Mary Harney

Mary Harney is frightening - just look at that picture above. No further words need be added to illustrate this image, every pixel tells its own story. Of horror.

Harney is another 'heavyweight' on the Irish political scene. Like 97% of the Dail she was a schoolteacher before entering politics. As is my way I couldn't be arsed researching her past so I'm just going to copy what wikipedia says about her early political life. "She holds the record as the youngest Senator in the Seanad, being 24 on appointment. In 1979 Harney had her first electoral success when she was elected to Dublin City Council. Two years later she was successfully elected to the Dail in the 1981 general election for Dublin South West. She has retained her seat at every election since then". Like all people who have read this fact about Mary my first thought was, "Lord Jehovah - save the people of that constituency from eternal damnation for they do not know what they do".

Harney became a founder-member of the Progressive Democrats in 1986 and has been fucking around the top of that "party" ever since. Another useful piece of information about Harney is that she is unable to start new sentences with capital letters, which has lead to our health system being ranked 25th of 26 in the EU + Switzerland, only ahead of Lithuania (again wikipedia) and her webpage looking spa-like.

Mary has fought off charges of gross incompetence, evading Luas ticket inspectors, stealing from Toymaster and the near annihilation of the PD's to remain in charge of the Irish health system since 2006. Opinions are, shall we say, slightly mixed on the type of job she has done since her appointment. However, recent statistics now show that an Irish person suffering with bubonic plague during the Black Death would have had a better chance of staying alive by going to the local apothecary, than if they were to limp into an Irish hospital with a sprained ankle tomorrow.

Now it would be easy for me to make light of Mary's 'consumption issue', which I think some of Ireland's finest political correspondents in the Irish Times and Weekly Sport go too far with, but there is another piece of information that must be divulged to the public (or this blog's 3 readers). Met Eireann has noted that the sheer density of Harney's mass is having extraordinary effects on the Irish tidal system. Irish tides, at intervals of 6 hours are literally being dragged towards her, nullifying the gravitational pull of the Moon. This phenomenon has resulted in levels of soil erosion along Ireland's east coast increasing 22 fold since 1979. Scientific fact.

In December 2001, Harney used a Government plane which was 50% funded by the European Commission to travel to Leitrim to open a friend's off-license. Harney later apologised for having abused her position in using the plane for non government business arguing that duty called because free pie was on offer in Leitrim. The aircraft has subsequently been devoted to maritime surveillance of the soil erosion effects discussed above.

So what have we learned about Mary Harney from the above? Nothing really, but the day will have to come when the people of Dublin South West say 'No' and tell Mary to go back to Ballinasloe. Either that or we wait for a black hole to be opened up in the front row of Dail Eireann because Harney's density reached critical mass.