1) Children
The weaponising of children for political purposes is a shameful act. Children are supposed to enjoy the magic of life, believe in the tooth fairy, ride their bikes, play outside all day long on a Saturday, not get dragged to some poxy church funded jamboree and exposed to graphic images of abortion where they’re made feel anyone outside the local cult is evil. Rally for life might as well be run by Boko Haram the way they use innocent children in their campaign. 

2) Mattie McGrath
Independent TD for Tipperary Mattie McGrath took to the stage to the tune of The A-Team. Mattie doesn't belong in the A-Team or the B-Team. 

3) Sean Friel
Sean’s twitter bio upsets me because he’s using 21st century technology for a 9th century message: Discerning For The Priesthood. I Am 100% Pro-Life. I Sing In The Church Choir. I Play The Violin. I Use Fountain Pens. I Love Latin. All For The Glory Of God. Note Sean's use of a voodoo chain with a tiny pro choice activist impaled on a cross. 

4) Fake News
You want to do your anti choice hate thing that's fine but let's not start fake news stories about the citizen's assembly being rigged. How do you even come up with that? It's made up of 100 members and open to submissions from the public and everything is kept on public record. You can't just dismiss the things you don't like in life, you can't simply start screaming it's stopped raining just because you don't own an umbrella. 

5) The Virgin Mary 
The virgin Mary did not need an abortion but real women do. Note the MAGA hat on the left leading the procession, return to sender. We don't need t make America great, we need to get the church out of Ireland and start making sensible laws we can live by. 

6) Leaches
Another really distasteful feature in the debate has been small groups jumping on the bandwagon to promote self interests and their own agendas; usually for financial gain. If you want to do the work of god how about you try look after the one billion people suffering from malnutrition. 

7) White Jesus
The Anti-choice brigade keep saying this isn't about Jesus so why does he keep cropping up and why can't they accept that more than likely he doesn't look like the baby from the fairy liquid adverts. Also if Jesus had been aborted we wouldn't have had 2000 years of church suppression and if there was a god he'd know that. So put away your sign Edward Kitchener there will be no blood drinking tonight. 

8) Gendercide 
The suggestion that abortion will be used for gender selection is like a plot to some horror movie from the 80's where there are only a handful of female politicians and decisions about the children women raise are controlled by men who hold 70% of the power. 

“How come life has to be so difficult, just because you’re born into this world a woman”

Activist Eileen Flynn’s rally cry to the thousands of women & men who came out on International Women’s Day to support Repeal the 8th. This woman could very well be the Joan of Arc of our generation, not only because she speaks energetically with compassion and pride but also because I think she might be carrying a sword on her at all times.

Eileen speaks to the crowd about standing up for our rights, she says she wasn’t always a ‘feminist’ because she didn’t know what the label meant, but now she knows what it means and now she’s here to fight for it. Eileen’s understanding of labels comes across very clearly, she speaks about the ‘us’ Vs ‘them’ attitudes which prevent us from working together to achieve the equality we all deserve, it’s not about being male or female, it’s about what’s right and wrong and the actions we take to create a society where people have the right to full bodily autonomy and equality for all.

Eileen challenged the real values of ‘Pro-lifers’;
“If you’re pro-life how come you’re not out there helping the homeless, how come you’re not improving the lives of the 3,000 homeless children in this country”

Her words hold such integrity that I’m proud to have been here to march with her today. For Eileen it’s not about what banner you march under but what you’re marching for. I’ve no doubt in my mind that if she was organising this march herself that it would have taken a slightly different direction.

Instead of concluding with a planned protest outside the Dail this organised march, a march for access to dignified health services, took a detour to the Customs House. I’m not sure why this decision was taken but I’m quite concerned that the Repeal movement is not getting the political support it needs two months away from the referendum. The repeal movement might have grass roots beginnings but it needs to recognise the need to progress if it’s to fulfil its destiny. Unfortunately there were more SIPTU flags at the march than SIPTU members. Where were all the nurses? Where were all the midwives? One speaker from Doctors for Choice spoke but why don’t we hear more from the medical professions on RTE?

International women’s day had an opportunity to be remembered for taking on this fight but it probably lacked the numbers and pikes necessary to get to the Dail. This doesn’t make Repeal the 8th a lost cause but it does make knocking on doors a lot tougher. The march highlighted all the work that needs to be done in the next two months and I hope everyone finds the kind of energy Eileen Flynn showed in order to dig in and make Repeal The 8th happen in 2018. 

The Government has come under fire for going a step too far in spreading a party political message in national and regional newspapers at a cost of €1.5m.

What’s worrying about Fine Gael’s campaign is that in most cases the advertising was written by mercenaries, featured pictures of party members, and were purposefully made look like authentic articles by the papers which printed them.

This is tragic because the advertising used the integrity and trust of the individual papers concerned to convince their audience that Fine Gael are promoting a positive and rewarding programme which will result in prosperity for Ireland.

Journalism has failed to question if the 2040 plan is simply party propaganda on the run up to an election and have thus failed the people of Ireland. Simply looking back on Fine Gael’s previous election promises of Burden Sharing and Ending Hospital Waiting Lists would suggest the party are incapable of delivering on their commitments, but is print media really going to challenge the provider of a multi million euro revenue stream or are they going to remain complicit with the hand that feeds them.

If independent news papers are afraid to speak out against members of the Government, or the Government itself, for fear of losing precious revenue then this is a threat to our democracy as well as leaving the Government less accountable and more open to corruption.

In light of this my real news awards continue with the fourth trophy of the year going to Ellen Coyne's (@ellenmcoyne ‏) for her coverage of the Splash4Cash scandal.

Make 2040 ads look like real news, paper told

Ellen open's with; Regional newspapers were instructed to make government advertorials look like independent stories and in some cases part of “the normal news cycle,”

She also reveals that; One local editor told The Times: “This is fake news. Newspapers are struggling and the government know that, so they’ve got us by the balls.”
 
The fifth trophy goes to Susan Mitchell (@susmitchellSBP) for her article

‘Stop Downplaying Hospital Waiting Times’

Susan’s sub headline says enough really;

“Claims that waiting lists are improving are not supported by the data and overall trends, but ever changing targets facilitate such lame assertions by politicians and the Department of Health”

In her article Susan points out that in January 2012 there were 59,386 people on waiting lists but by January 2018 those figures had risen to 80,204 with more people than ever waiting longer than 12 months for potentially lifesaving treatments.

The sixth trophy of the year goes to Donal O’Keeffe (@Donal_OKeeffe) for his article in The Avondhu: ‘Making pawns of people who have Down Syndrome is cruel and disingenuous’

Donal takes to print and tackles some very challenging points on the debate without holding back on the punches himself;
“I would ask ‘Love Both’ campaigners – who are usually Catholic in the extreme – what they think would have happened to a baby born with Down syndrome, say, in a Mother and Baby Home when the Catholic Church was in its pomp.”

Donal’s article is brave given how divisive the issue is and how little discussion there has been on the topic on RTE television. The Government have taken a backseat on the debate so far and it's hard to tell how they get away with such a lack of leadership on some of the most important and platform issues presented to them.