Parasitic Demagogues finally disband

Tonight Ireland is a happy country, as we celebrate the end of the PDs, a nasty little political party, which has imploded.
Good bye - I say - and good riddens!

After they lost six of their previously eight deputies in the 2007 general election, the Parasitic Demagogues (PDs), until then the junior partner in the government coalition led by Fianna Fáil, were demoted to infant partner. (Their previous position as the juniors was taken by the equally power-hungry Green Party.)

Among the 75% casualties were their then leader, the Tanaiste and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell (left), as well as deputy leader Liz O'Donnell and party president Tom Parlin.
The latter, a Minister of State and a corrupt weasel of amazingly few morals, found quickly a new perk as the head of the construction industry federation. He feels quite at home there now, as no-one in Ireland knows corruption better than the builders and property developers.

But greedy and power-hungry as they were, the PDs still stayed in government, despite being almost wiped out by the electorate. If there ever was a case in Irish politics where the expressed will of the voters was completely ignored and contradicted, it was to keep the damaged remnants of the PDs in government last year.

With a grand total of two Senators (kindly appointed by Bertie) and two TDs, one of which - the infamous Mary Harney (right) - even retained her position as Minister for Health (with an annual budget of more than € 16 billion), the PDs became the living dead of Leinster House.

It took more than a year before they could not stand the stench or their own wrotten existence any longer. Today they finally decided to obey the will of the Irish voters and disbanded what was left of the party.

But it was not an easy death. In April they even went through the charade of electing a new leader, as if there was anything left to lead. A previously unknown Galway man named Ciaran Cannon - one of the two appointed Senators - was chosen as the sacrificial lamb, as even Mary Harney could see no future for the PDs and refused to lead them into any more disasters.

Now it's all over - thank God! This afternoon the last surviving members of the PDs meet for a wake in Mullingar and voted to finally disband their party. Ciaran Cannon will have to live with the dubious stain of having been their last 'leader', while no-one even mentions the pompous and self-important Michael McDowell any longer.

The party, founded by the former Fianna Fáil TD and minister Des O'Malley in 1985 as the Progressive Democrats, had originally offered a new alternative in Irish politics. But after the founder resigned in 1993 and turned the party over to Mary Harney, things began to go rapidly downhill. Under the 13 years of her leadership the PDs became the Parasitic Demagogues.
It is however ironic that the very man who urged Des O'Malley in 1985 to establish a new party would become its undertaker. This man was no other than Michael McDowell, in 1985 a young Fine Gael activist, and from 2006 to 2007 the hapless leader of the corrupted PDs.

Neither he nor Des O'Malley were in Mullingar for the party's funeral. These days they have better things to do.
However, the decommisioning process of the PDs is not quite complete yet. Though the party is now officially disbanded, they still have a hidden stash of power in the Cabinet, known as Mary Harney. She is now trying to masquerade as an 'independent', but no-one believes her anyway.

She sees herself as the first one-person party in Irish history and is determined to stay in power as long as it is possible. Only with her decommissioning the disbandment of the PDs will truly be finished, and I hope she will be decommissioned soon.

Incompetence rules Ireland

We all are humans, and human beings make mistakes. That's normal.

Some of us make more mistakes, others less.

In the real world those who make more mistakes than they should pay the price for it.
They are demoted or even sacked, and then have plenty of time to ponder over their abilities and skills while signing on for the dole.

Only in Irish politics - and especially in Fianna Fail - those who make more mistakes than others are promoted. And the more mistakes they make, the higher up they get.

So we have an arrogant Taoiseach, who is nothing but a rude bully boy from the sticks who got into the Dail at the age of 24 and has not done a decent day's work since.

Mary Coughlan, the woman he chose as his Tanaiste, is Ireland's answer to Sarah Palin and the most clueless and useless politician one can imagine. Bad enough that she's a TD, even worse that she's been a minister for quite some time. But Tanaiste? That's a bad joke.

Looking through the Cabinet, there are not more than three or four people in it who are actually up to the extremely well paid ministerial job they are holding. The rest is a bunch of chancers and fools.

This morning Brian Cowen called a snap press conference "to explain changes to the rules about medical cards".
He appeared shortly before 10 o'clock at government buildings in Dublin, with Green Party leader John Gormley at his right, and Mary Harney at his left.

Never was there a more unholy trinity in Ireland than those three, trying to pull the wool over the people's eyes. But even though our politicians are fools, the people are not. So the attempt to shut the stable door after the horse had bolted was an utter failure, as you might have expected in the first place.

The current government is simply incompetent and not up to the job. They brought the budget forward to deal with the crisis, and by delivering a messy, over-bureaucratic and totally unfair budget, they created an even bigger crisis.
Now they want to talk their way out of that, and what do they do? They insult the intelligence of the majority of Irish people. And behind their backs they have at the same time the next plan ready to screw us ever more and more.

Can you still trust those clowns?

I can not, and in all fairness, I never did and have criticised the present regime for all the eleven years they have ruled us so far. I'm not in any party, and most of them are pretty useless anyway. But I'm Irish, proud of it, and take a very keen interest in the matters of my country.

The way I see it, the members of the current government are breaking their oaths of office they have to say when they are appointed by the President. They are supposed to serve Ireland and her people, defend the country and its interests, and perform their duties to the best of their abilities. On all three elements of the oath the current government is falling short.

At this stage I would not go as far as calling what they do treason, but it comes pretty close to that at times.

None of the three government parties are now led by the person who was party leader during the last general election in 2007. So the people the electorate voted for are no longer in charge, even though most of them are still in politics and in the Dail.

After all what happened in recent weeks and months, I think there is only one fair action for a government in such a deep shitehole: Call a general election! Let the people decide who they want to lead them through the crisis and out of it. Anything else is neither wise nor democratic.