cactus flower wrote:

D.Harry wrote:

Ganley is not an elected politician. He is a private citizen doing what he is entitled to do.
He is not responsible for the future of the EU and it is disingenuous to demand of him to present an alternative to Lisbon if he wishes to condemn it. I voted No. Do I have a better plan? No I don't but that doesn't mean that Lisbon isn't a rubbish plan.
It is up to our highly paid, elected representatives to come up with an acceptable way forward. That they refuse to do so and instead thumb their noses at democracy and international agreements, says much more about their bona fides than anything uttered by a private citizen.

I thought the Lisbon process and Treaty was a horrific episode of bureaucratic bungling and was profoundly undemocratic in intent. I voted against the Treaty and would like to see a completely different kind of Europe to the Merkel/Sarkozy hybrid model. However this thread is specifically about Declan Ganley, so I don't think it isn't unreasonable of Ibis to give his opinions of Ganley in the thread, from his perspective.

Ta! As you say, this is a thread about Ganley, not Lisbon.

cactus flower wrote:

Declan Ganley is a politically active private citizen who set out to influence the Lisbon vote (within his rights) and who spent a vast amount of money (a minimum of €206,000 acknowledge so far, so far as I am aware). He has set up an organisation, Libertas, with the express view going back many years that this should become a pan-european political party. I am not aware of the Austrian contacts to which Ibis refers.

For example, the letter-writing campaign? That was organised by the Rettet Österreich campaign, which is largely far-right groups:

‘‘There are no formal links, they are not supporters of ours, and we are not supporters of them,” said McGuirk, when asked about Rettet Österreich. ‘‘But we do have a common interest. They asked us if it would be helpful to organise the letters, and we said as long as the wording was correct.”

cactus flower wrote:

The Austrian parties are economically right wing anti-immigrant parties that would send a shudder down the spine of anyone with awareness of Austrian 20th century history. After the Irish Referendum, it was notable that Declan Ganley's first reflex was not to hold a meeting in Dublin or Brussels but to run over to Westminster for a highly publicised meeting with the right wing Tory eurosceptics.

To be fair, he hasn't pursued that particular line any further that I'm aware of, and was perfectly happy to state to said audience that he wasn't a eurosceptic, much less a europhobe.

cactus flower wrote:

Ganley's history prior to the referendum is opaque in detail, but generally is given out by him to have entailed aquiring extensive personal wealth through aquisition in his teens or early twenties of a rake of privatised Russian natural resources. He was also involved in business dealings in Albania, with his colleague Liam Lawlor, that left a lot of people there feeling sore.
His company Rivada Networks has on its Board a squadron of recently retired US military and Homelands Security personel. He has run a number of conferences on security attended by military and security personel. There appeared to be no very substantial deals done until the very recent announcement of a €200 million contract that I haven't yet read any detail of.

Ideologically Ganley gives a line in high flown patriotic and religious rhetoric along with a zeal for economic deregulation. He goes in for strutting and posturing without producing anything of substance and his presentation of Libertas as an "Institute" is laughable - it has produced no publications that could be taken as a serious piece of research or analysis.

For someone who wants a new right-wing movement in Ireland and Europe headed up by someone of this character, I presume this would all be fine. In my book, EvotingMachine described the whole thing in a four words, accurately. I am not calling Ganley a Nazi, but that doesn't stop me hearing distant sound of jackboots whenever I see him in action.

It's the call for strong leadership that bothers me, combined with the demand that the 'will of the people be done' - that's a bog-standard demagogic combo, where it invariably it turns out that the 'will of the people' to have 'strong leadership' points inexorably in the direction of the speaker.

cactus flower wrote:

The speech Ganley made is clearly in the context of preparation for a potential run by Libertas at the European Elections.

He'll be announcing on the 16th that the French MPF will be standing on the Libertas ticket. Libertas has already in effect been anointed successor to Jens-Peter Bonde.

cactus flower wrote:

I don't think there is any subject under the sun that Ibis and I agree about, apart from this one.

It does look that way!

ibis wrote:

D.Harry wrote:

Ganley is not an elected politician. He is a private citizen doing what he is entitled to do.
He is not responsible for the future of the EU and it is disingenuous to demand of him to present an alternative to Lisbon if he wishes to condemn it. I voted No. Do I have a better plan? No I don't but that doesn't mean that Lisbon isn't a rubbish plan.
It is up to our highly paid, elected representatives to come up with an acceptable way forward. That they refuse to do so and instead thumb their noses at democracy and international agreements, says much more about their bona fides than anything uttered by a private citizen.

Meh - this is the second plan they've come up with, and it famously bears a strong resemblance to the first plan. If they have to come up with a third, it will be similar, because it will address the issues they think need addressing, and proffer the solutions that they can mutually agree on. If you have different concerns, it's up to you to put those forward.

What does that mean? We all know the plan was changed. The questions are why and in what way. We know the answers to those questions also. Ganley is one of the few people pointing it out. That is why he is being personally vilified.
"it will address the issues they think need addressing, and proffer the solutions that they can mutually agree on".

D.Harry wrote:

ibis wrote:

D.Harry wrote:

Ganley is not an elected politician. He is a private citizen doing what he is entitled to do.
He is not responsible for the future of the EU and it is disingenuous to demand of him to present an alternative to Lisbon if he wishes to condemn it. I voted No. Do I have a better plan? No I don't but that doesn't mean that Lisbon isn't a rubbish plan.
It is up to our highly paid, elected representatives to come up with an acceptable way forward. That they refuse to do so and instead thumb their noses at democracy and international agreements, says much more about their bona fides than anything uttered by a private citizen.

Meh - this is the second plan they've come up with, and it famously bears a strong resemblance to the first plan. If they have to come up with a third, it will be similar, because it will address the issues they think need addressing, and proffer the solutions that they can mutually agree on. If you have different concerns, it's up to you to put those forward.

What does that mean? We all know the plan was changed. The questions are why and in what way. We know the answers to those questions also. Ganley is one of the few people pointing it out. That is why he is being personally vilified.
"it will address the issues they think need addressing, and proffer the solutions that they can mutually agree on".

I have no idea what you're asking.

ibis wrote:

D.Harry wrote:

ibis wrote:

D.Harry wrote:

Ganley is not an elected politician. He is a private citizen doing what he is entitled to do.
He is not responsible for the future of the EU and it is disingenuous to demand of him to present an alternative to Lisbon if he wishes to condemn it. I voted No. Do I have a better plan? No I don't but that doesn't mean that Lisbon isn't a rubbish plan.
It is up to our highly paid, elected representatives to come up with an acceptable way forward. That they refuse to do so and instead thumb their noses at democracy and international agreements, says much more about their bona fides than anything uttered by a private citizen.

Meh - this is the second plan they've come up with, and it famously bears a strong resemblance to the first plan. If they have to come up with a third, it will be similar, because it will address the issues they think need addressing, and proffer the solutions that they can mutually agree on. If you have different concerns, it's up to you to put those forward.

What does that mean? We all know the plan was changed. The questions are why and in what way. We know the answers to those questions also. Ganley is one of the few people pointing it out. That is why he is being personally vilified.
"it will address the issues they think need addressing, and proffer the solutions that they can mutually agree on".

I have no idea what you're asking.

Why would we expect them to come up with anything sane, after the last two days.

cactus flower wrote:

ibis wrote:

D.Harry wrote:

ibis wrote:

D.Harry wrote:

Ganley is not an elected politician. He is a private citizen doing what he is entitled to do.
He is not responsible for the future of the EU and it is disingenuous to demand of him to present an alternative to Lisbon if he wishes to condemn it. I voted No. Do I have a better plan? No I don't but that doesn't mean that Lisbon isn't a rubbish plan.
It is up to our highly paid, elected representatives to come up with an acceptable way forward. That they refuse to do so and instead thumb their noses at democracy and international agreements, says much more about their bona fides than anything uttered by a private citizen.

Meh - this is the second plan they've come up with, and it famously bears a strong resemblance to the first plan. If they have to come up with a third, it will be similar, because it will address the issues they think need addressing, and proffer the solutions that they can mutually agree on. If you have different concerns, it's up to you to put those forward.

What does that mean? We all know the plan was changed. The questions are why and in what way. We know the answers to those questions also. Ganley is one of the few people pointing it out. That is why he is being personally vilified.
"it will address the issues they think need addressing, and proffer the solutions that they can mutually agree on".

I have no idea what you're asking.

Why would we expect them to come up with anything sane, after the last two days.

Who?

Our highly paid elected representatives.

Ganley is on the Late Late tonight........anybody know if the white mare is a no-show? Good to see the show's production team get their ideas from machine nation.

As part of a debate or just him?

johnfás wrote:

As part of a debate or just him?

Don't know. Sounds like a guest interview. Pat labeling him already

I'm tuned in and have the tomatas ready

That thing at the start reminded me of Twink at the Fine Gael conference many years ago. We clearly are in recession when we have this sort of thing on. We'll be back to maceroon bars before you know it.

SeathrúnCeitinn wrote:

johnfás wrote:

As part of a debate or just him?

Don't know. Sounds like a guest interview. Pat labeling him already

Mr Ganley does a decent enough job of labelling himself.

I'm no fan of Ganley but Kenny advertising him as King of the no side is pretty irksome

johnfás wrote:

SeathrúnCeitinn wrote:

johnfás wrote:

As part of a debate or just him?

Don't know. Sounds like a guest interview. Pat labeling him already

Mr Ganley does a decent enough job of labelling himself.

i've been frequently accused of libelling him

We know where his heart is now and that his granny likes the Late Late Show... bet she prefers Gay Byrne though.

Where's the white mare?

She was on the treadmill just before he came out

Looks like my Nostradamas versus Cambrensis equine interaction scenario will not come to pass

Oh we've got Martha on the phone now.... g'wan Martha put him on the spot!

Dick Roche does a good woman's voice.......

A minute ago he raised 1.3 million now he raised 800 thousand, changing by the minute.

He complained about the yes campaign getting money from Europe and then discussed the possibility of raising funds around Europe. But he did score on the obvious lack of details on the main parties funding

This is a nice little chappy now. Good voice. Could he be the next face of Libertas?

Hi now. That poor young chap did nothing to ye. Leave him out of it

I wonder what Rachel Allen thinks of Libertas - perhaps Martha will phone in again.