Symptoms to look for if bitten by a wasp:
- Difficulty breathing
- Difficulty speaking
- Swelling in the mouth or throat
- Rash all over the body
- Faintness or decreased level of consciousness
It’s not finalized yet, but barring a meteor wiping out central Dublin, Fine Gael will shortly be back in place as the government in the south. How so? Because it will enjoy the support…oops, facilitation of Fianna Fail.
Important word, facilitation. Quite different from support. Support means you’re helping Fine Gael out by not voting against any big stuff it may bring to the Dail over its period of government. Facilitate, in contrast, means you’re helping Fine Gael out by not voting against any big stuff it may bring to the Dail …Hold on. That can’t be right. But it is. Fianna Fail have now mastered the art of bi-location, being in the area which supports Fine Gael and all its works and pomps, while at the same time being in the area that keeps a watchful eye (for the good of the people, y’understand) on Fine Gael and all its works and pomps.
Here’s the thing: the recent election was a wonderful experience for Fianna Fail. Yes, it registered its second-worst performance ever; but it also creaked open the coffin its opponents had consigned it to and emerged, grinning and spectral, with loads more seats than it had prior to the election. See the pattern? The worst of elections, the best of elections; the support , oops, facilitator of Fine Gael in government, the scourge of Fine Gael in government. It’s like doing the splits – a superb feat, but one calculated to deliver lasting damage in tender areas.
Personally I blame Sinn Féin. If they hadn’t got 23 Dail seats it wouldn’t be so horribly necessary for Fianna Fail to maintain some kind of position that hinted at opposition. As things stand, the Soldiers of Destiny will somehow have to find a way of being critical of water charges while keeping them on the books; will criticize Fine Gael on homelessness, crime, the economy, while at the same time forming the lead opposition party in all these areas.
Oddly, Fianna Fail don’t fear Fine Gael, the biggest party and the one they’re feck-insulating in government. They fear above all things Sinn Féin, the party they said they’d have nothing to do with, then blamed for not joining them to hammer out a government, and whom they now fear, with some justification, will grow stronger in opposition.
Truly, Mark Twain was right : “When you are in politics, you are in a wasp’s nest with a short shirt-tail”. Time to tuck that shirt in, Micheál.
An bhearna bhaoil
Here is the news
The farce continues. Where are the independents? They are debating the Turf Cutters Guide to the Galaxy. Where is Shergar? Seventy days later and the deal is not done. Outstanding issues are the order of the day. Joan Burton, now in opposition, is still talking about the national interest in the cut and thrust of civil war politics. We are told, the Fianna Fáil boot will be on Mr Kenny’s neck Post election scores are being settled in Dáil Éireann in the naked pursuit of political power.
Here is the weather forecast.
High pressure followed by a deep depression over Dáil Éireann.
There can only be one candidate to tackle that uber-desirable task, i.e. to tuck in the shirttails of the Soldiers of Destiny supremo , Esteemed Blogmeister.
And that would be he who has been doing everything for the S.O.D. since GE 2016 /Time began. Ladies and Laddies, please be upstanding and put your hands together for the one, the only , The Eoghan.
Mention of the t-word reminds one how a similar t-word came to mind this morning: tuck shop. This occurred while turning the sage-populated pages of The Unionist Times when one particular photograph certainly made one’s eyes pop in a button-popping sort of way.
But first, the second item in the august paper of record which caught one’s inner eye. An item, indeed, which suggested the w-word, penned as it was by one in a banker’s / barrister’s pin-striped suit and a Wexican to boot.
That would be (gulp) ‘Sinn Fein and the Gerry Adams nerves’.
Yes the topic under discussion is the n-word which just will not go away. Or, if one prefers the g.g.-words: the gaffes of the gaffer. A g.g. which the author of the piece is only too willing to ride, albeit it has all the configurations of a rocking horse. Despite which, it still resulted in the dumping of a healthy lump of steaming equine turds.
Now the author of that solemn column is uniquely qualified to give a forensic insight into the entrails of the body politic, having been a serial eliminatee at an early stage as a candidate of the S.O.D.’s.
Noel Whelan (for it is he !) observes:
-The reaction of most ordinary people to Adams’ tweets was best summoned up by Aine Lawlor’s opening line in an interview with him when she asked: ‘What possessed he?’ . She went on to ask him the other obvious question: ‘Have you had a drop?’.
Eh ?
What is actually going down here? First of all The Unionist Times liberates the a-word and now, it endorses the use of the d-word by its broadcasting wing, RTE. What next?
Will Yawnya Lawlor (for it is also she !) pose the d-word to a fellow female, if that is the correct choice of adjective? Or worse, will she (gulp) go one step further and query (gasp) a fellow female’s taste in clothes?
Well, let The Perkin state clearly, categorically and whichever c-word is most appropriate that he will not even dream of going down that slippery path. No, erm, way.
Which neatly brings one to the aforementioned photograph (see above).
It features the delectable DUP leader smiling beside a sign which reads, Weigh In, oops, Way in. This could possibly be referring to her local polling boot, oop, booth. But it is her choice of attire which acquired the entire attention of The P.
A fetchingly figure-hugging jacket, whose piping resembles in a remarkable way the (gasp) kind of button-popping blazer of Greyfriars which schoolboy aficionados of Billy Bunter were/ are all too familiar.
Luckily, The Perkin has already made his principled attitude to the slippery slope to slipshod terminology and widespread abuse of civilized discourse among consenting adults, clear.
There is just no way, chums, he would, for instance, resort to this quotation from the Wikipedia Witch of the West about the Fatuous Oulwan of the Remove:
-Bessie Bunter was essentially a female counterpart to her brother Billy, sharing many characteristics with her brother, including a large size and larger appetite. She was as unappetizing as her brother Billy, being conceited, untruthful, gluttonous and obese but she was rather more domineering that he was and would usually impose her will by nagging, or, as in the case of her brother, by administering hefty slaps to the head.
I say , you fellows………Blimey ! Beast! Crikey
Kenny back as Taoiseach, I feel as if I have just awoken from a very very bad dream. A new low water mark for politics in Ireland. I would love to know how those who voted for the Fianna feel about this partnership? Politics makes strange bedfellows , none more so than this one. Hopefully this will be a shortlived affair. It is laughable that Martin saves all his histrionics for SF , yet will soon kiss Kenny’s ring and arse .
Jude, you must have missed that day in university when they were giving out the Forked Tongue degrees.
But Fianna Fail and Fine Gael have attained masters degrees con ludorum in this subject which now seems imperative in the running of any government.
Jude, being fair, Fianna Fail have simply facilitated the will of the people, some seventy days after the choices the people, in the greater part of Ireland made.
The new Dail Eireann is a curious mix of choices, Shane Ross, once the mouthpiece of na protestant beal bhocht in the free state, now minister for transport, Catherine zappone, some foreign lassie, Aire Leannai, and major changes in the prospective challengers for Taoiseach with little rich Coveney and Leo the Doctor moved from higher profile positions than they were acting in yesterday.
The new opposition are frankly in a less than powerful position, a little like Sinn Fein in the six, Fianna Fail, who were once as popular as a sexually transmitted disease, now just six seats short of the once powerful Fine Gael are facilitating their mortal enemies in power, the peo’le quite clearly rejected Kenny for Taoiseach, Micheal Martin failed to recognise this, listening to the political science voices of TCD rather than the people who actually go out Nd do a day’s work.
This actually reminds me of what I said to young David McCann in 2010 following the brit general election, it was, in my opinion, then, won by the labour party there, they had fewer seats than the tories but, unlike in 1979 or ’82 were not wiped out, as were Fianna Fail in 1011. Now, the there labour parry did not ‘facilitate’ the tories, rather they, fairly, competently opposed the tories and the liberals, here however, despite the huge losses of Fine Gael, lacking in ‘recovery’, we have the ‘republican party’ putting these bastards back in power, in 2016.
Here, in the rest of our country, the expected rise of Sinn Fein went, well, no where, or appears to be there. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Eamon McCann and Gerry Carroll appear to be the new choices for those of us fed up with ballix, where will their undoubted opposition lead them in the next five years?
The stoops appear, unlike their potential Fianna Fail allies, to be getting electorally shafted, I wait impatientlyfornwest Belfast results, will that narkey wee gimp Attwood be in, or out and well gone
Its still a good outcome for Sinn Fein, no matter what Fianna Fail say. Sinn Fein are the main opposition party and the fact Fianna Fail are now sustaining Fine Gael in Government wont be lost on the electorate when another general election comes along in a year or 2. I’m surprised Fianna Fail have choose to replace Labour as Fine Gael’s mud guard but I suppose the lure of political influence was too much for Micheal Martin, as well as the fear of an immediate election and of Sinn Fein too. If I was Micheal Martin I would’ve risked another early election.
The Independents in the South will be rubbing their grubby little hands together, wondering how much they can extort from Enda, especially those two nutter brothers from Kerry. What the hell are they smoking down there in Kerry?
Ryan, what they’re somkeing in the Kingdom s realism, no different to what, once upon a long ago the lauded Tony Gregory did in north inner city Dublin.
There is much media malice directed towards the brothers Healy Rae, perhaps with some justification but, what is never reported is, in the same long ago, if you were a poor north inner city homeless Dubliner needing a home, to get one, you had to turn up in Gregorys constituency office with what became the infamous brown envelope, direct from the son of one of those who did, not me of course, but a one time work colleague of the Sinn Fein spokesman for Finance.
And apologies for my crap keyboard’s spellcheck, or, paucity thereof.
And then Gerry, acknowledging the collapse of his irish unity strategy due to SF electoral inadequacy 9n both sides of he border pleads for Micheal to take the Legion of the Rearguard north. Oops a daisy.