Most annoying politician at the minute

Regina Doherty: Thankfully exiled to the Seanad. Classic Karen haircut, mad eyes that tell you this person is fundamentally crazy and sends the Special Branch to Dublin Airport to harass academics that have the temerity to tweet about her. She wants to speak to the manager.

Paul Murphy: A cloud of smug hangs over this man.

Marc McSharry: Ticking time-bomb. Dynasty politician who'd have a hard time holding down a job as a call centre supervisor but for his family connections.

Josepha Madigan: South Dublin luvvie with a nasty streak and has now hitched her wagon to 'more women just because' bandwagon - when we talk about entitlement in our society, I think it's the likes of Madigan we should be looking at, not someone on the scratch in Mayfield or Blanchardstown.

Aodhan O'Riordan: Pious, mediocre and the kind of person we'll never get rid of from public life -- even if the electorate keep rejecting him.

Sean Haughey: The meek son of a politician that casts a long shadow over Irish politics. He's kind of just there doing nothing for decades on end. Probably sorts out his constituents with medical cards etc, but you'd wonder what's the point.

Eoghan Murphy: Absolute kryptonite outside his constituency. Heard FG reps 'down de country' had to beg HQ not to send him out for ribbon cuttings / appearances when he was minister. Unsurprising.

Leo Varadkar: Why can't FG just admit they made a mistake. Thoroughly divisive character and not half as smart as he lets on.

Gary Gannon: Eoghan Murphy from an odd-numbered postcode; all rolled up sleeves and social media, nothing behind it.

Emer Higgins: Will be an endless source of entertainment and mockery if she keeps getting elected. Marc McSharry-esque levels of cringe.

chosen1 wrote: »

For someone holding an insignificant titular role, she certainly gets an awful lot of air time. I wouldn't be able to name many of the previous Lord Mayor's of Dublin and I don't think they got any way close the amount of exposure she gets.

The constant tweets also don't help her case. These tweets are often contentious and she doesn't tend to row back in my experience when the initial reports don't turn out to be entirely factual.

Racism seems to be brought into most conversations involving her also. I went out with a South East Asian girl for four years here in Ireland and she didn't have any negative experience in that entire time. She had been living here for another three years before this and never experienced racism either. I don't doubt that there are a small amount of genuine racists out there but thankfully she never came across them.

Hazel must either be incredibly unlucky to come across racists on a such a regular basis, or she is seeing racism in situations where there may not be any. Not for me to answer that question.

Haven't been paying much attention to Chu, and don't know to what level she's been "playing the race card" so to speak, but I'll say the following:

Her parents were likely part of the first wave of Chinese / HK immigrants to Ireland, and these people didn't have it easy in a mono-ethnic Ireland. I recall when I was a kid there was one Asian kid in my class, looking back, other students did pick on him a fair bit and teachers weren't of much help to him either.

Ireland is also a desperately insider / outsider type of country to out detriment, and second-generation immigrants as talented as many of them are, often (understandably) have a little bit of a chip on their shoulder dealing with intra-generational networks and patronage that our country is riddled with.

I'd also say that someone moving to Ireland in adulthood and working in a defined profession for however many years is a different kettle of fish to bedding down into society. All well and good coming to work in Accenture or whatever, but wait until the immigrants try to muscle-in on the likes of Josepha Madigan or Marc McSharry's turf - then the sharp elbows come out.

Illustrative of this, I read an interesting article the other day about non EU doctors being almost completely shut out of further training opportunities and pathways to consultancy roles in our medical system. The unspoken rule is that these precious opportunities are reserved for the Irish scions of the classes that smuggle their precious darlings into UCD medical school by whatever means necessary. Fact is, they like their immigrants working in Starbucks, not out-competing their sons and daughters.