Can we have a thread to discuss the upcoming MEP Election candidates for Ireland?

[HornyHornersPinkyWinky]

European elections coming up on 7th June. Ireland has 14 seats to fill...

I know it's probably early days, but I got a shiny leaflet in the door from Barry Andrews talking about how great he is - sorry Barry but you're not getting my vote.

It got me thinking though, I have no idea who to vote for. Here's a website which lists all the candidates, if you scroll down you will see the constituencies and if you click on their faces it gives you more information about their policies etc.
https://www.europeanmovement.ie/european-elections-2024/#1708343079798-db46201b-445f

Is there anyone dead set on who they are voting for and willing to share? I'm in Dublin BTW. Actually, if I could I'd vote for Peadar Tobín, but he's in the Midlands constituency...

I can't see the wording of the pledge on there. It just goes to a blank page.

If you go to this page - https://comeout.eu/#about-the-pledge and click on 'read the pledge' it comes up as a pdf.

Just as an aside - they are seemingly still using the I for Intersex in their acronym - isn't that a disputed term to say the least...?

I thought it was DSD - people with Disorders of Sexual Development, who also asked to be kept out of identity politics bullshit.

Guys,

Again just asking all to encourage anyone who can vote to get out and vote.

This is our birthright and we should use it.

Many still today don't have that right.

We shouldn't be complacent re the right.

I just did 1and 2 for European election and 1 and 2 for Local election.
A sitting councillor knocked on my mother's door a couple of weeks ago and she complained about a street lamp out.
Lo and behold it was fixed yesterday !!
She gave him her No.1
She didn't even know he was her local councillor til the election was called, she hadn't seen him for dust since he was elected the last time. 🙄

Thanks @HornyHornersPinkyWinky that pledge is so badly written I can barely understand it but the bit about secrecy is very worrying

Yes, it reminds me of the Dentons document - there's an unnerving sense they are very willing to ignore normal democratic rules to get what they want. And they know the optics will be bad if it gets too much sunlight. Very sinister.

And the whole 'protect LGBTI' above everything else, above all other concerns. That's not equality, they seem to want special treatment. So strange how many people don't see this.

Interesting that all the Irish signatories seem to have signed in the last 2 or 3 months, I'm guessing this is a pre-election panic. They were told this is a nice leftie thing to support, so they signed.

"Gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics." How can these be in the same sentence? Kudos for using an Oxford comma though.

I had the same experience yesterday and wondered if it had been removed..
I found it at
ComeOut4Europe_Pledge.pdf

The list of signatories provided by Mermoose and then reposted by me was extremely useful for cutting down the long list of candidates on the ballot paper!

Although the election is nearly over bar the counting, I think that creepy pledge still needs to be investigated further.
It's so sad to have to criticize a body like ILGA which used to stand up for the L&G in their name.

(BTW - nice spot of the Oxford comma. For or against?☺)

Apologies that link isn't working, there's a different one in a PP... Unless they've pulled the PDF as well??? Where's my tinfoil hat?😁

Hopefully this works just in case anyone is having problems getting it from the website.

https://comeout.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/ComeOut4Europe_Pledge.pdf

Definitely for @MarieDeGournay

The link @HornyHornersPinkyWinky posted at 16:50 worked for me

I had posted this on the Sex and Feminism thread. I didn’t know about this thread, though I see it is linked in one of posts.
I have uploaded a screenshot of the pledge if anyone has difficulty opening the link upthread.

You're right.

When I see someone still using 'I' in as in LBGTI, or saying that intersex people are as numerous as people with red hair, I know they haven't been keeping up and are just plagiarising/parroting inaccurate stuff they've read somewhere.

I've often wondered if I'd ever get to use the word 'shibboleth' and along come two examples at once: using 'intersex' instead of DSD and quoting the disproven claim that being intersex is as common as having red hair. Both big 🚩red flags.

I've just heard a snippet of the Anton Savage show this morning, and they are predicting (with a heavy caveat of it being too early to say for sure) that Barry Andrews and Regina '9 genders' Doherty will each take a seat for Dublin. I was hoping Regina would be out on her arse but unfortunately not...

Apparently the transfers are a bit all over the place, so it will be hard to predict who gets the other two.

Its looking like a No Change election. I thought the Greens would take a bath but they seem to be surviving. SF down a bit. Some of their support seduced by the far right. I gave Mick Wallace a stroke in the Euros. Afaik he is not signed up to the Teni bollix.

Mick Wallace is a Putin apologist. I made the effort to put down 23 transfers to ensure he was at the end. He would be a dangerous voice in Europe.

I doubt Mick Wallace will have much affect on the course of the war. Whether the sudden expansion of NATO contributed to the war I'm not competent to judge tbh. But certainly Gorbachev was promised this wouldn't happen. Then there was the CIA - well Victoria Nuland to be precise - picking the next leader of Ukraine. Her famous ' fuck the EU' phone call.

Is Wallace really more dangerous than that weapon? At least he is elected ffs. But I digress. Meanwhile the 2 Tory parties march on. Perhaps that's the trouble with the Internet. There's still a huge ' contented majority ' out there. They don't give a crap if you are struggling to pay the rent and your kids are going to emigrate. But here in our silo we fondly imagine things can be changed.
Remember ' I'm never ever voting FF again ' circa 2008. But they return like a dog to its vomit.

The greens seem to be doing fairly well in the LEs but even Ryan has said that Cuffe is likely to lose his Euro seat and while there is less news about South tallies, it's reasonably likely that O'Sullivan will too.

Do we know when the European results will be out? I'm guessing they are doing the locals first...

I had a quick look on the RTE dashboard thingy but it hasn't been updated yet (also they spelt Connemara wrong - pretty bad for our national broadcaster).

Yes the locals will be counted first, Euro results Tuesday-ish??

As far as I can see RTE spells Conamara 'Conamara', what's wrong with that? Correct Irish spelling of this Irish-speaking area.

Apologies, I had no idea that was the Irish for it, I just thought they had made a mistake.

Also - sorry to be annoying but they have it down as Conamara North and Conamara South, so not using the full Irish, I mean why bother? Or why not use the full Irish terms instead of a mishmash, it just looks weird.

First they have to sort the ballots into piles of LE ballots, MEP ballots and in Limerick, mayoral ballots. Then the MEP ballots are re-boxed and sealed and sent to their central count centres. Tallies are taken by unofficial volunteers who are watching during the sorting process, which is where the 'results' we currently have are from. Unless the 2nd/3rd preferences are really consistent we get no clue about how they might go.

Then the locals begin counting. Starting with first preferences. Then it goes over and back with next preferences of the eliminated and excess votes of the elected. The latter is more complicated as all their votes are counted and then worked out as a percentage of the excess.

My own opinion on the local elections is that people tend to vote for the person more so than the party. As FF and FG already had a lot of sitting councillors, they had an advantage in that regard. Though, they are taking it as approval for their record in government, which is not great for anyone hoping they would abandon the Hate Speech laws.
I am baffled as to how anyone voted for them. Most of us with children are wondering if they will ever have the opportunity to own their own homes. After 13 years in government people seem to still vote for Fine Gael even though they have failed to get any grip whatsoever on the housing crisis.
Perhaps it is fear of a Sinn Féin government but it is baffling as to why anyone would give a seal of approval to the current crowd. A sharp shock, such as after the Referendum result, might have spurred them on to reevaluate their position on a range of topics. Now they are more likely to plough ahead with a business as usual attitude.