Hustings '10

Hustings managed to slide itself out to almost two hours. We've seen longer hustings, we've seen shorter. But as the room was booked for 8 and hustings began at 6, everyone was getting kicked out of the room after two hours anyway unless they wanted to hang around to watch the Debating Society talk about students and alcohol. Even with it only being about the sixth debate all year the room managed to clear. We couldn't blame them, it's only the Drama Society running nothing for months that's keeping the debaters from scraping the barrell bottom as the biggest waste of UL societies money all year.

Held in the Jonathon Swift hall, the hustings picked up a mostyly full crowd, meaning there were about 130-150 people there. That's not bad. Not good but any more and they'd have been turned away. Then again, booking a room that can only seat 150-odd smacks of resignation that the crowd isn't going to be any bigger. It wouldn't hold a quorate Student Union meeting, though any recent quorate Student Union meetings have been achieved through pretence, lies, bothering people and generally acting the tool. It'd be a good place to hold them then.

Enough, on with what the designated performing monkeys had to say.

Communications:

Again, like last year, the Communications candidates were asked about printing material critical of the SU and again they gave the same sick puppy answer about it not being in the SU's interest to print material that might not say what a truly wonderful job they were doing. We got this last year from the current Comms officer of course. Which we suspect is partly why we don't see articles counting the number of proper campaigns that have been run this year. Then again, when we were taught how to count in school, the nice lady teacher told us to start at one and never explained that we could start at zero. We're not happy with this kind of answer at all. We weren't happy with it last year and we're sure as heck not happy with it this year. Especially as we happened to notice that in 2007/08 (the pre-Aoifes Breen and Ni Raghallaigh era), for one year An Focal was happy enough to carry material that was critical of the Student Union and it was a better paper for it. We seem to recall the thing being short-listed for Newspaper of the Year that year at the Student Media Awards and being self-critical can't have hurt. It was also the only year we remember where even the cynics actually believed the bumpf in the paper as it got a short reputation for being truthful. Then again, the dream died the following year and we're all older and more cynical now.

Asked about radio, O'Brien listed out his experience in running an online radio station for Rag Week, leaving McDuffie with little to do other than stand up and say that when he went to look there weren't very many people listening to it and hence losing the votes of anyone who was interested in radio at all by not saying if there was anything to be done at all at all. It was an obvious question and should have been prepped better by McDuffie.

Ex-Societies officer Darran Savage managed to ask the most incoherent question of the night, spending about three minutes asking a long rambling pile of muck which chair Joe Wallace guessed was something do to with advertising. Would there be more posters? Er, yes, thank you for wasting time by asking. Savage was an appalling Socs officer and we finally got to see how. Synapses on, synapses off. Never to be mixed up, only professionals should touch the on/off button. Take note. Also take note that we didn't insert a ginger joke, which we could well have. No chep shots here, only the multi-syllable expensive ones.

On the whole, O'Brien came across better than McDuffie. His opening speech was far better so we were corect yesterday about public specking not being McDuffie's strong point. Also, while it doesn't affect his ability to do the job, McDuffie sounds and looks 12. O'Brien managed to swap his often-dour exterior for one that actually looked interested. If the crowd was bigger people would have noticed.


Campaigns & Services:

Here's the difference between the two candidates for CSO as we see it. Lorcan O'Neill is believeable. Vivion Grisewood is not. We're not addressing capability, competency or any of that rubbish. Voters don't care about these things (Bertie got re-elected in 2007 after all) so why should we?

There was a pointed question from Steven Carmody about the CSO being perceived to not earn the money. We've no idea whether this was prompted by Carmody being Sharon Brosnan's bit of fluff, the motion that was to be presented to Class Reps Council by Paddy Rockett and a few of the more reputable class reps to dock the wages of the current CSO for in their view doing virtually nothing or just one of those questions you think up while you're sitting there. Either way, Fergal Dempsey probably won't be happy about it. Especially as Carmody was right - that's what people think. That's what we think as well.

The two boyos were asked what campaigns they'd run. Grisewood listed off some, most of which are run by other offices like Education and Welfare and then stopped. When you stop, you sit down, it looks better. You don't stand there and swallow. Well, not in the kind of movies you'd like to show in front of your mother. That gave O'Neill time to stand up and explain things about the campaigns he'd run, make a wise crack that you can protest too much and then no-one cares (obviously pointed at one of the presidential candidates) and manage to use up all of the allocated time and look like he had more to say. O'Neill looked far more comfortable up there than Grisewood did.


Education:

Game over, no-one cares. Aoife Finnerty gave a speech, which she didn't really need to. Apparently the rules say that she had to.


DP/Welfare:

Daniel Reid faltered like a sick pony when the Welfare candidates were asked about how the Welfare office could help out someone in financial difficulty. While Derek Daly stood up first and explained how the Financial Aid fund worked, Reid followed by saying he couldn't do anything but that co-op was great and sure, wasn't getting a good reference from co-op great. We only hope he misheard the question and misunderstood Daly's answer rather than the alternative, which is that the brain monkeys were busy talking about co-op while picking fleas out of each other's backs. The short of it was that Daly was a competent speaker on the night whereas Reid looked as though he was solidly in Forrest Gump swimming pool and gasping for air. It reminded us of that debate between Jed Bartlett and Robert Richie in season 4 of the West Wing. And that part where Bartlett tells Richie "You'll be back"? Richie wasn't, neither will Reid. Where's Alan Alda when you need him?


President:

Any idea of how many students there are in UL? Louise Clohessy is pretty sure it's 12 thousand. It may well be 12 thousand. Almost every time she stood up she mentioned the 12 thousand students in UL? Wanna hear more? 12 thousand. Any idea how repetitive this sounds? 12 thousand by the way. We think it might be closer to 13 but don't tell her. She said the pitches weren't that important to most students. Here's a little secret: she's right, most students don't give a crap. It's something you have to pretend to care about to get votes though Louise dear. Remember that thre next time. Even the dog catcher has to pretend to care about the dogs.

Sharon Brosnan: poor. If she didn't have a campaign team behind her that is significantly bigger than Clohessy's, we'd be slotting her into last place now. She also made a big booboo when she mentioned that she might be inclined to skive off on Wednesday afternoons to go skydiving. Yeah, honey. That's what you get paid to do as student president. She might have been joking but she forgot to laugh or say she was. She's not Jack Dee. She might not have been joking. Right now her campaign manager should be beating her to death with her own shoes.

Ruan Dillon-McLoughlin was highly competent without being accomplished. Of course there are only so many ways to say "I didn't set the building on fire". Then again Paddy Rockett might want to but more of that anon. He explained that the playing fields were going to be sorted by the time the north campus was open. Not that we've seen that in An Focal. And that the security issue in estates was going to be sorted with the next contract renewal. Not that we've seen that in An Focal. Is the level of reporting for our beloved newspaper now so low that stuff the sabbatical officers know beyond the ability of the An Focal writers to sniff out? Please, say it ain't so, bro.

Paddy Rockett is still on his fight the power soapbox (three time we had to type it, we kept on typing spaobox). He'll fight them on the beaches, under the sea, overground, underground, wombling free. While good pal Viv is dependent on Plassey House goodwill to have a big badass lawn party. Somehow we don't quite see the two of those going together well. Especially when Don Barry looks out his office window, sees Rockett permanently there with a banner and opens the window to shout "Sod off, you langer!" He's from Cork you know. They talk funny down there. We're half surprised he didn't finish every answer with a clenched Black Panther fist. Though, because he ran out of time every time, he kept talking on his way to reseat himself so maybe he forgot. Revolutionaries sometimes forget to actually bury the bodies so they don't have to remember where they're buried. That's the IKEA approach to revolutions. Advertise big, pack it away neatly.

Nick Ryan is a heck of a nice chap. We might have said that earlier. He talked about his time in Austria, which must be the greatest location on earth. He was on erasmus in Graz and brought home the idea of vending machine pharmacies, which he said was the one thing he'd do if he could only do one thing. Incidentally Arnold Schwarzenegger came from Graz. We're just saying. Competent speaker. And a heck of a nice chap who wouldn't say boo to a goose. Though we did hear on the dicky bird line that Nick threatened Paddy Rockett with a court case earlier in the day. Seems the Rockett campaign has tired of annoying the students and is now switching to the candidates. Upward and onward. We were hoping for a fist-fight but we never get what we want. A bike, a poke and a surprise, please Santa, since you're wondering.

Roundup:

What did we take from all this? Not a lot really. Some candidates managed to go down severly in our estimation (Reid and Brosnan in particular), some managed to go up slightly (O'Brien and Daly in particular). We'd have given something valuable for a good fight or something. Ten rounds but you'll only need three, that kind of thing. Winner gets all the lollipops and 400 free votes on election day. It'd be more fun.

Did it change our view of the results? Ryan might do better in the presidential race than we thought. Nothing significant though. It's still Dillon-McLoughlin's game.