Same old, same old from stale party as good days drift further into past

After a tumultuous few months of hand wringing, convention dates, reminders, and exposures, which reminded me of a lump of driftwood left behind by the tide, and now being fought over by a swarm of beetles, the secret meetings, the handshakes, the infighting, and whisperings of splits in the camp, followed by weeks of speculation over who was going to get the nod at the Fianna Fáil convention, all we ended up with was a 68-year-old pensioner from Dungloe, born on the March 10, 1948, in Burtonport, which used to be a busy thriving fishing port but is now a ghostly shadow of its former self.

I remembered being at the Burtonport Festival one year and Pat the Cope, who got the thumbs up at the convention, was on the stage pointing with his outstretched arm towards a house and saying proudly, “that’s the room up there where I was born”.

I hate to say it but there’s nothing there to be proud of today, because just the same as the boats that will never split the waves again as they head for open sea, the decay has well and truly set in.

The other successful candidate is a country ’n‘ western type farmer in a suit, from down Carndonagh way. Yeah! That’s all the scrapings that the Soldiers of Destiny could muster up from the lucky bag after shaking and beating it umpteen times. God it must be horridly disappointing.

They were even talking of adding a third candidate which would be overly ambitious methinks. They may have conveniently forgotten the sort of despicable mess they left us to wallow in, but we the electorate won’t forget and for that reason they’ll be lucky to get two pairs of size tens into the Dáil, never mind three.

Why, I personally, would think twice about voting for Pat the Cope.

Firstly, he doesn’t need the money because of his Brussels pay-packet. Then there is the small matter of receiving a TD’s, ministerial, and Brussels pension.

Why, I personally, would think twice about voting for Charlie McConalogue, the farmer from a wee place called Gleneely.

He should have more sense in his ability to do much better for himself on a different stage, where he could actually achieve rather than deprive as his party has managed to do.

There was no smelling of roses following the razzmatazz convention in Letterkenny — the aftermath killer pong is more akin to poison ivy, disruptive knotweed, and stalks of the giant rhubarb plant fermenting in the one pot, and there is a strong possibility that a fresh-faced Fianna Fáil Nua candidate may emerge from the soup.

James Woods

Gort an Choirce

Dun na nGall