With news just in that yesterday’s referendum on the EU fiscal pact has drawn a majority ‘Yes’ vote from Irish voters, it has emerged that The Socialist Party have been using a picture of infamous Simpsons' character Mr Burns on their ‘Vote No’ posters – without permission from the show.
Whereas in previous referenda, the parties in opposition and the ‘No’ campaigners relied upon associations with 1916 and the Easter Rising, this year they went with doughnuts and d’oh.
Hot Press got in contact with Sky, the licenced distributors of The Simpsons in Ireland, who said that to their knowledge, The Socialist Party had not received the legally required licence to distribute or reproduce the image. “It’s not licenced by us”, said a Sky spokesperson in London.
And while they might have been in the dark, Socialist Party member Eddie McCave was more than willing to talk about the motives behind the campaign.
“Well [the design] was a combination of Paul Murphy, the MEP, and a few other people [such as] Joe Higgins," McCabe said. "Leading members of the Socialist Party just came up with the ideas and then I was the one who laid it out. We were looking for a cartoon to display a rich boss, who has a lot of money and he’s hoarding it. When we went looking for those images, we came up with Mr Burns.
"Mr Burns for most people represents that kind of rich, capitalist, greedy person, you know, so it worked well, and we thought it was the best idea to go with… They started going up on Monday (May 28). I think there’s a thousand up all across Dublin… Some in Meath and Kildare. I think everybody likes The Simpsons. And everybody knows Mr Burns.”