Politics . . . reasons why it’s just not for you

Bradley Bytes … A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

Reason number 18 why not to enter politics: You’re not that ugly.

Reason number 19 why not to enter politics: You’re too intelligent

Reason number 20 why not to enter politics: Your ego is not big enough

Reason number 21 why not to enter politics: You’re too honest and can’t lie

Reason number 22 why not to enter politics: You don’t like the sound of your own voice

Reason number 23 why not to enter politics: You’ve got a conscience

Reason number . . .

Colm the Chameleon

The fallout from former chairman of the Labour Party and former Independent Galway East TD, Colm Keaveney’s defection to Fianna Fáil exploded on the internet once the move was revealed in last week’s Sentinel.

Tuam based Colm ‘the chameleon’ Keaveney was welcomed to the Fianna Fáil organisation in Galway East by some rank and file party members in the same way a nun might greet news of contracting syphilis.

One FF wag out near Ballinasloe reckoned Colm would be caught with his pants down at Convention, where it’s one member one vote to get on the General Election ‘ticket’. The sitting County Councillor told us: “Like the retired Garda a few years back who went to a selection convention in Roscommon full sure of a nomination to contest the local election. He was full sure he would get enough votes. His wife was at the convention as well. When the votes were counted he got zero – even the wife couldn’t stand him!” 

But if the Soldiers of Destiny were not all happy campers, his former Labour Party colleagues couldn’t contain their excitement at his new found love of Fianna Fáil.

You could almost sense the snide-ness dripping out of the ‘Tweet machine’ when his former Labour leader, Pat Rabbitte tweeted that Colm and FF was “a match made in heaven”. Later he drew the ire of FF when he suggested that his former party colleague would “join the Hizbullah” if it would advance his career.

Equally amusing was the ‘fake’ Pat Rabbitte Twitter account that said: “The Guinness Book of Records are opening a new category, ‘The Shortest Memory in History’, there is a form on the way out to Colm Keaveney”. That, of course, was a reference to his previous musings about FF and how some of its members were “rampant with corruption” and other such flattering comments.

Sources in the Seanad have confirmed that the Lovely Lorraine Higgins, Colm’s nemesis in Labour in the constituency, couldn’t wipe the smile off her face all week.

Spare a thought, too, for the ‘Keaveneyites’, and long-term supporters of his, who aren’t exactly delighted to now find themselves ‘sleeping with the enemy’.

As Colm recalled this week, one such supporter remarked to him: “It feels like the girlfriend you love is being stolen by a w**ker.”

For more, read this week’s Connacht Sentinel.