Tomás Ó Flatharta

Message from the Joan Collins Site :

“I have agreed to go on panel on Frontline on Monday evening. It’s on after the  9pm news. Also last Friday I had a BBC Panorama crew with me for the afternoon in Drimnagh. They are doing an election special on Ireland, also on Monday evening.”

http://joan-collins.org/2011/02/19/appearing-on-panel-on-frontlines-rte-monday-night/

Joan’s campaign was featured in the Irish Times, Thursday February 17 :

Collins aims to offer radical alternative

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2011/0217/1224290025041.html

Joan Collins Flyer :

http://irishelectionliterature.wordpress.com/2011/02/09/flyer-from-joan-collins-people-before-profit-united-left-alliance-dublin-south-central/

500 Words from Joan Collins :

http://www.drimnaghisgood.com/2011/02/16/500-words-from-joan-collins-people-before-profit-canidate-for-dublin-south-central/

United Left Alliance Prospects?

Poll confirms growing support for United Left Alliance

My own thoughts on the likely statewide result (trying to put head before heart) :

Congratulations to Eoin O’Mahony– this research looks very convincing.

Here :

http://politicalreform.ie/2011/02/17/poll-of-polls-weighted-average-of-party-support/

and an updated version :

http://politicalreform.ie/2011/02/19/updated-poll-of-polls-with-with-red-c-and-millward-brown-polls/

That means Fine Gael in government with a coalition partner – almost certainly the Labour Party.

Keeping in mind that it is impossible to predict with 100 per cent accuracy the overall result – never mind individual constituency scores – let’s look forward to comparing the real February 25 outcome with this statistical analysis.

Perhaps polls of single constituencies have become better – but I will not be surprised to see today’s Irish Times Dún Laoghaire poll

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/0218/1224290141248.html

vary from the real result. The stated margin of error is 4.5 per cent – lots of room for differing forecasts! You could say one definite seat each for Fine Gael and the Labour Party – but after that?

If the numbers in this poll are correct, Richard Boyd-Barrett will not be elected to the next Dáil.

The Irish Times also published a South Tipperary Constituency Poll – you could say that Séamus Healy (ULA) and Tom Hayes (Fine Gael) are likely to be elected, but the third seat?

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/0216/1224289930282.html

A last thought on the ULA Policy of Repudiating the European Central Bank / International Monetary Fund scheme to bail out private bank debts.

– read carefully this story from the Saturday February 19 Irish Times :

Irish banks spark surge in emergency ECB borrowing

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/frontpage/2011/0219/1224290288536.html?via=mr

Like many financial stories in the Irish media, it is difficult to understand on first reading.

Perhaps this results from poor editorial standards – caused by a decline in sub-editing skills in that newspaper – or the lack of transparency is deliberate.

Here is a reconstruction of the story, using the same facts.

Overnight borrowing from the European Central Bank leapt up from €1 billion to 16 billion last Thursday night.

The borrowers were the Anglo-Irish Bank and the Irish Nationwide.

Who picks up the tab for these super-expensive loans?

The answer is you and me, Irish working people, taxpayers.

“The two troubled lenders, which are being closed down over time, have borrowed heavily from the ECB to prop themselves up following huge withdrawals of customer cash from their deposit books.

They have drawn ECB loans on a rolling basis for a minimum of a week under Frankfurt’s main lending facility, which is available to all euro zone banks.

The lenders have used about €15 billion in bonds – State-backed IOUs – issued by the National Asset Management Agency as collateral, or security, to borrow the money.”

The next time establishment slaves from Fianna Fail/Fine Gael/Labour Party talk about the gap between state income and expenditure just remember that figure of €16 billion.

The more this point sinks in, the United Left Alliance policy gains credibility. and the Labour Party loses ground.

A prediction :

If the new government is a Fine Gael-Labour Coalition after the 2011 General Election, Kenny-Gilmore will quickly be just as unpopular as Cowen-Gormley today.

since such a government will pursue the same policies as the outgoing discredited Greena Fáil coalition.