Keith Shirley

Like most people I’m good at bitching about things but don’t come up with too many solutions. If I do come up with solutions I sure as hell don’t want to get involved in politics to try and implement them. By its very nature it’s a thankless job. You can’t keep everyone happy – and I love to be loved. Awww.

I’m not well versed in who’s who in local (or even national) politics. It’s just one of those things that I should know more about but never made the time for.

With the aim of broadening my horizons recently I gate crashed one of the local political meetings. I’m sorry to say it was a big disappointment. Far from the fired up speeches about how they were going to kick ass in the next election I found it to be a very low key event. Possibly this was because it was a local party meeting rather than a public rally. There was only one candidate that I thought had the required polish. Even with that I’m probably biased as he was a boyhood friend of mine.

So it was with interest that I heard from T2 that they had developed an election info site in cooperation with KCLR. The site – www.localelections.ie - will provide all sorts of details on the elections and the candidates. Hopefully they can really get the candidates involved. I’m a bit fed up of all the junk mail that comes through the letter box but still gives me no idea of who the people really are.

Ken McGuire also wrote about it on his site -as I’m sure will a number of other local bloggers as T2 is hunting them down.

The site has a seperate Blog for Carlow and Kilkenny in addition to a blog by Sue Nunn from KCLR. The site is a bit text heavy at the moment but I’m glad it’s available. Maybe this election I’ll manage to educate myself properly.

Now I need to find out how and when I can get into the council meetings to see what goes on there.