Jesus christ, it's painful.
It always is.
Some cunt even made it up my road and hung up his mug on a pole (ruining the ambience).
Rather than deface it, why not get artistic with it and:
1 - take a good clear photo of the poster and upload it, then colour check it and blot out whatever sections/verbals piss you off the most
2 - then add your own text telling your own 'alternative truths'
3 - print off/cut to size an A4 sheet of your own 'alternative truth' about the candidate as though he/she did it themselves
4 - make it look as real as possible and paste it into place it in the dead of night without otherwise defacing the poster
It's not going to stop them lying but it might inspire others to do the same.
Another worthy tip: on the day/evening/night of the elections, gather up as many posters as you can from the poles and lamps around your area. A short ladder and a pair of clippers to snip the cable ties is all you need. Hold onto them for a few days and then go back out and rehang them where you found them, then phone it in to the council and watch the fines add up.
A contender in an election a few years back wanted me to give him some spread in Ballyer as he was running in Dublin South West. An ex-army ranger who lived in Bray but used his parents address in Drimnagh as his campaign HQ, he started getting snotty with me about the questions I was asking him. Then he started making threats via private messages, so I posted copies of his threats to me personally in the public threads discussing him and his army rangers buddy Cathal Berry, who was (is) running in Kildare North. Things got out of hand and he went flying off the handle. All I could do at that stage was mock him, he'd pretty much made a fool of himself. But when the locals read the threats, they did exactly what I suggested you might do: pull down his posters just before the election, then put them back up two days later and phone in some complaints. On top of losing miserably, he was then nailed with several hundreds of euros in fines for his posters still hanging three days after the election ended. He came up to Dublin and did the rounds pulling them all back down, but still had to pay the fines.
Win/win.
The fucking Indo has taken off its subscriber wall to regale the country with the whole fucking pantomine of it in their inimitable way. Check it out.
Maybe they removed the paywall on the election coverage, but the rest of the paper is still locked.
The only journalist I have any time for at the Indo is the stalwart Gene Kerrigan, whose books I love, whose articles always cut to the chase, and who sticks out like a sore thumb in Indoland. His book (with Pat Brennan) '
This Great Little Nation - The A-Z of Irish Scandals and Controversies' is an addictive little number that'll tickle your fancy and have you in stitches of laughter at the antics of some of your most famous political scammers.
Other than that the Indo can kiss my arse.
The general election campaign of 2024 is in full swing.
m.independent.ie
Well first thing is to go down to that election poster and paint something over it, a cow, or a horse or something.
Read first comment above.
What to do about the Indo though.
I simply gave up once the paywall hit. I used to read the Indo, Irish Times, and the Examiner for national news from Ireland. The Herald for Dublin specific news, and a few other rags for Ballyfermot and her surrounds. Once the Indo started charging I gave the whole lot up. I asked myself why I was still chasing down Irish scandals fifteen years after leaving the poxy little island.
It was mainly to give myself something to laugh about when 2011 onward turned into the carnage that you still see today on your high streets. The warnings about people losing their homes began a few years before, but by 2011 it started happening for real. Look at it now? It's not like any of 'just happened' and can be fixed. Instead, they've put it to you in such a way as to make you want to blame them for losing their house. The women and kids too.
They're still at it - and you did all party, right?
Just as y'all will do again with all the freebies and giveaways in the last budget.
That €14Bn from Apple?
Seriously?
The absolute state of its "journalists".
They're far from the madcap antics of say Hunter S Thompson, which leaves a gap for wits like you and I.
Not so much journalists in the classic sense as they are paid employees with specific functions under specific orders.
Kerrigan seems to me to be the only one thinking for himself in there.
Which makes one wonder how long he'll last.
But I asked myself that same question ten years ago - and he's still at it.
How does the recruitment of such wankers work?
There's a woman who does location articles for the Six One News. Can't recall her name, but she was modelling for Elaine's Model Management back in the 1980s and studying communications at the same time in the DIT. She tried writing but hadn't the guts for the real shit. Here she is, forty years later and the best she can get is phoning in articles from around the country.
It's a closed shop, recruitment mostly happens around the dinner table every Sunday: if you're in - you're good to go.
If not, then you'll be hammering your noggin against the wall like yer wan at large out in the sticks.
Obviously they're snatched at college.
Head-hunted, perhaps. But RTE doesn't accept people who have no relations in Montrose. Even if it's only your second cousin, that's a foot in the door. But a degree in journalism from whatever school or institution? Not a chance. They don't need honest writers who beat the streets. They need more marionettes, the sort used to having their strings pulled from up on high.
But how do they profile that level of wankerdom?
I blame the parents.
Jody Corcoran I take especial exception to. And you know underneath that veneer of cringey Indo institutionalisation, would it surprise you to know he's [removed to avoid trouble] in real life? (Or, IRL as Jambo the idiot high IQ white supremacist muppet writes).
He's what now? I know his face, I've read his articles over the years.
Am I right in presuming the reference regards his personal choices in partners?
I think it can be read in the level of bullshit someone deals in, if you're attuned to it.
Jimmy D casts some long shadows, eh.
I suspect at least some of those FFGers,prancing like a tit, making "connections" with other tits for votes, may well be the kind of fucker you'd not want to ever marry or be a close relation of.
Watching Simon Harris running down the road to shake Mick Martin's hand in Cork yesterday was laughable and cringey.
But only from a safe distance.
The pair of them are currently trying to start rows with each other about their mirror-image policies and manifesto content. The promises they're flinging out make my skin crawl. Professional liars. 100% guilt free too. These guys have been at it so long they can't tell the truth from a hole in the ground.
Christ, but Irish culchies must be the most pliant and gullible twats anywhere on the planet.
You know, what goes on behind those front doors.
Fine Gael lost several hotshot members over the last several months but they're still talking about entering coalitions like they're entitled to Leinster House by birth-right. Liberal Ireland seems to enjoy having so many gay members of the house. It's like they're flying flags for gay sex. Out goes Leo, in comes Jack Chambers, he's eyeballing Roderick O'Gormless, they both remember meetings with Zappone, and today they're referencing David Norris.
Like a big gay tea party for the big gay quotient.
Pricks, more like.
Anything that can be fucked, will be fucked.
It's the Irish way.
Check this loon out? Val's banging on about how young Irish people will never be able to afford their 'dream home' and they shouldn't even bother themselves trying. He points to this cheesy Irish 'villa' along some boot road plagued by flatbed trucks and cattle being driven through towards the town centre. The garden festooned with cheesy mock Roman pillars and fountain furniture. Little elves guarding the driveway. Green, white, and orange bunting all over the place.
Still, I'd love to see the day Val addresses the Dail.
As I said earlier, I read and watch the news out of Ireland most days. For the laughs, for inspiration to write up articles lampooning them. My Finnish friends don't find it funny at all, they tend to think about what Finland might turn out to be with redneck/culchie school teachers running the place. Retired farmers, estate agents, horse traders, cattle drivers, bookies, auctioneers, you fucking name it.
The ex did a great impersonation of the northern Ireland accent, and loved eyeballing the
sit-ee-ay-shun across the six counties by '
doze in-dee-vid-you-ells'.
Last week Val sang the star spangled banner for Donald Trump - in all seriousness. Tone deaf. Utterly unaware of himself. Of his banality and faux rage against the '
woke left' and '
awlla dem green hoors'. In this clip, he recites a poem he made up about The Irish Freedom Party, again in all seriousness:
And you wonder why the country is on her knees?
Val stands to land himself anywhere up to 6,600 votes from his subscribers. If they all vote for him, he has to make a choice: leave the farm and enter politics full time. Or abandon the position before even taking it up on the lower rungs out of shock at his own mistake in running at all. If he gets in, he stands a chance of being the single most extraordinary culchie ever to face down the Healy-Rae's.
Imagine Val sitting down to a meeting with Abul Kalam Azad Talukder (Limerick City West, Fianna Fail - about housing in Stab City?
Or Roderick O'Gorman about the kids and schools, the rainbow trannies, and the whole woke agenda yoke?
I'd say one decent back-of-the-hand from Val aimed at Simon Harris would knock the little shit into the middle of next month.
I really don't think Val has thought this through: he's knee-jerking himself into doing it because he's spent the last three or four years building up his profile online as a clown car-driving runner. He's backed himself into a corner with all his raging and fuming, so he can't back out now without looking like a country bumpkin on too much adrenalin running through his ruddy cheeks, left in terminal embarrassment until he drops.
I wonder will they laugh at his toothlessness?
His dress sense and general presentation?
The plugs of ear hair sticking out?
The manky jumpers?
Will the pink-shirted member Mick Wallace please stand up? How will they get along? Imagine Val strutting his way down the halls of the house and bumping into Mary-Lou or Roderick? The juniors of the house tossed out the dress code over a decade ago: some still dress for work, some show up like they just left a rave in some disused factory basement. There's traces of cocaine on the latrines. There are two alcohol-vending bars in the house. There's a printing machine down the hall, but after you go in the front door and put in the sheet to be copied, you then have to leave the building and go around the back way to get in the back door for the flyers as the printer is too big for the room it's in. Val could take a quick look at the €3.35k bike shed and the €1.4m hut by the side gates and offer his own designs for both, at less than three-quarters the cost.
He could shift his Polish built WWII lathe into his office and start manufacturing night-sticks for the coppers.
He could invade the department of agriculture and spray his annual slurry run-off all over the front doors.
Go on RTE chat shows to talk about Cavan's wonderful history and its many farmers - with cows.
The options for comedy are endless - but none of it's even meant to be funny in the first fucking place, eh.
