Are Offaly people embarassed by Biffo?

Physical appearance is not irrelevant. Not when you are Taoiseach.
Being fat means you don't exercise, eat or drink too much. It reflects self-respect. He wasn't just an ordinary slovenly fat guy - he was the slovenly fat guy representing Ireland to the world. The message was - look at the state of the guy that Ireland have leading their political system. Look, if that was the only issue with him I wouldn't really care that much but it reflects the attitude that he brought to his work. The abject performance of the man and the cost to Ireland in terms of current and future generations is collosal. It's not all his fault but going back to days when he was minister for finance and through his time as Taoiseach he has to bear much responsibility personally.

endabob1

Physical appearance is relevant only to the shallow & judgemental.
If he could do his job it matters not a jot if he is 6ft 2 with rippling biceps or 2ft 6 with a belly the size of Alaska.
The 2 global politicians (and I use that word loosely) with the best physique are probably Putin and Arnie Schwartzenager, bad and all as he was I'd have Cowen's intellect over either of theirs 24/7.

endabob1

endabob1 wrote: »

Physical appearance is relevant only to the shallow & judgemental.
If he could do his job it matters not a jot if he is 6ft 2 with rippling biceps or 2ft 6 with a belly the size of Alaska.
The 2 global politicians (and I use that word loosely) with the best physique are probably Putin and Arnie Schwartzenager, bad and all as he was I'd have Cowen's intellect over either of theirs 24/7.

ah the much-vaunted intellect of Brian Cowen. I haven't seen much evidence of this - his memory re golf games seems to be a bit flaky. In any case there are serial killers in jail with mensa-level iq's - you are only judged on your results!

Laisurg

Quazzie wrote: »

Not embarrassed at all. He is an intelligent man that came from local politics to eventually take lead of the country in the worst political situation possible. I hate the way Cowen gets so much blame when the majority of the problems that are occurring can be traced back to Ahern's leadership. Bertie seems to be forgotten about now that they have a scapegoat with a catch derogative moniker like Biffo to place all the blame on.

A lot of the problems were a result of Bertie, but he was smart enough to get away with it, however that doesn't change the fact that Brian cowen is a complete moron and has certainly not done much to help the situation.

says it all...............

endabob1

glasso wrote: »

ah the much-vaunted intellect of Brian Cowen. I haven't seen much evidence of this - his memory re golf games seems to be a bit flaky. In any case there are serial killers in jail with mensa-level iq's - you are only judged on your results!

Agree 100% with this. Judge him on his results, not good enough, next victim please

Dusty87

he not running for the election, seen it on the news there

So he'll be taking up personal injury cases from people slipping in the toilets in Abrakebabra Tullamore any day soon, utilising his Matlock solicitor intellect and firing off belligerent retorts.

Snakeblood

glasso wrote: »

So he'll be taking up personal injury cases from people slipping in the toilets in Abrakebabra Tullamore any day soon, utilising his Matlock solicitor intellect and firing off belligerent retorts.

Probably just collecting a pension as just reward for the last few years.

Snakeblood

Snakeblood wrote: »

Probably just collecting a pension as just reward for the last few years.

€140k a year - just reward for being instrumental in decisions that have effectively mortgaged the country for the next 30 years? wtf....
you're probably voting for his brother too right...
not sure if there is any hope for this country....

Dusty87

glasso wrote: »

€140k a year - just reward for being instrumental in decisions that have effectively mortgaged the country for the next 30 years? wtf....
you're probably voting for his brother too right...
not sure if there is any hope for this country....

glasso i might be wrong but id say i speak for a lot of people here when i say no one cares what ya think here. Your replys have been stupid. He's gone now, so could ya please feck off. And can we have a proper discussion without bull****.

Quazzie

Dusty87 wrote: »

And can we have a proper discussion with bull****.

I'd much prefer one without the bullshit.

Excuse me but I do find it hard to ignore what has happened to this country without putting some accountability where it belongs. The sort of parochialism expressed by some other posters here is exactly why these FF fools were voted in time and again, thought that they had a divine right to be in power and subsequently were able to get away with gross incompetence that has cost this country very very dear. How people can defend people in that situation is beyond me.

Quazzie

glasso wrote: »

. The sort of parochialism expressed by some other posters here is exactly why these FF fools were voted in time and again,

Can you point out the posts that express this please?

Alfasud

Alfasud wrote: »

Brian Cowan is made fun of because he is from the country. He also represents decency which Aherne lacks. Brian Cowan has family values. He dosen't have a 'partner' costing the taxpayer money on trips.

TomTom wrote: »

I am proud of how Brian Cowen conducts himself publicly and as an Offaly man I am proud that he made the post of Taoiseach.

Storminateacup wrote: »

Of course people were proud when he became Taoiseach, because let's face it, he was an improvement on Bertie ahern, the only finance minister without a bank account.
.

bestleftfull3 wrote: »

lets be honest hes from offaly, like myself so all for one one for all hes one of us so were gona support him!!if ye were from dublin,galway,limerick,sligo ,cork .....and the taoiseach was from yer county ye would stand by him so stop giving out.......get over it

I'm from the country myself but am not going to blindly support the local candidate just because I met him and he seems like a nice guy or that he got the road up the way widened. We can all see the damage "parish-pump" politics has caused. Whether our democratic system will be correctly reformed to something along the lines of a "list" system remains to be seen. I would be the first to admit that if FG end up in power too long that the same thing could happen as did with FF where laziness and an assumption that power is a given could set in and hence incompetence and cronyism.

Dusty87

Yea glasso, iv been hit very hard by this recession also. What wil i do? Oh yes, il bitch repeatidly about it on a forum, that'l work. No, il grit my teeth and struggle on. I used to really enjoy this forum on boards, because people could have the craic, respectfully disagree and rarely a row happened. I see a lot of regular posters not postin here anymore and tbh i dont blame them.

Quazzie

Alfasud is representing a point that is made by hundred of people up and down length of the country. One I myself posted in this thread. Cowen compared to Bertie is a figure to look up in terms of his morale standing and levels of decency. I wouldn't class this as parochial politics.

TomTom said he was proud that Cowen made Taoiseach. I think its a bit unfair to call a man up when he is proud that a local man goes onto become leader of the country. In the part you quoted he never said that he was proud of the job he done, only for the fact that he was seen as the best man for the job at the time. I would liken this comment similar to if a local lad when Mcmanus was representing Ireland in the International rules. Again its hardly parochial politics.

Storminateacupo basically summarises what Alfasud and TomTom stated. She was proud he was given the job and in comparison to Bertie again he came across less corrupt. Again this is a national view held by many outside of Offaly.

Bestleftfull3 doesn't really phrase what he is saying too eloquently and I can't really defend what he is saying.

I think its a bit disingenuous to imply that we are all subject to parochialism. No one mention roads or potholes. Cowen did do a lot for this county in both his time as cabinet minister and as Taoiseach but I don't think too many (not here anyway) would've blindly followed him into the next election. I suggest you look at the posts made before making suck sweeping statements in future as it does no justice to us, your argument, or yourself.

I will admit to quoting some people above possibly slightly out of context and your point is well argued (even your euphemistic response on the one good example! ) However we both know that parochialism is endemic in Irish politics (a fault of the system more than anything) and it needs to be removed.

Quazzie

glasso wrote: »

However we both know that parochialism is endemic in Irish politics (a fault of the system more than anything) and it needs to be removed.

It is, and that was none more evident than when I was listening to the radio when some Clara locals were interviews after Cowen stood down, and to put it mildly they didn't give the best impression of the area. Although I don't know why I expected better from our national broadcaster.

My point, and the point of most here is that the Offaly forum is generally frequented by well meaning and informed patrons. In a way we are not representative of the population of the county as due to being online and having access to the web, we get to see a larger picture than others might. Also it came across in your point, that Offaly suffers more from this problem than the rest of the country, which imo is a false representation of us, and in turn the rest of rural Ireland.

Thats why so many people took offense. No one can deny it is present, but we can deny that it is endemic to Offaly or that we personally are part of it.

brilliant article by author Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair. Everybody should read it - excellent summary of what happened in Ireland. It's very long but read it all.

http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/03/michael-lewis-ireland-201103

Here's how he perceived Brian Cowen.

"Cowen happens to have been the minister of finance from 2004 until mid-2008, when most of the bad stuff happened. He is not an obvious Leader of Men. His movements are sullen and lumbering, his face numbed by corpulence, his natural resting expression a look of confusion. One morning a few weeks before, he went on national radio sounding, to well-trained Irish ears, drunk. To my less trained ones he sounded merely groggy, but the public is in no mood to cut him a break. (Four different Irish people told me, on great authority, that Cowen had faxed Ireland’s 440-billion-euro bank guarantee into the European Central Bank from a pub.) And the truth is, if you were to design a human being to maximize the likelihood that people would assume he drank too much, you’d have a hard time doing better than the Irish prime minister. Lenihan, who follows on Cowen’s bovine heels, comes across, by comparison, as a decathlete in peak condition."

Storminateacup

So some dumb american knows more about ireland than everybody else. Sounds about right.

that guy is far from dumb - he has written some of the best business books of the last 20 years ("Liar's Poker", "The big short", "The new new thing"). It's also an outside perspective, unencumbered by subjective political and local inclinations.

Storminateacup

Somebody writing about hersey, and they call themselves professional? Yea.

Where there is smoke there is fire. The man in question has form in this regard unfortunately. What motivation has Lewis - he is a world-famous author and he's not trying to sell a book - it's just an article.

Storminateacup

But sure by that arguement - theres no smoke without fire when people whove posted in this thread have stated that hes a decent, down to earth, hard working politican cause they've met him or their fathers are friends with him.

It boils down to the same thing. Hersey. Did Lewis ever meet him?

I'm not calling into question that Mr.Cowen is personable and decent. Most politicans are personable - that's probably one of the reasons that they got voted in. That's not the point. The point is about being competent and respecting your position. When you are a minister or prime minister you just can't keep being one of the lads and drink like you used to - not when the fortunes of millions of people will be affected by your decisions. I have personally seen saw Mr.Cowen in a well-on state in a drinking establishment in Dublin on a week-night, at a very late hour (3am) whilst he held a cabinet portfolio and hence I am inclined to give credence to the story from Michael Lewis re the bank guarantee.

Storminateacup

And I - living in Tullamore, have seen what he's done for our county and our town.
I as a tax payer watched while he handed out astronomical bonuses in social welfare at the taxpayers expense. When the gravy train stops though, the people will turn. Its always somebody elses fault. Isn't it?

You want to discuss America? Americans thought they would never see the back of GW Bush. Obama got in because americans wanted change. They voted for the liberals, because Mc Cain was republican and they had enough of the republicans. Now - despite the "yes we can" and "time for change" attitude, nothing has changed. Wheres the free healthcare? Wheres all the employment oppertunities? Unemployment has not improved at all. People are still losing their homes (that they couldn't afford in the 1st place.) America isn't handing out almost 200 euro (dollars/whatever) pocket money to wasters who couldn't be assed getting a job.

Irish citizens who have grown up in the nanny state seem to be under this illusion that the government owes them something -- owes them their dole and their rent allowance, and their grants and whatever else they get.

And there isn't ONE party there claiming to lower the dole. I'm betting if they lowered the dole after 9 months, a lot of people wouldn't be too long in finding some sort of work.

Its Brian Cowens fault of course. He bailed out the banks. The banks lent the money to the people who couldn't realistically ever afford to pay it back. We, the people, took the money and bought houses that we would never own.
Now - the banks are in trouble (yes, due to mismanagement and scumbaggery too) and the government shouldn't help them out?

If the banks weren't subsidised, they wouldn't exist. Nobody would put their money in there, they wouldn't have staff, they'd have a heap of debts and the country would be 100 times worse.

Cowens government were helping the people out more than the bank. At least the majority of people got to keep their homes. Where do you expect toxic loans to go? Leave them festering in the banks? Leave people off without paying their morgage?

Just watch - Just like america. You'll have the whinebags come whining back "Enda Kenny is a useless bastard", "Eamon Gilmore couldn't run a bath". And it wont be just coming from me. Itll be coming from the people who voted for them, just like the FF voters turned on FF. Because, typically irish - we are never at fault. Its always someone elses fault.


Tl;dr. Whatever.

diego ribas

Storminateacup wrote: »

And I - living in Tullamore, have seen what he's done for our county and our town.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjl8OIZijjY

Storminateacup

Storminateacup wrote: »

And I - living in Tullamore, have seen what he's done for our county and our town.

maybe you should ask Jackie Healy-Rae to run in Offaly then. If all that Brian Cowen did was do a healy rae on it in the Tullamore region I wouldn't give a feck as he would have done little damage. But no, having no exposure to the real-world outside politics he was asleep at the wheel during his time at the finance ministry when the REAL damage was done. The bank guarantee was a disastrous decision but the damage was done at that point.

You want the dole to be reduced - oh don't worry it will soon enough as Ireland continues down this route of wreckage and runs out of money. You think that things are bad now - they are going to get a lot worse. Your town of Tullamore will see more and more retail units closing, more jobs going, crime rising. It's already too late.

This morning I heard a repeat on the radio of people from Clara talking about Cowen in the aftermath of the worst tenure of any Taoiseach in office and they were still defending him - how blind are the people down there? Others on boards are posting far worse than me re Cowen but in this forum people insist on defending the indefensible. Just like Cowen himself - he has been contemptuous and arrogant and refused to take any responsibility at all. If he did I could live with that and if he was in some way contrite.

Dusty87

Glasso, some people are going to vote for cowen because they fixed the road/footpath what ever outside there house when they asked. And you cant blame them, he did what others promised for years etc. No one is saying hes perfect. We all know what happened. We dont need a recent history lecture post after post. Do you mind me asking where you are from?