CIAN NIHILL'S sideways look at Election 2011
SLOGAN OF THE DAY:
"IT WASN'T COOL IN THE 80s, IT'S NOT COOL NOW"
A Sinn Féin anti-emigration flyer pointing to the lack of job creation
Lingo driving electorate loco, warns adult literacy agency
Candidates have been urged to curtail the jargon they use during the election campaign after a surge in complaints about convoluted political rhetoric.
The National Adult Literacy Agency said it had received feedback that people were having difficulty in figuring out what politicians were trying to say. The agency has urged parties to use plain English and has reissued a guide to explain almost 400 political terms.
People are finding it difficult to differentiate the messages between each party and are seeking a better and clearer response, Inez Bailey, director of the agency said.
Not communicating properly could work against politicians, she said. "People wonder if politicians dont really want them to know, adding to their frustration and lowering their faith further in the political process."
To use plain English politicians do not need to dumb down the message but need to work harder to say things in accessible and simple terms, she said.
The agency's free terminology guide can be downloaded from nala.ie
QUOTE OF THE DAY: CIARÁN CANNON
"If this wind keeps up I can imagine in six months' time a Jamaican looking quizzically at my face on a poster as it washes up on his beach...
Ciarán Cannon, Fine Gael Senator and general election candidate for Galway East, on his Twitter page
Ghost of Bertie stalks the streets of Dublin northside
He may be retired from Dáil Éireann but Bertie Ahern can still be seen going door to door at all hours of the day after he was captured on Google Maps Street View canvassing along St Clement's Road in Dublin northside.
The former taoiseach seems to have been caught by one of the Google Street View cars during the local election campaigns of 2009 when the photographs were taken and has therefore been preserved, at least in cyberspace, as an eternal campaigner.
While the face is blurred, political observers say it is unmistakably Mr Ahern, captured as he prepares to knock on yet another door, leaflet in hand.
The image can be seen by logging on to maps.google.ie and typing in St Clement's Road, Dublin. After clicking on to street view you can virtually walk down the street, where you might just bump into the man who once led the nation.
He can be seen in the garden of the third house on the left as you cyber stroll down towards St Anne's Street.
While the driver of the Google car may not have noticed the former leader of Fianna Fáil, Mr Ahern certainly noticed the car and is caught turning towards it, presumably in curiosity.
Home fires burn bright for singed leader
Taoiseach Brian Cowen, looked as if a great burden had been lifted from his shoulders last Tuesday night when he made it back to Tullamore having gone to the Park seeking the dissolution of the Dáil and naming the election day.
Many in the Tullamore Court Hotel, where he arrived from Dublin in time to address his party's selection convention, remarked upon how relaxed he was and the passion with which he delivered an hour-long address, without notes, to the 700 faithful who were in attendance.
Accompanied by his wife Mary, the Taoiseach mingled with crowd and revealed he was looking forward to a decent holiday after the election was finished and his duties ended.
The selection of his brother Barry as the Fianna Fáil candidate in Offaly was also a much-needed boost to the man regarded by his supporters as the "most-picked-upon Taoiseach by the media in the history of the State".
Election online:The best bits from YouTube
If you missed the whole downfall of the Government thing because you were busy playing computer games, then this is the catch-up video for you. The drama of the last days of the Dáil goes digital, the result being a short movie that looks like it is straight out of the latest Grand Theft Auto video game.
http://tinyurl.com/4s7nlxl
It turns out that Enda Kenny is in fact a top-secret spy. Well presumably that is what Fine Gael were trying to tell us this week when they posted this video of Mr Kenny’s recent trip to Brussels, complete with oddly chosen Mission Impossible-style theme music as a backing track.
http://tinyurl.com/4pusxe3
On the ground . . . and up in the clouds
"The Green Party will be fighting for the last seat in most of the nine constituencies which we are targeting to return TDs"
John Gormley on the tough reality facing the Greens, that they could possibly have no TDs in the next Dáil
"It is a wireless connection to stored data and information which is very easily retrievable and as a consequence enlightens people like you and I who don't understand what it means."
Enda Kenny explaining cloud computing at a press conference