Not the poll numbers, the other kind. During the election campaign (called just before the Mahon Tribunal had started looking into this, you’ll remember) the Taoiseach told us that he had a certain sum of money lodged to his account from wherever. Leaks, also from wherever, told us that the Tribunal thought that the euro conversion eerily equaled exactly $45,000 at that day’s exchange rate.
Bertie told us it didn’t. And that was where the story sat. Despite daily exchange rates being published in every paper, none of them seemed to want to, or be able to, check for themselves to see who was telling the truth.
Fergal wrote about this on Tuppenceworth in Bureau de Change .
Today the front stories of the Irish Times and the Indo were the earth-shattering news that the leaks were correct, and that AIB say that, sure enough, Bertie got a sum of money exactly worth $45,000.
What took them so long? And why couldn’t they have done the sums themselves before the election?
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This, by the way, was the particular issue which so horrified Michael McDowell that he went to the brink of pulling out of government mid-campaign. Bertie Ahern reassured him by, so far as we can tell, simply repeating his assertion that he was right and the tribunal was wrong. I doubt that the PDs under their current leadership will now be brave enough to unplug the life-support machine of government and follow through on their former leader’s threat. Perhaps Mr. McDowell, though no longer in politics, has something to say on the topic. Or will he remain uncharacteristically silent?
If a PD falls in the forest and there is no-one to hear, what sound do they make?
The PDs will most likely keep their heads down on this one. If they had held the courage of their convictions before the election they might not be in the ravaged state that they are. There is little to be gained now from them rediscovering their moral fibre and political backbone as it would just compound the image of a party buffeted on the ethical winds. To kick a stink now would likely be political seppuku and would only remind people that they had been on the brink of pulling out of the last coalition on at least two occasions in the past over this very matter. Very little would be gained.
McDowell will likely rant and growl in private but I doubt he’ll raise a public hare about this as it would mean that Harney would have to either follow his lead or slap him down publicly – either option is a losing scenario for the PDs in the PR stakes.
More interesting would be the reaction of the Greens…
Does that say “David McWilliams on the Streisand Generation” or do my eyes deceive me?
Kill me now. Actually scratch that. Kill him.
The nearest thing to Oxegen the Streisand generation can comprehend is the bottle of the stuff they have to trundle behind them to stop from being winded.
Yes, you’re right, that’s “David McWilliams on the Streisand Generation”. I can’t wait for “McWilliams’ children”, a generation of self-publicicising twenty-somethings who can’t see a social phenomenon without turning it into a generational trend.