What we've seen

Interesting start to the campaigns by some candidates, non-start to the campaign by other candidates. Do these guys not know that if they don't bother doing anything at all they won't get their forty euro deposit back?

Mark Conway could be our next president. Or the next guy to lock up his daughter for 24 years in his basement. We could go either way on this one. We're not sure what possessed him to use a picture of Joe Fritzl on his leaflets but the word is that he thinks that any publicity is good. If he's doing a joke stunt he's going to have to make it funnier or tell people. We've come across a few people who now think that Mark Conway is about 60 years of age with a dodgy look in his beady eye. We haven't met the chap though so perhaps he does. Someone should tell him that campaigning is good if you want votes. If nobody tells him it may be like the Paddy McHugh campaign for president last year, where he didn't start campaigning until it was too late for anyone to care.

Eamon Gardiner's facebook group has let us know that he's been through EVERY stage in UL life now from undergraduate to postgraduate. Aren't those the first two and joined together. When he reads, does he let people know that he's read EVERY page now from page 1 to page 2 and all the pages in between? He's also pretty sure that if pensioners can stop the government than 100,000 students can too. Good luck getting 100,000 students out for anything. Even free porn wouldn't get 100,000 students out. The pensioners like their days out to protest, it gives them a chance to catch up with their non-dead friends when they've nothing else to do, which is all the time. He also spells his surname "GARDINDER" on his flyer, which is presumably his secret identity to fool the feds. He also guarantees to bring high profile bands to UL. We think this means that we will all get to have breakfast with the Blizzards if we hang around long enough.

Ruan Dilloin Mcloughlin (yes, it's Dillon Mcloughlin, we got it assways before) wants to make the Union more relevant to all students. No, we've never heard that one before. He's picked up a fianna failer as his campaign manager. It's the kind of thing we'd half-expect students to notice but the political parties seem to arrive into student union elections by stealth until the day you notice that there's nobody running but political party candidates. Or if there aren't any candidates available they'll latch on anyway, making it look good to their overmasters who may eventually present them with the key to the junior executive washroom. The guy in question, Derek Daly, ran for a senior position on the kiddie FF council last year but didn't manage it so a win here might help him get another brownie point until the day he gets the badge. Ruan Dillon Mcloughlin wants to run a day link bus service to the housing estates around Castletroy. We guess this is because students are tired of smelling the residents. Or just don't like walking. In any case he'll be lucky to get anyone to fund it. We're putting this in the same box as the question current president Pa O'Brien asked last year about why we can't get the real Christy Moore for rag week instead of the Christy "this is just a tribute" band. It plays well with the plebs but that's all its for. Unless he charges money to use it. Then it'll be a "bus".

The education candidates got rolling as well.

Emma Kerins seems to have portrayed herself as either a cat lady or a witch, depending on who you ask. We know that cat ladies don't exist and that witches live on their own with cats. Most of them aren't students so perhaps this is a joke that only her campaign team get. It's probably hilarious.

Aoife Finnerty is going after the superhero vote. Such a pity that UL doesn't have many phone boxes but we suppose that when you're elected to the student union, at least you have your own office to change into the costume.

David James Collison Ryan is also racing after the votes from people who like cats, with his logo stolen or a tribute to MGM for some reason. It might be because his initials are DJCR as that instantly conjures up images of MGM. At least it might do to him. We hear on our own grapevine that his real name is David James James Collison Ryan. Yes, we typed it twice. Supposedly he picked the same name for his confirmation as his parents had picked for his baptism. Did no-one tell him that he could pick any other name that the local bishop would approve? We really hope that the sudden introduction of the "James (James) Collison" isn't just some attempt to get himself on top of the ballot paper. Or some kind of appeal to all the UL fans of Portsmouth FC.

Huw Thomas has something of a smothering fetish judging by his poster, which shows him getting down and dirty with Batt O'Keeffe. He's also got a long long list of things to do in his manifesto though.

On to the CSO candidates.

We haven't seen anything from Darragh Bourke. He may not be real.

Michelle Lawlor has a few people around, though again without an awful lot of presence. We didn't manage to pick up one of her leaflets.

Fergal Dempsey has to be seen as the one to beat here, if only because of his support from people who know him through his involvement in clubs. His leaflet is bright and colourful and has more substance than we'd have expected. Also more "f**ks" than we'd have expected. He's probably managed to establish himself in people's minds as the front runner, though it's still possible for Lawlor to catch and pass him.

Next, the communications race.

Slow start but then Dolphin wasn't sure he was actually in the race until Monday morning when Ni Raghaillaigh's objection was withdrawn. And Ni Raghaillaigh didn't know that she definitely had opposition until she realised the objection would be overruled and she withdrew it. Some interesting things from each and they're both going cheap. Dolphin takes issue with the continuation of Pulse, which costs a fortune to produce for something that almost nobody reads. Ni Raghaillaigh promises to do something about the ulsu website, which hasn't been updated since December and almost nobody reads. Then again, Dolphin is promising the same thing. Ni Raghaillaigh is promising an online version of An Focal, which is something that just appears to have not been bothered with this year as the website has copes from the past few years. We don't read the Irish columns all that much but again, that's something that was just dropped this year. Overall, nothing dramatically exciting from either candidate sofar so it will probably come down to how they fare on the ground.

As usual, while people are coming up with some good ideas, there's also the usual populist rhetoric to get in the regulars who don't know what's going on. The north campus photocopier. A campus off-licence. Pay for teaching practice. The security issue. Some of these things are important but at this point they've been issues for so long that we'd like to see more plans about them and less mentioning of them just to get a few extra votes from people who don't know that they've been mentioned by twenty people already in past years.