The TUAS Strategy

By AM Tuesday, January 25, 2011

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This afternoon sometime I got a text message through from a friend. It said ‘have been listening to Gerry on LMFM. What a clown. He hasn’t a clue. The listeners’ words not mine.’ My response was terse, ‘good.’ To which he answered, ‘he was downright stupid this morning.’ Wasn’t so sure about that, stupidity not featuring as one of his characteristics.

I try not to listen to him at all these days, having learned long ago that he is a verbal crap machine who incessantly churns out the brown stuff. There are sweeter things with which to massage the ears. Still, I thought it might be worthwhile tuning in to a recording of Morning Ireland later in the day just to see if he was as bad against Leo Varadkar, of Fine Gael, as he was against Michael McDowell four years ago.

Hissing and snarling on the phone, he was quickly reminded by the Fine Gael politician that his 2007 debacle hadn’t gone away, you know. Varadkar told him that nothing had changed since then as he was still committed to flaunting his ignorance of economics. Knowing next to nothing about the economy is no crime, but it is not something you want to put on display during a radio broadcast when the topic is the economy. But as Adams has often said of those he takes umbrage at, he would rather be wrong than silent.

It isn’t that I was hostile to a lot of what the Sinn Fein Master had to say, but as always the difficulty is an inability to believe anything he does say. When he rightly labels the other political parties as the ‘consensus for cuts’ it could be treated with some gravitas had his own party along with the rest of them in the North’s British micro government, not formed a consensus for cuts. When he goads the other parties that they should put it up to the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, it would sound more plausible if his party had only put it up to the British Tories instead of implementing the cuts dictated by London. This type of rubbish has allowed him to develop the unenviable trait of being instantly unbelievable.

Contrast this with Pearse Doherty who when on TV last night stood head and shoulders above his fellow panellists. He sounded eminently credible, his flow uninterrupted, his manner confident, and he is prepared to allow the opposition to speak. His leader on the other hand slithers about in serpentine manner, hectoring and bullying, seeking to voice-over his adversary while convincing nobody of anything other than his not knowing anything about the subject he comes on air to talk about. The sterling work that Doherty is doing in describing the nature of where the country is at economically is undermined the minute Adams gets air time.

Four years ago it very much looked as if Sinn Fein were finished in the South of Ireland. So much so in fact that Eoghan Harris with undue haste at the West Belfast Festival predicted the party would lose every one of its then four seats at the next general election. Now with the economy in a trough, beyond comprehension a mere four years ago, Sinn Fein has been thrown a life line with which it can haul itself up. If it wants to reap the potential to the full it should consider resurrecting the TUAS acronym. Try Using Adams Sparingly.