Roddy would top poll in fantasy ‘Letters to Editor’ constituency

Bradley Bytes – A sort of political column by Dara Bradley

If there was a Dáil constituency for writers of letters to the editors of newspapers, we reckon Tommy Roddy would top the poll.

We’re talking quantity of letters, rather than quality, you understand, as the latter is somewhat subjective.

There isn’t a week that passes when Tommy doesn’t have a letter published in one rag or another. Local or national, the bould Tommy doesn’t discriminate.

His musings have in the past been chosen as ‘letter of the week’ in the Sunday Independent, the biggest selling newspaper in the land. And on occasion he’s even secured the ‘holy trinity’ of getting the same letter into the three quality dailies (Irish Times, Irish Independent and Irish Examiner) on the same day.

His seat in the “Letters to the Editor’ constituency is as safe as houses.

The second seat would be a close call between prolific letter writers, Nuala Nolan, the former Labour Party city councillor and Derrick Hambleton, chairman of An Taisce Galway.

We reckon Our Nuala might just pip Derrick to the second seat, based on her getting a higher share of the redistribution of transfers from Roddy’s surplus.

Derrick, who would top the poll if there were a Dáil seat for writing really, really long letters, as opposed to the crude measure of numbers of letters published, takes the third seat.

Then there’d be a dog fight – or a pen fight – for the final seat.

Serial letter writer Mike Geraghty, who has gone off the letter-writing radar in recent months, would be involved a straight shoot-out with Simon Comer spokesperson for Cosain, the cycling lobby group.

Geraghty would be ahead on first preferences based on numbers of letters to the editors he has had published in newspapers but Comer would just nick the last seat based on transfers from all those angry cyclists whose letters would help him reach the quota.

The one thing all of them have in common? The Bradley Bytes makey-uppy Letters to the Editor constituency is the only Dáil seat any of them will win. Ever.

On your marks, get set…

Political pundits nationally have, for some time now, been predicting a snap election.

They’ve predicted it so often that if Enda Kenny does go to the country early it’ll hardly come as a surprise.

The only way he could catch us off-guard now is if he held out until the last possible date for when an election could be called, and that’s April 9.

Some local Fine Gael insiders have a hunch that Enda will wait until next year to dissolve the Dáil but not that long.

The Blueshirts are meeting for their last Árd Fheis before the election, in the last week of January. They won’t risk waiting to call it until April 9, because that would give the Shinners a boost during the 1916 Easter Rising celebrations.

And they won’t go before January, because nobody wants to be knocking on doors in the run up to Christmas; and the ‘giveaway’ budget, which they’ll use to buy your vote, won’t have kicked in to people’s pockets before the end of January at the earliest.

And so the smart money is on calling an election right after the FG Árd Fheis at the end of January, which would mean a polling day at the end of February. You heard it here first!

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