Election 2011 Offical Thread.

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

Gerry said ask Eamonn Gilmore the same question, lol 

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

Pretty sure the audience member is a Fianna Fáilure, Gerry now saying its like being back in Castlereagh interogation centre. It is a Gaol afterall Gerry. Bitch fight between FF & SF.

Now an Independent having a go at Gerry. They saying he arrived down with a bluffers guide to the Irish economy.

[Rouge_Diablo]

Now an Independent having a go at Gerry. They saying he arrived down with a bluffers guide to the Irish economy.

written by those who implemented it?

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

Now an Independent having a go at Gerry. They saying he arrived down with a bluffers guide to the Irish economy.

written by those who implemented it?

It was an Independent.

[Rouge_Diablo]

Do you have anything to add to last nights discussion on the "European Force"?

[Banana Man]

Pretty sure the audience member is a Fianna Fáilure, Gerry now saying its like being back in Castlereagh interogation centre. It is a Gaol afterall Gerry. Bitch fight between FF & SF.

Now an Independent having a go at Gerry. They saying he arrived down with a bluffers guide to the Irish economy.

that is starting to irk me, it can't be any more fanciful than the current bunch of balloons who have ran it into the ground, more front than newcastle promenade

[mayogodhelpus@gmail.com]

Do you have anything to add to last nights discussion on the "European Force"?

I gave my opinion.

[Poc me]

Fianna Fáil are some craic!!! They push the DUP and UUP into government with Sinn Féin and tell them to move forward and forget about the past, yet when Gerry comes to Louth they bring up the same old shit about his past in the IRA. It just goes to show that they are completely shitting themselves. Reverting to good old west Brit politics to preserve their position as the Republican Party....hypocrisy at its highest.

Most people on here from the north do tend to be SF supporters yes, i wouldn't count myself as a supporter of SF or any political party to be honest but I do have sympathies with them given the contempt with which they are being treated in 26 county politics.

Now lets have an answer...is the contempt for SF simply to do with their economic policies or is the fact that Gerry has come from the 'north' and additional reason to hate him?

[Rouge_Diablo]

Do you have anything to add to last nights discussion on the "European Force"?

I gave my opinion.

basically what you said is that you didnt expect it to be used much , and are happy with the fact that Irish troops would be at the beck and call of someone else in Europe - fightig another mans war - is that it?

You gave no opinion on how "you" (as in FG) would recruit to this army or indeed to the question on how the deployment of any troops would be managed.

What "you" seem to be saying is come lads it wil be grand, sure they will never ask us to go and fight...

[Rouge_Diablo]

Fianna Fáil are some craic!!! They push the DUP and UUP into government with Sinn Féin and tell them to move forward and forget about the past, yet when Gerry comes to Louth they bring up the same old shit about his past in the IRA. It just goes to show that they are completely shitting themselves. Reverting to good old west Brit politics to preserve their position as the Republican Party....hypocrisy at its highest.

Most people on here from the north do tend to be SF supporters yes, i wouldn't count myself as a supporter of SF or any political party to be honest but I do have sympathies with them given the contempt with which they are being treated in 26 county politics.

Now lets have an answer...is the contempt for SF simply to do with their economic policies or is the fact that Gerry has come from the 'north' and additional reason to hate him?

What would Charlie say?

[Donnellys Hollow]

Pretty sure the audience member is a Fianna Fáilure, Gerry now saying its like being back in Castlereagh interogation centre. It is a Gaol afterall Gerry. Bitch fight between FF & SF.

Now an Independent having a go at Gerry. They saying he arrived down with a bluffers guide to the Irish economy.

that is starting to irk me, it can't be any more fanciful than the current bunch of balloons who have ran it into the ground, more front than newcastle promenade

I don't think you'll find anyone who would disagree that the policies and idiocy of the current incumbents is the reason we're in this monumental mess.

The solution? Sinn Féin harp on about unilaterally 'burning the bondholders'. Sounds great, but what happens next? How will we pay to run the country? Do the markets have short memories? If (part of) the solution was that simple would we not have done it already or does it just sound too good to be true?

I'm no economics expert and I don't have the answers to these questions. However, I'd expect any party that would hope to implement such a policy to have the answers. If people perceive that they have not received satisfactory answers to these questions then they will naturally question Sinn Féin's economic policies.

[LaurelEye]

I was very much against the invasion of Iraq.

Yeah, but Leo was quite keen on it at the time.

And not being smart, but he's going to be making the decisions and you're not.

Good find LaurelEye. Certainly gives more weight to lawnseed's initial post.

I remember the comment at the time, and I remember Leo condemning the protests against the war as anti-American although I can't find anything about it on the Irish Times or Indo websites. I'm just surprised that no-one pulled him up on it when he made the comment about Blair's reputation being tainted by Iraq.

My fear really is that we are sleepwalking into giving an overall majority to a party which has no end of obsessions on particular issues - a totally uncritical take on anything coming from Europe, an enthusiasm for military alliances, a disdain for the Irish language - and where you have an up-and-coming clique of young politicians (Leo himself, Lucinda Creighton, Brian Hayes, John Deasy) who model themselves on the Tory and US Republican parties in terms of ideology. Add to that an economic plan which is based on out-of-date, over-optimistic assumptions about growth, a belief that you can remove 30,000 people from the public services simply through natural wastage and voluntary redundancies without affecting frontline services, and a health plan which is vague on details and seems to have been written in consultation with health insurance companies. And as prospective Taoiseach we have someone who has to be protected from in-depth questioning in debates in case he has to go beyond prepared slogans.

We may get a lot more than we bargained for. Actually, a lot of ordinary FG members may get a lot more than they bargained for.

Long term FF Supporter Laurel???

Reynolds got a number 1 from me in 1997 on account of the work he did on the peace process and because I thought he'd been treated shabbily during the collapse of the FF-Lab coalition, but I then transferred elsewhere. Otherwise not before or since.

I don't see much difference between FF and FG, frankly, and generally rank their candidates based on how much use I think they'd be in the Dáil. My worry is that we're buying a pig in a poke, just as we did at the last election. We are heading for a continuation (intensified if anything) of the same policies of the last three years with the same likely results.

[Banana Man]

Pretty sure the audience member is a Fianna Fáilure, Gerry now saying its like being back in Castlereagh interogation centre. It is a Gaol afterall Gerry. Bitch fight between FF & SF.

Now an Independent having a go at Gerry. They saying he arrived down with a bluffers guide to the Irish economy.

that is starting to irk me, it can't be any more fanciful than the current bunch of balloons who have ran it into the ground, more front than newcastle promenade

I don't think you'll find anyone who would disagree that the policies and idiocy of the current incumbents is the reason we're in this monumental mess.

The solution? Sinn Féin harp on about unilaterally 'burning the bondholders'. Sounds great, but what happens next? How will we pay to run the country? Do the markets have short memories? If (part of) the solution was that simple would we not have done it already or does it just sound too good to be true?

I'm no economics expert and I don't have the answers to these questions. However, I'd expect any party that would hope to implement such a policy to have the answers. If people perceive that they have not received satisfactory answers to these questions then they will naturally question Sinn Féin's economic policies.

It's a fair point DH and i would agree with you, an i wouldn't be an economics expert myself but thats not what i'm driving at.

Whats happening, is that people, sorry rival TD's and their supporters in the press are baracking and shouting down SF saying the proposals are fanciful and made up etc but that's it, the surface isn't even scratched of their proposals, it isn't looked into, the shinners respond with ''the dept of finance have fully costed our proposals'' and that's it, it never gets any further than a slanging match.

How did Iceland and Argentina manage to do it? not directing it at you DH as we both profess to know little about it, but can someone tell me why we can't burn the bondholders when others can??

[Bogball XV]

Local labour candidate arrived at my mate's house last night, would not confirm that labour would not go into govt with FF!!!!!  Did however say that they would not countenance any coalition with SF (presumably because there's still some bad blood over the split 30 odd years ago).

[Ulick]

Louth Const. candidates being interviewed on RTE Radio 1 now http://www.rte.ie/radio/

Gerry has just been asked a member of the audience has he been a senior member of the IRA. The interview is taking place in an old Gaol!!!

I was looking forward to listening to this as it's being mentioned on loads of other forums. Apparently the member of the audience John 'Jumbo' Kierans, editor of the "Irish" Daily Mirror. For some reason the usual podcast for this portion of the show has not being made available.