Maman Poulet

Remember Michael Lowry’s 20 Oxygen Weekend Passes Give-away earlier this year to celebrate his Facebook page and to launch his website?

It seems that Fine Gael TD for Tipperary North, Noel Coonan, has decided he needs a party to help launch his new website!

The launch of Deputy Noel Coonan’s website will take place in Long Charlie’s Pub on 27th August, 2010, at 9.30pm. The night will include food, music from the new, up-and-coming band Gin & Juice and a raffle for tickets to Guns N’ Roses and one nights stay in Dublin 4 Hotel. Guaranteed to be a brilliant night.

We can surel assume Deputy Coonan has paid for the prize himself and will be including it in his expenses or if it is a donation it will be listed in his returns to SIPO? Just checking!

I suppose I now know who Deputy Coonan is – he may have appeared in my ‘Know your Backbencher’ series at some stage in the future when I noted he followed me on twitter and realised I had never heard the name before!

I doubt Michael Lowry is invited to the party given Deputy Coonan’s objections to his constituency rival (and independent TD) being invited to Fine Gael functions in the constituency. The poor man has even had to put up with jokes from his party leader hinting that Lowry might rejoin the party.

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Look what President Obama just did. Maybe the Taoiseach can give us the tour round his new online gaff.

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Minister Pat Carey has been seeking questions from members of the public and members of his party. He invited people to email or tweet him with the questions. Today those of us who are on the FF supporters mailing list (the things I do for my readers !) received a video of a recent meeting where the Minister met with some of the people who had ‘asked him questions’. So herewith ‘Pat Carey Answers‘.

Jane Dignam and Adrian O’Higgins and others are members of the party but you wouldn’t know that from the video as they speak animatedly following their meeting with the Minister in Leinster House.

I’m not knocking the concept of speaking to the Minister and engaging with him like this but Fianna Fáíl might put the cumann names under the speakers names so we’re all clear. Especially as party members are being encouraged to spam send a link to the video to their friends. Did the Minister not get questions from non party members during this initiative? Or maybe this is the first video in a series. I’m also wondering where are all the questions asked and their resulting answers. There were pages of the questions on the website up until yesterday. Did anyone ask a question and get an answer? Comments please!!

While I’m at it – maybe the Minister could clarify the matter of his twitter account and if he does all his own tweeting. Last week at the MacGill summer school he tweeted that he had finished his speech before his backside hit the chair. It would be good to be clear on it all as he and his colleagues rush to go Obama on us.

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Mockumentary from Sonya Mulligan who is studying media and sociology. More please! In fact we need a series. The Good Lesbian maybe? Perhaps we could set Sonya challenges in the comments! No need to thank me honest.

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Meet Trevor Gilligan, FF Councillor in Clondalkin and Newcastle. A little bit of video blogging gold this weekend.  He has a lot to say on Fine Gael, and a special shout out for Fergus O’Dowd TD. Pity his phone rang, he was only getting started.  More soon please!

(PS. Trevor’s website is a bit bereft of mentions of Fianna Fáil.)

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Yesterday Michael Lowry TD gave away those 20 weekend Oxygen (camping included) tickets to constituents – he has youtubed the draw. Note that he knew all the acts appearing as he dropped then into the presentation with ease. No idea still if he paid for the tickets himself. He was assisted by a member of the Tipperary senior hurling team. I love the abrupt ending with no thanks or good wishes to the winners – just a direction to the lackey to turn off the camera.

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Fine Gael have this week launched a new campaign titled NewEra, with accompanying website outlining their plans for jobs, broadband, energy and water policies.

The website has videos from Enda Kenny, Simon Coveney and Leo Varadkar talking about these plans (George Lee look at what you are missing!)

And then there is this – Whack – a – Dodo - an invitation to commit acts of violence via a video game on members of the government and errant bankers.  I was stunned at first by the thoughts of hammering Mary Coughlan – encouraging us to hit a woman? No matter how much you think the Tanaiste is incompetent and a liability why would the party who wishes to be in government and the party of law and order wish website visitors to hit her and other members of Fianna Fáíl?

Fine Gael’s history of website design and engagement with social media has been one long FAIL – they are consistent at something at least.  They patronise their electorate and offend many and tell nobody nothing new about what they intend to do or make anyone want to vote for them.  As for the design? I’ll leave that post-mortem to the techies.

PS. Did they get the Russians in again to design it? Or is it the staff in FG who can’t check the copy? See this

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Michael Lowry the Independent TD for Tipp North/South Offaly is running a competition to celebrate the ’success’ of his new website and facebook page.

This is no ordinary ‘come meet me in the Dáil for a cup of tea and meet a few Ministers’ competition. Ah no Michael has gone for the yoof vote.

He is giving away 20 Oxygen Weekend passes on a Facebook competition – to constituents only mind you! These tickets are worth a minimum of €224 each. 20 tickets therefore would have set the TD back €4480 – if he paid full price for them? And I’m sure he has.

So if you live in his constituency and want to enter you can find out more here.

Now to all the other TD’s developing social media outlets what wonderful items are you going to be giving away to your constituents who friend or like you on Facebook? I’m not recommending this strategy by the way. Bribery anyone? I can think of a lot better uses for €4480 – is this what ‘walking around money’ is now going to be used for?

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I’m getting my fill of elections and politics at the moment by watching as much as possible on the happenings across the water and less so up the road in Northern Ireland.

As interesting as the politics is the communication methods being used, the lessons learnt from US Election 2008 and the moves forward that have been made since or the cultural tweaks that are being made. I’m sure all the political parties and political communication specialists here are watching the moves being made on and offline.

When launching their election manifesto earlier this week the Labour party also launched a range of animated cartoons online.

This first one is the main introduction and I’m interested in the little click on buttons on each of the main campaign messages throughout and at the end of the Youtube video which then leads the viewer to another video on a message they want to know more about.

What do you think about them?

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Thats to all the political correspondents and hacks running to join twitter and talk about it expertly.  It was not long ago you were laughing at it and those of us who use it and read it.

Now its ‘the twitter that did it’ and ‘tweeted out of office’.

So was Dan Boyle’s tweet planned or off the cuff? What will his next tweet say? When will someone tweet from the pol corrs seats?

I await the expert articles and socmediagooru’s writing politics posts.

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