The 2006 Ministerial Awards Show!!

El Stuntman

yes indeed, for one night only.

roll up, roll up (but not your joints - this is a family show)

The Frank Spencer Award for Ministerial Incompetence:
and the winner is.........Martin Cullen!!! This comic genius continues to amaze audiences up and down the land with his breathtaking routine of outright stupidity, dazzling daftness and headline-hogging opening of bypasses around ballygobackwards. All the while cocking up any and all important transport issues that cross his desk (Aer Lingus, Transport 21, Dublin Bus, IE etc etc etc).
A master of his trade, Martin we salute you with this award. You must have some real serious dirt on the Bertmeister to stay employed!!

A special mention to Mary Harney in this awards section - a good woman done down by the entrenched inefficiency of a health service run solely for the convenience of its employees. She still managed to cock it up royally and now looks as though she's praying to be booted out in the General Election. fair play to ye Mary....

stay tuned folks, more to follow!!!

oh and feel free to add your own

Nuttzz

i dont see how transport 21 has been cocked up considering its only in planning stage or how 100 new dublin buses is cocking up or how removing the plan to privatise 25% of dublin bus is cocking up ...now e voting machines....

The Dirty Harry Award
To the limerick ferret with his pistol picture in the curragh

El Stuntman

Nuttzz wrote:

i dont see how transport 21 has been cocked up considering its only in planning stage

I don't like projects with 30bn budgets and no breakdown of costs

makes me suspicious

Would the opening of the Port Tunnel, the success of Luas, the fall in road deaths and most bypasses coming in on time and on budget not see Cullen sensationally stripped of his award?

Kojak

Nuttzz wrote:

The Dirty Harry Award
To the limerick ferret with his pistol picture in the curragh

Brilliant

ballooba

Deleted User wrote:

Would the opening of the Port Tunnel,

Way Out of Schedule, Way Over Budget and soon to lead to further problems on the disaster that is the M50.

Deleted User wrote:

the success of Luas,

There is only two lines and they don't even link up. Most of it's passengers have been cannibalised from Dublin Bus.

Deleted User wrote:

the fall in road deaths

You've already started another thread on that one. So let's leave that there.

Deleted User wrote:

and most bypasses coming in on time and on budget not see Cullen sensationally stripped of his award?

How about a decent working motorway network rather than a few poxy bypasses?

The so-called N2 'Motorway' is a joke. It's a dual-carriageway. It's a N road. It even has green signs rather than the blue motorway ones.

We now have retail parks springing up and down the M1 ruining the only decent motorway in the country.

Plus, where's the motorway rest stops the NRA keep telling us to use.

SeanW

Martin Cullen and the precession of idiots that have called themselves "Minister for Transport" over the past 10 years.

Like MC who only recently realised that there's a total crisis in the driver testing system, and has only now - 6 months before an election - decided "hey maybe I should throw some money at this." Not even any kind of plan yet, just an announcement of €10M to deal with the "backlog"

Meanwhile, I just visited the FG site today and sure enough, clicked "Policy" and found a whole bunch of concrete proposals, sensible ideas and even some records of recently proposed legislation. So much for them not being a "viable alternative."

I'm not a big fan of FG but they do give me the impression that they have good ideas and a genuine desire to do things better.

The_Minister

SeanW wrote:

Meanwhile, I just visited the FG site today and sure enough, clicked "Policy" and found a whole bunch of concrete proposals, sensible ideas and even some records of recently proposed legislation. So much for them not being a "viable alternative."

I just went and had a look. The ones that I saw were the normal crowd pleasers, nothing too dynamic. Anyone can promise more money, and to get tougher. What was it that you think is great.

EDIT: Fine Gael has just stuck every speech that they made in there, at least the PDs (it's too late to check them all so I just took one gov. one), bohered to distill theirs. http://www.progressivedemocrats.ie/our_policies/

Heinrich

Deleted User wrote:

Would the opening of the Port Tunnel,

Is this the one that was closed the other day? The one that spews out lorries across the road at Santry so that they can do a sort of waltz before getting on to the motorway?

That's a class act...

Then there's Bertie's brother who reckons that the reason some Nordic country (no names, no packdrill to proctect the innocent) does not have a homeless persons problem because it's colder up there.

It's a wonderful circus. The act of Bertie without a bank account getting his salary arranged into a sock or mattress, we were'nt told exactly which.

The blank check trick.

Love it.

ps. The fall in road deaths might also have a massive contribution from the car manufacturers who now install airbags in all their cars as standard, safer construction etc.

El Stuntman

marvellous appreciation for our first award winner!! a big round of applause for the Waterford Wizard of Whimsy!!
(and his lovely girlfriend Monica - doesn't she look lovely in her government-funded outfit?)

Now (quiet down the back), time to move on to the next part of our show and it's that perennial favourite, the Charles J Haughey Award for Sheer Brass Neck.

As usual there were a flood of ministerial nominations for this award, any of whom could have taken the title in any normal year. However, in 2006, one man rose head and shoulders above the contending pack and our jury of handpicked drunks has little hesitation in awarding this prestigious prize to.......An Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern!!!

Bertie's sheer brass neckery in expecting the electorate to believe his fantastic tales of (a) having no bank account while a serving Minister for Finance, (b) keeping 50 grand in a biscuit tin under the bed and (c) just being handed cash by both his mates in Fagans and also total strangers in Manchester, with no strings attached and 'no favours sought or given', in our view makes him a greatly deserving winner of this award.

He further enhanced his claims with his wonderful statement that "I might have appointed somebody (to state bodies) but I appointed them because they were friends, not because of anything they had given me".

What else can we expect of the man who claims to have attended both UCD and the LSE (neither institution has any record of his attendance)? Or the man who signed away the blank cheques to fund his master's sybaritic lifestyle? Or the man who barked up every tree looking for signs of Ray Burke's corruption?

Feck it, we're so impressed by Bertie's neck that we're giving him this award in perpetuity!!! Ladies and Gentlemen, please salute a true great - the Bertmeister!!!!!!!!

More to follow after these messages.....

Heinrich

Bertie's sheer brass neckery in expecting the electorate to believe his fantastic tales of (a) having no bank account while a serving Minister for Finance, (b) keeping 50 grand in a biscuit tin under the bed and (c) just being handed cash by both his mates in Fagans and also total strangers in Manchester, with no strings attached and 'no favours sought or given', in our view makes him a greatly deserving winner of this award.

Damn you El Stuntman!!! I thought the paltry sums were banked in a sock and/or mattress.

But at least the *cough* loans were not even repaid but rather went to a deserving charity run by the one and only ex Mrs Bertie Blanquecheque.

I hope this ringmaster gets in again as I can't imagine Inda pulling Rabbittes out of a hat (Bono's maybe) with the same aplomb as the greatest brassneck of outr times.

ghostdancer

El Stuntman wrote:

Nuttzz wrote:

i dont see how transport 21 has been cocked up considering its only in planning stage

I don't like projects with 30bn budgets and no breakdown of costs

makes me suspicious

well that must mean it's a cock-up....

El Stuntman

yes indeedyo, that was a world-breaking commercial break folks!!

well we're back on air and ready for the next section of the show (we've even closed the bar in a vain attempt to keep you interested). The next award is the Kim Il Jong "What the fook are you lookin' at?' (also known as the "Come and have a go if you're hard enough?") Award

This Award is presented to the Minister who's shown the most combative attitude to politics during 2006 and really there can only be one winner. 'Mad Mickey' McDowell, please step forward!!!

Is there anyone this man didn't want to take on and batter to within an inch of their lives this year? No, didn't think so.
Let's have a quick recap of who Madser has annoyed this year:
Aslyum seekers
Judges
Coppers
The opposition in general and in particular
The media
Mary
I could go on for ever and ever and ever......

Has this man ever seen a controversy he didn't want to leap headfirst into and start doling out headbutts? Is his tongue on speed? Is he overcompensating for something? Doesn't the leftie media love to hate him? Is he the one minister who actually gets half a job done?

Great craic to watch and listen to, he livens up Leinster House no end and I personally wish there were more like him - saying the Dublin rioters were ' Deputy Gormley's type of people' was a classic (actually Madser, Gormley voters are probably trendy South Dublin types from the same demographics as your own constituency!) quote, one for the ages.....
Comparing poor little Dickie Bruton to Josef Goebbels was another corker!!

Yes, a truly deserving winner of this award (well there were no other contenders amongst our wimpy political classes who are so scared of the electorate that they refuse to do or say anything radical). If we let them crazy Northern politicians compete, it might have been a different story....