated the knock on negative impact. But no doubt a trade war will be bad for everyone including Ireland. 

It was mentioned briefly above, but I'm sure FG will do less well than their poll numbers suggest due to the high turnover of candidates. You will have plenty of people who might be thinking FG1, but then don't recognize the FG candidate so give their number 1 elsewhere.

They'll probably do ok in transfers but at this stage I reckon FF will be the party with the most seats.

I wouldn't rule out a FF-SF coalition if the numbers are there (with MM standing aside), but if I was betting, I'd have a slight inclination to it being the same again, except Labour replacing Greens.

That article is focused on foreign companies importing stuff into the US. The vast majority of US companies in Ireland service Europe and other non-US markets. Their US companies service the US markets. Tariffs will be bad for trade generally and would impact our big domestic companies, but won't hit Ireland harder than anywhere else.

What we don't want is a reduction in US corporate tax rates down to about 15%. Even that wouldn't cause an immediate problem, but would certainly lead to a drip feed reduction and significantly impact the pipeline of new US companies coming to Ireland.

How come the McGregor case going through the Civil cour, and not the Criminal court, given the extend of the accusations against him.

Barrister friend tells me the DPP concluded there was insufficient evidence to likely secure a conviction. And not the first time.

Civil trial has a lower bar. But have to be careful with reading too much into the opening day, especially statements by the prosecution lawyer, even if the initial medical evidence seemed very strongly against him.

Confirmed on Rte.ie just now
"A woman who alleges she was raped by mixed martial arts fighter Conor McGregor in a Dublin hotel almost six years ago has said she was "absolutely devastated" and let down when the Director of Public Prosecutions decided not to prosecute him for the alleged assault."