Quentin Gargan

I’ve never been a great fan of posters on lampposts, and would be a lot happier if there was a total moratorium on them by all parties, but of course the big players who can afford to swamp the area with them would never go for that.

First out of the traps this year is Christy ‘never-mind-the-Litter-Act’ O’Sullivan from FF. He didn’t chance putting all his posters up - just 15 to 20 around the outskirts of each main town - enough that if the council whipped them down on Monday it’d not put a dent in the total stock.

I reckon that the long-suffering electorate has to look at all our ugly mugs for long enough, without one of us jumping the gun to get some exclusive exposure on the lampposts of West Cork. I asked the County Council’s Senior Engineer whether they would press charges, especially since it is a member of the Co. Council that has broken the law. He said it wouldn’t be worth his while because the judge would probably let him off, it being so close to the election.

He did suggest that since it is litter, we could take them down ourselves - in the same way that one might pick up rubbish off the street, I guess we could take some of Christy’s rubbish off the lamp-posts. They cost him about €8 each by the way. Dublin Corpo takes them down with a long-reach tree clipper.

Question: “Why is it that developers who are so keen to support a political party don’t leave money to them in their will?

Answer: “Because they want their rewards in this life, and not in the next one.”

That has to be the quote of the day from “It says in the Papers” on RTE. Afraid I don’t know which paper it was in…

What with the various tribunals, there were all sorts of ethics regulations brought in to limit the likelihood of money corrupting politics. Naturally they included a few flaws to ensure that they were entirely ineffective, such as;

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Many of us feel frustrated at the corruption in politics and a national agenda set by big business to the detriment of ordinary citizens. But today the environmental consequences are perhaps the most important issue.

Global warming is a huge threat, oil stocks are depleting, and we just can’t afford yet another election in which the environment is either ignored or spun. That’s pretty much the reason I’m running for the Greens in Cork SW. I haven’t been particularly political in the past - I’ve almost always voted for whoever was in opposition, (only to be disappointed when they won).

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