Monthly Archives: June 2009

What a weekend it’s been. The local and European elections provided plenty of interest, even for somebody like me whose interest in politics isn’t all-consuming, by any means.

My main woman, Joan Collins and her shoulder pads, got elected in my local area. Go Joan!

On a European level it looks like it’s curtains for Declan Ganley as he failed with his bid to be elected in the North West and so far Libertas have won just one seat in the European parliament. That makes me very happy as the Libertas machine and its rampage of online advertising gave me and many websites a pain in the arse.

I rejoiced in seeing the witless Caroline Simons eliminated in Dublin and Libertas as a political entity is now essentially irrelevant.

It’s cheerio to Mary-Lou as well as the Shinners poison dwarf lost her European seat in Dublin. She’ll have all the time in the world to explain away her attendance record now. This also makes me happy.

Fianna Fail have suffered, as you would expect, in urban areas but have still managed to maintain some of their traditional vote in rural areas. It’s surely no less than they expected but it must hurt all the same. Bertie’s brother Maurice never came close to being elected in the Dublin Central by-election where Maureen O’Sullivan romped home. Ahern also lost his seat on Dublin City Council. Ha and indeed ha.

And the Greens, talk about paying the price. I wrote something a while back saying they’d suffer for their association with the most inept, crooked government of all time and so it has come to pass. They have been practically wiped out and it’s entirely their own fault. They had the chance, more than once, to show that they had some balls but they chose to stay in power and have now been kicked right in arse by the electorate.

They’ve lost all their council seats in Dublin, most of them around the country, and even the likes of Dan Boyle have blamed their association with FF for their poor results. The Greens were the easiest to punish for the failures of the government and they’ve taken the brunt of the backlash.

Senator Dan Boyle

Still, John Gormless won’t pull out of government though. I think he’s mad. At this point he could walk away, hold his hands up and say ‘We got it wrong, sorry’, and people would have a bit of respect for that. This desperation cling to what’s left of power is shameful and ever more damaging for the Greens. What’s left of them.

The most interesting part of the weekend for me though was how I got the information about the counts, who was in, who was out, etc etc.

Bar one period where I was in the car and listening to the radio all the breaking news I got has come via the web. Using Twitter and following people like Suzy and Alexia, lurking around and occasionally joining in with the liveblog and the RSS feed of the increasingly influential and important Irish Election.

We’re probably still very much in the minority but those of us who followed the events this way got our news first, we got testimony from people at the counts. We got reaction and opinion, speculation and punditry, we got video and audio, and we got it not on our radios or TVs or in newspapers but at our computers or on our phones.

It’s a big shift, an important shift, and for me the most interesting part of it was that the info came from people I trusted. People whose blogs I’ve read for years, who have earned the right to be believed, to be considered worthy and at times pivotal sources of information.

Where they have led this weekend you can be sure the mainstream will follow. They have to follow or they’ll get left behind.

So big congratulations to all of them and to everyone else who engaged them on Twitter, on their blogs, in comments and so on. It was collaborative and a big step forward for the web and its influence in Ireland.

Now, we just have to wait for the inevitable general election. That should be fun.