Micheal's Big Day Out at Bodenstown

You gotta hand it to the guy. One good poll and he's outa the party grave, shaking a reproving finger at the state next door. Micheal Martin,  with the wind of that favourable recent poll rating, is suddenly started worrying about the north. Which makes a nice change from the fifty years or so when his party was dominant in the south and didn't give a monkey's nut what happened in the north, apart from the occasional rhetoric-leakage on St Patrick's Day or better still over Easter at Bodenstown.The very place, funny enough,  where Micheal was expressing his worry today.  it seems the parties in power up here aren't working right and the south's government are - yep - standing idly by. No - hold it. Sorry. I tell a lie.  Micheal is actually  OK with the unionist half of the Executive here - it's the republican part that's failing the people badly, apparently. And by way of proof,  Micheal offers a quotation from " a little-reported speech", in which Peter Robinson says the Shinners are not taking responsibility properly.

Pass the smelling salts,  Wilhelmina. This is the leader of Fianna Fail talking. The party that sent the south's economy into a tail-spin from which it'll be lucky to recover in about twenty years. And there he stands,  sporting a new ancient-Roman haircut, looking all soulful and sincere, speaking more in sorrow than in anger about the bad things Sinn Féin are doing at Stormont.

At the end of the RTÉ report,  David Davin-Power, he of the bouffant hairstyle, explained that this wasn't just an attack on Sinn Féin, it was really an attack on Pearl Harbour....No, only kidding. He said it was an attack on something or other which oddly, I can't remember. And I can't remember because I was so astonished that, immediately after listening to Micheal giving out yards about how Sinn Féin wasn't living up to its responsibilities, David D-P should try to convince viewers it hadn't  happened.

They haven't gone away, you know. If the southern electorate really want to get rid of the party that oversaw the most appalling economic disaster ever to hit the southern state, they'll have to get a very long, strong, pointy stick, wait until midnight and then drive it - more in sorrow than in anger - into Micheal's party's heart. They're certainly never going to die of shame.