Extraordinary video footage from Enda Kenny’s meeting in Leitrim this evening by Newstalk journalist and national treasure Paraic Gallagher.

Video 1 – Video 2 – Video 3 – Video 4

Update

You can watch back the official Fine Gael Ustream video feed here. The sound is a bit scratchy and very low, but nice to see them starting to do more live video.

Update 2

RTE have Youtubed another video on the heckling. The heckler is named Bobby by unidentified handlers trying to shut him up.

Update 3
Boooo! Hoaxarama by Cllr Terry Ghusto. Beardy hecklers around the country are hurting.

Just when you think the Fine Gael site is a safe place to visit, they scare you even more. Welcome to ‘Fine Gael Twolicy’.

Now, the idea of collecting Fine Gael Twitter presences in one place is interesting, logical and downright useful for those of us in the political nerd herd. It makes sense.

Onto the cringey stuff.

“Twolicy”

I’m not sure even the run-of-the-mill Life Guru-Expressive Social Media Coach could keep a straight face saying this. Yes, really.

e-Canvasser

What is really objectionable about the Twolicy page though, is the e-Canvasser form.

Clicking on that banner on the page, brings up the pop-under form below:

The call to action for visitors is to effectively astroturf on social media properties. I’m kind of wondering just who this page is aimed at. Party members wouldn’t need encouragement to do this and well, floating voters – are they really going to a) enter their details into a Fine Gael site again this election cycle and/or b) spam all of their friends with “I heart Fine Gael”. Is there anything more likely to cause unfriend in social media networks than streams of political rhetoric? That old chestnut that ‘I don’t use Twitter because I don’t want to read what you had for breakfast’. Magnify that by a thousand and you have the annoyance factor of consistent electioneering noises on a network of friends.

Looking at the design and tenor of Fine Gael’s e-Canvasser page, I think it’s the kind of page that a committee of consultants would produce. Don’t you think that there are touches of Obama? We’re not an politicially-charged community of phone pools in neighbours’ houses. And I don’t think we will ever be. If anything, encouraging people to spam their friends with pro-Fine Gael messages could backfire on Lower Twount Street HQ. Hello Protest Voters.

Instead of taking risks in content and spending less, look at the power of Coveney’s Audioboos outside a McD’s on a late-night ride home, we get Fine Gael encouraging people to fill their social presences with spam. The best that Fine Gael can hope for is that this twolicy is an expensive but unmitigated disaster in user takeup. That would, at least, save them the indignity of spending money to annoy would-be voters.

Ah, Youtube… Today brings Green candidate in Dublin North Central Donna Cooney and camera in tow calls on the Fine Gael HQ. Knock, Knock. “Can I look at your accounts?” This follows FG strategist Frank Flannery’s comments that their funding would be transparent.

I hate to poke my fingers in the eternal wound of Dublin media vs people who eat their dinner in the middle of the day. But I do love this picture. Via Enda Kenny on Twitter.

This election far from being an Internet election – sorry Obamaites – is more Internet-friendly election with a little more online stirrings than pre-07. In that spirit, Suzy has been trailblazing the Youtubes of candidates, the more different, the better.

And so, here’s another – Fine Gael’s Marcella Corcoran Kennedy who’s running in Laois/Offaly as part of the panzer move into Biffo country.