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The Rumble in Ranelagh

For posterity's sake, I haven't checked the quality of the video but I'm sure it's good enough. One of the headline events from this year's election was the infamous, "Rumble in Ranelagh".

Basically, for the uninitiated, it featured rival campaigners from the same constituency having a bit of a staged media event. Well, it might have been spontaneous from Gormley but whatever.

Anyhoo, in the right hand corner, you have the bulldog, the incumbent Minister for Justice and leader of the neocon Progressive Democrats, Michael McDowell. He is attempting to repeat his shimmy up the lamp post stunt from the election beforehand. At that time, he was trying to intimate that the PDs would somehow act as a counterpoint to Fianna Fail and indeed a watchdog. This particular day, I'm not quite sure what he was up to, more of the same probably... Or "left wing government: no thanks!" or something...

Now, in the left corner, we have "Honest" John Gormley, who was the Chairman of the Green Party and genuinely regarded amongst a certain middle class intelligentsia in irish society. John in this clip, is hopping mad. Why? Is it the PD and the government's track record on the Environment? Carbon limits? The proposed motorway through national heritage site, the Hill of Tara?

Erm, no.

It's a misquote in some PD literature about the Green party proposing an increase in the current corporation tax rate (tax on company profits, particularly important in Ireland due to our reliance on profit repatriation for Yankee Multinational Corporations) and by golly, is he upset.

Anyway, watch the clip, it's hilarious stuff.

The situation now is that McDowell lost his seat and is supposedly out of politics forever, "Honest" John is bigger than ever. The Greens the new makeweight taking over where the PDs have left off (they're still in the Government coalition but literally they are a spent force having lost 6 seats). So the Greens, are touting themselves as the new watchdog on the party of the corrupt, they're here to deliver sensible policies in relation to the Environment, Transport, Energy and the whole lot.

Nevermind the prinicipled stuff, no war machines through Shannon, out the window. M3 & Tara, we'll see what we can do but we're not promising anything. Ah, the politics of expediency and the slippery slope...

Really John, when you're shouting in McDowell's face, did you not realise you were looking in a mirror???