Things we now know

Thanks to some amazing work byPaul "not just at election time" Gogarty, we now know what we should be calling government TD's next time we see them.

We could start with just one or two if we pass them in the street and were pressed for time, or if they call to our door or otherwise try and engage us in conversation we could use the whole lot, some of them twice:

• Brat
• Bufoon
• Chancer
• Communist
• Corner boy
• Coward
• Fascist
• Gurrier
• Guttersnip
• Hypocrite
• Rat
• Scumbag
• Scurrilous

And of course one of my favourites for this particular exercise: Yahoo.

All of the above are perfectly legitimate and extremely accurate descriptions of Deputies, Cowen, Harney, Coughlan etc, but due to the rules governing Dáil speeches, opposition politicians are prohibited from using them in reference to fellow TD's while in the Dáil.

The brave Dublin Mid-West TD today brought this incredibly useful information to the attention of the electorate when he squealed "Fuck you Deputy Stagg, Fuck you" at Labour's Emmet Stagg today.

It seems neither Oscar Wilde nor Winston Chirchill could ever hope to match Deputy Gogarty for political discourse or cultured witticisms.

What could deputy Stagg have done to deserve such a reaction? It must have been particularly horrible for such a foul mouthed outburst in our national parliament nonetheless.

Had Emmet questioned the sexual morals of Deputy Gogarty's mother?

Had he suggested that the Green party TD tortured puppies for fun in his spare time? Or perhaps he suggested that Deputy Gogarty was somehow in favour of the carryings on in the Murphy report?

I mean, whatever it was it had to be momentously horrible, spectacularly bad.

Not quite. What we're forgetting in all this is that it's Paul Gogarty we're talking about here.

This is the same Green Party TD who rolled around on the floor and played dead when listening to a speech he didn't like the sound of and likened being in government with Fianna Fáil with prostitution.

(A good description actually, but perhaps not when you're the one who's selling themselves.)

And of course it's the same Paul Gogarty who decided to resign a position as chairman of a Dáil committee on Education on principle no less, but refused to give up his wage for the job.

Such principles.

As it turns out all Emmet Stagg did was question the sincerity of a Green Party TD wringing his hands at social welfare cutbacks while voting to implement them.

Deputy Gogarty then replied with the now infamous words, later trying to justify it on a technicality like some petulant, wailing teenager.

While I am no fan of political correctness, it has to be pointed out; this our national parliament.

This outburst is hardly surprising as the Green Party have let their voters down repeatedly following their post election sellout.

Since coming to power they have no more advanced a true Green agenda than any of the other mainstream parties who now pay lip-service to sustainability.

Some of them even got a taste of the Ministerial high life (John Gormley's long trip by car in the UK springs to mind)

We are already well aware of how pathetically inept our current government is, and while the Green's can't be held culpable for the disasters of the last decade, they are responsible for propping the FF yahoo's up (yes, I went there.)

They can be held responsible for wasting our money, ignoring the will of the Irish people for a widely sought election and now of disrespecting the Irish people and the Dáil.

The best thing we can do as citizens is to ignore Paul Gogarty and his party. Gogarty is a desperate, attention seeking charlatan who deserves to be ignored, and his party's irrelevance cannot be overstated.

This most recent outburst is symptomatic of a TD and of a party desperate to stay in power at all costs.

When will the Irish electorate cop on to the fact that this is a Republic and that the Irish people are responsible for what goes on in their parliament?

If we stop voting for the lazy, hypocritical, self-important gombeen's and vote instead for politicians who have some respect for the Irish people, then we won't be stuck talking irrelevant rubbish like this on a regular basis.