Category: Politics

Serious. Or apparently serious.

Categories
Politics

Voted Yet?

Mubarak PosterCourtesy of  Broadsheet.ie, a lovely piece of what, back before political correctness ruined a perfectly good word, we used to call Art Terrorism. The logo in the top left of the poster is – naturally – that of the Fianna Fáil party.

Well I’ve just been out with my ballot hammer, adding my own small nail to the lid of Fianna Fáil’s coffin. An interesting thing: Everyone in the station and in local shops seemed to be in a good mood, chatting about the election and how it was a lovely day for one. OK, the weather was pretty nice, but I really think there was more to it. People were glad it was an election day. After all, a change of government is the first grounds for hope they’ve had in years.

Categories
Politics

Get Up and Vote

P45 CartoonWe should be having a revolution here. Instead, if polls are to be believed, we may be electing a government even further to the right, even more willing to elevate rich over poor, than the one we are throwing away.

Don’t believe the polls, it’s too easy for such prophecies to become self-fulfilling. There is everything to play for right to the end. Which is why I’m up at 3:00 writing this so you can read it before you leave in the morning. It isn’t too late to send a message to all the political parties, to their wealthy friends, to the other countries of the EU. We are in a hole that was not made by the ordinary people of Ireland, and certainly not by those who are going to suffer the most because of it. The message is that we will not put up with this shit.

Don’t vote for Fine Gael to punish Fianna Fáil. There are much better punishments. Vote for people who don’t mince words about repudiating the awful “bailout” arrangement. That’s there to save the Euro, not us. Remember we have a hostage.

This means voting for out-there parties like the United Left Alliance – or even Sinn Féin. Few things would give the establishment more pause than a substantial rise in the SF vote. It also means voting for Labour, even if I am disappointed on the stand they’ve taken. Or lack thereof. Essentially we need Labour in government if there is to be any hope of the next few years not turning into an orgy of punishment for the poor.

Please, get out there now and warn those who act like they own us. Remind them where power really comes from.

Meanwhile, back in Galway West

My own constituency is going to go to the wire. While there are some laudable independents running, I don’t personally think any of them have a chance – except the ones who are independent more in name than in outlook. These are Noel Grealish, the ‘last PD’, and Labour’s lost candidate Catherine Connolly. It seems very likely that the final seat will be between these two, and I hardly need to tell you which is the vastly preferable outcome.

Indeed I like Catherine Connolly better than Labour’s official candidate, Derek Nolan. I’ll be putting her ahead in my order, and I hope a lot of others do too. I believe Galway West can elect them both.

And there may be an extra trick that more daring voters can play, if Kernan Andrews in the Galway Advertiser is correct:

Senator Healy Eames needs to outpoll Deputy Grealish and stay ahead of him to ensure she takes the seat. If she does, she will knock Grealish out and this will free up the last two seats for the Galway Left – which means victories for Labour’s Derek Nolan and Independent Catherine Connolly.

So that’s my only FG vote – Senator Fidelma Healy-Eames. Remember that name. She may help us simultaneously finish off the last PD and elect, for the first time in the history of Galway West, a second TD on the left.

Which… would be nice.

Categories
Humour Politics

Introducing Approval Cat

King CartoonAnother weird thing about broadcasters in Ireland is the ‘moratorium’. Under this rule, they’re not allowed to discuss tomorrow’s election today. They still broadcast the political shows though, so right now we’re witnessing the unedifying spectacle of hot leftish forum Tonight with Vincent Browne studiously ignoring the most important ballot in living memory.

But what is there that doesn’t relate to the economic and political train wreck we’re living through? The only even vaguely topical issue they found is the mooted visit of the reigning British monarch, an idea so disconnected from current reality that you wonder if the media started it just so they’d have something to talk about tonight.

I couldn’t bear to watch. For the sake of TV, the argument had to be over whether we should actively despise or be really quite fond of royalty. Both unreasonable positions to my mind; I would prefer to simply not give a flying fuck about the British or indeed any monarch. I am a republican.

Not in the usual Irish – and certainly not in the American – sense, but in that I am opposed to inherited respect. So I would prefer if persons holding office simply by privilege of birth were not fawned upon by our leaders. On the other hand, she’s the symbolic head of a country with which we are trying to heal and mature our relations. If we do this right (as in polite and dignified, NOT flattered and awestruck, monarchophiles) it could – could – help improve life for people in Northern Ireland.

So I’m in a bind. In these situations, I’m forced to defer to Approval Cat.

Approval Cat, where do you stand on an official visit by the UK’s Head of State?

Approval Cat

Guess that’s settled then.

Categories
Politics Technology

Fine Gael to Tax Freedom


Barring a miracle of the ballot boxes, it looks like Fine Gael are going to be our masters for the next few years. So I guess some people will have to actually drag their eyes through the bloody manifesto and see what may be in store. Friend and fellow cartoonist Allan Cavanagh alerted me to this gem:

TV Licence: We will change the TV Licence into a household-based Public Broadcasting Charge applied to all households and applicable businesses regardless of the device they use to access content.

Do they really mean to charge all households for RTɹ, whether they watch TV or not? That would be a new general tax, just one that’s collected through its own separate – and therefore ridiculously wasteful – system. Further, it forces me to pay for something I don’t want. I do not own a TV, and one of the reasons for this is that I don’t think what RTÉ broadcasts is worth paying for. If you saw it, you wouldn’t too.

RTE ThumbnailBut perhaps they mean you will be charged if you have any device in your home capable of viewing RTÉ ‘content’. (Do you get nervous whenever anyone uses that word?) They’re hardly going to come round and check what sort of phone you have, so unless they go the unthinkable² route of tracking all internet activity to make sure no one secretly watches television, the logical and simple way to do this will be to charge a tax on every broadband connection or data tariff.

So in the guise of a TV licence, they introduce a tax on freedom of information and of expression. No way, Fine Gael.

  1. RTÉ is the publicly owned broadcasting service, funded in part by a television license fee in a similar fashion to the BBC. In a highly dissimilar fashion, it also has commercials.
  2. Please God they do realise this is unthinkable, don’t they?
Categories
Politics

Ireland – Read This And Pass It On

Rightwards CartoonDammit, I am not looking forward to life under Enda. The reason Fianna Fáil went so wrong is that they were far too involved on a personal basis with business, banking and property. Fine Gael are meant to be the cure for that? Hmm.

Over the last ten years or so, the idea prevailed that if you let banks go crazy they’d magic up enough money for everyone. Since this failed so disastrously, you might think we’d consider voting for the sole major party that wasn’t in favour of it. Yet instead we’re going from one lot of laissez-faire capitalists to another. This is like voting for five more years of British rule after the Great Famine.

For the first time in our entire history, Ireland had a real chance of returning a mildly socialist government. Not a Labour overall majority, but at least a government led by the left. Yet even after the parties of the right destroyed the country, we still do not. Incredibly, there’s even a small danger of electing the furthest-right government we’ve ever had – a single-party Fine Gael administration. I almost wish that on the electorate. Go on, do it. Find out for yourselves just how right-wing Fine Gael can be without the moderating influence of Labour.

(God no, don’t. It would be like staring into the unmasked face of the national id.)

Why, even when kicked and spat on, are we incapable of voting for real change? It’s true Labour failed to present themselves as well as they might, and I don’t think Gilmore is their most impressive leader ever. But Christ, look at Kenny. There has to be more to it. Labour started dropping in the polls when voters decided that Kenny was the clear favourite in the race to be Taoiseach. They chose him like punters choose a horse. In other words, a substantial number of people out there vote not for what seems just, or even for what they think is necessary. They vote for who they think is going to win.

It’s insane, it’s stupid, but people do it anyway because it gives them a sense of being on the winning side. Like Man United supporters – only they get to decide our laws. As soon as it became clear that Enda Kenny was most fancied, people started clustering around him. The media unconsciously give him a softer ride (as they did with Brian, and Bertie, and…), suddenly he no longer looks like an uptight, ineffectual bumbler. Well actually he still does, but he’s going to be Emperor now so shut up about his nakedness.

People who vote like that deserve bad government, deserve to have their money stolen by laughing rich people. But they are not all of us. Don’t live in a country where that kind of person decides your fate. If you’re reading this on Friday and you haven’t voted yet, get up from the computer and run. Run to the polling station.

Or just keep on running. Let’s face it, the place is going to shite.

Categories
Humour Politics

What Debate?

Micheál Martin Cartoon“The big issue here… The big issue…” says Micheál Martin, attempting to talk over someone in the RTÉ debate. I look forward to hearing him say that a lot more. Preferably on street corners.

Really, what is he doing in this studio? His party will be lucky to make it into opposition after this election, never mind government. His opinions are irrelevant, his policies fantasies.

But then the whole debate is a polite fiction. The election results seem to be pretty much a foregone conclusion, the only real thing at stake the precise relative strength of Fine Gael and Labour in the mix. So in effect we’re watching a debate between Gilmore and Kenny, with Martin there as punching bag. That’s a thought actually. If they just wrestled the fucker to the ground and took turns kicking the jam out of him the electorate could go to bed with a smile tonight. Miriam there keeping count of the points. “Nothing below the belt. Oh, go on then.”

But instead it’s just the usual three grown men bickering like siblings. Not only is it pointless, it is actually bad for democracy. I mean, it makes us fantasize about solving problems with violence. That can’t be good.

Mmm. Violence.

Categories
Politics

Live from the Death

Gaddafi's Enemy CartoonMuammar Gaddafi delivering his address to the people of Libya. It is like watching someone die live on television. I think that this may be the longest living (prehumous?) obituary ever.

He is proudly in favour of what the Chinese did in Tiananmen Square. He thinks that he is the victim of a conspiracy between bearded Islamists and the United States – a refreshingly idiosyncratic position. The protesters are cockroaches on pills. He will execute those who commit crimes against the army.

He genuinely believes that he is protecting and saving his people – believes this so strongly that he is willing to pay out of his own pocket for mercenaries to machine-gun them.

Douglas Adams was right it seems. Evil will read you its poetry.

Categories
Politics

Libya’s Warning From History

Muammar's CarI really need to stop confusing Ban Ki-moon with Sun Myung Moon. It’s making the news seem very odd. At least though the UN Secretary General (not the businessman who says he is Jesus) gave an unequivocal response to the massacres in Libya. Our own government still seem to feel there are pros and cons to gunning your own citizens down en masse. It’s probably just as well that they’re resigning power next week.

Unless that is they’re looking at Qadhafi’s dogged approach to politics and thinking “Well, that is another option.”

You may think there is little connection between Ireland and Libya, but the world can be astonishingly small sometimes. Yesterday one of the candidates running in next week’s election lost his brother to the fighting in Benghazi. In fact three members of Ireland’s Libyan community have lost family members so far, a statistic which hints that the number of deaths may be much higher than reported.

The Belfast Telegraph reports that a Dr Ibrihim El Sherif and about 60 Libyans delivered a letter to the Department of Foreign Affairs yesterday, urging our government to condemn the violence.

“We want freedom. We want justice. We want freedom of expression, we want the freedom that we can go to the ballot box like the Irish people in coming days,” he said.

Come on, Libyans. You can do better than that. You’ll only get the same freedom at the ballot box as the Irish people if (a) your uprising turns out to be led by people who are fundamentally conservative, (b) they take control, but then immediately have a civil war between the very conservative and the very, very conservative, and (c) every election for ever after is basically just a choice between one of these nasty, small-minded factions and the other.

And really, what are the odds of that?

That reminds me – found out that one of the Fianna Fáil canvassers I swore at yesterday was the great-grandson of revolutionary leader Éamon de Valera himself. Dev the One-Eighth; I feel like I’ve been touched by mediocrity.

Categories
Politics

Our First FF Canvassers

Knocking on the window. I go outside.

“We came to the wrong door.”
“You came to the wrong house. I don’t give a flying fuck about you guys. You’re welcome to leave.”

I guess I should have been better prepared. The problem is, any time I rehearsed it mentally it ended with shouting and a tirade of filthy abuse. So I guess “I don’t give a flying fuck Doorbell Cartoonabout you guys” showed remarkable self-restraint, even if it was virtually nonsense.

What I want to say is “How can you show your faces? How can you actually stand here and campaign for that party?” But that would have only started them making excuses, and I wouldn’t have been able to hold it in then. They’re gone ten minutes now, but I’m still aching to shout or break something.

And that’s just one Fianna Fáil candidate. There’s another two of the bastards still to come.

Categories
Politics

Revolution Abroad, Retrogression At Home

Generic CartoonI just heard a Libyan diplomat to Ireland come on the radio to condemn the actions of his own government. Not looking too good for Qadhafi then. Of course he isn’t going to get the support from ours that he’s requesting. You can see the argument for a Western government not commenting on other people’s revolutions; comments could be seen as interference, etc. But Jesus Christ, could we not say something along the lines of “We disagree with importing mercenaries to machine-gun your people in the street”?

Meanwhile… Each new opinion poll here delivers its payload of depression. For the first time in our history, Ireland had a chance of delivering a mildly socialist government. And after having lived under a conservative one that wrecked the economy and gave all our money to bankers, you’d think we’d go for this. But we seem to be in real danger of electing the furthest-right government we’ve ever had – a single-party Fine Gael administration. A party of small business, big farms, and the professions, FG has never formed an administration without the balancing influence of Labour as coalition partner. (The reverse is also true.) If they do get in by themselves, the country had better brace itself for a shock.

Irish group blog The Anti-Room is running a competition for election haikus. This is my first entry:

Tired of the same old wealthy-favouring right-wing politics?
No?
Good.