Irish Election - Coverage of Irish Politics, News and Current Affairs

In a week dominated by harrowing scenes of civilian suffering in the ongoing Russian-Georgian conflict over the separatist region of South Ossetia. There are shades of the Sudetenland crisis in 1938, when Hitler, on the pretext of defending a ‘persecuted’ German minority in that region of Czechoslovakia, was appeased and [...]

The Irish Examiner is running a series at the moment of putting questions to various Government ministers. The minister facing questions for the next edition is Social and Family Affairs Minister Mary Hanafin.
Do you have a question you would like to put to Minister Hanafin? Send me an email (gavin AT gavinsblog DOT com) [...]

I was delighted that Formula One boss, Max Mosley, won his case against the News of the World who paid one of his prostitutes to secretly film one of their orgies. The paper ran the headline “F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy with 5 hookers”. Mosley sued the paper for invasion of privacy. The paper [...]

Kevin Myres has written another article which has caused a bit of stir. This time on Africa. Myres laments that aid to Africa has only allowed its population of miserables to multiply and propped up several vile regimes in the process. The Indo letters page was bombarded. Then in today’s Irish Times Bryan Mukandi from [...]

At least it is according to Minister Brian Lenihan last week.

The Government’s announcement of €500m in cutbacks reminds me of that other €500m that was in the news lately – the overspend on the Ballymun Regeneration Project. What if that €500 million were somehow refound and used to tackle the Government’s current budgetary problems? Problem solved. You would be forgiven for thinking. 

Me and everyone else here would like to pass on their sympathies to the Brennan family on the death of Seamus Brennan.

I was looking for the Reeling the Years clip about 1980s immigration and found this. Hindsight ehh.

We have been playing it for a while, though we are repeatedly at pains to point out that there was no single reason why this Treaty failed. Voters voted for different reasons. Anyway, over on his blog Jon Worth gives his two cents on who gets to shoulder the blame in Euro-ville.
The candidates? Charlie McCreevy, [...]

One of the EU’s problems is that there is no shared Identity unlike the USA. This is something that is always pull back the EU from its goal of a closer union. So Janez Jansa’s solution? And EU soccer team.
While maybe not a solution it certainly is interesting to talk about so pick your starting [...]

Another excellent contribution to Open Democracy on the fallout from Lisbon yields a clear sighted analysis of just why so many people think the Lisbon campaign and fallout stinks;
But the Irish voters are not the only surrealists in the latest European psychodrama. A day before the vote, European political leaders had passionately argued that success [...]

Pardon the spelling if dickying is incorrect but I highlighted a post earlier today on Open Europe - as much for myself to return to later than anything else and yes those links in the sidebar do change!. They have a copy of the original Commission poll(PDF) that informed the awful reporting in the Independent [...]

The Eu Barometer results are up.
Edit: They seem to have taken it down. Copy here fl_245_en
Anaysis Soon
Graphs below fold.

There’s been so much debate in the past week about the sneaky underhanded reasons why 53% of the population voted no to Lisbon. First, No Voters were a bunch of unreformed republicans; yesterday it emerged they were in league with UK fascists and jailbirds.
But it’s always gone unquestioned that the Yes Voters were a happy [...]

Today’s scenes in the EU Parliament, as detailed by Simon here, show a particular hypocrisy on the part of the protesters who urge the EU to ‘Respect’ the Irish vote. However they are not hypocrites because they only wish to respect the Irish voice now as opposed to a few centuries ago, as was oddly [...]

We are putting together a Lisbon Treaty podcast this evening and uploading it to the site later, one of the guests lined up is Jo Leinen MEP he is Chairman of the constitutional affairs committee in the Parliament and has suggested before the election that a no vote may end EU membership. Any questions for [...]