Cubbard full of Mike’s broken tax promise

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Politicians are spineless

We know this to be true – they say one thing, do another.

You’ve met cracked eggshells with stronger constitutions than that of most politicians.

Once they’re elected, all bets are off. Once they’ve got close to the levers of power they then renege on their election promises.

They slime and slither their way out of keeping their word.

Obfuscation is a sleeveen politician’s most important trait.

And neck. They need necks as sturdy as jockeys’ jewels in order to brazen out their u-turns. We all know this; yet somehow we’re surprised when a politician acts the bollix and does the opposite to what he or she said they would.

It gets us every time. More fool us!

Sometimes a politician will come along who we think is different. Like Luke ‘Ming’ Flannagan, the champion of turf cutters, and weed smokers, and the ordinary man on the street. Then he becomes embroiled in a penalty points scrapping scandal and, well, he looks less like a champion and more and more like a member of the political establishment he purports to rail against.

Ditto his pink-shirted colleague, the blonde bombshell, Mick Wallace TD, another hero of the little people until we learn he’s up to his oxters in a tax cheat scandal.

The public discourse was “we expected it from Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael but not Ming and Mick, men of the people”.

Now we know: even the ‘good uns’ aren’t necessarily as good as you first thought.

Which brings us to exhibit A: Galway City Councillor Mike Cubbard.

Mike, a first-time elected representative, was voted in to City Hall on the back of a wave of cynicism against the main political parties. Independent Mike was an alternative voice for the people of Westside and the City Central Ward. He benefited from the backlash against the mainstream candidates.

Mercurial Mike, young and enthusiastic, topped the poll on the back of pledges to be different to the gombeens in the ‘big three’ parties.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.