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SPRING MAY FINALLY have decided to make an appearance this year after a cold start to the year.
Met Éireann is forecasting milder temperatures for the week ahead, with highs of up to 15 degrees Celsius.
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There was a frosty start this morning and showers – heavy at times – are expected later in the day. Top temperatures will reach 9 degrees, but it will turn icy again tonight.
Tomorrow this frost will clear early and there will be milder temperatures, reaching 7 to 11 degrees in some areas, though rain will be persistent.
Wednesday is expected to be the warmest day of the week with highs of 15 degrees, sunny spells and scattered showers. Mixed and changeable weather will follow Thursday and Friday.
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Surprised its taken this long but who else have they got? All 6 of them are in serious danger of losing their seats at the next election. Bacik has been anonymous since she got elected, apart from attending Merrion gate and Aodhain ORiordan… enough said. They should probably merge with Fine Gael.
@Richie56: maybe Catherine Martin might defect given that she’s in the market for a leadership position? Comes with all the right qualifications, useless, incompetent etc etc…
@Paul Shepherd: tell us who in your opinion is useful and competent etc etc, be interesting to see if there is a woman on your list..populist throw away comments like this are sad, I have no party affiliation
@Richie56: Well Kelly should join FG, — that’s it if they would have him,and I suppose they would. He was very much a Blue shirt when he was trying to force the water charges . The Labour Party is finished .
@Charlie Murphy: nothing to do with the fact that she’s a woman. There are equally incompetent male TD’s. As for a list….you’ll have to leave that with me given the dearth of available talent.
The Labour Party? I think I remember them. Weren’t they the party of working people at one stage? At least they claimed to be back in the 70′s and 80′s when I used to vote for them. Not sure what the ‘Labour’ part of their name means these days given that they now seem to represent the guilt-ridden, hand-wringing, liberal middle-class…
And to think that the wealthy parts of Dublin Bay South voted for Labour in the last by-election instead of voting for FG tells you how far they have come from being a party for workers.
@William Tallon: to an extent they (Labour) have gone they way of the Labour Party in England but more so, if you get my drift. The majority of people they used to represent, the original ‘working class’, (factory workers, farm laborers, dockers, shop workers etc) prior to 1990 have by and large moved into a different social and economic sphere thanks to access to second and third level education and social improvement up to Celtic Tiger years.
The Labour Party need to sit down and decide who and what they are for today and they need to display a social conscience in order to win support. There are many good party members and representatives out there but these days the party is up against Sinn Fein and their policies, particularly with younger people.
@Siobhan O’Sullivan Morrin: The original ‘working-class’? Working-class people still exist as in unskilled low-paid general operatives, factory workers, shop and service workers etc. Thousands of them are part-time or zero-hours contract workers open to exploitation. I think it’s safe to assume that their parents and grandparents were also working-class people and the problems they’ve always faced haven’t gone away or changed much either. Individuals may have benefited from social improvements at different stages but as a demographic, the working-class hasn’t gone away or morphed into something else. That’s something the Labour Party chose to do and consequently lost working-class support. Your rosy view of how the lot of the working class has improved doesn’t hold water I’m afraid…
A poisonous party who in no shape or form represented a worker’s vote. A consistency of brown matter exiting from between their (other) cheeks when they speak. Untrustworthy and unforgivable to the end. Vote for labour and you may as well flush your ballot paper down with their promises.
@Vestigial: He had his chance when last in government. The so called Labour Party became more Blueshirt than the Blueshirts. Kelly’s Road to Damascus came when they were anilaleted at the ballot box.
The Labour Party couldn’t even make headway in the polls when RTE treat them like the main opposition party, they shafted their core support when in govt, allowing the loss of double pay on Sundays, reduction of minimum pay etc etc etc. They’re no loss.
He will not be missed. As a once staunch Labour supporter he was the complete antithesis of what the Labour Party once stood for. His ego, arrogance and his utterly blinkered stance on water charges were his downfall. I doubt there will be much sympathy for him.
@Paul Shepherd: thoughtless, cliched, irrelevant comment on an ‘irrelevant’ article. my favourite type of post and I am now pleased to be able to add my own one to this online landfill.
Alan Kelly’s record as leader is one by-election contested and the seat won? Odd call to oust him but I won’t complain if Labour are infighting and pressing the self destruct button.
Imagine the absurdity of a “ Left wing” party that voted to abolish medical cards for disabled children!
Yes that’s the Irish Labour Party, they did this and would like you to forget it!
Labour are nothing like what they used to be, once upon a time they had decent leaders and stood for something now though, they are a joke of a party clinging onto the idea that they once mattered while refusing to look to the electorate for guidance on what they want rather than what this lot think they want.
There was a push for awhile to promote Kelly as a kind of radical loud mouth as though Ireland would forget austerity. Now Power in Ireland is worried because of lack of housing the country has swiungi left.
Due to Labour’s performance the past 10 years and no credible alternative they are sunk and the left consolidates in SF. The pendulum of a government with every few years labour in government no longer works. Its reduced now to SF vs FG+FF. I suppose the hope was people would take up the safer labour option but they have not.
@alan: I don’t think that’s true. FF and FG are sort of centralists, they swing a bit left and a bit right and really, in the past 2 decades, don’t have any real core values so never make any real change. While, SF are populist, they will say whatever they think will appeal to their base – free houses, tax the rich, increase social welfare, the lot – very much like Trump appealing to his base as much as he can. Ireland doesn’t have any real political spectrum, it’s a mess, an identityless missmash of terrible political parties and worse choices, crying out for a new party and a new wave but too cynical to support anything new
@alan: FFG are neo liberalist, that brand of thatcher/ Reagan politics which they try to tell us doesn’t exist but they implement on a daily basis. They have no social conscience as they believe Thatchers doctrine that “ who is society? There is no such thing! There are individual men and women and there are families and no government can do anything except through people and people look to themselves first.”
I wonder will Labour soon follow the path of the PDs and fade into obscurity. I was just reading about the PDs, I hadn’t realised they were disbanded in 2009. I’d have said 2013/14. Hard to credit it being 13 years.
Always irritated me listening to his arrogance when highlighting the flaws of other parties. Never had any solutions to the problems he liked to highlight. Very negative leader.
Labour are totally irrelevant as a political party. People will never forgive them for their stand in austerity and water charges under Joan’s leadership. So his resignation makes absolutely no difference they will probably merge with FG to have any hope of getting elected next time around and stay a drain on the country going forward.
They should just hand that party over to Labour Youth and let them build a progressive movement for the future. The alternative is a SF stranglehold for years They’ve been a nothing party since Burton.
@Vonvonic: Burton is one of the reasons Labour died. Kelly tried to redeem his part in the death. However, he was not able to revive the party. Labour is dead. RIP
Totally unrelated:
My wife claimed she was late coming home tonight because she was ambushed by a group of elderly men who pinned her down and repaired her shoes.
Sounds like a load of old cobblers to me.
Interesting looking at the sneering at Labour. FF bankrupted the country, FG want to privatise as much as possible and would have us in NATO in the morning, SF still glorify the paramilitary wing, and collectively they are on 70% in the polls. Interesting people can forgive parties of far worse things than Labour have ever done.
@Brendan: FF and FG are consistently at less than half the vite share they have been at for years. People haven’t forgiven them at all and I don’t know where based on the comments here you come to that opinion. They are 3 parties I will never ever vote for again and I know that many of my friends and family feel the same
Good riddance to Alan “power suits me” Kelly. Now if we can just turf out Leaky Leo and Michael that money was just resting in my account Martin please?
What is it about “left” wing parties in Ireland? Labour infighting, the SOCDEM spin off, SF internal “discipline”, PBP joins up with Solidarity after Murphy quits Socialist party!!! & a motley crew of oddball independents…. They can’t even get their own individual parties together!!! Doesn’t bode well for a left coalition after the next election…. They’ll present an open goal for FFG again and even if they manage to cobble together a programme for government it won’t last!!!!!
@Seoirse Ó Staighe: if you look up the definition of what you accuse me of.. it’s “people who leave intentionally provocative or offensive messages on the internet in order to get attention, cause trouble or upset someone.”
Just to let you know I didn’t, I’m just expressing my opinion as a left leaning voter but maybe your “reply” fits the definition more. I notice on forums like this that people who have nothing constructive to say resort to name-calling as a first resort…
@Vestigial: I never thought about it in that way before but you’re spot on. Let’s face it the past the past as well, if do really want an alternative to the established parties then we have to move on from the past term in government
Remember Gilmore anyone (my way or the highway)where is he now gone like the rest of them Spring,Howlin,Finlay, though he wasn’t leader,but he’s gone like the rest of them like the party they led
The fact it was a surprise might be one of the reasons your going. It’s kind of like saying you had no idea you were doing a bad job and about to be sacked. Your job is to know what’s going on.
@Ian Byrne: noted that your comment was deleted. Terribly biased. It seems everyone is entitled to an opinion as long as it doesn’t disagree with the moderator. The comment wasn’t even offensive.
Labour will join Sinn Fein, like Democratic Left joined Labour and Sinn Fein the workers party joined Democratic Left.
It’s the only way Labour will become relevant again. Power Mercs and Pensions.
Labour as we know it died after Joan and Alan screwed the people a few years ago.
I know Alan Kelly I wrote to his home address for help but I never heard from him. Well its just as well because I wouldn’t have got the help I needed all he is was doing in the dail was confusing the Tds and objecting to what they are doing this of course I think was getting his own back on them because they had but him out of the dail and that was the end of the labour Party.
@Vestigial: Kelly was Minister of the Environment. In opposition, a politician will market themselves to voters and accuse the government of being out of touch, etc. In government, a politician will resort to “We need stability. We need consistency. We have to prioritise the bigger picture, etc.” Kelly is not lacking in intelligence or work rate. He is also not lacking in arrogance (as an MEP also), personal ambition, etc. I think the biggest problem Ireland faces is too many voters haven’t figured out the rules of the political game yet.
I would respectfully suggest that labour select Ged Nash as the new leader of the party in succession to Alan Kelly. Of all their TDs, he has the best chance of reviving working class support for the party.
This is YOUR comments community. Stay civil, stay constructive, stay on topic. Please familiarise yourself with our comments policy here before taking part.
Just saying.
@Vestigial: he was aligning the party as a coalition partner to sf (plus whoever else they needed) that was very clear in his language this last year or so and this scared the party imo.
@Donal Desmond: they were in the minority, but I thought they did well in difficult times, under the circumstances.
I liked Kelly, he isn’t a muesi-knitting sandal-wearer, more a representative of people who actually work. But if they want to play the game, Backik is their best option.
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