Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week July 8, 2012
Posted by Garibaldy in Sunday Independent Stupid Statement of the Week.trackback
It looks a hell of a lot like Marc Coleman has finally lost it. The whole article deserves to be quoted, but here is a representative sample.
Fine Gael’s core, by contrast, has nowhere else to go, and as Fine Gael’s stance on a host of issues shows, it seems to be taking it for granted: the levy on private pensions; the protection of quangos; James Reilly welcoming a Socialist party motion to legalise abortion; and Fine Gael’s ard fheis endorsing same-sex marriage without even having a vote — are all signs of Fine Gael’s left turn.
That’s right, Fine Gael’s left turn. According to Coleman, the left is on the way to conquering every party in the state. An end to austerity is surely nigh.
Marc Coleman is Ireland’s answer to Rush Limbaugh. Though I’m not quite sure what the question is.
“Marc Coleman is Ireland’s answer to Rush Limbaugh. Though I’m not quite sure what the question is.”.
+1
The first 5 pages of the Sunday Times contain three separate stories on public service allowances and increments today, followed by a lead editorial demanding that the government renege on Croke Park. This drumbeat will be with us all the way to the budget.
Haven’t read The Sindo yet; but I’m probably right in guessing that the five pages excoriating the public sector are followed by five pages lambasting Ulster Bank for the shambles of the last few weeks. If a meltdown of the scale of Ulster Bank had taken place in any part of the public sector, we’d probably have public servants being publicly executed on O’Connell street.
Feel a bit stupid – you were referring to the Times and I thought you meant the Sindo. Anyway, read both of them last night and the war on the public sector is hotting up again for another big push in advance of the next budget. Funnily I couldn’t see anything of substance in either the Sindo or the Times about the Ulster Bank meltdown, surely yet another example, among thousands, of private sector incompetence……
Did you at any stage spot the word ‘more’ or ‘further’ before the phrase ‘public sector cuts’? It’s a very important aspect of these campaigns that the public sector be portrayed as having totally escaped the downturn.
That’s the scary thing about yesterday’s coverage: they’re clearly working on shaping the perception, first of all, that public servants have not been hit, at all, by the economic crisis in order to, secondly, force through a paycut and/or other deductions from net pay in the next budget. I suspect September to December is going to be even nastier for coverage of the public sector in the media, than usual.
There’s a strange letter in the Sindo that reads like it was written
by Baroness Orczy :
I personally know a lot of the Irish aristocracy well. All work seven day weeks, taking tours around their houses, organising weddings, setting up very successful creative businesses, and engaging in other hard work. Most, if not all, live in a small cottage on the estate or in the stableyard. They work for every bit of income that they bring in.
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/letters/aristocrats-work-hard-3161585.html
“You will, most likely, meet a charming young lord or lady in their estate cafe as they politely pour a delicious bowl of soup and brown bread, made by themselves.”
Brilliant. Beyond parody.
It sounds like the opening lines of a Cole Porter song.
Hmmm… You really enjoyed the Phantom of the Opera the other day didn’t you?
It was the tops, it was the collosseum
What a glorious feeling
Sounds like pure soap opera, I may cry.
I don’t understand your hostility to Marc Coleman here. He is outlining how Fine Gael are implementing policy of the ‘left’. A vote for the Left is a vote for abortion.
Owen, there seems to be something wrong with your web browser there, try cutting and pasting this into your search bar http://www.politics.ie/
Bye bye.
“A vote for the Left is a vote for abortion.”
Ayn Rand. Extremely right-wing. For Abortion.
Dorothy Day. Extremely left-wing. Against Abortion.
You’ll note that bill was voted down. The idiocy is in claiming that they are implementing a left policy when they are voting against these policies.
Some figures in Fine Gael are pleased with this administration because they see it as a return to the centre right and a banishing of Garrett Fitzgerald’s malign influence. Claiming they are of the left is flat wrong.
This kind of softly-softly reaching across the aisle is an absolutely logical and obvious strategy for FG to follow. (Especially given how tarnished the Labour brand will be the time the next GE rolls round).
While the opposition field may seem crowded from centre-left to far-left, in fact there\’s a severe shortage of realistic targets for those who like to vote for a party to govern (as opposed to being in more or less permanent opposition).
The field ranges from those who absolutely do not want to be in government (like, ever!), those who would like to govern but need more time in the decontamination chamber before they can hope to do so legitimately, and those who screwed it up so badly the last time round that they wouldnt trust themselves anywhere near the levers of power.
Having the conservative vote sewn up allows FG to safely throw some Garret-the-Good-esque shapes in order to hoover up a few soft-left votes.
Gobshitery.
Coleman has paraded this weird form of thinking on Twitter over the last few months. Nobody has suffered from such a severe form of the red scare since the 1950s. The Left is to Coleman what sex was to Freud. He looks for it wherever he goes and inevitably finds it hidden behind right wing rhetoric and policies. For Marc, a cigarette is never just a fag.
On the boundary changes a week or so back Electionlit made a wry remark about voting for Brian Hayes at the next election. Coleman was on twitter asking if people thought Hayes was left-wing shortly after.
O R, surely he cant have been serious?
Course he was.
When I pointed out the sarcasm he said but wasn’t Brian Hayes in the Workers Party many moons ago!???
;( its hard to fathom that level of thinking. Brian Hayes a leftist! Maybe he is a sleeper. There is a wonderful line in the Lost Rev. about a lad who left the WP from one of the secret cumainn – that the first time people knew he was in the WP was when he resigned. Brian Hayes has gone deep undercover perhaps.
How can someone be so closed to the real world. Amazing.
que, isn’t that particular legend regardin|g WP membership associated with our beloved Chair of the Labour Relations Commission (Hammer of IBEC! and indefatigble opponent of the boss class) Kieran Mulvey.
Mulvey loves free junckets. He had his trip to the Soccer in Poland paid for. As did the chief of the the so called sports quango.
He’s almost certainly off to the Olympics given that he was in the front row at an Olympics Ireland fashion event last week…Making peace with the establishment is not without its perks!
Hayes was very briefly a member of Democratic Left as a student because he felt Fine Gael and the PDs were too nationalist.
Of course in MarcColemanWorld, everyone here (Bartley included) would be a rabid leftie.
Would have known Brian Hayes well in college and he was friendly with some WP people but would not have been a member.
Didn’t realise he had been in the DL but he would have been involved in Co-Operation North and I think also involved with The Peace Train and FAIT.
I think I may have picketed a SF Ard Fheis with him too.
Either way he was never particularly Left Wing.
DL? and his reasoning!
All ended up in the same place I suppose.