The Electoral Collage

To say that I love a good election is roughly conducive to saying Brendan Behan liked a drop of porter on occasion, and yet I’m getting into our European and local elections rather late this year. It’d take something pretty extraordinary for me to miss a campaign, and as it happens work experience on Top Gear fits that bill rather nicely, but now I’m back from the exciting world of telly in London’s White City, I’ve been trying to get up to speed as quickly as I can. And there’s plenty that’s already caught my eye.

Now I’ve heard of relaligning elections before, but how often does that pertain to colours? Fine Gael, long associated with dark blue, have taken on a green tint in their European election posters for Senator Joe O’Reilly, capitalising on the fact that green-liveried parties have been devalued somewhat of late. Meanwhile, Pat “The Cope” Gallagher has gone all cerulean, presumably in a bid to hide the fact he’s a Fianna Fáil candidate. And whenever a heralded local man such as “The Pat” has to revort to such dirty tricks as sky blue posters to get elected, you know things are dire for the Soldiers of Destiny.

Hearing of FF canvassing practice in this campaign it sounds, in some cases, like a morose documentary about the demise of the railways. “Aye, the Fianna Fáil lads don’t seem to come round here much anymore, I blame the economy myself”. In the instances that FF candidates do summon the courage to knock on a few doors, they seem to be getting more than a few spleens thrown at them. I’ve heard more than one instance of party operatives being chased at doors where they’d be getting tea and battenburg cake in previous years. Their election material seems to reflect their chastened attitude.

Leafing through my local FF councillor’s godawfully produced booklet, complete with mid sentence capitalising, unnecessary quotation marks and a jazz-like syntax, the crux of his case was that he always tried his best, even if he wasn’t working on world-changing stuff. In other words, please don’t hurt me. It’s a far cry from the rather more triumphant rhetoric of  “Bertie’s Team” at the last election, where it sounded like Ireland was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar before we met Fianna Fáil.

Considering the government’s myriad problems, Declan Ganley must be a bit dissapointed he’s not gaining quite as much traction in the North West constituency as he’d hoped. But since his menacing posters, complete with grin that suggests he’s about to say “No Mr. Cowan, I expect you to die!”, aren’t doing the trick he’s taken on a pretty interesting schtick: giving out legal advice. Campaign supporters were last week giving out non-descript looking leaflets directing you to a website to go to if you’ve been shafted by legal counsel. Makes you think his economic plans revolve around consolidating our national debt into one managable monthly repayment.

While Ganley’s unsettling smile hardly rocks my world, there are plenty of candidates taking this election to strange and sexy new places. Sterling copper Ray Carling from TV’s Ashes To Ashes  once claimed that “Female detective inspectors should look like a cross between Betty Turpin and HMS Belfast, they should not be shag worthy”, and it’s often been the same case with politicians. Step forward the positively Venutian Newbridge Town Council candidate, Emma Kiernan: http://www.finegael.ie/representatives/lea/index.cfm/type/person/pkkey/1093/pkey/655/ikey/18

As if looking like one of the Robert Palmer girls wasn’t enough, she’s become embroiled in quite the media, hehe, bust up of late, a picture surfacing of her at a party with a female friend grasping her breasts, her exqusite breasts, with the open-mouthed wondrous expression of a Japanese gameshow host. While Emma would no doubt like people to be concentrating on her policies rather than her looks, you have to think that any situation that propels a first time town council candidate to national prominence and makes her a shoo-in for comfortable election should be, ahem, taken with both hands. Let’s just hope this new combination of pretty candidates and enclosed ballot spaces doesn’t precipitate any underhand tactics.

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