results of the irish general election

I voted for a Fianna Fail candidate called Sean O'Fearghail.
His use of the Irish language form of his name dates from his entry into politics two decades ago.
Before entering public life he was known around here as Johnny Farrell.
I kid you not.
I voted for him because he had himself voted in parliament last year against the illegal Fine Gael Labour Party combo government's legalisation of abortion.
I call this abortion law illegal because the Irish people have twice voted in referendums prohibiting abortion and requiring any future government to hold a plebiscite before legalising it.
The Fine Gael Labour Party action was also illegal from the moral point of view, because Fine Gael had specifically promised prior to the last election not to legalise abortion.
Sean O'Fearghail has never done much speaking out against abortion but he was the closest thing I could find to an honorable, decent, courageous person standing in the constituency.
His running mate at the last election Sean Power who lost his seat, might disagree with me, since at the time he accused Sean O'Fearghail of a dirty tricks campaign, ie sending out a letter to suppporters on the eve of polls purporting to be from party HQ but actually emanating from Sean O'Fearghail HQ, urging ye aforementioned supporters to vote tactically giving preference to Sean O'Fearghail.
Hilarious no.
I met Sean O'Fearghail on one famous occasion during a reception hosted by various politicians in the chamber of Kildare County Council.
I'd just started work with a now defunct newspaper called the Leinster Leader and there was a bit of a speculative buzz around my early reportage.
It didn't last by the way, but on this occasion I was hail fellow well met.
An enthusiastic group of politicians were glad handing me at the gathering.
Sean O'Fearghail called roughly across the room: "Hey you, I want to see you outside."
Somewhat nervously I followed him out the door.
When the door had closed behind us he turned to me and stated mildly: "I just wanted to say you're doing a great job at the newspaper. Your work is really impressive."
His rough greeting and demand that I  leave the room had been solely to impress the other politicians.
So here we are years later.
After all my pillorying of his party Fianna Fail as a kleptocratic quasi fascist crime gang infiltrated by the Rah, and after his recent speech in parliament about Catholic zealots, I don't know who'll be more mortified that I voted for him: him or me.
We'll all just have to get over it.
By the way, in Ireland our system of voting allows us to rank any number of candidates in order of preference.
So I gave a Number Two to an Independent called Declan Crowe on the off chance that he might have some awareness of the sanctity of life.
I live in hope.

election day in ireland

Wandered into the voting centre.
Maurice O'Mahoney, my old Fourth Class teacher from primary school, was holding sway at one of the tables.
(Fourth class does not refer to his abilities as a teacher. It is the preferred term in Ireland for what Americans call Fourth Grade.)
I approached and addressed him in the ancient language of Ireland.
"Dia duit a Mhuiris, taim ag lorg duine a bhfuil i gcoinne an ghinmhilleadh."
It means: Hello Maurice, I'm looking for someone opposed to abortion.
Without turning a hair he answered me in Irish.
"Ta duine agam duitse," ar se, "Tomas O'Dufaigh an oifigeach votail."
It means: I have the very man for you. Tom Duffy the polling officer.
Patiently I sought to explain.
"Taim ag lorg," a deirim, "duine ata ag seasamh do chathaoir sna toghchain."
It means: I'm looking for someone who's standing in the election.
He still didn't turn a hair.
"Mo bhron," a deir se.
Sorry, says he.

the story of my two brushes with fame

Wandering down Grafton Street, Dublin, earlier today.
Ahead of me some men unfurl a banner.
One of them shouts: "Who wants to hold Johnny Logan?"
The same words are also on the banner.
Another man stands directly under the banner.
A brief glance reveals that this man is the most famous Irish heart throb singer of the 1980's era, Johnny Logan. The banner and the shouted invitation clearly reference his biggest commercial success, a song entitled Hold Me Now.
Some sort of a promotion is underway, maybe a new Greatest Hits release or an upcoming tour.
He must be in his 50's but he still exudes a certain youthful vivace.
He's a bit like the French crooner Johnny Halliday.
Sort of dashing.
To his credit, as the banner unfurls, he also looks a bit sheepish.
The citizenry are not exactly rushing to hug him.
These days the jaded pornogrified Irish have a somewhat detached view of fame, at least when we're not actively resenting it.
Presently a matronly woman steps forward and gives the singer a hug.
Somewhere cameras whirl.
I find the whole thing a bit rum.
I'm getting a feeling of deja vue.
For lo!
I have met Johnny Logan before on this very street.
Let me see.
It was the dulcet Summer of 1985 when he was in the first white heat of his celebrity.
I was walking up Grafton Street and Johnny Logan came racing towards me pursued by a knot of teenage girls.
I had stepped neatly out of his way and he'd careened past me, on up towards Stephens Green, the shrieking girls gaining on him with every step.
They're going to kill him, I'd thought, but what a way to go.
Now here we were again thirty years later.
Same place.
Same scene.
Bigger pot belly for me.
Different median age and slightly less intensity of emotion for Johnny Logan's groupies.
I watch the group congealing around the banner.
The whole thing is a bit lacklustre.
I suppose I could lend a little help.
But our previous meeting and his fame and my easy going macho nonchalence notwithstanding, I don't feel I knew him well enough to hug him.
So I keep walking.
I wonder will Johnny Logan ever realise that twice in his life he has been in the presence of Ireland's greatest living poet.

political predictions

Ireland is having a general election on Friday.
I would refer you to the following considerations.
The present Fine Gael Labour Party combo government have legalised the murder of unborn children through abortion.
Before the last election they promised not to do so of course.
Then once elected, they did it.
This in spite of the fact that the people of Ireland have twice passed referendums requiring that abortion may not be legalised without a full plebiscite of the people.
The Gaelers legalised it anyway.
Ain't they wunnerful.
Prime Minister Enda Kenny not content with legalising abortion in direct contravention of the Constitution, has also turned a blind eye to the illegal distribution of abortion pills by the self styled Irish Pharmaceutical Union to children, (no minimum age, no legislation, no questions asked) from Irish pharmacies.
So in Ireland, children are now being routinely turned into the murderers of children through a pill.
And health board workers in Ireland who routinely rape children in their care (I'm not joking) are able to conceal the results of their rapes, by murdering the babies so conceived just by popping down to the pharmacy and picking up a few pills.
Oh brave new world that has such Gaelers in it.
Not the worst part of this but certainly worth noting, is that the pharmacies have been permitted to give abortion pills to children over the counter without parental consent.
If you could listen to our television programmes bold travellers of the internet, and read our newspapers, you would think Irish people were wholly unconcerned with the barbarism and betrayal implicit in Fine Gael and Labour's promotion of abortion culture.
You'd think our sole concerns related to social welfare entitlements, footpaths, water charges, free education, and gimmy-a-grant-for-my-sore-toe-misther.
Here is the news.
I am predicting that Fine Gael and Labour face wipe out in the election on Friday.
They are passing away.
They will be gone forever.
Not because of their fiscal policies.
But becaue they legalised the murder of unborn children.
There will be nothing left of Fine Gael and Labour, save a rump of plush bottomed twitterers with verbal diarrhoea bemoaning the fact that they might have won the election if they'd only built more footpaths in skanger estates.
It's the closest they get to morality.
Unfortunately, there is no clear alternative to them.
We are about to go from the atheistic abortionist frying pan into the marxian mafioso fire.
I am predicting that the IRA mafia's parliamentary proxies Sinn Fein may actually find themselves in government courtesy of an alliance with a concatination of coffee shop socialists styling themselves variously People Before Profit, the Anti Austerity Alliance, the Green Party, and so on.
(Particularly And So On, I hate them.)
These coffee shop socialists are united by the deeply felt political principle that the German government will pay our debts in perpetuity.
I'm not optimistic about the efficacy of their vision.
So here it is folks.
The IRA mafia's proxies Sinn Fein, with the help of romantic wide eyed Oi-Know-Moy-Roights coffee shop socialists are about to subvert parliamentary democracy in the Republic of Ireland.
They are in the process of doing to Ireland right now what Cosa Nostra and the Russian Mafia did to Italy and Russia fifty years ago.
They are turning our country into hell on earth.
In my own little town of a few thousand people, we have witnessed a corrupt cop running the town for gangland for fifteen years, a drug dealer living beside me poisoning generations of children so that he can preserve the illusion of wealth for himself and his offspring, various IRA factions up to their necks in all of this filth, and the Hutch mob, yet another IRA faction, moving out of Dublin, which they have already destroyed, to live among us and wreak the same havoc here in our little village as they brought with gay abandon to the great city they ruined and then left behind.
To call any of them scum would be to libel protozoan life forms.
The IRA and its proxies Sinn Fein already control segments of the trade union movement, the broadcaster RTE, and the Judiciary.
The IRA and its proxies Sinn Fein have also substantially infiltrated the mainstream parties Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fail, as evidenced by the former government of Fianna Fail looting the treasury to bail out the IRA front bank Anglo Irish Bank, which was the single biggest loss making bank on earth during the world wide banking collapse of 2008.
IRA agents within the bank's management Sean Fitzpatrick, David Drumm et al, had systematically burglarised their own bank by giving billions of dollars to IRA proxie businessman Sean Quinn disguised as loans, who then laundered the money into Russia using the Russian mafia.
I kid you not.
Fianna Fail impoverished us for the next hundred years and put Ireland in the Third World overnight in order to cover up an IRA Sinn Fein bank job.
We should not forget that in order to creat a veneer of cross party non partisanship for their decision to bankrupt Ireland on behalf of an IRA front operation disguised as a bank, Fianna Fail appointed Alan Dukes a former leader of Fine Gael the present party of government, to run Anglo Irish Bank.
And Alan Dukes took the job.
Nor should we forget that Chris Andrews, a member of the Andrews family, a Fianna Fail political dynasty famous for its anti Israel rhetoric and blatant advocacy on behalf of Muslim terror armies in Palestine, is now openly standing for election on behalf of the IRA's proxies Sinn Fein.
Mr Andrews was hilariously unmasked recently using a fake identity to place criticisms on the internet of Fianna Fail political dynasties with a red herring thrown in criticising his own family to boot.
Nor should we forget that Fine Gael and Labour when they succeeded Fianna Fail in government extended exponentially the public bailout of the IRA's aforementioned shell corporation Anglo Irish Bank.
Nor should we forget that Fianna Fail Councillor Mark Dalton is a brother of Des Dalton the leader of an IRA splinter group styled Republican Sinn Fein. (Plot Spoiler re Republican Sinn Fein: The IRA was too moderate for them.)
The wheel is rigged and it's the only game in town.
Whoever we vote for, everything just keeps coming up Rah.
And now we're about to allow Sinn Fein into government.
They've already all but subverted everything that moves in our country, mind.
But they never quite got their hands on parliament before.
The abortionists and the coffee shop socialists have led us to this;
These are dark days for Ireland.