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AS SINN FÉIN’S Ard Fheis kicked off on Friday night, Martin McGuinness said it was fitting that his home town of Derry was buzzing as “the party is buzzing”.
Sinn Féin’s slogan of ‘Déan an tAthrú’ – ‘Make the change’ – was repeated over the two days as many delegates spoke of the sea change taking place in Irish politics, and how the party looks set to become even bigger following the next general election.
Here’s what we learned over the course of the weekend:
1. Sinn Féin wants to be the biggest party north and south by 2016
McGuinness, Northern Ireland’s Deputy First Minister, said Sinn Féin plans on becoming the largest political party on both sides of the border.
He said if the party achieves this goal by next year, the centenary of the 1916 Rising, it would be “massive”.
Time will tell.
2. The party wants Mary Lou to be the first woman Taoiseach
One of the first delegates who spoke on Friday night made some Rip Van Winkle-inspired predictions for 2018.
He said Gerry Adams will be President of Ireland and Martin McGuinness will be First Minister in Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, a ”finance rock star” in the form of Pearse Doherty will be Minister for Finance.
His most popular prediction, however, was that Mary Lou McDonald will become the first woman Taoiseach.
There was a LOT of cheering, with every pair of hands in the house – bar McDonald’s – clapping.
3. The party has a position on abortion, sort of
Delegates voted in favour of allowing abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormalities, and repealing the 8th amendment.
McDonald spoke in favour of both motions.
As motion 122 passed, two others fell automatically.
Motion 123 called for terminations to not be allowed in the circumstance of fatal foetal abnormalities, while motion 125 states:
This Ard Fheis believes that women’s reproductive rights, and control over a woman’s body and sexuality are entirely a matter for the woman concerned in each particular circumstance.
One speaker expressed dissatisfaction that members would not get a chance to vote on the latter, saying she viewed it as a separate issue.
4. Sinn Féin will be a senior government partner or none
The party passed a motion that ruled out entering a Fine Gael or Fianna Fáil-led government after the next general election.
In his presidential speech last night, Gerry Adams addressed the issue:
Sinn Féin will not prop up either a Fine Gael or a Fianna Fáil government. Sinn Féin wants to lead the next government. I am confident that when it comes to making a choice, the people will make the change.
5. Royals are not welcome in 2016
Sinn Féin MEP Matt Carthy got plenty of cheers when he said he couldn’t see any circumstances under which Sinn Féin would support a British monarch attending 1916 centenary events.
Limerick councillor Séighin Ó Ceallaigh bluntly said that royals “are not welcome at any event”.
Delegates later voted that no member of the British royal family or British government should be invited to any state commemorations in 2016.
6. People should respect the Irish flag
It took three attempts to count the vote on a motion calling for the Irish flag to not be “thrown around” or disrespected by party members.
Eventually it passed by 94 votes to 60.
7. Alan Kelly doesn’t scare Mary Lou
After telling Tánaiste Joan Burton she would debate her “anywhere, any time”, McDonald had this sarcastic message for the Environment Minister:
Joan’s number two, Alan Kelly, has vowed to rip us apart. We are quaking in our stilettos, I’m sure.
8. Not everyone is mad about Sinn Féin
Jobs Minister Richard Bruton sent out a press release as the Ard Fheis was in full swing yesterday, warning that Sinn Féin’s policies would “screw up” Ireland’s recovery.
The Fine Gael TD stated:
As assuredly as the IRA’s semtex helped to destroy the Irish economy in the 1970s and ‘80s, Sinn Féin’s tax policies would do the same today.
9. Standing ovations are where it’s at
Adams got one, so did McGuinness, McDonald and Lynn Boylan, among others. Syrizan deputy foreign minister Euclid Tsakalotos got TWO.
https://vine.co/v/OEOMeYZwtJh
10. Aloe vera sales are set to increase
A shipment of the cream is expected to be sent to Fine Gael, Labour and Fianna Fáil imminently.
After being in the firing line at the recent Fine Gael and Labour conferences, Sinn Féin dished out a few deep burns of its own.
The party’s finance minister Pearse Doherty dropped several zingers. On Friday night he told the audience Sinn Féin had “no interest in propping up failed parties for ministerial positions”, saying this is what the Labour party is for.
Aengus Ó Snodaigh, social protection spokesperson, called the government’s Action Plan for Jobs an ‘Inaction Plan for Jobs’. Yeah, he went there.
It wasn’t just TDs who took aim at their political rivals, with one delegate giving this suggestion for where Labour should hold its next conference:
Follow @orlaryan and @TJ_Politics for updates from the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in Derry this weekend.
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That’s the problem with todays media reporting of live events, they are all so busy trying to get one up on the other channels that they don’t think for a minute about what they are saying. Imagine hiding out from some langer trying to kill you only for some idiot reporter to come on air and say “oh by the way there’s 4 hostages hiding out in the cold room”!
If you can get your hands on “the human face of big data”, there’s an interesting piece on how terrorists use data and how in more prolific hostage taking countries it’s now quite common for live selected killings to take place using human search engines and media outlets for info. Or even waiting to carry out an attack to see who is in their area. Next gen terrorism. Off point but interesting.
Its not just a modern thing – during a ground stand-off following an aircraft hijacking (in the 1970′s I think) special forces had approached the plane via a blind spot to launch a surprise raid on the hijackers. Unfortunately events were being broadcast on live radio and the hijackers were listening in and knew exactly what was about to happen, with disastrous results.
Amen.
What Globalist Murdoch said about the Sydney Siege comes to mind.
Bloodthirsty vampire.
http://www.thejournal.ie/murdoch-tweet-sydney-1836603-Dec2014/
Good move. Hopefully the media will cop on a bit more. If some aren’t making it up they are getting it all wrong.
Fox News springs to mind!
About time the tv media were taken to task, imagine if that lunatic had been watching the live stream and did go down to the chiller they were hiding in…unthinkable acts would have ensued.
In this day and age you would think tv news channels would have more cop on…but I suppose being more and more sensationalist is worth more than a life in this day and age. How many more lives would have been saved that day if that sick man was not put under the spotlight?
Its sad really that there is an appetite for this sensationalism.
Apparently the gunman was watching but must have missed that report. The cop is to blame here as well as he shouldn’t have told the media anything in the first place. With today’s communications it would be easy for any gunman to have someone else watching TV, twitter etc and keeping them informed of what was going on. Best keep the media away from they area and in the dark until it’s all over.
I wonder if that journalist would have been so eager to broadcast that information if one of his own relatives was hiding in that freezer?…..I think not…….which just goes to show how little empathy some journalists have with other people in deadly situations.
I wonder what nationality and religion the editor / producer : journalist are?
It’s like that film Night Crawler. Ratings are worth more to these stations than human lives. Check it out. Jake Gyllenhaal is great in it.
I was thinking more about the reporter from Die Hard and Die Hard 2.
Yes. Just what I was thinking. Great movie.
Some of these”repoters” are sociopaths.
Look at the way they vilify Israel for its conduct in the war against Hamas terror,though experts in this field attest that Israel took the most extraordinary efforts to keep civilian casualties at a minimum while Hamas used its own people as shields in some cases. But vilifying Israel feeds the Jew-hatred and sells so ‘to hell with the facts go for what sells’.
See excerpt from Colonel Kemp’s report
–Three days ago I spoke to an Israeli pilot that told me that the same morning he had aborted an enemy target a total of 17 times because there were civilians in the target zone, and eventually he abandoned the operation. I asked him, was that not frustrating? His answer was simply no. And that to me, is one of the best things about the IAF – that the last very thing they want to do is bomb a target and have that on their conscience for the rest of their lives. And it was the same thing with infantry soldiers. I spoke to soldiers who have been fighting in Gaza, and several of them said to me: ‘We know what the rules of engagement are but even without them, it is always on our minds that we cannot kill civilians.’ See for them, this has nothing to do with orders, it’s just always there at the forefront. We’re talking about [reservists who are] simply artists, metal-workers, musicians, they are not killers. They have absolutely no desire to kill civilians. In fact, in terms of civilian casualties, the attitude of IDF solders is the exact mirror image of the way they’re portrayed to the world.
http://www.algemeiner.com/2014/07/30/col-richard-kemp-israeli-pilot-aborted-gaza-strike-17-times-to-protect-civilians-jewish-people-should-be-proud-of-the-state-of-israel-interview/
Happy Easter All!
Truly and accurately stated. You’ll get red thumbs galore, no doubt, Patrick, but that just goes to show that many people don’t like the truth messing up their paradigm.
@Elias Khoury! Thanks for Elias’ sentiment. Your prediction was so but not so bad and some of them even red-thumbed Elias to spite me.Laughable isn’t it!
I worry not but to speak the truth as I see it. People have a very healthy scepticism about the newsmedia here and it’s just a matter of time before they cotton-on to the con-job the Hamas/PLO and other Jihadders have pulled on them via the self-seeking media.
Additionally, Jew-hatred is on the wane however imperceptible it seems.
Happy Easter…
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