Jude Collins

Thursday 6 October 2011

Cometh the hour, cometh the...entrepreneur?


In the hours leading up to last night's RTÉ news, I was watching a movie featuring Bill Murray : 'The Man Who Knew Too Little'. It was a daft plot - American visits London, stumbles into what he thinks is a street theatre event but is in fact a real-life conspiracy to re-start the Cold War. It was a mediocre film but Murray as usual was brilliant - the nice guy totally clueless, generating lots of laughs.

And then the RTÉ news led with the Irish Times poll showing Sean Gallagher in second position. Well phew. Do the Irish people have a sense of humour that goes beyond daring into something surreal?  I'm sure Sean Gallagher is a nice man. He's certainly a big or at least broad man, and if he came onto a TV programme like What's My Line?, I'd have put him down for a night-club bouncer or a gym assistant. This would have been a mistake because  in fact he suffers or suffered from a disability (that's him and Norris both), so it's unlikely he'd get the bouncer/gym assistant job. In fact  he's a youth club or community worker or something along those lines, which is  good: serving the community. But he's also an entrepreneur, I think ( notice all the 'I thinks' here, indicative of the impact he made on me at least until now)   which is another word for someone who comes up a wheeze to make himself money. Maybe those who believe we all should be entrepreneurs and that our schools and universities should be centrally concerned with producing entrepreneurs will vote for him. And then there's his Fianna Fail background, which he apparently gave up 'way back - like 2009, when that party began to implode. If I had a vote, which I haven't, despite being an Irish citizen and born in Donegal,  I might give him my, um, third preference.  He is undoubtedly a decent man but he just doesn't look or sound like presidential material.  What's more, I don't believe the Irish people will carry their famously zany sense of humour so far as to put him in the  Áras.  Today's Red C poll may indicate otherwise but I'll stick to my prediction: Sean Gallagher will go nowhere near the Áras. It wouldn't be the first time events proved me wrong but if they do I'll have the company of those who said Mary Davis was the dark horse to watch, David Norris was clearly cut out to grace the presidency and with the help of Fine Gael's huge popularity, Gay Mitchell was a shoe-in.

At this point I'm tempted to plumb the mystery of why Michael D Higgins has been leading everyone since the start but I'll desist for now. A final thought, though, keeps haunting me:  a bare-chested Gallagher wrestling with a bare-chested Vladimir Putin on the lawns of the Áras for total debt-relief for Ireland. D'you know, I'd nearly give him my vote to see that. If I had one.  

8 comments:

  1. Martin McGuinness is not doing so well with women voters.His political powerbase seems to be the young male unemployed. David Norris is doing well considering all the mud that has been thrown at him and I am pretty sure there is more still to come.Nobody has laid a finger on Michael D Higgins the media treat him like everyones favourite grandfather.And Gay Mitchell just comes across as a nasty piece of work in all the debates.And Mary Davis with her links to Bertie Ahern and Denis O'Brien.

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  2. Yep, Anon 15:33 - can't disagree with any of that. Well, maybe a teensy bit. I think McGuinness may not do so well with women voters who don't know him/haven't met him. I was in a centre in Omagh last Monday and probably more than half the 400+ audience were women. They LOVED him to bits. Although of course they may have been the converted. Certainly when he makes direct contact, McGuinness is extremely effective.

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  3. I'm not a political pundit, but it seems to me that if Martin is so influential when pressing the flesh, that he might start out by spending a little more time pressing it where people CAN vote than in places where they CAN'T, like Omagh and Free Derry corner, for instance.
    When the votes are won, then he can do a lap of honor around the north, but in the meantime, get his Derry ass over the border and into the trenches!!!

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  4. Anon @ 16:11

    Don't worry Martin is going into the West of Ireland. He will be visiting Sligo,Roscommon,Galway and Leitrim over the next three days.

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  5. Irish Times Opinion Poll

    FG 35 -3
    Lab 17 -1
    FF 16 -2
    SF 18 +8
    Grn 2 nc
    Oth 12 -2

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  6. http://m.youtube.com/?rdm=4o6pvu609&reload=3#/watch?desktop_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DudIGH58fmiU&v=udIGH58fmiU&gl=GB

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  7. Sean Gallagher once gave Bertie Ahern an Ipod as a present.

    http://www.argus.ie/news/bertie-on-whirlwind-tour-of-louth-632735.html

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  8. http://www.independent.ie/national-news/presidential-election/gallagher-earned-just-euro212-per-week-after-tax-in-2010-2904554.html

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