Questions & Answers ~ Election Special

Brian Cowen is head and shoulders above any of the politicans in Ireland.

Almost didn't recognise Liz O'Donnell there, what with all the airbrushing on her poster.

Neil3030 wrote:

Almost didn't recognise Liz O'Donnell there, what with all the airbrushing on her poster.

Same thing happened to me when i saw Olivia Mitchell on Tv last week. Her poster picture must be at least 15 years old

Cowen seemed to leave the door open to support from Sinn Fein for the election of Taoiseach without explicitly doing a deal with SF.
Coveney summarised his position immediately afterwards and Cowen didn't contradict him.

Maybe an informal FF/SF pact could be on the cards if the numbers fall that way?

DeepBlue wrote:

Liz also got roasted tonight.

:eek: This is a family board.

DeepBlue wrote:

Cowen seemed to leave the door open to support from Sinn Fein for the election of Taoiseach without explicitly doing a deal with SF.
Coveney summarised his position immediately afterwards and Cowen didn't contradict him.

Maybe an informal FF/SF pact could be on the cards if the numbers fall that way?

What would be in that for SF they get to take the **** for bad FF decisions but don't have any say in anything.

FF would I presume be delighted to take on a junior partner without having to give anything back but I presume the shinners have more sense

That was a good debate, but I dont think anyone came out of it with a perfect score.

Cowen was fighting his corner well, but there is something about his attitude that I dont like. He treats the public in a condescending way and basically is saying that because he/FF are in charge of the purse strings and for 10 years that no-one else has any credibility to do so. If that was the case there would never ever be a change in government. He is pig-headed.

Rabitte didnt come across that well I thought. He was red-faced, undfer pressure, and some of his points were petulent, he got shouted down by Cowen a lot, and sometimes in debates its s/he who shouts loudest and longest is seen as the winner, alas.

Liz trotted out the party line with regards to co-location etc, and she harped on at the FG/Lab/SF as being idealogically left, which I presume by corollary means that PD are right-wing facist.

Coveney ws out of his depth and this was evident with some of his hmms and ha's. Bruton would have been a much better foil.

Ryan did okay and got his green issues across. His point on the economy is salient, whilst the FF/PD mantra is "its the economy, stupid", with such a position they are in fact treating the electorate as if they are stupid. "the county is awash" with money, we hear time and time again.

Mary-Lou did put across the SF points quite well. They are not aiming for government this time, and are just trying to increase their mandate. All they have to do is point out the problems in the current system and society, and there are clearly many, and play to their audience and they will get more seats.

I found Liz O'Donell's response to SF fairly poor tbh, just with facial grudges, etc.

Overall, a good debate, no winners in my opinion, and more debates like this were needed, with some heavy/ministerial positions.


Another interesting set of debates are the Cooper & Hobbs ones. I've only caught a couple. These are better in a way because there is a 2-to-1 aspect and its all about Matt and Eddie trying to nail the politician on specifics.

The problem with Q&A is that John Bowman, as good as he is, isnt able to get the politicians to really answer the questions, so you end up with one side saying one thing, another saying another, a typical political 'discussion' with obfuscation, avoidance, etc, which turns off many viewers. I wonder how many of the 1m or so people that tuned into the FF/FG leaders debate watched Q&A? Much less I would hazard a guess.

Just a few days to the election now ..... I think the turnout for this one will be quite high, maybe as high as 70-75%.

Redspider

I have to agree that Q&A was very interesting this week. Obviously this close to the election every party would be under additional pressure to perform and bring their points across. Cowen was in bullish form as usual, but I thought Rabitte fielded him very well. I think at one point in the debate Liz O'Donnell called Rabitte 'cranky' and while that might have been overstating it there was certainly a more sombre demeanour about him than I have seen of late.

The main issues about the economy and public services were re-aired of course, and I felt that Fianna Fáil delivered their message about their handling of the economy and Fine Gael and Labour delivered their message about the state of public services. However I thought Eamonn Ryan made some very, as another poster said, salient points about our economic competitiveness and the threats that inflation and poor value for money bring to that competitiveness. I'm quite surprised that we haven't heard more about this because one concern of mine would be the issue of competitiveness in a global economy, burgeoning personal debt, balance of trade deficits and so forth.

Liz O'Donnell really, really annoyed me. She sounded condescending and patronising as if the success of the economy is all down to PD policy and handing the reigns over to the 'lefties' would be the fastest way to collapse it. A mirror of the PD posters screaming "don't throw it all away". Scaremongering.

Sinn Féin delivered their standard boilerplate message, but no more than that really. Mary Lou was quite articulate, but didn't send my heart racing in any sense of the term.

I was quite disappointed with Simon Coveney. I felt he was a little unsure on his points, as if he hadn't prepared adequetely. Perhaps he needs more experience or maybe he was being drowned out by the Rabitte/Cowan face-off but he did come across as being the weaker representative. However when he did deliver his message it was sensible, and he made some good points about the polling.

Hard to pick a 'winner'. If I had to say, I think Labour came out of it very well, and Fianna Fáil fought their corner in Cowens own inimitable way. Fine Gael did not shine but were by no means disgraced either, and the other two representatives were 'also rans'.

funktastic wrote:

I think John Bowman is able to get them to answer the questions. He pushed Rabbitte into a corner about a coalition with FF after the election when he was trying to brush it aside. I feel he would have been much better than Miriam O'Callaghan for the leaders debate last week.

I actually think he was quite biased in dealing with this issue...

The question, which was quite a good and fair one, was put to Pat Rabitte first who said (not word for word but as close as I can remember), 'I don't think that will happen, I think we will see a majority...' but before he could get another word out John Bowman started raising his voice and jumped down his throat claiming that was not what was asked and that he should stop trying to avoid the question.

When all the commotion had settled he turned to Brian Cowen and asked the same question. Cowen started by stating... 'I don't think that will happen, the people want FF to continue and I think we will see a mjority...' and John just sat there looking on allowing Cowen to continue.

Next he asked the Green candidate the same qwuestion and when he tried to say it wouldn't happen John treated him the same as Pat Rabitte.

Very biased in my opinion, and I was quite disappointed because I do believe that he is a great presenter.

Compared to some of the shows in this election, I cannot see how last night's Quanda was bad. The debate and passion and indeed the arrogance of some of the opposing candidates made it all the more entertaining. Certainly, the Green candidate looked more mature than the rest.

Compared to his usual performances in front of the FF faithful, he did look a little shaken. And I think Pat Rabbitte wasn't rambling. On the contrary, he quipped a lot, and rather negatively too.

Tristrame wrote:

Mind you Biffo's comment to him " look if the carbon foot print was a 24hr clock...Ireland would be about 7 seconds of it" was a pretty good retort in the finding a sense of perspective kind of way.

Yup, that pretty much sums up why I don't want to see the Greens in Government. From a realists perspective we're really not a big factor regarding global warning when you get down to it. We could mass pollute our little hearts out and so long as the US, the rest of Europe and China etc cut down on emissions it would make little difference to the fall in emissions globally. Not that I want to see that or anything but the point stands nonetheless.


Edit:

Tristrame wrote:

That may be so but I'd imagine there were a lot of people watching that were making similar facial grudges whilst listening to Mary Lou.
I know I did when Mary lou expressed disdain about the others going on about figures all the time.

Imagine that-having to talk about figures when you are proposing something-perish the thought.

Yeah, it was a farcical comment. Sure it would appeal to some of the SF voter base who only want to hear the words equality and rights over and over again but I imagine that a lot of people (including myself) have a lot of trouble taking seriously any politician who makes such comments.