Enda Kenny - Dangerous and Unsuitable for Office

anymore wrote: »

The question is, who will be pulling the muppet's strings ?

No - the question is who is pulling the current gang of muppet's strings.

Liam Byrne wrote: »

No - the question is who is pulling the current gang of muppet's strings.

Let me ask you, what did John Bruton do when informed of attempts at bribery?
What did Fg do ?

Aidric wrote: »

Nail on the head. The OP was looking to get feedback on the performance of Kenny yet all he has got is a FF bashfest. The type of tired, inward looking, bickering centred, political point scoring analysis that quite frankly turns a lot of people off politics in this country.

The week after Mary O Rourke called kenny a tratior for criticicising Ahern when he was out of the country, Kenny was pictured in the paper all smiling at an exhibition of Padraig Flynns paintings and was also on radio speaking warmly about " My colleague Beverly".
If I didnt know better I'd say he was an FF plant !

Aidric wrote: »

Nail on the head. The OP was looking to get feedback on the performance of Kenny yet all he has got is a FF bashfest. The type of tired, inward looking, bickering centred, political point scoring analysis that quite frankly turns a lot of people off politics in this country.

Given the thread title, I'd say the OP was aiming for a Kenny bashfest. "Dangerous and unfit for office" is NOT an accurate description.

And the fact of the matter is that people in falling-apart glasshouses shouldn't throw stones.

Yes, Kenny is weak. No argument. No "fanboy" here.

But - aside from Gilmore, who would be questionable given the links to unions - Kenny is the best we've got.

The reality is that quite a lot of the time it is regarded as an achievement if Kenny completes an interview without putting a foot in it ! That is how low the expectations are from this man.
He should ahve destroyed Ahern over the period of the Mahon tribunal hearings and both Rabbitte and Gilmore in their turns have left him looking inept and slow witted. His big advatage was supposed to be his ' organising skills'. Well the george lee fiasco put his organising skills into perspective as did his unilateral announcement regarding the aboilishment of the Seante - which will never happen.
Lucinda Crieghtion has reglarily made him look as if he has no control of his party; what would the opposition do if he were Taoiseach.
As for re -organising FG, Seamus Brennan did the same job for FF when he was a young TD and was never elected Leader.

Liam Byrne wrote: »

So - given that we're not allowed to make the obvious comparison and contrast with Cowen's waffle and Bart Simpson style avoidance last week - what would you suggest ?

I personally couldn't give a crap about someone "putting their foot in it" in a soundbyte, as long as they can do their job and aren't corrupt.

Am I different ? Obviously. I look at someone's overall convictions rather than their snappy soundbytes and "clever" put-downs.

I - despite disagreeing with a lot of Michael McDowell's ideas - would have voted for him, because himself and Pat Rabbitte struck me as the only politicians who stood by their convictions.

And - as a result - McDowell regularly appeared to "put his foot in it", saying things that pissed some people off, including me.

But it was only his eventual stance on Ahern that made him completely unacceptable.

There is a difference between putting your foot in it and being stupid !
I too admired McDowell for his forthrightness - his remarks about many refugees stories being guff or nonsense was perfectly right and his attempts to introduce cafe style licences was the voice of sanity - which is why it was rejected so focribly.
Kenny is where he is because the people of ability in FG either didnt have the backbone to stand or the FG membership is simply inept and prefers ineptness in thier leader - I have had some correspondence from FG Councillors TDs which tend to vouch for thier ineptness or otherwise.
Again I repeat, Kenny's holding on to a permanent teachers position for twenty or so years whilst working as a full time TD and also drawing a Minister's pension is utterly immoral from my point of view. I may vote for a FG candidate at the next election, as I did at the last, but i would never vote for a Teacher/Politican such as Kenny, martin Hannafin etc.
They are all the same, there is no difference in ethics.

Liam Byrne wrote: »

I wouldn't agree with you on this, although I would admit that ethics and fairness don't seem to be high priorities of anyone in the Dáil.

So again, I'll ask. What do you suggest ?

Do we vote for FF, with their record of corruption and incompetence ?
Do we vote for Labour, with Gilmore definitely seeming strong, but with their ties to unions ?
Do we vote for independents, with the resulting dilution of influence ?
Or do we vote FG, who seem to be the best of a bad lot ?

I've stated my reasons for replying to the thread - which is purely an objection to the mud-slinging exaggerations in the title - but what do you think is the best alternative that we have ?

If Labour weren't so tied to the unions, I think Gilmore would blow Kenny out of the water; but I still wouldn't view Kenny as "dangerous and unsuitable for office".

Well I mainly agree with you. I have always included Labour candidates somewhere in my lsit of preferences but no more. Labour is now the political wing of the Public Sector Unions.. Unfortunately some in FG seem also to be the mouth pieces of the PS - one of my own potential FG candidates Senator Buttimer circulated a newsletter that was a baltant invatation to PS voters/pensioners that he would take care of them - he is a teacher of course, so that rules him out as far as my vote is concerned. In fact i will not vote for any candidate who is a PS worker of any kind regardless of party.
If they were still in existence I would have to consider voting PDs, but of course Harney's Quid pro Quo to FF was to kill off the PD party. Harney is at heart not right wing at all ! That is one of the funny things about irish politics. What jobs did her husband hold ?
The title may be accurate in the sense that dithering, and Kenny is a ditherer, may be the most dangerous course of all. He has already said he will try to ensure the salaries of ' the lower paid' PS workers will be pushed upwards - Socialism is alive and well !
The truth is there is no party that is interetsed in people like myself, many of us feel we have been disenfranchised and we have no powerful vested group to lobby for us. perhaps we should seek refugee status in some other country ?

Liam Byrne wrote: »

We're pretty different, so, because the PDs took privatisation to the extreme and in doing so made basic services more costly and less customer-focussed.

I'd have voted for them when O'Malley was at the helm, but since then they got carried away and were counter-productive, profit-oriented.



Dithering can occasionally be, but I doubt that it's more dangerous than the crap that FF have put us through.

One could also argue that FF dither on stuff that suits them (e.g. we're only NOW starting to slow down the recession, while the bank guarantee - including Anglo - was done on the spot).



Nothing wrong with a basic amount of socialism.....especially given how capitalism and "profit at all costs" has obviously failed us.



Define "us", though ? You and I are obviously significantly different, and yet that last sentence could have come from my mouth.

'Us' is proabably in the lower middle section of what is the middle classes - people I would regard as real ' working class' who qualify for very little in the way of benefits ( and if they have been self employed qualify for none at all) people who have subsidised the ' vulnerable , ie the work shy, ETC.

The kind of people who take an active interest in the education of their kids who will make financial sacrifices to send them extra classes to make up for the deficincies of Irleand's ' First Class' education system and who are then villified in the media for exploiting ' less well off kids, i.e the children of chain smoking boozing foreign holiday parents who cant bother thier arses taking an interest in eduaction,
the kind of people who will, if they can afford it after paying for their mortgages and the extra housing costs charged for Social and Affordable Housing, after having scrimped and saved for the house deposits, also pay for Health Insurance and who are then villified by the media for exploiting and denying the aforementioned ' vulnerable' who can afford € 3k/5k a year for ciagarettes but who 'cant afford' health insurance.

That is roughly the kind of people I mean by 'us'.

nuac wrote: »

Raiser, re your comment on 29.4.10 that Enda kenny was responsible for FG failure in the 2007 GE - How can you claim that. In the run up to that election he brought FG back from the dead.

The body Enda Kenny brought back to live in the run up to the '7 GE was Bertie Ahern; Ahern was politically dead until Kenny showed how inept he was and support swung back to Ahern

Again and again, FG has hidden Kenny away when they have been giving economic presentations - how embarrasing is that ?

In Cork prior to Council Kenny, on a local radio show, was so gushing about FF's Deirdre Forde moving to FG,that he couldnt not give the name of one of FG'd other Council candidates !
And of course Cork lost a FG MEP when Kenny parachuted his wifes relation into the Munster constituency....and shall we mention George Lee ?