Fine Gael TDs running away from Varadkar whilst blaming the voters

Yes it's disgusting behaviour. It reminds me of those videos, that were especially common in the USA during the Pandemic, where angry middle aged people were roaring abuse at young staff in supermarkets because they had been requested to wear a mask.

Somewhere along the line, "freedom of speech" has been conflated, by some people, with freedom to act like a massive child when you face the smallest amount of pushback or don't get exactly what you want.

The FG electoral college gives massive weighting to the members of the Oireachtas so they'll likely be the ones to swing it. The thing is that quite a lot of them are already retiring. They may actually vote for the long-term health of the party rather than who will save them their seat.

It should be a pretty open race. I'm sure the horse-trading is well underway already.

Donohue is the only competent person but thought he was heading to EU?

Heather was beaming during the speech... 😐

Car burned out

Cllr sent pictures of erect Penis

Presidents head threatened to be stamped on

Sending continuous text messages harassing

Death threats

Screaming abuse at family inside family home

That's just a few examples.

Don't know, no pun intended!

Those descriptions are clear examples of abuse but there's another whole area where the public vehemently disagree with elected officials online and/or in person. Where they are heckled in public, they don't like that either and call this abusive.

I dunno. I think a lot of that is really a case by case basis. I mean low heckling is in my view not a big issue but if it goes beyond that it is an issue.

I left that job shortly after.

Imagine having to listen to her accent more often, that should rule her out immediately

We've had enough years of posh south dublin accents, maybe it's time for a different voice.

Point out the hatred filled sentences or words in your quoted post please.

While I'd draw the line at violence and/or abusive pics, etc, directed at politicians, I think the least they can expect for a poor performance is a bit of anger or invective thrown their way. They may consider that to be "toxic", but there's many a person living with the results of "toxic" decision making that politicians have left the country with, and they're bound to be angry.

FG were installed because they promised to fix the fuck up that FF left the country in, and a decade and a bit down the road we're back to pre-2008 levels of teetering on the abyss of another crash. Our farcical housing situation, alone, would invite some really harsh criticism, and when coupled with other crises, the electorate have a right to be angry at the people/parties that are at the root cause of them. If your sitting at home looking at your 40 year old son/daughter living in their childhood bedroom because they can't, and probably never will, afford their own place, it's going to make you angry. If you're wondering whether your sick mother will get a hospital place before her illness becomes much worse, it'll make you hostile to those in power. If your wage packet barely covers your cost of living, you not going to look kindly on those in government when they're financially secure and head off into the sunset with generous pensions after making a mess of things. When you make a choice not to have a child because of affordability reasons, it makes you wonder why things have gotten so out of hand that such a thing has become a reality.

People are also frustrated because we now live in a boom and bust faux economy, where only the wealthy can weather the inevitable storm of recession with any kind of comfort. Everyone else gets shafted in some way. And our immediate choices of political custodians are pretty much wedded to this type of "economics". FF and FG are indistinguishable in terms of where they stand on most things, so most people's "choice" comes down to a tweedle dum/tweedle dee style merry-go-round and folk are sick of it.

Frankly, it's no wonder that people are angry at the people who are put in charge when they screw things up.

No need to get smart. I see no abuse in the post. Criticism yeah. Didn’t see personal abuse. Unless it was edited too. 👍

I expect Varadkar, Coveney, Paschal, Ring, and Durkan not to run which bring it up to 16. Half their incumbents or so. Insane.