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Climate Change According to Danny Healy Rae

I wasn’t going to mention how ridiculous Danny Healy Rae was in the Irish parliament yesterday except I came across this XKCD comic mocking a US senator over similar beliefs.

The News

It’s embarrassing that a member of the Irish Dáil believes that climate change isn’t real and that “God above is in charge of the weather and we here can’t do anything about it”. Maybe, just maybe he has a cunning plan after all…

The Healy Rae Cycle
The Healy Rae Cycle by Ciara

As usual, WWN have a hilarious report on the situation. 🙂

“But we’ll do our best to ensure a few grand nice days there with the Child Of Prague under the hedge. Sure didn’t it work for us there in Kerry the time we were going to our cousin’s wedding, we put the statue out and it was a fierce day the next day altogether. There’s no reason a concentrated effort by a few hundred thousand people across the country couldn’t do more for climate change than you’d ever get done by banning fossil fuels”.

BTW – if you’re having trouble understanding him, this Irish Times article has some quotes and the Examiner has reactions and of course check Twitter too.
Bonus: Danny Healy Rae will debate the leader of the Green Party, Eamon Ryan, on the Last Word on Today FM at 5pm. Get your popcorn ready!

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This Ireland Does Exist

A rather depressing montage of the the low points of Irish politics over the last number of years. Mostly since the 80s, but you gotta get Dev in there preaching about our morality too.

I still don’t know why they put the “This video does not exist” message over it. Anyone enlighten me?

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Missing months of expenses

So, here I am working on my end of year accounts with the help of my wife and I read Gavin’s unbelievable report that the Dail, our national parliament, has lost 29 months worth (over 7 years) of expenses data for Irish politicians! You’d think that after almost 100 years in existence they might have got something as simple as storing expense sheets down to a fine art?

Why is this not so bad? Well the news aspect firstly. The Houses of the Oireachtas have so far been unable to locate expenses data for a combined period of 29 months. Eh? Not alone that, they want to charge me to find this information. Information that really should be in the public domain anyway. But we have to deal with the system we have…

Still feel guilty about losing that petrol receipt now?

The kicker is, it’ll cost €2,440 to pay civil servants to search for this information that should already be in the public domain. Gavin is looking for donations to pay for the FOI request but I think a national paper or media organisation should stump up the cash and help bring politicians down a peg or two when the sh*t hits the fan.

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Far too much Bertie

Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister received a pay increase of €38,000 a few weeks ago. Not many people are happy about that. To express your disapproval, send an email to FARTOOMUCHBERTIE@gmail.com and you’ll be sent a “Far too much Bertie” sticker. 200,000 stickers have been printed so there are plenty to go around!

far too much bertie

Via Indymedia and Kevin Cotter on the Ray D’Arcy Show.

Personally, I’d prefer to see a “Get Mary Harney out!” sticker to get rid of Mary Harney, the Health Minister. Hundreds of more cancer cases in Cork and Galway are to be reviewed. What a shambles.

Update! There’s a lively discussion on boards.ie! Welcome all from there. Please feel free to comment here too.

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Vote for the person or the party?

I’ve had cause to get in touch with my local TD, Noel O’Flynn, recently over an urgent matter and he has been very responsive and helpful. Some will say that it’s an election year and our elected officials will be extra careful to keep their constituents happy but even in past correspondence he responded promptly. I’m not normally a Fianna Fail voter but this year that may change.

So, will you vote for the person or the party? Do party policies matter more than the active local politician who represents you?