ShaneC

Two very big stories dropped yesterday: A Commission for Taxation projection on the long term trends for the country’s tax base, and a Dept of Finance projection that we’ll have a housing crisis for 15 years. Neither will generate a fraction of the commentary that Ivan Yates has over the past week.

There’s a conflict of interest that he should’ve been upfront about, but there isn’t a weeks worth of news and media coverage in it either. 2/2

I’d guess it’s as simple as they like Terry Prone and really don’t like Ivan Yates, because he’s a barstool boor with opinions they’re uncomfortable with and a podcast that I’d guess is more popular than any of theirs. Spite is probably the only reason I can think as to why this is still a story. /1

Media types are upset that a lad whose entire public persona is “barstool boor” did something to upset them.
Now, as a subscriber to his podcast I’d have appreciated him being transparent about his professional relationship with FF politicians, but personally I wouldn’t cancel him for it either.

It’s the latest in a long list of mistakes and misjudgments. Yielding to the far left on water charges, losing 6 seats in the 2020 general election, making a hames of Michael McGrath’s EU commissioner selection process. Risking everything for Jim Gavin is on a whole other level of reckless though.

Come back to me when you’ve campaigned in somewhere like East Galway to abolish one-off housing, abolish turf cutting and introduce a “right to roam” on private farmland. The hostility will be on a whole other level to anything you might have encountered canvassing for Mary Robinson 33 years ago.

Which would explain why Sinn Féin has lost so many voters since 2020.

Green Party activists told don’t use 'big words' when talking to rural voters GREEN Party activists have been told not to use 'big words' when trying to appeal to rural voters as they may not understand what they mean.

There’s certain niches that there’ll never be a market for, and “movement that thinks people are too stupid to understand big words” is one of those niches:

www.independent.ie/irish-news/g...

My point is that if enough people despise someone else’s political choices, then that some else won’t win a presidential election.

In its best ever General Election result (2020) the Green Party won 7.1% of the first preference vote. Even on its very best days its appeal is niche.

Annoyance is far too benign a word to describe the visceral and widespread loathing of the Green Party in rural and provincial Ireland, and an Eamon Ryan presidential campaign would be a lightening rod for it.

I’m from rural Ireland. Take it from me that antipathy to the Green Party, and specifically to the man from leafy Dublin Bay South who wanted to release wolves into the countryside while telling us we should all be pooling car ownership runs very, very deep.

Also, it can’t be understated how much rural and provincial Ireland, where turf cutting and one-off housing are considered to be birth rights, absolutely loathe the Green Party in general and Eamon Ryan in particular.

Makhlouf should just shrug his shoulders and say "what can you do, central banks have their own cab rank rules too".

My hot take is that the Irish presidency was designed for a dutiful, mid-level plodder who won’t say much or embarrass the country. Unfortunately, too many people have got it into their head that it’s a far more consequential, quasi-religious, role.

I’m looking forward to Catherine Connolly and her supporters struggling to comprehend this too in the almost certain event she wins tomorrow.

There's nothing worse than when the weather breaks when you're on the way back from the bookshop:

I believe that 1% of the population left Ireland ANNUALLY in the 1950s. This at the same time most of the rest of the world was undergoing an economic boom.

What’s even more cracked is a lot of those online members have English or American accents because their parents had no other option than to leave 1950s Ireland.

A small but curious trend are the people in generation #3 who’ve convinced themselves that the time period generation #2 grew up in was a golden age, in spite of what generation #2 try to tell them.

Sounds like every other job where at certain stages of our working life we find ourselves making compromises with our conscience so we can pay the bills. It’s a problem when you pretend to be a paragon of principle and ethics who’s never fumbled in the greasy till to keep the lights on.

As I understand it solicitors aren’t obliged to chose the first barrister in the queue to represent their clients, and are free to chose a barrister whom they believe will represent their clients tenaciously and single-mindedly, providing full value for whatever legal fees the client is paying?

conscience then it’s reasonable to ask why she didn’t return to a career in clinical psychology where that type of compromise probably wouldn’t be necessary. 2/2

Her record as a barrister matters because it allows us to test the idea that she is in fact a “principled person motivated by conscience”. Fine if the “cab rank rule” meant she had to represent financial institutions in repossession cases, but if this type of work went against her principles and /1

It’s interesting to compare and contrast rural attitudes to the fox and the pine marten. There was always a grudging respect for the cleverness and cunning of the fox, that’s evolved into affection these days. OTOH the pine marten is still feared and despised as being remorseless and menacing.

It doesn’t take much to be president, it’s the campaign to become president that’s hard. Either he forgot completely about this tenancy issue, or knew full well but assumed it wouldn’t be an issue for a successful GAA figure like himself who had the Taoiseach begging him to run.

That too. Between the financial stuff, and rumours about his personal life that he didn’t exactly deny outright,
Jim Gavin’s persona of selfless public servant to the State and the community is in shreds. He’s now just another GAA figure who got notions about himself beyond his abilities.

💯%. In the excitement over the political fallout let’s not forget just how serious the allegation against Jim Gavin is. Keeping €3,300 that you know isn’t yours to keep is the sort of thing the Guards might need to look into.

Meanwhile:

Ego got the better of him, as it does with almost every politician. At the same time this would be a particularly stupid way for anyone’s political career to end.