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IT’S THAT TIME of year again, where we cast our eye back over the Irish political year to see who has weathered the storms successfully and who has struggled to keep their head above water.
There’s lots to unpack for 2024 – we’ve had the local and European elections, a couple of referendums, the loss of a Taoiseach earlier this year, and throw in a general election to boot.
This year, The Journal team announced its political awards on podcast The Candidate.
You can catch up on the reasoning behind each award by tuning into the episode here.
Editor Sinéad O’Carroll, Deputy Editor Christine Bohan, Political Editor Christina Finn and Political Correspondent Jane Matthews also talk through the Ah Here Moment of the Year and Whoopsie of the Year.
One of the awards is Politician of the Year. We each nominated a candidate and put it to the rest of the team for a vote. Votes were counted by PR-STV by Producer Nicky Ryan.
Agree or disagree, you can let us know in the comments section who you think was most deserving.
Here’s a run down of the awards:
The nominations were: Micheál Martin, Ivana Bacik, Jack Chambers and Eamon Ryan.
The Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin received the top gong for his performance over the last year and for essentially winning the election for his party, getting 48 seats for Fianna Fáil.
“It was an election year. He had a job to do and he did the job,” the podcast team said.
His performance in relation to Gaza was also highlighted, notwithstanding the fact there is an overall view the government can do and should do more.
Looking at where the Fianna Fáil party has come from to where it is now, leading the next government, it is a notable political feat.
To creep out of the shadow of the economic crash and and to come back to be the largest party in the Dáil is some political achievement.
The outgoing Fine Gael minister was given the nod for her work in managing to deliver the largest Social Protection budget in the history of the State – over €2.6 billion worth of measures aimed at supporting our pensioners, carers, people with disabilities and working families.
Her work in getting the auto-enrolment pension scheme legislated for before heading for the hills was also noted upon.
The People Before Profit TD was commended for his oratory and being a voice on the issue of Palestine.
Richard Boyd Barrett has been highlighting the plight of the Palestinian people for a long time now and has spoken truth to power when European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen attended the Dáil.
Labour’s Marie Sherlock managed to stave off Gerry ‘The Monk’ Hutch from taking a seat in her constituency. Having been a senator and now a TD, the team believe she is a rising star in the Labour Party. One to watch, for sure.
Eoin Hayes, who was suspended from the Social Democrats Party before he could take his seat in the new Dáil, was given this award for obvious reasons.
He found himself embroiled in controversy over the sale of his shares in Palantir. Must try harder in 2025.
Aontú’s Peadar Toíbín gets the nod for this award for his clear and concise communication skills which he has displayed in leaders debate programmes as well as numerous radio and TV appearances.
There were lots of resignations this year – Brian Stanley, Simon Coveney, Eamon Ryan, to name but a few, but the most notable was former Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announcing on the steps of Government Buildings that he was throwing in the towel.
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It is quite clearly not the same person. They have black hair and mediterranean olive skin, that’s where the similarities end. It gives us quite an insight into our media that when a capitalist talks and behaves as a capitalist in public, rather than offering the usual false persona of responsibility, then we assume it must be a fake. In other words we are so used to being lied to that when confronted with the truth we find it impossible to compute that information and instead try to reject it, like our immune system rejecting a virus, we are now immune to the truth.
the thing is though, Noel, this man Rastani is just a bookie with an agenda.
Pretty funny that people think this could be a fake. Maybe he’s cynical but his strategies are pretty sound and they’re being followed by many people in the markets that I know. Just look at the yields on T-bills; they’ve tanked. People are loving T-bills right now. That’s just an objective fact. So Rastani is right; people are investing in T-bills — that’s certainly not a Yes Men stunt.
I read an interview with him here and he clearly knows the markets quite well:
Does no one remember that many large US financial institutions bet against their own customers in 2008? Did that factoid sink down the memory hole or what? This is largely how the markets work. You hedge against risk no matter what the circumstances. And yes, you can hedge against risk even if the rest of the world tanks. That’s just a fact and, cynical or not, traders do it all the time — that doesn’t mean that they ‘dream of another recession’.
Go tell that to Xenu
Definitely… the BBC needs a better screening process
Fool me twice for the BBC.
I stand corrected, this guy is not one of the YesMen. I had assumed he was another back room guy
Heres a statement from the YES MEN http://www.yeslab.org/rastani
So holy shit, this guy is a trader. Thats makes it scary all over again
Duh. There was NO EVIDENCE that this was otherwise. People need to wake up and get real.
Talking about fake earlobes and contact lenses. This is a disgrace. If the journal.ie wants to maintain any semblance of editorial quality I suggest that they don’t run internet rumours with zero evidence backing them. Even if these rumours fit in with established views of the world.
Eh Phillip, Ive never said that this guy was the same as onther person.Id assumed given the brazen nature of the interviews content that this was a satircal interview, of which the YesMen have done many. Of you have followed thier work you would know that there is more that just the two guys, but a pretty decent sized support team, not to mention that they have been training folks and working with around the globe.
As for earlobes or contact lenses ive never mentioned them.
Nice one on the ‘Duh’ by the way. Funny how the interweb users find it grand to be assholes to people they dont even know.
Delete my comment if you’re a mod and it breaks the rules. Otherwise don’t make conjecture and you won’t be called on it.
Hi Mark,
Someone on Facebook used exactly the same phrase “I can confirm that it is the Yes Men”
I thought that maybe issuing such firm confirmations was another Yes Men tactic!
(You aren’t one yourself, are you? :O )
Stop speculating on nonsense, listen to what the guy has to say. Then grow up and enter the real world, where people’s jobs and livelihoods are daily being put on the line by indecisive and inept governments, you child.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/27/a-traders-truth-or-a-prank/
Well, that or you could just look up another Gawker article on cats falling out of trees or whatever. LOLZER. :) :) ;) :) ;) ROFLCOPTER!!!
Why does it matter if he is or not? Does anyone really care what some bloke said in an interview on the news?
you should probably watch the movie YesMen then
It’s just a load of blokes, goin around, sayin stuff.
Oh please, even my 13 year old doesn’t think they aren’t the same person (I know, I asked him to watch the videos and he was adamant they’re not the same man), and I agree with him. Hairline, chin, nose, ears, set, body language, eye contact, vocal inflection… Unless Me Bilchbaum has had quite extensive (and specialised) plastic surgery and completey changed his persona, had voice coaching and is working reallyl hard to control his body language (which from way Alessio Rastani twitches seems unlikely) they are NOT the same person. Doesn’t mean Rastani is genuine, or that he’s not a Yes Man, but what he’s saying is true anyway, so I don’t really care.
It’s amusing how Ayn Randists think it _must_ be a hoax when a right-wing financier announces he’s selfish and doesn’t care about society.
P.
The YES men are a collective of several hundred impersonators who give interviews, attend lectures and launches and think-tank seminars, posing as the grotesque caricatures of what they believe their opponents to be.
They attended an oil industry seminar to propose selling candles made of human flesh. They are left wing extremists who are a direct mirror of the evil that they oppose.
This interview on the BBC played into the BBC’s natural left wing bias, so they bought the lie, hook, line and sinker. The BBC would not know what due diligence is if their licence to broadcast depended on it.
Time for the BBC to be broken up and then each part, (sport, drama, light entertainment, news, etc) to be broadcast as voluntary subscription services.
How are they left wing extremists? Seem to make a lot of sense to be. If highlighting that DOW chemicals refused to assist the 100,000 Indians left with disabilites after a chemical plant exploded make people left wing extremists , sign me up.
If you want to learn about the YesMen, have a look here and make up your own mind about what left wing extremists get up to. http://bit.ly/9DtI3H
And they are not several hundred, thats kinda absurd. Much like the traders making a mint of our insecurity.
yes, lets destroy the BBC. thats rational. nice doberman pic by the way.
“Their ear lobes look different. Maybe they are prosthetic?”
This is getting ridiculous. There is zero evidence to suggest that this dude is a Yes Man. It’s just a rumour. THERE IS NO EVIDENCE.
Dear Journal.ie editors,
How often do you run rumours on your site? And if so in what circumstances? Because I can come up with rumours with no basis in reality right now. Will you run them?
It seems to me that people just WANT TO believe that this guy is a fake because they don’t like what he’s saying. Wishful thinking. Pure wishful thinking.
That’s why it’s a poll and not a story…
It was clearly sarcasm & humour in Ronan’s post, hence the remark in his same comment about breaking up broadcasting companies.
Thats how the Yes Men role,they set up profiles and sit and wait. Its not a lot of effort really. They are great anti capitalist activists. Wanna know more about them you can watch em in action http://bit.ly/9DtI3H
I can confirm it is the YesMen
The weird thing is that Alessio Rastani’s photo on his twitter account (https://si0.twimg.com/profile_images/1433676090/alessio_pic_8.png) is NOT the same guy that appeared on BBC. One has blue eyes, the other brown.
So the Yes Men would appear to have persuaded him to let them appear in his place.
Mind you, he hasn’t tweeted for 2 days so maybe they kidnapped him!
Actually, I think it may be the same guy after all! Not sure why his eyes changed colour though… It’s certainly not Jacques Servin…
Your getting stuck on the wrong point, re if he’s an imposter. He is giving people real advise about the nature of the stock market that you never hear on TV. I say well done
well said – and whether he’s a trader or not, the things he says are correct
Check out link below…..his acc is 10 grand in the red haha
Coloured contact lenses are one of the easier ways of changing your appearance – actors use them all the time.
The Yes Men Fix the World is a docu film they did. Pretty good for seeing the stuff these dudes get away with (even if I dont fully agree with their methods of fighting globalisation)
I’m a finance major and everything this guy said is right. Why would this be a joke, its refreshingly truthful
Hopefully you’ll end up with your own house and more than 900 pound in cash on your companies books and not ten grand in the red like this numnum!
Their ear lobes look different. Maybe they are prosthetic?
Based on such auricular deception, there seems little alternative than to go around taking public service broadcasters apart.
IMHO, they certainly look alike, but looking closely I don’t think they are one and the same.
great side-by-side inquiry. They do look very similar, but it is also extremely clear that they are not the same person unless he has has extensive plastic surgery between clips. Stop both frames at any point and look at the details of the ears, the eyebrows, or the hairline. They are definitely not the same person.
Unless Rastani had a brow lift, eyebrows extended farther outward, and a nose job to make his nose more pointed, these are not the same 2 guys. they look similar, but it’s clear to me that wihtout major plastic surgery, these two guys can’t be the same. this does not mean that isn’t a Yes Man. He could be.
It’s called a ‘long con’. The Yes Men probably have numerous dormant personas slowly building a history.
I dont think he’s a prankster…i think hes just mad as a bag of cats. He trades from home, in this bedroom, in his jocks, and his mom calling him down for his dinner. Thats the problem with the media…he wasnt backround checked..clearly mad and now its gone viral. Way ta go BBC :(
He could trade while screwing a transsexual prostitute and it wouldn’t make an ounce of a difference. You’re being intellectually dishonest in your ad hominem and post-hoc theorycrafting.
What is this? All white guys look alike?
Firstly, to my eyes and ears, not the same guy. That doesn’t of course confirm that he isn’t a ‘send up’ man or whatever.
More to the point though, the views he expressed aren’t that crazy. The markets are ruled by fear, traders do justify their existence by making profits on that back of whatever turn is in the market and it is neither their concern or responsibility that the cumulative effect of those actions may be bad for an economy or economies – that is what regulators are supposed to do. He is right that the big investment banks and hedge funds have more influence over that world than any government and the view that the euro will collapse is hardly something that one could patent.
OK he is at the extreme end of a spectrum but may not be as much of a charicature as people might like to think…
Morgan Kelly metamorphosised anyone…?
The Bhopal Disaster impersonator is Jacques Servin of the Yes Men.
http://www.freitag.de/datenbank/freitag/2009/23/bichlbaum-yes-men-guerilla/print
Alessio Rastani looks very different and is much younger. He’s here: http://www.leadingtrader.com/wp-content/uploads/frugal/alessio-rastani.jpg
For any message, i always separate the intellectual and emotional message. If this is the same guy, he has greatly increased his ability for lying. For the Dow message, I don’t think I would have fallen for that, with the unnatural gaze, and the continuous hidden smirk.
I got no unnatural feeling from the trader video, if its fake, it would have fooled me.
Who feels stupid now hahahaha
If you think these two are “strangely similar looking” you need to change your prescription.
have your say