05.25.07
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 8:53 pm by Sarah
Well, well, well.
So not a bad day for FG but a phenomenal one for FF.
I confess myself to be bewildered, resigned and cheerful.
Why people in Meath East elect 2 FF candidates when they don’t have enough schools is beyond me. Poor people voting for FF instead of SF is not such a mystery. Where resources are scarce maybe the Shinnors seemed too willing to give something to the immigrants and who cares about the effin peace process now that we have peace. In one way I approve of the collapse of the smaller parties and the independents – people voted for who they wanted in government not who they thought might influence a government.
In the end, FF sent out the big boys – Cowen, Martin, Ahern and everyone else seemed like amateurs in their shadows.
For Meath West, well I think had Higgins not run, or my sister run or God Almighty run, is all irrelevant. Fianna Fail polled almost 20,000 No. 1′s. Who can challenge that?
So why am I cheerful? Because I’ve decided to stop feeling guilty about the children’s allowance bonanza and the SSIA windfall. I used to look at that money and think – I don’t deserve this – poor people should have this. But the poor people don’t want it! So I’m going to enjoy it. Cheers!
And finally..McDowell..what can you say? His influence has been malign yet he will be missed. But perhaps he’ll be back..
In the meantime, I am off on holidays. Enda, you did a good job. Just because the people don’t want you doesn’t mean you have failed. They have failed themselves. Chin up.
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05.24.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:45 pm by Sarah
Paddy sent me this. It’ll take our minds off the election.
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Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 10:56 am by Sarah
It’s best to do it early. Just in case I take some kind of seizure and die later in the the day. At least they’ll have my vote.
So, I did
GG 1, English 2, Higgins 3
So if GG does shite and gets eliminated his vote will go to Damo if he hasn’t made the quota and onto Higgins if Damo has been elected.
If GG is eliminated and English has been elected already and Higgins has also been eliminated, then what?
Out of principal I gave 4 and 5 to Labour and Green and 6 to the Independent Cantwell but in reality if GG and Higgins are out then so are those guys.
So the vote that will really count is the no. 7.
I was left with the FnFers, Sinn Fein and Father’s Rights guy.
Chances are that third seat will boil down to a fight between Johnny Brady and Joe Reilly of Sinn Fein. Dempsey will be the poll topper and won’t need the vote so I gave it to Brady. I’d rather he was elected than the Shinnor.
You know Jim Mitchell’s elimination elected FF Dermot Fitzpatrick in the last election? Put him ahead of the Shinnor. See you have to think hard about where your vote might travel.
On the downside my father and I watched people going into the polling station. The FnFers are coming out of the graves to vote. On the upside people are ringing us for guidance so the FGers aren’t taking any chances either. All to play for.
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05.23.07
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 12:36 pm by Sarah
Alright so that wasn’t the last word – this is.
I think Pat Rabbitte was right when he said that the policy to build private hospitals on public grounds should be the deciding factor in the election because it sums everything that is wrong about FF so-called governance.
Let’s just do the history…
They gave benchmarking which included index linked, benchmarked linked pensions for civil and public servants.
They guaranteed everyone’s job from the Health Boards.
They hired in another layer of bureaucracy called the HSE.
They decentralised so they had to hire more people.
None of this was linked to productivity
So the cost of Health soared but the services didn’t improve
So they realised they couldn’t provide any extra public beds because they couldn’t persuade the bureaucrats to work.
So their mates the builders down at the tent in the Galway Races said “sure we’ll build those for you if you give us a dacent cut”
So now the new equipment and the good nurses and the fancy doctors will go into the new private hospitals.
And the old and the poor and the cystic fibrosis patients will die in the old crappy hospitals while the privately insured live it up next door in the carpeted hospital/hotel.
And they call this a government?
WHAT F*CKING GOVERNMENT?
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05.22.07
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 5:34 pm by Sarah
“Senior Fianna Fáil figures met the head of Independent Newspapers, Sir Anthony O’Reilly, before the election campaign began, Minister for Finance Brian Cowen has confirmed.
Questioned about the matter yesterday, Mr Cowen said “an opportunity” had arisen to hold a meeting with Sir Anthony.
“Any meetings that are private are private. It wasn’t about anything other than Fianna Fáil putting its position formally to a proprietor of newspapers to see what way we can get our message across.”
Funny that, meeting with the man who swears he has no editorial involvement in his papers.
Wonder what it’ll be this year?
“Payback Time (for AOR)”
Or maybe’s today’s headline is enough “Rabbitte hints he’ll back FF to thwart SF” – that’s the kind of thing Bertie would like alright..
Do these journalists even pretend they aren’t serving Sir Anthony’s agenda?
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Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 11:30 am by Sarah
It’s time to focus people.
Do you REALLY want those fools Dick Roche and Martin Cullen back in office?
Do you REALLY want Mary Hanafin in office whose special mission in life is to deny adequate services to autistic children?
Do you REALLY want to say that its cool for the Taoiseach to take cash from his mates and pay no tax?
Do you REALLY want that ignorant bully Cowen puffed up even more than he is now?
Do you REALLY want to re-elect a government that guaranteed the Health Board people their jobs, then hired HSE bureacrats on top of them, THEN officially gave up on the notion of a public health service by calling in their mates the builders to build private hospitals?
Do you really want the millionaires shrieking with delight on Friday when they realise their best friends are back in power?
Do you really want McDowell back in Justice passing his draconian legislation which horrifies criminal lawyers?
Do you really want Michael Martin back in, who sat back in DoH meetings and cheerfully ignored the nursing home crisis?
If that’s what you want fine. The builders will be pleased as they’ll have plenty of business getting the contracts to build hospitals and nursing homes and charging you all for what you should be entitled to for free.
But if you don’t want that then you have to vote Fine Gael or Labour.
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05.21.07
Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 9:39 pm by Sarah
I like Marc Coleman’s pieces in the IT – used to know him in TCD btw. This opinion column today in the IT starts out making a point with which I totally agree – that public servants should take responsibility for mismanagement in the public service. Pat Rabbitte’s defence of public servants sparked the column and that’s fair enough. What I don’t get (other than his personal party preference) is why Marc devotes so much time to patronising Rabbitte and failing to point out the rather obvious fact that FF hardly have a sparkling history of making public servants accountable. When did anyone get fired for a f*ck-up?
Michael Kelly from the Dept of Health got moved sideways after the nursing home scandal. Ministers sat in on meetings where that was flagged and they ignored it and quite frankly, that was one case where there SHOULD have been political accountability. But in the last ten years, is that it? One guy who took the blame while his Ministers avoided any?
How can Coleman write an article condemning Pat Rabitte for his view that public servants shouldn’t be fired and not mention the fact that FF haven’t fired ANYONE in the last ten years? He’s just using the space to bash Labour over the head for saying how they would behave in office while ignoring how FF have actually behaved in office. Bizarre.
“Should accountability for the performance of more than one-third of a million people employed in the public service boil down to the sacking of government ministers alone? The question has an important backdrop, that of benchmarking public-sector pay.
Already in 2002 the average public servant was paid 40 per cent more than the average private-sector worker. Public-sector pensions are widely regarded as “to die for”, while the nurses’ request for a 35-hour week illustrates just how different reality is for public-sector workers. Given such conditions – and given that private-sector workers pay for them – Pat Rabbitte was asked whether public servants found guilty of incompetence should be sacked.
His answer was honest and unequivocal: “I do not agree with the proposition that what is required is the sacking of incompetent public servants”.
Justifying the answer, Rabbitte spoke of the “long traditions” of the public service. Traditions whereby ministers took ultimate responsibility for the mistakes of public servants.
It was precisely those traditions that were called on last week by both Labour and Fine Gael. Dick Roche, they argued, should be sacked for the debacle over the contamination of water supplies in Galway and Martin Cullen over the state of the transport system.
In a general election campaign an opposition politician is, of course, entitled to make such an argument. But what does making this argument reflect about the understanding of government, and the complexities of government, on the part of the person making it?
The context of Pat Rabbitte’s response to the question put to him was a question posed by another newspaper over the Travers report into the scandal of nursing-home charges.
That report, although not blaming the former secretary of the department of health Michael Kelly, stated that an insufficiently detailed report given by him to Cabinet had contributed to the situation which arose. According to the Labour leader, Kelly had been scapegoated.
Without entering into that sensitive issue, the question needs to be asked: are there any circumstances under which public servants can be sacked?
Despite repeated questioning, Rabbitte felt this was not the answer to the problem of waste in the public sector. When the question was put to Fine Gael, a spokesperson for the party said that while of course existing disciplinary machinery within the public service could be used to do so, Fine Gael had no agenda to pursue such a course of action.
But the reality is that Dick Roche did not poison Galway’s water supply. Nor did Martin Cullen call into being the complex array of stakeholders who for decades have defeated all attempts to make Ireland’s public transport system efficient. Both men are temporary holders of office which afford even the longest-serving of their occupants barely enough time to grasp their brief, never mind envisage or implement change.
In their efforts to personalise issues of ministerial accountability, Fine Gael and Labour failed to grasp this point last week.
Of course, ministers must be held to account. Of course the cost overruns cited by the Labour Party last week are, mostly, real. However, a system of policy decision-making that reduces the question of government efficiency to the sacking of one minister has had its day.
As Pat Rabbitte said last week in relation to the Estimates procedure – by which government spending is allocated on an annual basis – it stems from the 19th century and is long overdue for reform.
So is the view that highly-paid public servants can any longer remain immune from accountability, no matter how incompetent they are or how irresponsible their actions.”…bla bla
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Posted in Irish Politics at 5:02 pm by Sarah
Good on Trocaire. They are running this campaign.
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Posted in Sunday Times Columns at 4:05 pm by Sarah
I wrote about the swallows a little while ago. Things have moved on. They aren’t back yet but about a month ago, some other breed, not sure which, cos they fly so fast, nested in the vent for the kitchen fan. It’s pretty long, about 8 feet, so once we heard the cheep cheeps from the fan and noticed the pile of nest building material under the hole in the wall we realised it was going to take a major job to get them out. How would you know they were out before you put wire over the entrance? Couldn’t cope with that. Anyway, then apathy set in and now it’s too late because the eggs are probably laid now.
I don’t mind really but it does make me reluctant to switch the fan on because they wouldn’t like the noise or the draft. I’ll have to start focusing on what kind of birds they are. If they are going to nest in my fan-vent I should at least know who they are.
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Posted in Domestic/Relationships at 2:53 pm by Sarah
Mad, just read this . It describes Regina Doherty, the Fine Gael candidate in Meath East to a tee!
Back here, the polls have been done and English is safe and Graham is well ahead of Higgins. Unfortunately Higgins is not strong enough to get elected but absorbing too many Fine Gael votes to keep GG ahead of Johnny Brady. As we feared the biggest threat to FG getting 2 seats in Meath West is Higgins himself. He was told and refused to listen. This is SUCH an important swing constituency. It’s one where we can take a seat right off FF. Any Meath West people reading who want FF out of government need to get this one right. GG No. 1.
Course if you actually WANT FF, who think the government is incapable of supplying extra hospital beds and wants to hand our health service over to the private industry, well then fair enough, Johnny Brady is your man.
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