First the mildly funny story. It emerged this morning that since 2003, more than 18,000 people cases of serious road traffic offences have been brought to court in Ireland and convicted of. Of those, it would appear that just over 700 of those cases were ever given penalty points, although points were indicated from the hearings. The reason? Apparently court clerks in Ireland aren’t responsible for lodging drivers licence numbers with the Road Safety Authority, and it wasn’t anyone else’s job. So that’s how government works in Ireland.
Now a sad story about a feckless leader’s failure to deploy his assets in the interests of his party.
George Lee was the economics editor for Ireland’s state broadcaster, RTÉ. In that role, Mr Lee was the dour harbinger of doom, the counterpart to the happy-clappy nonsense of the Fianna Fáil government, which was at the time pretending the economy was hunky-dory and brilliant, and that building houses and apartment blocks could continue indefinitely with 120% mortgages for all. In short, people didn’t like what he had to say, but as things went tits up, they began to realise that his narrative was at least more believable than the Government’s.
Then, as a vacancy in the Irish Parliament called for a by-election, the main opposition party Fine Gael (EPP-ED, thinks it’s centre-right) selected George Lee to be their candidate. Lee swept to victory in South Dublin, and expectation was that, after a decent period of reflection, he would find himself developing and representing Fine Gael’s economic policy.
The one error in the calculation was that Fine Gael already had a shadow finance minister, who’s also the heir presumptive of the party leaderhsip. Richard Bruton, a veteran within the party was never going to hand over control of economic policy (or at least the optics of it) to some celeb blow-in from off the television.
So Enda Kenny, the party leader, tried to be all things to all people, putting Lee in some sub-shadow cabinet level position, and not allowing him to call the shots. For Lee, a born prima donna, this was not acceptable, and today, he finally threw his toys out of the pram, resigning from the Dáil and Fine Gael.
The moral of the story? If you’re going to bring a celeb into the party, you need to have a way to put them to good use, or they will leave you and shit all over your credibility as a leader and a party of government.
The decision to elect Margaret Ritchie MLA leader of the Social, Democratic and Labour Party is the decision which will destroy the party.
To be fair, the choice was between a political operator at turns smooth and utterly unsophisticated whom many in the party couldn’t bring themselves to have lunch with, let alone vote for (Alastair McDonnell) and a political operator with slightly less charisma than the Executive round table she sits at as the party’s only member.
But I can’t help but think that Margaret Ritchie, who when talking about politics comes across as a primary school teacher explaining fluid dynamics to chimpanzees in her second language, will simply make the SDLP seem irrelevant, and that can’t be good for politics in Northern Ireland.
For my money, Mark Durkan is just about the only proven effective and nimble actual politician the SDLP possesses. It’s been a while since the real intellectuals other than Durkan have had profile within the party; the disastrous attempt to out-green the shinners for a couple of years was wrongheaded and alienated the middle-class base of support within the party. But it seems to me he’s still the best hope the SDLP has to remain somewhat relevant.
Today’s Prime Ministers Questions was an exhilarating experience, partially because David Cameron was on form, alive and effective at asking his questions. They were topical, fed the news cycle and kept the Labour benches almost silent. It was superb work from the future Prime Minister.
The other two main players, however, were pretty dreadful at their jobs. The Prime Minister failed to answer any question in any sense. The Speaker of the House, John Bercow, did not do his job of ensuring the PMQ session held the Prime Minister, and therefore the government, to account. The PM was allowed to simply parrot party-political lines, and talk about the policies of the Conservative Party, with the full complicity of the Speaker.
As a result, I suspect that today, Gordon Brown twice misled the House of Commons, which is a serious and dangerous thing to do. In response to a question on defence spending, he told the House that Conservative plans at the last election would have cut defence spending by billions. In fact, spending was promised to rise by £1.77bn in that manifesto.
Second, he claimed not to know what a questioner was referring to, when he was asked about the slush fund allegedly formed by the then Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘back in the day’. The allegations, first made by Peter Watt in his book, have been widely repeated across all media, and it would beggar belief for the Prime Minister to not have been informed that a criminal breach of party funding and standards in public life breaches had been alleged.
Happily, I’m not the only one who noticed. Eric Pickles MP, the Chairman of the Conservative Party has written to the Prime Minister, and the letter is covered on Iain Dale’s Blog along with some nice analysis on Dizzy Thinks.
I notice that, finally, consideration is being given to whether the Conservative Party should be fully invested in Northern Ireland, and what sort of interaction there should be between the party and the (inaccurately described) province. I’ve written about this before, when I was to a large extent agreeing with Jeff Peel (full disclosure – Jeff is a former employer of mine).
Reading the Guido Fawkes blog earlier, I was struck by the force with which I disagreed with Paul Staines. His contention is that, as a liberal party sans the sectarianism etc of Northern Ireland, the party shouldn’t intervene in their issues, and should be wary of working alongside either or both of them.
As it happens, I argued in the articles UUP and Conservative Talks (August 2008), Tory UUP Alliance (October 2008) and Jeff Peel, Reg Empey and a Clockwork Orange (March 2009) that the best thing would be the extinguishment of the UUP. I argued that they should be abandoned as a party of the past, an intransigent throwback to the days of Protestant ascendancy.
I still believe that, essentially. Normal politics (that is, based on ideas more than heritage, based on policy rather than religious denomination, and susceptible to evolution and change) is extremely difficult to have in a system where a party like the UUP could survive. Simply incompatible, in my view. I believe that the people of Northern Ireland deserve better than the politics that Sinn Féin, the DUP and the UUP can offer. The intellect of those parties is simply so limited at the policy making level that they just can’t be good at it. I’m still trying to deconstruct that thought, and I’m working on it hard, but I know it’s true. I can throw examples around, like the failure to agree a Bill of Rights or the decision to replace the school selection system with complete chaos.
Anyway, back to where I was headed.
The Conservative Party is a liberal, non-sectarian, secular political party which believes in the Union. In Northern Ireland, it’s possible that the unionist parties might cannibalise themselves and split their vote in the forthcoming elections, and, if there was an election to the Northern Ireland Assembly, it’s likely in such a scenario that Sinn Féin would emerge the largest single party, and therefore be in a position to nominate the First Minister.
David Cameron wants to be the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, and the last thing he wants is to have to deal with a Sinn Féin First Minister with a mandate as the largest party. As a result, I think it’s reasonable and sensible that, as an opposition leader, he should do what he can to encourage the unionist parties to get their act together, and spare us all the spectre of that shower in power. What he should not be doing is going into alliance with them. They represent something to be dealt with, not encouraged.
Castle woken by intrusion alarm, as Lord Alderdice tries to ram-raid his way through the security cordon in a JCB. Eventually talked down by David Forde, and was immediately tazered by angry PSNI officers. Eventually claimed that Iain Dale had made him do it.
A very similar article to this appeared over a year ago, and I’m glad to have the opportunity to revive it, now I have readers.
Apple Announces iProd march
CUPERTINO, California—March 11, 2009—Apple® today introduced the all-new iProd® march, the world’s most desirable reformed christian, capable of sustained belief of its superiority over centuries. The revolutionary new MarchOver feature enables iProd march to speak your hymn and psalm titles, books of the new testament and give pithy commentary on any political issue of the day, as well as walk in a somewhat dignified manner to church and onward to an assembly field. The third generation iProd march is significantly smaller than a dirty rebel, holds up to 1,000 prejudices and is easier to manipulate by the DUP with all of the controls conveniently located on the collarette. With the press of a button, you can play, pause, adjust volume, switch playlists and hear the exciting prejudice of the day. iProd march features a gorgeous new design with shirts and blouses from Debenhams and trouser suits from the Outlet outside Banbridge, along with a built-in ’shoulder chip clip’ that makes it ultra-wearable.
“Imagine your worst nightmare talking to you, telling you you’re destined to an eternity of sorrow and suffering, constantly reminding you of Christ’s sacrifice, the perfidies of the UK government and what he’d do to Martin McGuinness if he ever got hold of him, ” said Greg Joswiak, Apple’s vice president of iProd and iPhone™ Product Marketing. “The amazingly small new iProd march takes a revolutionary approach to how you listen to your music by incessantly disapproving of you, also making it the first iProd march with playlists.” “It’s far superior to the Apple iTaig, which has only one track and goes on and on and fucking on about it for 800 years,” he added.
iProd march is based on Apple’s incredibly popular shuffle feature, which randomly selects hymns and sermons from your music library. And now, when you can’t remember the name of a hymn or a visiting minister playing, with the press of a button iProd tells you the name of the devotional song and clergyman. iProd march can even tell you status information, such as whether th’on girl at number 52’s been shacked up with that fenian from over the town. With the ability to hold up to 1,000 simultaneous tracks and the MarchOver feature, you can now easily switch between multiple simple misconceptions on your iProd march.
*Battery life and number of march cycles vary by use and settings. See www.apple.com/batteries for more information. Hymn capacity is based on four minutes per hymn and 128-Kbps AAC encoding; in 256-Kbps AAC format, song capacity is up to 500 songs; actual capacity varies by encoding method and bit rate.
Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.
Press Contacts:
Christine Moob
Apple
(7345608) 974-88423450
Tom Neumayr
Apple
(4084)324 974-2341972
NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information visit Apple’s PR website, or call Apple’s Media Helpline at (456408) 976784-2042.
Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, Apple Store and iTunes are trademarks of Apple. Other company and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Nábídána might just get sued for this one.
