Fidelma’s antics to leave a lasting legacy 150 years on

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

“Who amongst us will be remembered 150 years on,” wondered Senator Fidelma Healy Eames recently after an event at Thoor Ballylee where the 150th anniversary of WB Yeats birth year was being celebrated.

In fairness, she’s making a good stab at it.

Can’t you just picture it now?  The year is 2165. The place is Oranmore National School. Hundreds of robotic children are learning the History of Political Foot-in-Mouthism on their high-tech devices that haven’t yet been invented.

Surely some of FHE’s online howlers and ‘Twitterings’ will stand the test of time.

Who will forget her #PCgonemad hashtag, when she suggested mother’s day might be cancelled if Ireland passes the same sex marriage referendum.

Her pronunciation of Wi-Fi as ‘wiffy’ in the Seanad caused such a stir online that it’s bound to be quoted in 150 years.

And equating ‘Fraping’ with rape on Facebook should also stand the test of time.

And that’s before we start factoring in court cases with builders, fines for non-payment of car tax, and fine for boarding a train without a valid ticket.

‘No Doctor, No Village’ and no Derek either

Still on Derek Nolan: the city TD organised a public meeting with his party colleague, Senator Lorraine Higgins, in Oranmore last Thursday evening.

He had blighted the city’s lampposts with posters publicising the meeting; and these posters doubled as general election posters.

Lovely Lorraine and Ditsy Derek spoke at the meeting about the Labour Party “standing up for working families”.

It has been said, however, who they weren’t standing up for, and that was rural GPs.

It was noted that Derek was absent from a meeting in Clifden organised by the ‘No Doctor, No Village’ group who are campaigning to save rural GPs across Galway.

The GP meeting just happened to coincide with Derek’s one, which was organised to rally the troops ahead of what will be a bruising election campaign.

Derek bats eyelids at Seamus

Derek Nolan, the Labour Party TD in Galway West, has broken ranks with his party.

Labour is languishing in the polls. And the party is hanging its hopes – and very survival as a party – on the electorate running scared of an alternative led by Fianna Fáil, Sinn Féin along with a whole hape of what former Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy would call ‘left wing pinkos’.

Labour has hitched its wagon to the Fine Gael star. It wants the current Coalition returned when voters go to the polls.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.