Ballot Capers: Facebook silent on Fine Gael smiley-face tally

In the US, Bernie Sanders will win the Democratic nomination by a landslide over Hillary Clinton, and will go on to be defeated by the Republican candidate, who will either be Ben Carson or Donald Trump. That's if you base your predictions on the number of Facebook "likes" the respective candidates have received so far. Frankly, you'd be better off disembowelling a chicken and flinging its entrails across your kitchen floor if you're seeking a scientifically accurate way to guess the result of an election. But the obsessive-compulsive fascination with "data" derived from what people get up to on social media gets ever more inane. A press release from Facebook this week "revealed" that Fine Gael has been the most discussed political party. The report is silent on the party's Angry Face/Sad Face/Smiley Face share, though, so the information is essentially useless. In other news, flooding was discussed a lot in Roscommon, Westmeath, Clare and Leitrim – which will come as a huge surprise to anyone who's been asleep since last November.

It’s the little things . . .

"A man who will misuse an apostrophe is capable of anything," said the late, great Con Houlihan. With the next leaders' debate due on Monday evening on RTÉ, will viewers see one small but important improvement? A nation expects its public service broadcaster will reinstate the humble apostrophe, so lamentably absent from TV3's effort on Thursday.

Attempts to claim that "The Leaders Debate" should be construed using the D-word as a verb (as in "The Leaders Debate Very Crankily") won't wash when the phrase has been well established in its correct form for so many years. TV3 may claim it was just trying to make the thing sound zippier, but we blame those perennial enemies of good writing, the designers.

Message in a movie

At one stage we dreamed Election 2016 might see an explosion of creativity from a new wave of political activists keen to use tools like video and podcasts to tell their stories in innovative and exciting ways. Then we woke up. Instead we got the usual dreary Killinaskully lookalikes singing country 'n' Irish dirges about "sending your man" to the Dáil. No wonder the powerful video released this week by Dublin Central Social Democrat Gary Gannon has been so well received.

It's a single take, with no edits, of the candidate walking down a dark street, hearing what people have to say and talking passionately about what he believes. "The script for the video was developed by myself and Grace Dyas, who's a young director/writer with Theatre Club," Gannon tells us. "Areaman Productions were the ones who brought the video to life really; the quality was down to them." The video was filmed in Broadstone, just beside Blessington Street Basin. It's well worth a look on YouTube.