Eau De Merde

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Screen Shot 2015-07-06 at 13.43.13

Further to ‘whiffygate’…

Today FM reports:

“Senator Fidelma Healy Eames says its sad and disappointing the way people have reacted to her using the word wiffy.”

“She made the reference during a debate last week on a bill which would ban certain abusive comments online.”

“Speaking on the Anton Savage show she said she deliberately used the French pronunciation of the word because she was talking about tourists.”

Healy-Eames was speaking French when she said ‘wiffy’ (Today FM)

Previously: ‘Do You Have The Whiffy Code?’

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78 thoughts on “Eau De Merde

  1. Madouveh on the dole

    She is emblematic of every useless bogger that our primitive, spudheaded neighbours outside the pale elect to represent themselves.

    #prolife

    1. Mike Dublin

      She wasn’t elected. Appointed by Fine Gael.

      Fidelma Healy-Eames, a failed Dáíl candidate in 2002, 2007 and 2011.

      Fidelma’s sole political achievement up to 2011 was being elected to Galway County Council, and as anyone familiar with Irish politics will know, this is hardly a badge of honour. But Fidelma, a former primary-schoolteacher, is nothing if not pushy, and so it transpired that she became Fine Gael’s spokesperson on education and science in 2007, at a time when the party had no prospect of being in government. Or to put it another way, somebody gave Fidelma a meaningless job to keep her from complaining.

      When the electorate rejected Fidelma for the third time in 2011, Fine Gael took pity on her and nominated her for the Labour panel in the Senate elections. Nobody knows why, but the result was a massive boost in Fidelma’s ego. For clarity, I should explain that the Labour panel has about 1,000 voters, consisting of county councillors, TDs and senators. When Fidelma won a seat with a grand total of 89 votes, she embraced the delusion that she was a public representative, despite representing no-one at all.

      1. bisted

        …she’s spokesperson on education and science? Seriously? Well if FG think the ability to play chopsticks is qualification enough to be Minister for Arts then I suppose Fidelma is over-qualified.

    2. Observer

      She was elected by the Seanad electorate.

      11 members of the Seanad are appointed by the Taoiseach, the remaining 49 are elected by either the Seanad electorate for panels like the Labour one or by the NUI or TCD student body. Senator Healy Eames is one of 49 elected senators.

      And the people, in their wisdom, voted to retain the Seanad.

        1. Observer

          A promise from whom? The choice on the ballot paper was retention or abolition. The people chose retention. Reform was a hope that wasn’t written anywhere.

          1. Rich

            Exactly right. Most of those making the promise had no chance of actually making the reform happen.

            It is a fundamentally undemocratic entity.

        2. BobbyJ

          Who promised that? Pretty sure the ballot paper was a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’. I don’t recall a ‘no but reform’ box. The No side built their campaign around reform but reform was never on the agenda. You were well and truly fooled.

    3. Mike

      Dublin North Central continuously re-elected the venereally corrupt and slippery weasel, Bertie Ahern. You can find stupid people everywhere.

      1. Caroline

        Lol. A malapropism worthy of the man himself.

        (Unless you know something we don’t want to.)

        1. Mike

          I think we’ve all collectively taken it up the ass from him and his cronies over the years luv

    4. Madouveh on the dole

      If you actually read my wording, i didnt refer to that. Although she was elected by seanad members. But carry on in reactionary ignorance mate.

    1. realPolithicks

      So apparently you can say gobshite on BS as long as you use a french accent. Voilà de la discrimination ! (via google translate, so I’m not really sure what it says)

  2. Nikkeboentje

    If she really was trying to use the French pronunciation, she got it wrong as it’s pronounced wee-fee.

  3. nellyb

    “But you know life is full of suffering.” – so please live your own gospel, senator

  4. Gers

    a non issue but sure the Journal and other rag must fill their pages I guess. Pathetic clickbait shoite.

  5. Daisy Chainsaw

    Criticism and commentary of the constant stream of stupid from a woman elected on a handful of votes to a vacuous, expensive talking shop of losers and wannabees is not bullying. No wonder she’s backing Higgins’ Censorship Bill

    If she’s such a sensitive snowflake, maybe she shouldn’t be in politics and get a proper job instead.

    1. Shanti

      I’ve said it before and I will day it again.
      there’s no need for this bill, we already have laws against death threats or threats to harm, as well as laws against harassment. all they need is one or two words added to make them relevant to today.
      these are serious crimes and so require serious evidence to secure conviction.

      Which I’m guessing is precisely why these numpties want new laws. if FHE things people laughing at you making a fool of yourself constitutes “cyberbullying” then presumably the level of evidence required is sweet f.a.

      No wonder people are against this law.

  6. jeremy kyle

    She should be banned from using the internet. It just doesn’t agree with her.

      1. Shanti

        Bet she’s wishing she had said it on Facebook – then she could at least claim she was fraped.

    1. Mani

      All she needs to do is add another barrel to her name and she’ll be downright untouchable on twitter.

  7. Stewart Curry

    She’s under the delusion that people pointing out the stupid things she says and does is bullying. No wonder she is all for trying to reduce it.

  8. donkey_kong

    she is full of waffle but has a point – the whoops of delight and guffaw on social media over a mis-pronunciation is as pathetic as her attempts to back track

    1. Mark Dennehy

      Her point on that day was that we should pass a bill that would (in section five if you want to go looking) allow the courts to punish people they’d found innocent of offences under that bill (in sections three and four).

      Her speaking colleagues that evening wanted, amongst other things, to make it a criminal offence to possess a phone in a restaurant; to ban any form of protest against political decisions that had expletives in it; and to generally make it illegal to be mean to TDs.

      She may go jump in a swimming pool full of effluent if it’s sympathy she’s seeking for her terrible plight after coming out in support of the ridiculous pile of dross that bill was.

    2. Shanti

      People laugh at other people doing silly things, we have done so throughout history. Hence why slapstick comedy and the likes of Karl Pilkington are so popular.

      Now. if Senator Healy Eames had had the good grace to laugh at herself and say, “oops, I’m an eejit!” Then there would have been nothing for anyone to poke fun at, she would have been in on the joke, and it wouldn’t have lasted more than a day.

      Instead, she tried to cover her tracks, pretend that she’s not capable if making a mistake – which just makes her more ripe to be made fun of.

      Radioheads “Just” is going through my head as I type this…
      “You do it to yourself you do, and that’s why it really hurts, you do it to yourself, just you, you and no one else, you do it to yourself”

  9. Clampers Outside!

    I just read she’s just started her ‘general election’ campaign… I’d nearly move back west to sit by the door and wait for her to come canvassing… it’d be comedy gold.

    Earlier… my Da told me of a story of that other unelected mouth-muppet, Sen Lorraine Higgins, who was out canvassing last time round.
    She, or her driver, pulled in to a neighbours drive, and the driver rolled down the window and asked ‘Will you vote for Lorraine Higgins?’

    The response was, ‘If she cannot ask me herself, she’s not worth voting for.’

    Go away you two, you’re an embarrassment to the west of Ireland !

  10. ahyeah

    Is it true that Fidelma has a PhD in something? I can’t be arsed looking it up, just vaguely recall hearing it somewhere, sometime.

    1. Clampers Outside!

      Yes, she’s got a PHD in the area of ‘education’ – do remember though, a degree of any kind does not infer any particular intelligence other than in the field studied.

    2. The Old Boy

      Her website says she “holds a Ph.D. degree from NUIG with a specialism in writing, language and the creative process.”

  11. Donal

    for what its worth WiFi is pronounced wiffy here in spain.

    if she had said “wiffy, as they call it” we would all have been spared a lot of hassle

    1. Caroline

      Yep, she should have known that nobody would be bothered looking into the actual context of what she was saying, because effort. She should have anticipated that and spared everybody from looking like an ar*ehole for jumping all over her. I’m actually more disgusted at her now after putting us through that.

      1. Donal

        haha so what we are saying is that it does show her ignorance because although she really was referring to the way the french pronounce wifi she was ignorant of how lazy social media is and how context means nothing any more!

        1. Caroline

          Exactly. She has no idea – none at all – that many of us have busy lives sending women rape threats and trying to get companies to delete poorly-worded tweets. If she doesn’t understand that, I mean, does she even internet?

  12. Donal

    Actually maybe this episode says more about ireland’s ignorance of other languages than it does about the senators technological awareness…

    1. well

      It’s doesn’t, it says shes a chancer so upset by her own slip of the tongue that she’s tried to turn it around on us and make herself look somehow cosmopolitan.

      This is just one of many in a long string of gaffs for her.

  13. smiffy

    Her argument that she was talking about French tourists, even she mispronounced the French version as well, might carry a bit more weight if it was actually true. However, if you actually look at the full speech from the Seanad last week, she doesn’t mention tourists once. Here’s what she actually said:

    “There is definitely a need for education and information about this problem in the context of social, personal and health education. In the past, I was involved in working on curricular development in that area. It is now time that curriculum was revised in light of social media, other technologies and digital communications. It is vital that boundaries are discussed with our young people in schools in terms of what is safe and unsafe behaviour.

    We have to realise, and I am not preaching about this as I have teenagers, that social media is moving at a rapid pace. Young people live on and live far. The first question asked in a restaurant is about the Wi-Fi code. I hear it every day, and guess what? I am doing it now. Our young people cannot possibly live without it.”

    With more before and after, but none of it in any way related to tourists.

  14. fmong

    So Anton Savage son of Terry Prone of the Communication Clinic, crisis managers for Fianna Gael, interviews Fidelma, an FG Senator with a history of gaffes (no train ticket, no road tax, frape-gate) on his show on the Denis O’Brien owned radio station, and finds that she actually wasn’t talking bollox after all, that’s she a great woman, and that it’s the rotten mean people in ‘the media’ and the sad cases on the internet who are giving her a hard time because they’re awful… that’s what happened, yeah?

    This country is a joke…

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