Campaign Oddities – part the 2nd

National University of Ireland, Galway.

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The event at NUIG on Monday was interesting if somewhat more sparsely attended than I would have liked but fair dues to all of those involved for putting it on.

Strange to think that a candidate would bus in (or drop off by car a short distance from the gathering as was the case) a plant who would then go about asking awkward questions of other candidates. In my dealings with him, once he was moved off his prepared talking points he seemed very uncomfortable indeed. I sort of felt sorry for him in the end.

I suspect someone is feeling the pressure a bit more than they might have expected to be at this stage.

Paddypower have posted odds and they’re just plain crazy! I’m not sure that they used any logic at all in arriving at the odds but it seems that after marking out the leading 3 candidates (which I’d not really dispute) they simply drew names out of a several hats with people grouped into the hats on some basis that makes little enough sense to me.

Another peculiar thing is that many people haven’t received their ballots as yet, and trhe reason behind is that some areas of the country were late in getting their Litir Um Thoghchán which apparently have to be delivered first.  And some deliveries of the Litir Um Thoghhchán have been delayed in getting to some parts of the country. This has happened before and on those occasions the deadline for polling has had to be expected.

I forget to mention it last week but the calls for Senator Mullen on Pat Kenny last week for civility and respect for the views of others* rather struck me as ironic, I’m old enough to remember the first divorce referendum and even the original pro-life one too. And I don’t consider calling…actually making that screaming and shouting at people the term “murderers” who have different views to you is entirely civil or respectful.  Nor is referring to people as wife swapping sodomites, either respectful or civil.

Now Senator Mullen will say that these people aren’t representative of his style and there are not, but they were part and parcel of the armoury of his side of the debate and they are still active. The people calling for respect and civility now that their side of the argument in either in the minority or moving close to it strikes me as a bit rich when one considers that when the show was on the other foot that such civility and respect wasn’t much in evidence. And Senator Mullen’s outrage was in response to the rather mild but genuinely surprised reaction characterised by laughter on the part of many of the other candidates present to his assertions that we should not be reading anything into his motivations for his actions in opposing the civil partnership bill with various red herrings about elderly brothers caring for one another and multiple amendment each defended with long and ponderous speeches as a delaying tactic. They were a delaying tactic, pure and simple. He can be as offended as he likes about that view of them but they were.

And finally, it would appear the election is running neck and neck at the moment with the voters just about ahead of the non-voters with 12,00 votes cast, 10,000 have been returned as undelivered.

* it was about 31 minutes into the shows archive.

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