Re-Turn is the scam that keeps on scamming.
Fine Gael councillor was hired by Re-Turn to lobby a Fine Gael Minister to remove 23% VAT on the unclaimed bottles!!
The councillor previously worked for the PR company Teneo whose client is ReTurn.
ReTurn is sitting on €100m after just one year but they’re still not happy. They wanted tax exemptions on top.
A humiliation gravy train.
We pay roughly €1.2m a year for Simon Harris to have 10 advisers as Minster for Finance.
3 of them are journalists and just one of them has a finance background.
@rtenews Just proves they care more about themselves than the country.....they're so outta touch with reality that's what happens when you living an echo chamber & surrounded by incompetence and advisors who are all from the media
Irish voters believed Eamon Ryan and the Green Party were responsible for many policies that they hate, e.g. carbon tax, ultra wokeness, etc. The public were under the impression that FFG were basically sensible and competent at their core, and were simply being forced to make concessions to radical environmentalists against their better judgement for the sake of holding the coalition together.
So the voters destroyed the Green Party and reduced their Dáil share from 12 seats to 1, but kept FFG around, assuming they'd get a steady hand of the old parties unencumbered by window box salads and wolves.
And yet now the Greens are gone, but the policies people hate remained.
It's almost like the Green Party weren't actually the primary culprit, and were only a convenient mudguard for the bigger parties, who are actually the primary defenders of this stuff.
We're not dealing with an isolated cock-up here or there - there's a clearly identifiable pattern of consistently underestimating how unpopular certain things are with the public. There's obviously a lack of understanding among senior politicians as to how certain things come across to the median voter.
A sample of things Government has badly misread the room on in recent years:
- Hate speech legislation (expended huge political capital trying to get it passed and ultimately had to abandon the speech element entirely - Regina Doherty, when she was leader of the Seanad, said she'd never received so much negative correspondence about a piece of legislation in her political career)
- Family and care referendum (lost comprehensively, biggest defeat margin for a referendum in the history of the State)
- Immigration (had to radically change their policies and rhetoric after years of sustained protests)
- Blocking Maria Steen for the Presidency (backfired horribly, caused both Government parties to bomb in the election, historically awful result that led to unprecedented vote spoilage nationwide)
- Running Jim Gavin (self-explanatory)
And now, most recently, the fuel protests. And that's all in just a couple of short years, all in quick succession, one after another. You can't look at that and tell me it's not a pattern.
Yesterday’s clip of an Irish senator claiming the tricolour “terrifies” her went viral globally.
Meanwhile this is the kind of voice we should be listening to instead. And as she speaks, the same senator is walking out.
Common sense wins.
The day after they voted confidence in their parties and the Irish government, Albert Dolan, James O’Connor and Ryan O’Meara, all of Fianna Fáil release a statement trying to distance themselves from their own party and the actions of government!
These lads must think we’re actual idiots!
The same day they signed off on a €20,000 pay rise for the director of RTE!
Folks, this is a regular thing! Are your eyes opening now? 🇮🇪
Minister for Communications Patrick O'Donovan is no longer seeking a review of media coverage of fuel protests despite his comments yesterday
https://t.co/cdvRx95bV1
@HarrachtainO The fact he hasn't been ousted as yet after everything else incl presidential election there's no spine n that party or FG putting up with Harris
Half room for the speeches however performative & full house for the vote speaks volumes about the disconnect of the government & also the so called independents self interest comes to mind #fuelprotest
@davidhall75 For my sins I watched before the session started the body language of the government TDs all smiles, laughing & happy demeanor... They just don't get it not even for optics sake
@NewstalkFM I was on a street protest yesterday I'm not a farmer, haulier or labourer... I am a high rate taxpayer who can't afford a house, I'm basically taxed outta existence I get nothing for free & Ireland is too expensive to exist in atm and alot of it is by choice USC for example
When the state funds the media through Coimisiún na Meán, the state expects to get what it paid for. And if it is not getting what it paid for, it may not pay any more.
Exhibit A.
This is the threat Irish journalists now work under.