Small Town Reporter

Cream sours in Greystones chamber

Fine Gael’s Simon Harris had his first bitter taste of small town politics on June 11, 2009. Shortly after 7:30 pm in the Greystones Council chamber the cream of his electoral success was soured by Independent councillor Chris Maloney (right)  who announced that he was forming an alliance with Fianna Fail and Labour members of the council. It will be conceived as Maloney pouring Harris’s chance of being Mayor of Greystones down the drain.

Small talk, strawberries and stroke

Set off for the bank and to pay my framer, Michael Hayes. At different locations I bumped into Evelyn Cawley, George and Joan Jones, Pat Dempsey, Maraed, my lawyer, and Brod Kearon from Natures Gold. Everything was fizzing. Then I popped into the Village Bookshop to talk about my book sales and there met Muiris MacConghail who revealed that he had suffered a stroke. He looked better that the last time we met. Overweight and sweaty. Now, two stones lighter and tanned.

“Ill-effects?” I said.

"Just one." Smiling: “I voted Fianna Fail,” he said and tapped my brewer’s goitre with the book in his hand.

Kelleher survives in Town defeated in County

It was as impossible to imagine the defeat of Kathleen Kelleher as a county councillor as it was easy to accept that her fellow traveller Eleanor Roche would be defeated on Greystones Town Council. 

Few individuals in this town are so dedicated to work in the community. But the fact remains, the 2009 local electorate with a fickle sweep of its hand wiped her name off the agendas of a wide range of local government committees at county level. Her interest in planning and development is with a hawk’s eye for detail. 

Tom Fortune still harbouring doubts?

Elected to Greystones Town Council for the first time is Tom Fortune, a redoubtable Labour politician who was at the heart of the anti-harbour campaign that put half a million on the bill and which delayed the project for two years bringing on two public inquiries.

There is nothing wrong with that. 

Democracy was well served by those investigations.

Simon Harris - bright mind, dark side

Simon Harris has launched his political career with a bang leaving some hard working politicians in pools of tears and mists of anger. As a Fine Gael party-man he served up the biggest victory witnessed in town and county politics for many a year. 

After the Bubble

A bubble bursts and the world melts down. In the rush for the lifeboat everyone has a quick fix:  “It is the banks we must to sort out first.” Or “The government has lost control.”  It is election time, of course, but they have forgotten their history. Or more likely, few have read a book in their lives. The first big pop in the financial world occurred in 1720 was not caused by a cork from a champagne bottle. It was the South Sea Bubble and it smashed many.

Greystones Harbour, Block 2000

IT TOOK TIME to get this far. It was a political football and still is. It cost two public inquiries. Put half a million bucks on the construction bill and saw one wannabe politician bite the dust at a personal cost of €38,000.

Politics, promises and broken paths

Four years is a long time in the life of a politician. A long time to deliver promises. After a mere one hundred days, President Obama  got it in the neck for something he warned everyone, would take time. A long, long time. Generations. Nobody is fooling anybody in the White House. But it is not OBama that I'm worried about. Its the newcomers to my neighbourhood....

Sewers, discontent and one sorry rat

Rats and politicians have a certain affinity it seems not so  far removed from our annual residents meeting in May.

Election Posters v. Real Politicians

The literature of election posters obliterates town and countryside at this time. Judgement day approaches for our local and european political leaders, old and would be. So many wonderful smiles, expectant, cool and sagacious, stare down upon the passing populace, beseeching it to trust them. They look like saints and some like scholars. How could you not vote for any of them?

"Give me your Number One", they cry.  Ah, to have the power of the electorate at such times can feel exhilarating. Even to have one skinny little vote like mine. So, how do you decide who is best for the job?

When a sledgehammer hits a Swiss watch?

They keep telling us the economy is returning to the austerities of that which came with World War II. We have to start accepting that there is truth in this and that as survivors we are all lucky to be alive. The time has come to take stock of what we have and to make the best of this. History never repeats itself as the saying goes, but it does spiral.