As Ireland prepares to go to the polls - you have to wonder - is there an opening for an Irish Nigel Farage?
Could we get a serious far-right/populist political movement like we’re seeing in nations across Europe and the world?
People might point to Peter “Your Angry Uncle at a Wedding” Casey as our Nigel. But the Dragon’s Den dude is surely nowhere near the level of success that Farage and his Brexit Party look to be heading for in the Euro elections.
Casey’s call to Bring Back the Punt! was a bonkers indication of the level he’s playing at. Not even the loudest eejit parked at the end of the bar would be raving about bringing back the Irish pound, for feck’s sake.
There’ll always be a certain market for Casey’s “Immigrants are going to make the GAA run on Sharia law!” bollix (and he’s not even very good at delivering that).
But with Nigel Farage’s Brexit party riding very high in the polls in the UK, you have to ask if this kind of stuff could ever win serious support here.
Our main political parties are certainly in the doldrums - Fine Gael’s inability to offer anything on the Housing Crisis beyond more help for the poor landlords and “Co-Living” or “Tenements” as they used to be known - is a big part of their problems in the polls.
You can never say never. But the answer is likely to be no. It’s to do with our history and our attitude. Figures like Farage and Trump set themselves up as messiahs, but they are basically salesmen. And what they are selling are easy answers that play to people’s ignorance and grievances.
But Irish people tend to be very suspicious of salesmen. And we don’t trust messiahs.
We know there are no easy answers, that salesmen will always let you down and there is no politician who can lead you to the promised land. You’d be doing well to get one who can keep the local post office open.
We also - as a people- tend to want to punch up rather than down. Most of us know it wasn’t plumbers doing jobs off the books or the Polish girl working in Aldi who crashed the economy the last time.
Brexit is - potentially - very dangerous to us. But we’re just going to have to let the English get on with repeatedly punching themselves in the face in the hope they’ll get over it.
Let’s just make sure we look at the lessons to be learned.
Wipe smile off owners faeces with real fines
Do you know how many dog-owners were fined for failing to scoop their dog’s poop in all of Dublin last year? Four! Just four people out of a dog-loving population of 1.2m.
Now, you’d just have to wonder how bad your dog’s toilet habits would have to be to get you fined in our capital.
Did these four dogs take get together to take a synchronised crap on the roof of the Lord Mayor’s motor? Did a Jack Russell sneak into Trinity and take a giant dump on the Book of Kells?
It may seem like small stuff - but it’s a (smelly) example at how crap we are at enforcing a lot of laws. It’s the routine things, the dog shite, the fly-tipping you see everywhere and the wild levels of anti-social behaviour on public transport.
People just get a free pass.
It’s the little things that create the overall atmosphere, that feeling that we’re not really serious about creating a pleasant, safe and faeces-free environment for all.
We have got to start taking this sort of crap seriously.
This week
This Week I’m Loving – The long summer nights.
This Week I’m Dreading – My birthday - it’s like there’s one every year.
