Damien Mulley

From Today’s Irish Times Radio review section.

Seems Kebab Lenihan was on the Marian Finucane show last week and they talked about the Late Late Show and Governments telling the media what to do and then…

All but one of Finucane’s panel of newspaper reviewers were in agreement that the Government should never seek to interfere with the editorial decisions made by programme-makers. It’s a no-brainer, really, unless you’re from North Korea – but not for our Minister of State. “Funny enough” said Lenihan, “I don’t object to the principle that calls could be made. I notice that around the table we’re all getting very precious.”

Uh oh

Since I said well done to Labour today (and prob had some people choke on their fairtrade cornflakes and soy milk brekkies) I should also give praise for the level of engagement by the Green Party. Recently Roderic O’Gorman and Ciaran Cuffe left comments on my blog post about them turning their backs on samesex marriage. I still don’t agree with the comments on follow-up blog posts and I still think they’re modern day judases but that’s ok. The good thing about them is that they’re engaging and this is definitely the first time members of the Government have officially engaged, in this medium at least. Great to see that. They’ve continued to blog once inside the tent (Galway horseracing one or not) and continued to leave blog comments. A big step in changing policy is first being able to engage so personally I find this a positive thing. I also see that their press people are going around leaving comments on blogs and via email and clarifying some facts. Again well done. This is good for everyone, it shows the Greens are listening and it is helping bloggers by sharing factual information with them too. Baby steps…

The Labour party is now without doubt the most web savvy political party in Ireland. More credit to them. Their conference is on this weekend and they’re using UStream to stream it for web viewers. They’re doing an online Q&A, they’ve got a Flickr stream, they’re using Twitter and of course there’s their blog. I’m well well impressed. Well done to them.

Also best of luck to Neilformer as he goes for the NEC.

* (For the sake of consistency, assume there’s a dig at Labour Kids as well somewhere in this blog post. 🙂 )

Have a look here and here and here. If all evidence removed, you can still see how the blog part of the site was hacked by looking at the RSS feed here.

Neilformer – Commie in disguise (he of the Che loving, Coke hating Labour Kids) takes a few shots at Roderic O’Gorman and his nonsense post about the Green Party and their backturning on equality. Neil makes very salient points and also points to Ciarán Cuffe and another blog post on his view of the past week. I don’t for a second believe what he said last week in the press but once again a blog post from Ciarán gives me some hope that the Greens have some morals. What good are morals though if you never take a stand? Anyway, contrast Ciarán’s blog post with Roderic‘s. I know which one is more transparent. As Neil also points out, I think it very poor form to use the names of Katherine Zappone and Anne-Louise Gilligan to try and copperfasten what the Green Party did last week. It’s pretty low in my books.

Speaking of low, while cheap to laugh at a typo, I find it funny that Roderic talks about getting passed the spin, (I think he meant getting past the spin) as if he was the next baton holder in the Green Party FUDathon. It seems indeed that Roderic picked up the baton and performed well enough, if spin and buck passing is the game. Screencap of the blog post title before it is changed on Rodder’s blog.

I wonder will I get dressed down privately now because of what I said about the Greens? I hear that’s the new fashion these days.

Bonus link to Una’s piece last Sunday on Ciarán.

I’ve used Freedom of Information over the years to get information from lazy regulators and lazier Government departments. Today, November 2nd, 2007 I got a letter frm the Office of the Information Commissioner saying that an appeal they were dealing with is now complete. I requested documents from ComReg. Included in the information was data supplied by a third party – eircom. eircom objected to ComReg giving me certain information and appealed to the Office of the Information Commissioner, as is their right. eircom has now said they are happy for ComReg to now hand this over to me. So now I get 11 records that I request from ComReg … in September 2004. 3 years for an appeal! Best delaying tactic ever.

A Suzy points out, this time it’s the people that want civil unions who have had their throats slit in order for the Greens to stay in power. The spine of the Green Party must be completely eroded now judging by the way they’ve contorted themselves to bend over backwards in new ways for Fianna Fáil. Seriously, if I was a FF supporter I’d be so entertained at the hazing they’re giving the Greens.

Suzy covers what the Greens are telling fibs about now and how their abortion of the original Civil Union Bill does sweet fuck all at the end of the day so go there to read it. For me while pissed off at the latest shameful attitude from them I’m really sad for them too. They keep saying they need to be pragmatic and they talk up what they’ve achieved so far but they’re running out of things to achieve though since they’re turning their backs on their own policies more and more. What’s left from their manifesto that they haven’t sold down the river? Surely they should just quit while they are ahead now or are they in it for Ministerial Pensions? Where’s Trevor Sargent in all of this by the way? He’s been really quiet. When will it be his turn to turn the knife on his own supporters?

I’m surprised that the new Party Chairman hasn’t at least attempted to create some fake conflict in the party so make it look like the Green Troops are pissed off over all of this and he has to work hard to keep the party from leaving Government. I guess this negotiating tactic can’t be used for at least another year or two. But what about a genuine party revolt, are the party faithful *that* faithful and blind?

So Labour reintroduces the Civil Union Bill tomorrow. (Suzy has a nice post about Ciarán Cuffe rolling over, shame, I thought he was the most transparent Green but what he said today was guff) Just wondering since Labour, Fine Gael, Sinn Féin and the Greens voted for the Civil Union Bill in February, whether they have policies for employees in samesex relationships? Healthcare, pension rights, you know, that kind of thing. Whatever the partner of a married staff member gets, I assume they cater for the samesex partner of a staff member too. I am positive they do, leading by example and all that. Right? Can anyone point me to any information the parties have on that? Plenty of fanboys and girls from all those named parties visit this blog so I’m sure you can root out the standard employment contracts from these parties. Or maybe some of the people in the media that dip in here now and then could put on their sleuthing caps and smoke their pipes and find out? Not those pipes, thems are for after work.