INSIDE POLITICS - TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR THIS GOVERNMENT

THERE are four years, eight months and six days left until the next general election.


That means only one thing — the Government has left it too late to save their skins. They are toast already.

Ah yes, you say. A resurgent Fine Gael will become even more resurgent and will wipe the floor with them. Ermmm, no.

By the way they are shaping up so far, Fine Gael look like they will be merely spectators to the Government’s demise. I was speaking to a senior Fine Gael backroom person during the week and asked him about the state of play of its strategic planning for the next five years.




The answer I got was that there isn’t a strategy, not yet. The reasons?

It’s only a couple of months since a tough election. The new front bench needs to bed itself in. Give it a bit of time.

It was — and I didn’t quibble — a reasonable explanation. But it was also wrong.

Just as a week can be a long time in politics, a five-year term can be a short time in politics. And we have seen a couple of examples in the past week of Fine Gael spokespeopleopposing just for the sake of opposing and offering no cohesive or original proposals of its own (and before you correct me, the otherwise smart Charlie Flanagan’s suggestion to call in the army was not original).

And so in the new Dáil term, we have seen FG take up where it left off before the election. We don’t know if it’s still relying on the three pillars on which it fought the election campaign — health, crime and value for money — but it seems to be. And that’s a mistake.

There’s a school of thought within FG that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it — continue with the strategy that won it 20 seats and sure, won’t it yield even more?

A couple of weeks ago, FG’s young blade Leo Varadkar wrote in a posh newspaper arguing that far from trumpeting its success, FG should be flagellating itself for failing to win the election.

The campaign (ie the superficial razzmatazz) was professional, but wasn’t enough. “We did not win the policy debates. We showed an unwillingness to take clear positions. We did not demonstrate competence to run the economy.”

As an example, he said, the party, by concentrating on the narrow issue of stamp duty (pandering to a skewed and perverse Sunday Independent campaign), abandoned imaginative plans for a 30% income tax for middle earners. To that end, they could learn from the flair that Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne has shown in terms of policy and presentation.

Mr Varadkar’s argument that Fine Gael “will have to look like modern Ireland” sounds like it comes straight out of David Cameron’s rulebook.

FG needs to do all of those things. But already, it’s beginning to look like it might not need to bother. The PDs already look like goners. There’s no dynamic for change within FF, which means that Brian Cowen and others will bide their time even if Bertie Ahern stays on until 2011.

If that happens, whoever succeeds him will be leading Fianna Fáil into opposition.

And the Green Party? The incinerator debate this week underlined the innate weakness of its position in Government. The media and opposition honed in not on John Gormley’s argument that Ireland will need two rather than eight incinerators, but on his tacit acceptance that incinerators will be needed in the first place. That’s a big concession.

Its biggest enemy will be time. In the Programme for Government, the Greens got a commitment to an international review of national waste policy. And it’s been agreed. That’s fine. But it won’t be completed until 2009. And by the time they’ve gone through the hoops of approval, procurement and delivery, it will be — well, way beyond 2012.

And with an economy beginning to feel the squeeze, its own big flagship issues — the annual 3% reduction in carbon emissions; the big push towards renewable and alternative forms of energy — will encounter resistance from FF ministers.

The Greens know that FF has red lines and is not prepared to cross them. So many of what the Greens want is predicated on reviews, reports, promises and vague aspirations (stuff that can be kicked into the blue yonder). Green ministers and their advisers are still talking naively about how nice FF ministers have been to them. But in technical terms that’s called a honeymoon period.

If they don’t start picking a couple of fights with the Big Beasts of FF soon, they’ll find themselves with nothing tangible to show. There are four years, eight months and five days left. But if they don’t start moving, it will be too late.

INSIDE POLITICS - MORATORIUM

Parties did little today. Only two official press briefings. All the politicians returned to their own constituencies.

Red C and the Sunday Business Post published an eve of election poll, which was sampled on Monday and Tuesday. It's up on the Red C website.

Shows that FF have risen since their poll on Sunday (but aren't as high here as they were in the TNS mrbi poll). Labour and Fine Gael - and the PDs - will all take some positives from it. It's where many commentators and observers sense the parties are at. On this basis, the outcome will go down to the wire...

There are two intriguing findings. One shows that people, when asked, now think the FF-PD combination is a marginally better one; reversing the situation on May 13.

More interesting is the finding that shows that the uppage in Fianna Fail's support coincided almost exactly with the fall in the number of undecideds. It seems that most of those who were undecided have decided in the past week (Westminster? The TV debate? Continuity? Doubt abut the wherewithal of the others?) to throw in their lot with the Bertie Bunch.

The Greens might also be worried by a little dip. Equally the PDs will take a crumb of comfort that they have crept up by a point.

John Gormley issued a statement last night saying that the last seat in Dublin South East was going to be a fight between him and Michael McDowell. Last minute shivers down the spine or is this constituency going to surprise us again.

I've got it in the neck all week for predicting that FF won't take a seat on The Week in Politics last Sunday. Maybe I concentrated too much on the failure of both the FF candidates to win council seats. I met Eoin Ryan in the Leinster House car park and he tackled me over it - saying that you can't argue against 1.2 quotes.

"There's always a FF seat in Dublin South East"

A mature recollection moment for me? Possibly. Sure, we are all fallible!

Here is the State of parties: (compared to last Sunday)

Fianna Fail 38 (+2)
Fine Gael 26 (-1_
Labour 11 (-)
Sinn Fein 9 (-1)
Greens 6 (-2)
PD 3 (+1)
Others 7 (+1)

INSIDE POLITICS - LATEST POLL

The Irish Times/Tns mrbi poll results tonight will give the three main parties a little to boast about and a lot to chew on.

The results are: FF 36 (+2); FG 28 (-3); Lab 13 (+3); SF 10 (-); GP 5 (-1); PDs 2 (-1); other 6 (-).

(Read more on its Breaking News site)

FF will be happy that it's got a little bounce. It will help galvanise the troops, get the likes of Cowen to thump the hurley onto the dressing room table, telling them that they're still in the hunt.

But 36% is low. Worse ever low. FF tend to go down as well in the election campaign but they've rarely started off a campaign as uncomfortably low as they are now.

The two worst performances were under Albert Reynolds in 1992, and under Bertie Ahern in 1997. In fact Bertie's first election as leader was pass remarkable - what hid over the sclerosis was slick vote management. Last time around FF attracted transfers from everywhere - it's not going to happen now.

FG has fallen three but it's still happy with 28. Even the party's most enthusiastic strategists (why does Frank Flannery come to mind?) were saying that looks a bit high. So it's not too put out by the fall, unless it's a sign of a trend (and the Sunday Business Post poll on Sunday will tell us that).

We've been talking about Sinn Fein and the Greens for two years now. But Labour is the story of the past month. The party is buoyant. Pat Rabbitte has had a good first ten days of the campaign. On 13% it will make gains at the expense of FF, and some of the targeted gains of FG and the Greens (who are not at 5% - showing some signs of decline in recent months).

Rabbitte and Kenny are at the highest level of satisfaction. FF got a mini bounce this time in sympathy for Bertie, but nothing like last October. SF look solid, and Gerry Adams satisfaction rating has jumped, a direct reflection, I would guess, of the feelgood factor around Stormont on Tuesday.

Shows how fluid, how volatile and how fickle it's all going to be. There's a fortnight left. There will be a lot of skelping!

INSIDE POLITICS - PDs OUT OF GOVERNMENT

Bertie Gate - The Sequel is the story that keeps on giving.

It's going to take us right into week two of the campaign.

We'll have to wait until tomorrow morning to see the impact of new Sunday newspaper revelations and what the PDs will do.

If the PDs pull out, it will mean little in terms of Government... it's on half-throttle in any instance since the election was called.

But it will leave the PDs very isolated. They will have severed their ties with FF. None of the other parties wants to treat with them. They'll have to make a very good pitch as to why they will be any relevance.

And as for FF. The papers will damage them more. The PDs pulling out will damage them more. The Mahon Tribunal, by timing the Quarryvale 2 module to coincide with the election campaign, may have unwittingly taken the Government down. Everything that is damaging Bertie Ahern is coming from documents that the Tribunal distributed to witnesses and which one of them is now leaking.

INSIDE POLITICS - POLLS APART

The Wexford Echo is running a poll today, conducted by Red C.

The surprise are at both extremes. John Browne is his county's answer to Michael Ring. Despite being a junior minister, he is ubiquitous - at funerals, weddings and barmitzvahs! He told me a couple of years ago that his constituency office deals with 14,000 pieces of correspondence each year.

It is, therefore, not surprising that he is the likely poll topper this time round as he was in 2002. But what's flabbergasting is his showing in the poll. 30 per cent! That's double what he got five years ago. Now the last time I looked at Browne he hadn't unveiled hitherto concealed superhero powers or disclosed that he was putting his name forward as the next leader of FF.

So why the jump. If you look at the local constituency polls done so far, you see the leading contenders getting massive showings of support (Mayo, Galway West and Dublin Central are cases in point). It suggests that voters have not yet fully committed themselves and are plumping in opinion polls for the candidates they know best. I will perform a jig in Michael Flatley's most outre costume in the Bull Ring in Wexford town if Browne repeats that on polling day.

Can Colm O'Gorman be scoring as low as 2%? That happened too to John O'Mahony in Mayo. It's worrying for him but it's still early days. In his case, he has to get over the hump people will have about him (like O'Mahony) being a parachute candidate. But at the same time, the PDs better start worrying if he is their main hope of a gain.

Well, most ministers have now departed like the Four Evangelists to the furthest corners of the World to spread the Gospel according to the Bert.

The press relief justifying this was purgatorially long (nine pages for a press release!). Of course, that immediately aroused suspicions on the basis that the Government doth protest too much.


It was full of spurious claims and half-truths. An inedible concoction stuffed with cheerful prose and garnished with pious piffle.

“A unique even in the global calendar.”

“An unrivalled opportunity to promote modern Ireland overseas.”

Phrases not included: Junket; Jolly; knees-up; waste of taxpayers’ money.
The second worst part of it is the selling of each event as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to promote trade.

Batteen O’Keeffe slaving away for us in Ho Chi Minh city. If Timmy O’Malley didn’t make it to Osaka, sure wouldn’t the whole of Ireland’s lucrative export potential to the Far East slip down the drain.

The worst part of it was the following line.

“The Taoiseach and Ministers this year will highlight the global threat of climate change and the urgency of acting together to meet this challenge.”

Yeah, sure. With 18 long-haul destinations around the globe (each involving delegations of between four and six) there is no better way to highlight the threat of climate change. See Liam Reid’s story on carbon footprints in the Irish Times (subscription)

What hypocrisy!

When the news of Tony Blair's family holiday to Miami last Christmas was made public, he was forced into stumping up the cost for offsetting the carbon emissions of the long-haul flights. It didn't cost a huge amount, a few hundred quid sterling (see Guardian story on it here). Similarly Irish government ministers flying to far-flung climes should be made stump up to offset their carbon footprints. And that should come from their pockets and not be another freebie that we suckers have to eventually stump up.

INSIDE POLITICS - The Grid

Outside conference season, Sundays are usually quiet days for political journalists. The political parties all know it is a quiet news day. Most of the press releases all have a 'Here's one I prepared earlier' vibe to them.

But in a strange kind of way, weekends have almost been busier than weekdays over the past two months. To be sure, a lot of it is explained by the party conferences and Ard Fheiseanna.

But it's axiomatic that an election is approaching faster than an Atlantic squall.

Sunday was a short straw day. Four separate press conferences - two Government, one PD, and one Labour. At least one of them - and maybe two - was a neat demonstration of the goldfish syndrome. Backroom people know that collective memories last all of about three seconds. So the trick is to announce the same thing over and over again.

But Sunday was the first time that I got a sense of the Grid. The Grid is the diary mode that all parties go into in an election campaign. The schedule everything to wonkish, nerdish, paranoid and exhaustive detail. There's the message of the day. There's the issue of the day. All the effort to get maximum exposure for the party's top personalities across as many demographics, across as wide a geography, as possible.

The Grid will be on the web, on the pod sphere and, yes, on the blogosphere for this election. Political parties will try to fulfill the American civil war maxim of getting there firstest with the mostest. A number of politicians - Dominic Hannigan, Joanna Tuffy, Ciaran Cuffe, John Gormely - have well established blogs. Labour threw up a video of Pat Rabbitte asking us the famous question with the weasel comma: But, are you happy? Mary Harney went one better this weekend with a slick video to accompany the PDs' billboard campaign on health. And here it is but see below for continuation of discussion!




Not so slick though was the actual launch of of the billboard by the Progressive Democrats. Its location was the junction of Stephen's Green and Grafton Street on a busy Sunday morning. That was a mistake. The reason. Politicians might actually encounter what they fear most - the electorate.

It was a very predictable event. The photographers do their smiley shots. Then the reporter huddle around to ask questions of our heroes. All us rabble are missing are the cards with the 'press' legend slipped into the band of our fedora hats.

But there was a guy passing who wasn't reading the script. Con Kennedy threw in a question right at the end of the huddle. The press officers tried to fend him off gently. But he was not to be deflected. He has a four year-old-son who has anaphylaxis which means that Con Kennedy always needs to carry shots of adrenaline. He asked a simple question: why was there no paediatric immunologist in Ireland to deal with his son's rare condition.

No amount of statistics, or general political pronouncements, or aspirations can deal with such direct human experience.

In fairness to Mary Harney, she did her best. But from a public relations perspective, a carefully coordinated press conference had been essentially hijacked.

It was a little like Tony Blair being ambushed by the Women's Institute or John Prescott throwing his famous uppercut. The dailies on Monday morning didn't report the PD billboard launch, rather the fact that an angry young father had rained on the parade.

The Grid. It's not in the sphere yet. In America maybe. But over here, the election will be fought on the streets and in the hustings. Not on the web. Its influence is growing, certainly, though it will take some time before it reaches critical mass.


As an end note, here is one of the vaguely funny parodies that are doing the rounds on You Tube. Do people have nothing better to do with their time except feeds us with such abundant blog fodder?

INSIDE POLITICS - Posters

The Kylie moment. Back in 2002, Pat Rabbitte, then a humble backbencher (that's an oxymoron if ever there was one) came out with a rapier comment that was never surpassed during the election campaign.

It was March, early April maybe - certainly a good few weeks before the election campaign was launched. And quicker than the Black Death had spread throughout Europe in the middle ages, Bertie posters had suddenly appeared on every lamp-post in the country.

Rabbitte couldn't avoid them in his Tallaght and Clondalkin heartland. Bertie's face was more ubiquitous in his constituency, he said, than Kylie Minogue's bum. (The Australian icon allegedly had surgery on her backside that - predictably - prompted oodles of pictorial coverage in the tabloid press).

The net point that Rabbitte was making was a serious one: under the electoral acts, there were strict limits on spending by candidates and parties.

In 2002, the limits for each candidate was:

- €25,394.76 (£20,000) in a 3 seat constituency;
- €31,743.45 (£25,000) in a 4 seat constituency;
- €38,092.14 (£30,000) in a 5 seat constituency.

During an election campaign, political parties are allowed, well, a great big zero to begin . The only income they are allowed iswhatever money is assigned by its individual candidates. So for example, a candidate in a 3 seat constituency was allowed 25 grand or so in 2002. The party allowed him or her to keep, say, €15,000 for personal campaign spending with the balance of €10 grand going to the party nationally. With 100 candidates, say, the party could then have an allowance of €1 million.

Not a lot of dough, when you are talking about TV and newspaper ads, leaders' travel expenses, daily launches etc.... all closely monitored by the Standards in Public Office Commission.

But the trick is that these limits only apply DURING the election campaigns (which last barely three weeks).

There are absolutely no limits on spending before the election campaign. That will give an answer as to why Fine Gael have launched a rake of billboards; why the Labour Party has followed suit and the PDs will launch their fourth in a series of five next Sunday when they launch a Health one.



Fine Gael's spend has been incredible, certainly running into seven figures. So far, FF has been the only party to hold back. Expect a blitzkrieg, a tidal wave, an epidemic, a blizzard, a plague of FF stuff from late March/early April.

We have the appearance of ethics and standards in spending and donations since the great unpleasantness of the middle 1990s. But in reality, there is little of it. What we do have is a total swiz, a magician's distraction.

For one, parties can spend as much as they like at any time other than those narrow three weeks of an election campaign.

And for two, what's worse is we don't have a clue how much they raise, despite the introduction of all these laws of transparency.

Sure, you have to declare a donation if it's above a certain limit. What parties have done is made sure that the vast bulk of their individual and corporate donations fall below that limit. So we hear about silent collections and envelopes at Fine Gael and FF shindigs - presidential dinners, Galway Races and the like. But when you see if there's any record of how much has been raised, there is nothing - because all the donations fall tantalisingly below the limit. It's the same with Bertie's Christmas fundraiser in Clontarf castle - it raises a huge amount of money for his well-greased organisation. But how much? The figure remains as much a mystery to the general public as Paddy the Plasterer.

Soon Bertie's face will start to appear everywhere. And for a couple of weeks the country will look like a tinpot former Soviet dictatorship as we succumb to the cult of personality surrounding the one and only The Bert.

By the way, The Bert's legend has spread far and wide - to Canada no less. Check out this comedy sketch:

INSIDE POLITICS - PDs

4pm Saturday
It's still February. The election is still months away. And already I'm beginning to feel like one of the depression-era marathon dancers in the film "They Shoot Horses Don't They"

The pre-election-campaign campaign is in full swing. Nearly every weekend between now and the end of March, there is a party conference or Ard Fheis. From Friday night to Sunday afternoon, each of the parties say 'come hither' and spend the entire weekend shamelessly flaunting their wares at us.

This weekend it's the PDs down in Wexford (for the party's own ongoing coverage of the event, follow this link) With each convention, the names and slogans and messages may change but the format and over-riding atmosphere are the same for all.

For the media, this is how it pans out: The party leader opens the conference on a Friday night with a speech that will include a news line for the TV and radio news at 9pm and for the following morning's newspapers. The news tag from McDowell last night wasn't an announcement but a 'The End is Nigh' speech, warning about the Armageddon that will happen if that useless shower in the opposition ever get their hands onto power.

The Bert is a master of the Friday night newsline - at the last FF Ard Fheis he announced in his Friday night speech that he wanted a referendum on the rights of children (that's the one we may or may not have before the election!).

These are annual conferences and motions actually do get debated. But nowadays you sense (with all parties) the internal debates are mostly for cosmetic purposes. The real deal is the oodles of priceless unopposed publicity all weekend. They get two hours of live TV in the morning. It gets an opportunity to showcase as many of their candidates as they can. The party leader will do a doorstep interview with a huddle of reporters. This is for the benefit of radio reporters. Then there's another hour of RTE coverage, this time on radio with John Bowman, in which three or four of the party heavyweights get airtime.

Things you always hear at party conferences. Morale has never been so high. We are all 100% united behind our great leader (insert appropriate name). I have been coming to conferences for a long time and can safely say that this has been the best one ever. The media have got it wrong.

Things you never hear at party conferences. We're doomed. The media have got it right.

Anyway, like other conferences, the PDs have gathered a big crowd here. I'm in the main hall as I write this, for the afternoon workshops. They used a neat visual trick to portray the hall as full. Every row of seats has its own table. Brilliant! Theres nothing worse on TV to show a half-empty auditorium.

For a small niche party, the showing is very respectable. At this very moment they are debating a few motions on crime. Hey, it's the PDs after all and we're hearing a lot about being tough on crime, but not so much, sadly, about being tough on the causes of crime. Oh, yeah, loads of applause for McDowell everything his name is mentioned.

They have just started an open forum now with the great man, as he does a Q and A session with delegates. He, John Dardis and guest speaker David Quinn have been placed on stage in an informal manner, seated on stools like traditional musicians but without their instruments (ie they all look very uncomfortable).

Of course, the main event will be McDowell's maiden leader's speech tonight. You don't have to have too much wattage up in the attic to know that he'll go for broke - with tax cuts, or new tougher laws on crime, or the like.

As I wrote in my column this morning, McDowell is omnipresent. In Ireland, the cult of personality has always run deep in political life, particularly in Fianna Fail where the party was personified by its leader, de Valera, Lemass, Lynch, Haughey, Reynolds and Ahern.

All parties approach campaigning, here as elsewhere, in a presidential manner, pushing the personality of its leader. But it seems to me that the cult surrounding McDowell is a bigger one that the one that surrounded Mary Harney.
Everything in the party seems to revolve around him. Sure, Harney is still a senior minister but she now confines herself to the task in hand in Health. Where are the others who should have stepped up to the place. The two other members of the leadership troika, Liz O'Donnell and Tom Parlon, have not asserted themselves sufficiently.

Sure, there's no such thing as bad publicity. But are there perils to being over-exposed, to to the PDs being totally synonomous with McDoweel, to fatigue kicking in. Maybe he and his party should learn that sometimes less can be more.

INSIDE POLITICS - The Hurricane of Hype

WHO is the star of this week’s column? Take a wild guess. If you happened to die and are now pushing up daisies, you might not have noticed him this week.


Of if you happen to be an anchorite monk living on a remote island sometime in the 6th century, there’s a slim chance that he may not have crossed your path.

For everybody else, there was no escape. From the moment he choked on his Corn Flakes last Sunday morning, Michael McDowell has reacted to Labour’s tax coup by invading our every waking moment, policing our thoughts, and trying to wash, like rain, the trashy Labour promises off the pavement.




On Monday, he introduced the techniques of Sumo wrestling to Irish political discourse. In a matter of mere seconds, his ferocious and fierce onslaught removed Pat Rabbitte from the ring. The winning technique? Haiku. “I want to say this about the speech that Pat Rabbitte made the other night. That speech proves that he is now admitting that he has been talking rubbish for 20 years. He has attacked every aspect of our tax policies. He’s voted against them in every Finance Bill.

“He has denied our argument that tax rates matter. And here he is now saying, after 20 years of empty, unsuccessful, hypocritical rhetoric, that he accepts he is wrong. What a sadmoment for him.”

This outburst came during a so-called doorstep interview, where the politician takes questions (usually on the street) from reporters. There were no questions here. McDowell walked up the reporters, delivered his broadside, said “I’m finished” and walked away again. A few reporters sniggered. But for McDowell there was nothing funny about this.

For this was a Labour leader having the cheek to encroach on his territory. Though what came across washumorous, what bubbled inside was toil and trouble. This column has said it before: McDowell is a one-man walking Atlantic weather system. This week, it was storm force 10 stuff coming in furiously with no respite.

The really scary bit is that all this is just the lead-up to the Progressive Democrats national conference this weekend. You might have noticed the sly reference above to Travis Bickle, the anti-hero of Martin Scorsese’s classic film, Taxi Driver. On Tuesday, McDowell did his own bit of scary “you looking at me” stuff when he announced a package of anti-crime measures. The Tánaiste has a tendency to announce his measures in the manner that Twink introduced John Bruton at a Fine Gael Árd Fheis a long time. You initially think, great stuff, and then you think, this is over-the-top, and then you think, oh, God, this is going to finish up badly.

His crime package sounded very impressive on first hearing. Suspects could be detained for seven days. There were tighter measures for bail; further curtailments of the right to silence, as well as provisions to introduce the long-awaited DNA database.

But then we found out it was all based on an interim (and rushed)report of the expert group charged with re-balancing the law.

Not only that, but the package of measures didn’t include legislation — only an intention to legislate.

So what was that all about then? Optics? In reality, by the time that package becomes law, the general election will be but a dim memory.

McDowell wanted to give the impression he was being tough on crime (as usual the “crisis” has been hyped up by politicians and the media). Now he has come up with illusory measures to remedy an illusory crisis.

For one thing hit me between the eyes in the recent Frank Luntz focus group exercise for RTÉ. Crime was identified as a huge issue. Yet, not one of the group had been a victim of crime in the past five years, save for one guy who got his chainsaw nicked. And why were they all scared to walk the streets, leave the key in the door etc? They said it was because the media told them so. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy if there ever was one.

Of course, the Tánaiste didn’t leave it there. He was just warming himself up. On Wednesday, he took on the Mahon Tribunal, claiming its legal bill could top €1 billion. By Thursday, that row deepened into a full-blown crisis. Characteristically, he robustly stood by his word that night, setting up the second grave stand-off with the judiciary in as many months. And that was the same day, he promised he would big it up at the PDs’ conference in Wexford, with his own proposals on tax cuts and stamp duty.

Batten down the hatches folks. A hurricane of hype and histrionics is fast approaching from the South East.

(This is my column from today's Irish Examiner)

INSIDE POLITICS: If you're happy and you know it...

Fresh from their national conference last weekend, Labour has its gander up. It launched a new webside makeachange.ie today, along with a poster campaign.

A lot of it is based on the non-tax and non-health aspects of Rabbitte's speech on Saturday night, where he referred to the "gilded treadmill", where people are earning far more but feel that the lives they lead are less happy. Or they sense they are less fulfilled than their parents, or that their lives do not match the poorer but happier world they remember from their childhood.

The Bert has championed this theme as well, with a task force and campaign on citizenship. But the language tused for that campaign was so technical, so full of gobblygedook, so darned ugly that it has had next to zero impact. Active citizenship and volunteering are unwieldy terms that have little purchase with people.

The slogan being pushed by Labour to grapple with this complex but nonetheless crucial theme is much more effective. 'But Are You Happy?' it asks. You can see it emblazoned across this new website.

But while the Labour message is more direct,I am one of those fatalists who believe that little can be done to reverse the downside of the massive changes that have taken place in Ireland in the past ten years. Society has become more urbanised, fragmented, individual, materialistic and ultimately dissociated. To encourage/compel/cajole people into caring a little more for those around them will require a colossal change... the kind that's only brought out by catastrophic or calamitous events. By the way, it's not half as bad as some portray it. But telling people they can't have a second car, or their own house as opposed to an apartment, or can't automatically have a holiday home in Wexford is like telling a brand-conscious child that they can't have that pair of sneakers that all their friends have.

Elsewhere this morning, I was flicking through the list of legislation to be published in this Spring term. The Government says it will publish 25 new Bills. Not a snowball's hope in hell. They'll publish the Finance Bill and the Social Wefare Bill, both necessary to give effect to changes announced in the Budget. They'll pass and publish a couple of other Bills. And that's about.

We're into election mode. After the St Patrick's Day break next month, all the big guys will be on the road. I will sing Danny Boy in falsetto in a public place in the Election isn't called by Easter. So legislatively, it's all over. And there's a whole pile of promised stuff (some very important) that will never see the light of day.

Labour's new website is interesting. It has embraced technology more than any of the other parties (including blogs, though Ciaran Cuffe and John Gormley of the Greens are still the best there). And the website even includes a little video of Pateen a la Barak Obama and Hillary Clinton. Hell, there's a couple of politicians who have even got their own bebo sites (to get down with the kids!)

But sadly, technology isn't really going to be a factor in this election. We are usually a little behind the curve. It's big already in the US but it will be 2012 before it is fully embraced by all the parties. By the way, the Fianna Fail site is the worst of the lot, never worth looking at for anything.

The other big looming worry is flagrant auction politics by all the parties during the pre-election conference season. Within the space of two days, we have had tax cuts and a promise of a whopping 50% increase in pensions. Where is it going to end? Free holidays for everybody?

As I write, Brian Cowen is on The News at One vipering into Labour's tax-cut promise. He's denouncing it as irresponsible while defending the PDs equally grandiose promise of a huge rise in pensions as "not outside the bounds of possibility".

Good man, like a pint of you know what, consistency in a world gone mad!

INSIDE POLITICS - Finally, a real Rabbitte out of a Hat

Since Saturday night, Pat Rabbitte has looked like a man who has entered a pub on Easter Sunday having just completed his 40 days of being on the tack. He has been brimming with goodwill, bursting with bonhomie, overflowing with mirth.

His coup at the national conference - the announcement of tax cuts at the standard rate - has proved to be the biggest political payload for Labour. Ever!

Fianna Fail and the PDs responded as if a fox had been let loose in their chicken coop. The fury of their reaction was redolent of how effective it all was. Brian Cowen and Micheal Martin were quick out of the traps. It continued yesterday with the Bert's gnomic put-down of both Rabitte and all us cynical journalists and our caustic charmless ways (forgetting that the Coalition itself announced a tax cut in December and the PDs are looking for another round or two of cuts).

If I was to announce this weekend, that I was to continue to cut taxes by 3pc, I'd be in the editorials this morning criticised for trying to buy votes. But then again, you know what editorial writers are.

Erm, no the Bert, we dont' know what editorial writers are.

But the best response was a glorious 30 second outburst from Michael McDowell. He came out to reporters, delivered it, took no further questions and just walked away. The little microphone huddle was stunned into silence. And his sermon was delivered in such a grave, mirthless, furious and over-the-top way that it was hilarious. Bitter. Bilious. But brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.

"I want to say this about the speech that Pat Rabbitte made the other night. That speech proves that he is now admitting that he has been talking rubbish for 20 years. He has attacked every aspect of our tax policies. He's voted against them in every Finance Bill. He has denied our argument that tax rates matter. And here he is now saying, after 20 years of empty unsuccessful, hypocritical rhetoric, that he accepts he is wrong. What a sad moment for him."

No wonder Rabbitte took so much glee at causing such mayhem within the Government. Maybe it's time for him to take his occasional drinking buddy - as revealed on Tubridy recently - for a confidence-boosting pint.

So we finally got the attack poster featuring Michael McDowell yesterday. But it was one issued by the PDs and not by Fine Gael. The FGers lost confidence and went for a wan poster showing an idyllic scene with the same message. I spotted the new FG poster driving in this morning. Because the concept is a 'poster within a poster', the size of the slogans and writing is smaller, and very hard to read. It really lacks impact.

Meanwhile, the PDs one is simple, direct, does what it says on the tin. Judge for yourselves.

And what is it with the Irish Independent and Pat Rabbitte? This morning the Indo suggested that Labour deputy leader Liz McManus's oppostion to her party joining a FF-led coalition was kind of conditional and that she too was beginning to waver. The newspaper had based its assertion on her reference in a radio interview to unforeseen circumstances that can give rise to extraordinary responses.
But in a quote that the Indo itself used yesterday, she made it clear what she meant by those.
"I spoke at one point on radio about the possibility of extraordinary circumstances arising which might change the situation. But I was literally talking about something like a national state of emergency or something like a third world war. That might alter my views but it is about the only thing that would do so.
"My position has been clear and consistent. There is no change from what I said in the Irish Independent last week."
Well, now we know. Labour will have no difficulty going into coaliton with FF in the event of a nuclear fall-out.