Well, we’re not going to find out what Silvio Ganley’s plans are for the future if we’re to rely on the likes of Vincent Browne and Eamon Dunphy.

On Nighty Night With Vincent Browne on Friday, the grand poobah was getting busy in a BK bathroom with what was left of the Lisbon Treaty. What was interesting to note was how Vinnie treated his guests. Mary Hanafin was ignored, Patrica McKenna was tolerated and Alan Dukes was told to stay quiet. But referendum man of the match, Silvio, was treated with the kind of respect visiting heads of state and young starlets normally get. Every time Dukes went to make a point about what had been said, Vinnie told him to hush and stared at Silvio with those puppy-dog eyes of his. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered such a soft interview outside of an RTE chat show featuring some lass from Fair City. Very strange behaviour from the host - and there wasn’t even a hint of a sigh or a groan from him.

On Saturday morning, Silvio was back on the airwaves, this time with Eamon Dunphy asking the questions on Conversations with The Great Man. Surely this was going to a proper interview? Surely Eamon would ask some questions which Silvio wouldn’t be able to blarney away to one side by refering to footing turf on a bog or telling the Latvian government what to do? Surely there would be blood on the airwaves? Er, no, another love-in with Silvio.

Puzzling behaviour altogether from the Irish media seniors. Either there’s absolutely nothing remotely controversial about Silvio or the two lads are just totally infatuated with him and his brave new political world. At least if Silvio wants to start a new magazine or take over a football team, he’ll know who to go to for advice.

If we knew they were coming, we’d have a baked a cake or a rhubarb tart (awesome amount of rhubarb in the garden at the moment). We’re talking, of course, about Rock the Vote. They launched their Lisbon Treaty referendum campaign this morning and, joy, are promising a slew of new videos in the run-up to the big day. Fantastic news.

Here, is Mary still working for them? And is their then chief bottle-washer Patrick Cosgrave still having a kip?

It is a question which is vexing several old dears in Drumcondra, according to a RTE news vox-pop. Just what does an ex-Taoiseach do when when he steps down from office and rides off into the sunset? Former big men on the Dail campus have done everything from writing for The Irish Times (Garret Fitzgerald) to, well lets not go there (Charles J Haughey).

So what does Bertie do now? Some possible new job roles for the soon-to-be-ex leader of our government.

Bank assistant. Apparently, he has oodles and oodles of experience dealing with all manner of cash transactions. He may not have a great head for remembering details, but he will be able to use a calculator

TV football pundit. With Liam Brady due to join the Irish management set-up, there is a vacancy in RTE-TV sports department for somone to join Dunphy, Giles and the A-team. Bertie has tried the talking about football lark before with mixed results but, like all politicians, he deserves a second chance. And Bertie has a lot of experience with make-up

Writer for The Sunday Independent. If Willie O’Dea can do it… We hear Bertie knows a few people in the Sindo so this should be A-OK if he wants to become a member of this glorious and exalted tribe.

PR. He would be a fabulous asset to any PR company given his ability to spin any old story, an unique relationship with the English language and that winning smile. Maybe a company like Q4 might be able to give him an aul’ dig-out and take him on as an apprentice for a few months?

Blogger. He could well be the world’s first pay-per-blog-view blogger. C’mon, you so know you’d pay a couple of cents a day to read Bertie’s thoughts and opinions.

Running a chain of bars and off-licences called Bertie’s. One of the most abiding memories of Bertie’s tenure in politcs was the number of pub and supermarket openings he did. This would be an ideal way for him to remember his time at the top and make a few bob too.

Any other suggestions?

How the hell did Band of Horses get so big? Are they the new National? It really seemed as if everyone in the city of gig-going age - and certainly every one of the writing about music and talking about music classes - was on Harcourt Street last night en route to Tripod to see the Yanks in action. But while the albums are decent stabs at new-rock with old colours, the live performance was uninspiring and mundane and left me cold. They also reminded me of the Sawdoctors. Blame the banjo. But sure, Irish audiences go nuts for that sort of thing.

Next door, Cap Pas Cap were playing their first gig of 2008. They have a hugely promising hold on art-pop’s fixtures and fittings and, while the new material needs oiling, the older, more familiar tracks zinged. One to watch as the year progresses.

One of the year’s early must-hear albums is “Beat Pyramid” but, after last night’s show in Crawdaddy, These New Puritans are one of those bands you must see in the coming months. A short (35 minutes or thereabouts), sharp and spikey set from the Southend band which was all angles angles (we particularly dig their alternate interior, obtuse and vertical ones) and golden moments. “Swords of Truth” was the one for me. It will be interesting to see them a year from now when they’ve transformed all that energy into fireballs.

But the performance of the night has to be Martin Mansergh on Nighty Night With Vincent Browne (which is turning out to be an oddly fantastic show - yes, both odd and fantastic). Man, Marty was on fire. It was like watching Jerry Lee Lewis rocking out with Chuck Berry. The erudite TD for Tipperary South (not a description we have ever used before when discussing public representatives from the holy land, but he does hold a D Phil. in Pre-Revolutionary French history) was preaching and hollering and testifying like a man who had just found God. Or in his case, Bertie Ahern. Political car-crash TV at its best, up there with Gerry Collins’s “don’t burst the party” plea or Bertie’s cry-me-a-river performance with Bryan Dobson.

From today’s Letters to the Editor:

TEXTING IN THE DAIL

Madam, - Would someone tell Olwyn Enright of Fine Gael to stop texting while on the front bench in the Dáil? It looks very bad - and I have never seen any other TD do this.

The camera caught Ms Enright texting twice during the course of the Oireachtas Reports I have seen since Christmas. Even children in school are not allowed to use mobile phones during class! - Yours, etc,

Florence Craven, Maynooth, Co Kildare

It’s the story which never fails to pop up every four years: the attempt by some hamlet in Ireland to piggyback on the US presidential election. The yarn about Barack Obama’s connections with Moneygall in Co Offaly first surfaced last May. However, it is the story which will keep on giving, especially if the senator from Illinois continues to kick Hillary Clinton’s butt in the coming weeks to win the grand prize of a rough, tough, dirty battle with the GOP’s war dogs.

It means, though, we’re in for more cringeworthy TV like the RTE TV news story on Saturday evening about the celebrations in the Co Offaly town following Obama’s win in Iowa last week (thanks to Shane for pointing me towards the YouTube footage which is below). On this occasion, it was poor Ray Colgan who was sent to round up the happy drinkers and get them to gurn and wave flags for the cameras. He looked commendably unimpressed with his task, but he had better get used to it. Chances are he will be back in Moneygall again and again before next November.

But those good people in Moneygall are not the only Irish folks keeping a self-interested eye on the US elections. Have a read of last week’s opinion piece from publisher and editor Niall O’Dowd.

Besides his work on the Irish Voice newspaper and the Irish America magazine, O’Dowd’s a long-standing Clinton fan (he’s on the finance committee for her election campaign) so his piece was about why she should get the love and the votes from the Irish-American constituency.

There were many reasons put forward. O’Dowd counted the number of Irish onboard Clinton’s groovy bus. He pointed to how Clinton took time out from her canvassing schedule to engage in some jaw-jaw with the Chuckle Brothers when they visited Washington DC. He even recalled Clinton and hubbie Bill’s emotional reactions after their first to Northern Ireland in 1995.

As far as O’Dowd was concerned, this is a no-brainer.

If she becomes president, Ireland can expect the most committed American leader in history on their issues. If she wins, Ireland and Irish America will be big winners too.

But surely Irish-American voters have more pressing issues to think about than how their vote will play back in the old country? Isn’t the US presidental election supposed to be about, lets see, health care, foreign policy and taxes, to name three issues which spring to mind, rather than a green takeover of the White House?

It seems that many Irish Americans have already went “harumph” to such notions. O’Dowd points out that over 16 per cent of Iowa’s citizens claim Irish roots. They must all be from Moneygall, in that case.

I can’t wait to see what other candidates will declare their Irish roots in the coming week - or, more likely, see their Irish roots coming back to haunt them. And it can only be a matter of time before someone here tries to join the dots between a dude standing for election in Kenya or Pakistan and some Irish village in need of a visit from a RTE camera crew.

(1) It seems that Cathal Mac Coille believes the Socialist Workers Party is responsible for yanking the bus service in north Dublin and leaving 60,000 people walking and fuming in the rain. Here, how will those strikers from Harristown get to their planned demo outside Dublin Bus HQ in O’Connell Street today if there are no buses?

(2) France has also gone strike-crazy in the transport sector. Must be the time of year.

(3) Our Lady Of Lourdes Hospital in Drogheda is very clean. Of course, that’s according to their own in-house survey.

(4) Enterprise Ireland are confident that Irish industries are going to make a mint from the London Olympics. Wonder does that include the pharmaceutical sector?

(5) If you’re renting a flat at 46 Mobhi Road, Glasnevin, Dublin 11, watch out for the yellow wires.

Twenty Major! Naomi Klein! David McWilliams! A Sinn Fein councillor who used to be indie rock’s answer to Louis Walsh but he’s OK now! Clint Velour! IN THE SAME ROOM! I mean, what more do you want on a Friday night?

The return of Leviathan to the big smoke after some high jinks in Co Laois sees Maccer talking shop with Klein about her (very good) new book “The Shock Doctrine”.

Then, there’s the debate. Talking with great intelligence and insight about the topic, “Romantic Ireland’s dead and gone” will be everyone’s favourite chain-smoking bad-ass with a typewriter Twenty, the excellent Sarah Carey, Killian Forde (Killian would be a MEP now had the people of Dublin Central took Mary-Lou as their TD but thankfully that latter nightmare scenario didn’t come to pass), John Waters from the paper, Green Party senator Deirdre de Burca and Carol Hunt from The Sunday Independent.

It all goes off at Crawdaddy on Friday from 7.30pm. Tickets are €20 and ham sandwiches with the crusts cut off will be available in the bar. Appropriate security measures are already in place.

A couple of years ago, an old mucker of mine Katie Hannon wrote a great book about the Irish political process. The Naked Politician looked at just why hundreds and hundreds of seemingly sane men and women would go through the often demeaning motions of seeking a vote from their fellow citizens who were often happy to say one thing to their face and do something else entirely in the voting booth. It was a great yarn (especially the bits about Jim McDaid) which proves once and for all that the Irish political animal is one quare beast.

I kept thinking about Katie’s book during last night’s RTE 1 re-up on the 2007 general election and not just because the two titles were first cousins. Watching The Naked Election made you realise that most of those who stand for election must really be plain daft. Be it the would-be Progressive Democrat TD Frank McNamara (would you vote for a lightweight version of Richard Clayderman? Only 474 voters in Dublin South Central were prepared to do so) or Niall O’Brolcháin (the then Green Party mayor of Galway), here was ample proof that you needed more than a firm handshake and a brass neck when you went on the Irish hustings.

You also needed a sense of the ridiculous, which O’Brolcháin clearly doesn’t appear to possess. If it was mind-boggling enough to be having difficulties persuading the voters of Galway West to vote Green at a time when their water was undrinkable, O’Brolcháin seemed totally at a loss when faced with common-or-garden electioneering high jinks. The candidate always looked awkward on camera, none more so than when he was facing an audience of senior citizens with a tambourine in his paw. That his then leader Trevor Sargent was extremely happy to stand by his side, belting out “The Wild Rover” on an acoustic guitar like an eco-friendly Damien Dempsey, probably still features in O’Brolcháin’s nightmares.

But it was perhaps more telling to see how some of the others profiled in this documentary possessed a blinding conviction in their own chances, a belief which persisted even when it became obvious that they were not destined to become members of the 30th Dail. Sinn Fein man Pearse Doherty, for instance, was spinning some semblance of sucess even after the seat he had targetted had gone Fianna Fail’s way. He probably still finds it hard to accept after all his Bebo, YouTube and conventional canvassing that the people of Donegal had said no to him.

He should take stock from the reactions of such battle-hardened war-horses as Jackie Healy-Rae and Mary O’Rourke. That pair may have a good day in May, but they both knew it could have quite easily gone the other way too. After all, you don’t get to be a gnarled Irish political veteran without getting a kick in the arse now and again from the electorate.

There’s probably a whole lot more on tape where all that came from too, which will hopefully give some of the RTE mandarins a couple of ideas about future programming. I’m sure I’m not alone in feeling the license fee would be better spent on this. More Richard Crowley and Sean O’Rourke please and less Brian Ormond and Charity You’re A Star.

The fuming has already begun. There was some fuming on Morning Ireland earlier and I reckon we’re in for a whole week of fuming.

All thanks to the German ambassador to Ireland, Christian Pauls, who made a couple of observations about modern Ireland at a function last week. Per The Irish Times, Pauls said that:

Hospital waiting lists were chaotic

Everyone drives ‘06 and ‘07 cars.

Doctors who were offered salaries of €200,000 a year had described the salary as “Mickey Mouse money”.

Irish Ministers of State earn more that the German chancellor

20 per cent of the population were public servants.

US visitors had stopped coming to Ireland because of the heavy traffic

Ireland has a bleak time in the past due to the Famine

Ireland had a history “sadder than Poland”

A house had sold in Clontarf for over €20 million and one could buy a skyscraper for that in Frankfurt.

Those of us who call this little island home will surely nod our heads sagely at this lengthy list and go “mos def”.

But while the ambassador thought he was just speaking to members of the German Federation of Buying and Marketing Groups visiting Dublin, Fine Gael MEP Gay Mitchell was also at the event. And he was “shocked” at what he was hearing. I repeat “shocked”. It was as if Gay was hearing all this for the very first time.

“The ambassador should grow up. What he said was very undiplomatic and his contribution was somewhere between resentment and spite. He should not get away with what he said. I was totally taken aback.”

The German embassy doesn’t really know what all the fuss is about. Per their spokesman:

“He is a nice and polite man who is also a witty man. I don’t think he would insult the Irish people with his remarks. That would not be his intention. Sometimes he tends to be ironic and maybe they were meant to be ironic comments.”

Like I said, it’s going to be one of those weeks.

From That’s Ireland via The New-ish Journalism and The Warholiser

Say hello to Senator Ivor. It does, you have to admit, have a certain ring to it.

I wonder does this mean the return of the caravan? Hopefully, he’ll be able to take some time from his hectic schedule as an Irish senator to review his website and remove the various references to himself as a TD from it.

An Eyebrowy slam-dunk as they set the scene for Bell X1’s show at Malahide Castle last weekend. More of this kind of thing please chaps.

Corker! A new website looks at the early days of club culture in Cork with a grand round-up of the Sir Henry’s days, including the 120BPM documentary, various mixes from the Sweat glory days, some Stevie G joints and lots of flyers. There’s even a couple of pics in there from Nirvana’s show at the venue back in 1991 when they supported Sonic Youth. Ah, I remember it well…

Bruuuuuuce! It’s the On The Record YouTube Springsteen grab including “Thunder Road” from 1976, a promo video for “Atlantic City” from 1982 (hmm, wonder has David Chase seen this one?) and an acoustic version of “Born To Run” from 1986.

Hello to Seamus Brennan, the new Minister for Fun at the Department of Arts, Sport & Tourism. Will he do anything for the Irish music industry? Keep dreaming, boys and girls, keep dreaming.

Os Mutantes are coming! Yes, we know we’ve probably mentioned this before, but the Brazilian psychedelic pop icons play Dublin’s Vicar Street on July 26. When Caetano Veloso first met them, he said “they looked like three angels”. They look somewhat different these days we’re sure, but check out this trailer from the proposed band documentary “Bread & Circuses - A Film About Os Mutantes” and get a fever for the flavour. This show had better not get canned.

Blogledge Nialler9 has just unearthed a top quality recording of Leftfield’s performance at Homelands in 2000. Click through now and enjoy some heavyweight, stomach-pumping bass.

Going to the Garden Party? Prepare for your big day out with this 20 minute excerpt from Hot Chip’s new “DJ Kicks” mix-album. Lovely hurling

Political anoraks, this is for you. Anne-Marie Power spent Election 2007 in Dublin Central tracking the ups and downs of the three female would-be TDs campaigning in Bertie’s backyard. She followed their campaigns from the get-go to the last count for a documentary called Patricia, Mary and Mary-Lou Too which airs tonight (Wednesday) on RTE Radio One at 8pm. If you miss it, check here for a podcast from tomorrow.

KRS-One blanks Ireland! Those June dates I wrote about earlier featuring The Blastmaster and Marley Marl? Forget about them. The shows are cancelled. Read a book instead. Me, I’m about to start the new Richard Ford, if you’re wondering.

Una Rocks tried to give up blogging for a week. It didn’t work. She blames Rick O’Shea. See, I’m not the only one who has issues with 2FM.

Stop groaning already. They haven’t gone away, you know. Or maybe they have. Read on…
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Most Saturday mornings, I go for a cycle. The route stays the same: leave the house in Fairview, up through Marino, along the coast road and out to Dollymount. It’s a route punctuated with regular sights. Like the bright orange Volkswagen Beetle towing a caravan which turns up, as regular as rain, on the footpath at the bottom of the Malahide Road by the Crescent.
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While Friday’s election count will inevitably have its share of must-see moments, “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” was truly the most extraordinary four hours of TV I’ve seen in an age.
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There’s a very interesting contrast to be made between the excellent general election campaign run by Older & Bolder and the awful, dreadful, cliched drivel which continues to be foisted on us by those eejits at Rock The Vote.

Rock the Vote employed a bunch of celebrity buffoons (and Cormac Battle) to try to get young folk to vote. This bunch of buffoons seem to think that wacky statements, silly handsignals and irony is the way to go when it comes to votes, politics and elections.

Older & Bolder, which is a group consisting of Age Action Ireland, Age & Opportunity, Irish Senior Citizens Parliament and The Senior Help Line, have got lowdown and dirty with issues which directly impact on their immediate constituency. Meetings were organised, voices were raised and the importance of a large voting bloc was quickly understood by all parties.

Older & Bolder’s lobbying is the reason why you’ve heard more about pensions in this election, for example, than such pressing youth-related issues as the country’s appalling road safety record (has there been mention of this issue by any party?) and the influence of the drink lobby on our law-makers, to name just two.

Instead of empowering and encouraging young voters to harass politicians about such issues which are of immediate concern to them, Rock The Vote decided to treat their audience like children and sent in the clowns. What a waste of time, money and resources.

Just when you thought Election 2007 couldn’t get any more GUBU, along comes Ivor Callely and his Teddy Bears Picnic stunt.

It seems On The Record’s favourite ex-junior minister decided to enlist the help of some people wearing teddy bear costumes as a jolly jape on the hustings in Dublin North Central.

Hey, dressing up in bear costumes worked mighty fine for the Flaming Lips, didn’t it?

But, like many things associated with Ivor, this stunt back-fired.

A mother today rounded on Fianna Fáil TD Ivor Callely after her young children were canvassed by adults in teddy bear suits outside school gates.

The 33-year-old woman insisted she was shocked by the former junior minister’s electioneering stunt outside the junior girls school in the fiercely contested north Dublin constituency.

Damaris O’Brien, from Killester, demanded to know if the unknown figures in the teddy bear suits at Belgrove National School in Clontarf had been vetted before engaging with young children.

“Who the hell are these people in bear suits? I mean you just don’t know who people are anymore and you hear all these horror stories about kids,” she said.

Naturally, Ivor had an answer. Didn’t he?

Despite numerous calls to Mr Callely’s mobile phone and several messages left with his constituency office and parliamentary office there was no response to the concerns.

I repeat. Best. Election. Ever.

This is how they used to do it. A dig through the RTE archives has unearthed this series of TV and radio clips from the station’s coverage of past general elections. There’s some fascinating bits and pieces, including behind-the-scenes coverage from 1982, a report from a mass at the Pro-Cathedral for incoming deputies in 1981 and, from the same year and perhaps best of all, Vincent Browne rocking a fine set of mutton chops AND admitting to Brian Farrell that he was wrong.