By Dan Boyle
(with apologies to Myles na gCopaleen)
What contradictory emotional state is expressed by a political representative when asked that question?
(S)He is glad that question was asked.
What unnecessary adverb is added to express disappointment at being asked that question?
(S)He is really glad that question was asked.
What added phrase is necessary when after three minutes no answer to that question has been given?
I am getting to that question.
What phrase, found in the future conditional tense, creates the promise that all will be right eventually?
The phrase is going forward.
What timescale is given to decisions made today eventually bearing fruit?
After the election after next.
What unit of intensity must people possess to be the beneficiaries of government policies?
They must be hard working.
What length and duration must an economic plan be?
It must be long term.
What sports analogy should no issue ever be?
A political football.
At what radial intersection is the country to be found at every coming election?
At a crossroads.
What serious consequence to important pacific endeavour follows criticism of any type, of the words or actions of the Sinn Féin party?
It damages the Peace Process.
What exaggerated expression of seriousness must be applied to every disagreement that occurs in Northern Ireland?
Such disagreements must always be described as a crisis.
What legal requirement is not said to exist, if individual approval has not been given in exercising access to the utility of water?
No consent no contract.
What sense of direction should apply to the payment of water charges?
No way
From where should this direction be applied?
From many places – days out in Dublin; football matches in Portugal; or swimming pools in Florida.
To what state of physical well being are many public bodies thought to be in their utilisation?
They are not thought to be fit for purpose.
In whose interest are all political decisions made?
The national interest.
Whose debt is not it?
It is not our debt.
Who is responsible for everything in the country that is working well?
The Government is.
Who is responsible for everything in the country that isn’t working well?
Somebody else is. Anybody else is.
What type of failure does government admit to?
A communications failure.
To what political party does communication failure most impact upon?
The Labour Party.
What alternative state negates a forced resignation of any high level public official, not being seen as a dismissal?
When such public officials retire.
If the Fianna Fáil party is unable to be in government with the Fine Gael party or with the Sinn Féin party, who can it be in government with?
No one. It is a perfect state of disgrace.
To what extent does the six syllable word sustainability feature in Irish political debate?
To no extent at all.
What time projection for this nation are our young people?
Young people are our future.
What type of coagulant are our young people also considered to be?
Our life blood.
Why are undocumented Irish people in the United States considered different to economic migrants who come to Ireland?
They just are.
Who is the Minister for the Environment?
There is no Minister FOR The Environment.
What is the relationship between Tribunals of Inquiry and subsequent convictions within the Irish judicial system?
There is no known relationship.
There is only one DOB.
Thou shalt take the name of the Lord thy DOB in vain.
If a war is over why does armed conflict continue? If an army has been stood down, why does a withered husk of an organisation still remain? If a tree falls in a forest, and no one is there to hear it, did it ever fall?
Don’t ask me. I’m not God.
Dan Boyle is a former Green Party TD. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle
Don’t forget that rural ireland is dying on it’s feet.
Kudos, Dan, very good indeed. Always nice to meet a fellow Mylesophile.
Mylesian, surely?
Its Milesian.
Mmmm, Milseain
…amaDán
*Shrugs* Dunno
I feel the BS commentariat might double it. If he stops.
http://i.imgur.com/RuaQJ8z.gif
Ah I remember Dan Boyle when the Greens were in government. He would never have used any of these tired cliches or evasion techniques when he was sent out to bat for the government.
Damn right I didn’t. Didn’t go to Carr Communications either.
You know Dan that the broadsheet massive are now engaged checking every utterance you made whilst in government :)
They won’t.
they couldnt be Ars*d ??
Compiling list as I “look at the debate in its wider context”.
No Dan, instead you were asleep at the wheel (literally), while the country was pushed into accepting the world’s biggest bank guarantee scheme. You have no credibility whatsoever on any aspect of being in government.
Figuratively?
You don’t read timelines very well do you?
I’d be more concerned about your own inability to read balance sheets and spread sheets
Em how was I ‘literally’ asleep at the wheel? What wheel? Literally.
the wheel that should have allowed Anglo to go to the wall; the wheel that agreed to the bank guarantee scheme. You know exactly what I’m talking about, stop trying to dodge the issue.
Ah the wheel of a Dodge. Can’t ever driving one of those, but I will defer to your expertise with metaphors.
Huh, wheels are sentient political actors now. Who knew?
“Ah the wheel of a Dodge. Can’t ever driving one of those, but I will defer to your expertise with metaphors…/”
Good man, make fun of inflicting misery on hundreds of thousands of people like the smarmy little traitor that you really are
Yes Rob that was me. All me. You have shamed me with your penetrating use of proportion and perspective.
“Yes Rob that was me. All me. You have shamed me with your penetrating use of proportion and perspective.”
I never said it was all you, stop being disingenuous. You were part of it, you were in that government that signed off on the bank guarantee. Surely you can see that you have to take some responsibility for the guarantee scheme as part of being in government?
I doubt I have shamed you because someone like you, a traitor, has no sense of shame. You deserve to be put up against a wall for what you did.
The Oireachtas, including Fine Gael and Sinn Féin, signed off on the guarantee. I resort to humour when engaging with you, because I cannot take seriously anyone who uses phrases like ‘traitor’ so glibly. And as far from literal as they can possibly be.
Jaysus Rob ya poor wee scut.
Did someone pee in your cornflakes… you’re calling for people to be shot, and it’s not even noon ! :)
“The Oireachtas, including Fine Gael and Sinn Féin, signed off on the guarantee. I resort to humour when engaging with you, because I cannot take seriously anyone who uses phrases like ‘traitor’ so glibly. And as far from literal as they can possibly be….”
Dan, I’m not being glib at all, you are the one making light of the situation and attempting to joke your way out of it.
To make this really simple for you; the government, including you, agreed the terms of the bank guarantee scheme. Your leader, John Gormley, slept through the critical negotiations, when the terms of the extremely poor deal were hammered out.
You, as part of the government then presented this deal as a fait accompli to the Oireachtas who then voted on it. You and FF and The Greens betrayed the country and therefore you are a traitor. I don;’t use the term lightly at all.
There are a lot of things you’re using lightly Rob especially your intelligence. You have a warped sense of what happened, what was done by whom and who is responsible for what. I’ll let you wallow in your ignorance.
For your benefits Rob, though you’ll probably ignore it, here are the actual facts.
The Bank Guarantee didn’t cause our economic collapse, it was a consequence of it.
It wasn’t plucked out if the air one night. It had been talked about over a series of time, and The Greens were part of that discussion.
The meeting on the evening you obsess about was attended by two cabinet members. All other cabinet members were asleep as was the rest of the country.
There was no fait accompli. The guarantee was one of a number of bad options that existed.
The guarantee was wrongly applied but was still the best policy option that could be followed.
All decisions were made for what were believed to be the best reasons.
I appreciate none of this makes sense in your fantasy world.
For your benefits Rob, though you’ll probably ignore it, here are the actual facts.
The Bank Guarantee didn’t cause our economic collapse, it was a consequence of it.
It wasn’t plucked out if the air one night. It had been talked about over a series of time, and The Greens were part of that discussion.
The meeting on the evening you obsess about was attended by two cabinet members. All other cabinet members were asleep as was the rest of the country.
There was no fait accompli. The guarantee was one of a number of bad options that existed.
The guarantee was wrongly applied but was still the best policy option that could be followed.
All decisions were made for what were believed to be the best reasons.
I appreciate none of this makes sense in your fantasy world.
No Dan, I won’t ignore your extremely poor attempt at spin, but I will look at this statement and respond on a point by point basis:
Regarding the bank guarantee not chasing the economic collapse, but being a consequence of it: This is a straw man argument that you made to me in the comments section of your last post on Broadsheet. I am fully aware it was not a cause of the recession (although as a minority Government partner since 2007, one would hope that you would know a bit more about the causes of the collapse than anyone else), but as a reaction to the collapse it had the effect of throwing petrol on the fire. It was a disastrously bad decision and one we all still live with.
The reason I focus on the night of the guarantee – you rather snidely put it as an obsession because I can only assume you are seeking to discredit me from shining a light on your biggest betrayal of the Irish people – is because that’s when the crucial details were agreed on.
I have no doubt that it was discussed among Cabinet as many other issues are, but the night that it was agreed was when the really damaging decision of having a blanket guarantee was agreed on. I’m sure we were all asleep soundly, but as party leader, surely he should have been awake to sit in on these key decisions?
The deal was presented to the Oireachtas as a done deal (‘fait accompli) and with hardly any debating time, it was rushed through.
The final point that the blanket guarantee scheme was the least worst option or that it was all about the implementation is pure nonsense. At the very least, Anglo should have been allowed go to the wall as it wasn’t a pillar bank and there was no risk of contaigon.
It has proved to be the most expensive bank guarantee in history and has inflicted untold misery on Irish people. To suggest that you were acting in the people’s interests by agreeing it suggests that you either have an extremely weak grip on economics; are naive, incompetent or just don’t care. From the way that you address me and based on the extremely weak arguments, it suggests that you are a mixture of all of the above.
I don’t spin Rob I engage. I certainly don’t see using the type of trite sloganising you do as debate. Your outrage is outrageously exaggerated, and your attempt to come across as menacing is more than a little geekish.
“I don’t spin Rob I engage. I certainly don’t see using the type of trite sloganising you do as debate. ”
So after having erroneously attempted to excuse the Greens from the enormous mistakes you made in government, and having your weak arguments shot down, you now try to engage? By the way, it’s ‘sloganeering’, not ‘sloganising’. Also laughing at you saying you don’t ‘sloganize’ (sic) straight after you issue the ultimate cliched political slogan: ‘”I don’t spin Rob I engage.”
Your really are a joke of a man
“There are a lot of things you’re using lightly Rob especially your intelligence. You have a warped sense of what happened, what was done by whom and who is responsible for what. I’ll let you wallow in your ignorance…”
So what part of what I posted was inaccurate or incorrect? Apart from flinging insults at a former Green voter, why don’t you give us plebs on the outside an insider’s view about what really went on inside the tent? After all, it is us who are still paying for your betrayal
Which definitive photographic devices and racing certainties are to blame for our current difficulties?
The Developers and bankers
Rob, don’t take the bait.
Dan , don’t take the bait. You are most likely dealing with a student at the “no surrender ” school of politics.
Enjoyed the post!
You’re right J. I’ll leave it that now!
Good man, you know you are beaten. Go off and write another brilliant critique of the Irish political system while we suffer for your mistakes.
You don’t read timelines very well do you?
…. and which parts of the Golf Course seem to have vanished from the landscape?
Enjoyed this. Thanks.
The DOB one should be more vilifying than sarcastic praise…. but overall I like it.
The communications problem with Labour is actually a fact, not just a cliché :)
Good work Dan Boyle. You must have been up all night. Do keep on keeping on with the writing and I’ll keep on keeping on with the reading of it.
“The reality of the United States vote…….. whereby a toxic debt that is not redeemable in the short term is being bought and where our nearest jurisdiction, the United Kingdom, is buying up financial institutions, as and when they are likely to go out of business, is not one that a small economy such as ours can face up to. ”
So Dan, you said that our economy couldn’t handle the buying up of toxic debt. Then your party sanctioned that exact policy.
This does in fact make you a traitor Mr Boyle.
My Seanad speech on the guarantee. I stand over every word. What it shows is a/ countries other than Ireland were involved in bailing out their banks; b/ that some countries. US and UK, had fiscal instruments not available to Ireland.
So when is the citizens arrest Ollie?
why bother with an arrest when it would be much easier to do what they do with traitors in other countries?
you stood over the line that the banks were too big to fail. you should have copped on that ‘too big to fail’ equates to ‘too big to exist’. every time i look at the one third of my pay packet going to fund your pension i see your smug face smiling back.
Congrats, Rob. You’ve clearly completed all today’s exercises from the Trotskyite Youth Workbook so why don’t you give Comrade Teacher an apple from the collectivized farm and refrain from beating Dan Boyle – and the rest of us – about the lugholes for a while.
Yours on behalf of the degenerate bourgeois :)
of course, it’s so easy to laugh about stuff like this, and hey let’s call anyone who criticises the pol establishment a trotskyite or a commie or a marxist, sure it’s far easier than actually trying to understand what happened and what continues to happen.
Listen, bit ad hom on my part. Apologies for that.