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LAST UPDATE | 12 Jun 2024
SINN FÉIN COULD be in with a chance of holding on to a seat in the European Parliament for the Midlands-North-West constituency, according to incumbent MEP Luke ‘Ming’ Flanagan.
The party’s seat in the constituency is currently held by Chris MacManus, who was co-opted into the seat in 2020 following Matt Carthy’s successful Dáil bid.
However, MacManus is well out of the running and yesterday told reporters that his lack of European Election campaigning experience contributed to his poor showing.
Meanwhile, Flanagan, Fine Gael’s Maria Walsh and Nina Carberry, and Fianna Fáil’s Barry Cowen all look comfortable and Matt Carthy told reporters on Sunday that these four are all but guaranteed seats.
Outside of this top four, former RTÉ correspondent Ciaran Mullooly has a lead of around 12,000 on the next nearest competitor, Sinn Féin’s Michelle Gildernew.
Flanagan, who seems assured to hold onto his seat, told reporters that he thinks Gildernew is in with a chance of being elected.
That’s despite Gildernew telling reporters that she was “resigned” to not winning a seat and that she was “not overly optimistic” that she could overtake the 12,000 vote lead of former RTÉ correspondent Ciaran Mullooly.
SF's Michelle Gildernew says she is “resigned” to not winning an MEP seat but calls it a "setback, not a tragedy".
— Diarmuid Pepper (@Diarmuid_9) June 11, 2024
Referencing the loss of her nephew Fiachra Ó Faoláin, Gildernew says: “This is a setback but it is definitely not a tragedy; I know what that feels like this week." pic.twitter.com/brcnQcNNfg
But her party colleague Pearse Doherty then disputed this and claimed Sinn Féin was “not out of the race here yet” and remarked that there is “no read as to where transfers are going”.
However, Flanagan told reporters that he does in fact have a read on where transfers are going.
He’s been camped out at the TF Royal Theatre in Castlebar, Co Mayo since Sunday, and has often been seen with his head down, crunching the numbers.
He took a break from calculations last night to report that he’s taken a sample of around 1,000 ballots from the majority of the 27 candidates who stood in the election.
Taking to X, he later outlined his sums and said Gildernew “could be two thousand votes ahead of Mullooly with only Lisa Chambers’ votes left to distribute”.
I've been looking at the tallies I've done on various candidates second preferences. If they're correct then Gildernew could be two thousand votes ahead of Mullooly with only Chambers votes left to distribute. No tallies done Chambers second preferences. All to play for yet.…
— Luke 'Ming' Flanagan (@lukeming) June 11, 2024
In a later post on X, Flanagan added: “Hold your horses. Far from decided.”
Counting has continued until around 1am since Sunday night, and while there was previously optimism that a result could come today, that now seems increasingly unlikely.
And while a result could come tomorrow, candidates have said it may be Friday before the result is confirmed.
However, it could extend even further, with Flanagan saying as far back as Sunday afternoon that there could be a recount.
That would be bad news for fans of Tina Turner, as a Tina Turner tribute act is playing a sold out show in the count centre on Saturday night.
While some have been criticising the lenght of time taken so far to carry out the count, Flanagan has been taking it all in his stride.
In a further post on X, he hit out at people describing the count as an “arduous process”.
“How is it arduous?” asked Flanagan.
“It’s the ultimate display of how the democratic process works,” he answered.
“I love it. May it never change.”
—
This work is co-funded by Journal Media and a grant programme from the European Parliament. Any opinions or conclusions expressed in this work are the author’s own. The European Parliament has no involvement in nor responsibility for the editorial content published by the project. For more information, see here.
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Give him the Father Ted box set.
Careful now.
@Mic JHintl: Down with that sort of thing.
That’s mad Ted
Ted do you think this religion lark will ever catch on.
That’s an ecumenical matter!!
@Ollie Fitzpatrick: Like the academic icons and their disciples, non-spiritual individuals follow, there are no manners or sense of history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Wp3Awd3MIk
The Earth’s orbit around the Sun was based on a hypothesis because the original framework was Ptolemaic.
“Moreover, we see the other five planets also retrograde at times and stationary at either end [of the regression]. And whereas the Sun always advances along its own direct path, they wander in various
ways, straying sometimes to the south and sometimes to the north; that is why they are called “planets” [wanderers]. Copernicus
Instead of God and Spirit, you follow Royal Society icons and I assure you, that explains a lot.
Knew all the comments would be utterly dopey and predictable
@Ted Daly: is praising such a cruel organisation the opposite of dopey to you ? How warped, delighted they’ve been neutered from their sanctimonious views on everything when I read such tripe
@Sean oSuilleabhain: I’m no fan of the church. I’d end them this second. The dopey father Ted comments is what I was referring to and the sheer predictability of it
@Ulysses 31: are you looking in the mirror? because thats you
@Ted Daly: oh, for sure I share your view there.
We are all one, we are all God and God is love. The universe is love and when we die and return to what is everything you will know everything.
@Allo Allo: this assumption that god is love , where does it come from? God could be petty jealousy and peevishness for all we know. And the notion that we are all one. We might be 3 and 5 eights (during the week) and 2 and a half (on bank holidays and weekends).
@Alan: According to Origin of Species, you are this-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_racism#/media/File:Scientific_racism_irish.jpg
I am sure you like the fairy tale of neighbouring Galapagos islands; however, natural selection is a product of the neighbouring islands of England and Ireland as Anglo-Saxon and Celt ‘races’.
If it is any consolation, denominational Christianity stays silent on this self-inflicted wound on humanity.
@Alan: in the absence of acceptable tangible evidence for either perspective Alan we are truly equals
@Allo Allo: spoken like a sheep who did what they were told and hasn’t read much of the bible, even if you skim read you can see the violence, hatred and sectarianism spewing from the major books Bible No.1 and a certain other takes No.1 spot everytime. THIS GOD is mean, sectarian, spiteful and does not love the christians
@Sean oSuilleabhain: *Bible No. 2
Its amazing a confirmed non believer can get to meet the head of the catholic church.That is by his own admission.
@Charlie O Connell: believing in fairy tales is outdated and clearly show a lack of brain cells.
@Charlie O Connell: Pretty sure there’s a parable or a story in the Bible where Jesus goes to meet a bunch of heathens and everyone’s surprised that he’s not meeting the holy people, but he points out that it’s just like how a doctor calls only to sick people…
@Alex: yeah get rid of God that fairy tale instead let’s believe a man can be a women or a women a man. Let’s support and promote this in society in schools. Yeah no more fairy tales.
Presumably an atheist now. Jimmy Fallon also a narcissist, sorry atheisty too. No one going late night in the US is more of a phoney, he thinks everyone loves him
Remarkably, there isn’t a single priest I could meet and offer to show them how to resolve an issue between Pope and Galileo that created the awful dynamic that science is one thing and religion something else. There is an issue with the Ptolemaic framework that the first Sun-centred astronomers were obligated to use in proposing a moving Earth as a hypothesis and a solution that eluded people 400 years ago.
It requires an orbiting satellite to resolve and specifically this observation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2uCtot1aDg
It is lighthearted, and people forget that when genuine science and spirituality are forgotten.
@Gerald Kelleher: You’ve been asked many times here to show us what you believe.
And have never been able to do so.
So we believe you when you say “there isn’t a single priest I could meet and offer to show them how to resolve an issue between Pope and Galileo…”
For there isn’t a single person you are able to explain your position to, never mind a single priest.
This short description is for people who can appreciate something new.
Galileo could only use Jupiter’s moons’ back-and-forth motions around their parent planet to prove that not all celestial objects orbited the Earth as the geocentric astronomers imagined.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcrBAuLBXag
A contemporary satellite tracking along with the Earth around the stationary Sun, free from the daily rotational influences of the surface Earth, now shows the faster-moving Venus and Mercury running back and forth around our parent star.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2uCtot1aDg
Yes, it is simple, and that is how it should be, notwithstanding the complex issues needed to provide the demonstration. It removes the bottleneck created by the Ptolemaic framework in an exquisite way.
@Gerald Kelleher: Methinks you should head back to your orbiting satellite bud!
There is no need to waste time on those who cannot appreciate what is in front of them, even when satellite imaging demonstrates the analogy of Jupiter’s moons with the motions of Venus and Mercury.
https://www.unav.edu/web/ciencia-razon-y-fe/new-light-on-the-galileo-affair
Nobody could resolve the issue of whether the Ptolemaic framework, which is brilliant for predicting astronomical events as dates, can also be used to prove that the Earth and other planets run circuits around the Sun.
It has been resolved using 21st-century observations and by a Christian, and that is all that matters.
@Gerald Kelleher: And what has ANY of that got to do with the modelling you dispute?
You have been asked many times to tell us what YOUR model is.
Still waiting.
@ItWasLikeThatWhenIGotHere: You are fine.
@Jimmy Wallace: To be spiritual is the ability to be inspired and inspiring.
Those who consider themselves non-spiritual have not developed their perceptive faculties that distinguish between street noise and great music, an instruction manual and great literature, a painted object, and a work of art.
The Age of Reason ( enlightenment) was an attempt to operate without perceptive faculties, so you are driven by those celebrities who lack the real education behind astronomy and natural sciences.
Christ never prayed for the world, never said to love thy neighbour as thyself, render onto Caeser, and so on. People who realise the Bible is not one book but many traditions understand this, so they are not troubled by trying to reconcile traditions that cannot be done.
@Gerald Kelleher: Where in the Bible is earth ever described as a spinning ball orbiting the sun?
@Science: Newton’s Principia is the bible of the damned.
The Earth’s orbital motion is derived from observations that the slower-moving planets fall behind in view as the Earth overtakes them, as Jupiter and Saturn are seen to do.
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/0112/JuSa2000_tezel.gif
Putting Earth in motion between Mars and Venus replaced the geocentric view of the Sun’s 365-day period between those two planets.
Newton conjured up a hypothetical observer on the Sun to account for the motions of the slower-moving planets.
“For to the Earth, planetary motions appear sometimes direct, sometimes stationary, nay, and sometimes retrograde. But from the Sun, they are always seen direct.” Newton
That is the vandalism of a mathematician at the expense of Western astronomy.
@Gerald Kelleher: I didn’t ask you to quote Newton, I asked you about the Bible.
@Science: Most of you students try to behave like SS guards with no manners, reason or sense of goodness, but that doesn’t work with me as a Christian.
The Catholic Church, at a certain administrative level, has indeed behaved worse than the hapless supporters of the Enlightenment subculture insofar as the decisions made centuries ago by the Church have led to the desolation of Western society today due to technical reasons I already outlined. I would offer to demonstrate all the technical issues, but so many are content to remain with a mixture of science fiction and fantasy.
Nothing is more magnificent than the heliacal rising of the stars in Job, which is now easily understood by satellite imaging.
@Science:
“Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring forth Mazzaroth in his season? or canst thou guide Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven? Canst thou set the dominion thereof in the Earth?”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Job%2038-42&version=KJV
I adore the stars’ heliacal rising as they come in season, just as the Neolithic people in Ireland and ancient societies once knew.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRzqNK-1IHI
Not a single of the non-spiritual/ non-perceptive can produce imaging, and that is where I leave it.
You’ve let Doogle meet the Pope!
I feel sorry for the Pope
Must be a Waterford Whispers story.
‘Ah Ted we’re meeting the pope’
It’s a setup,Bishop Len Brennan going to be there for revenge.(kick up the backside kind).
@Jack Cantwell: I cannot remotely stand any organised religion, but Len Brennan is a gas man although with the jewels and the girls in his bath moments, more than a deliberate air of certain Taoisigh and others about him. Well done to writers
So Your Holiness: how’s the son? The son of God, that’s what he meant.
So what’s the Catholic Church take on the whole racism thing? Personally I don’t mind as long as I can have a go at the Greeks. They invented gayness.
@Alex Marquis:
They are no more able to face the results of natural selection as anyone else here can.
https://youtu.be/xy_xWKJubuY?si=gtgi72zdCZJyKExt
For me, it is an opportunity to remove prejudice and not wait for academics or clergy.
Beastiality’s best boys.
Another 3 bishops to be invested
WTF for? Just the kudos?
So what?. I’m meeting my friends next week.
have your say