Who you going to vote for?

Tim Robbins

Well I hope the Mods don't me putting this here, but it would be interesting to see if we think the same on or clash on this issue.
I'll try and explain my own thinking.
FF have a few good ministers (Martin, Brennan) but are conservative and too corrupt for my liking.
FG are too conservative.
Labour are too in with the Unions.
Green have some good ideas but the one in my constinuency seems scientifically illiterate.
Socialist Party, Jim Higgins is a brilliant speaker but I don't agree with his politics.
SF are just a no.
So I go for PD. Not saying they are perfect. The citizenship referendum was upsetting but looking at social / economic policy they seem to be the best.
Your thoughs?

PDN

I would just like to stress that the PDs are nothing to do with PDN.

I got 2 voting cards for 2 different addresses. Does this mean that I can vote twice?

After all, the old Sinn Fein election slogan for their supporters in the North was always "Vote early & vote often".

Dave!

Where's the Atari Jaguar option?

I'll most likely be voting.....

1. Labour
2. Fine Gael
3. Green
4. Sinn Féin

BTW my religious beliefs don't affect who I vote for. Mainly because I don't think any parties are gonna be pushing any kind of secular agendas.

finlma

I wouldn't go near the PDs with a fifty foot barge pole - they can keep their evil right wing agenda well away from me thank you.

All my votes will be going to anyone but FF, PD and SF.

toiletduck

Where's the option for the Christian Solidarity Party?

Dave!

lol

Tim Robbins

DaveMcG wrote:

lol

After watching the debates tonight and last night,. McDowell is easily the best debater. He was arguing against three people at the same time and wiping them. He floored Adams twice. I'd loved to see McDowell come in here and whoop up some of our debating standards.

frankscott

Hi, I got my polling card a few weeks ago, but can't find it anywhere now, dawter came home and 'tidied'!!

Can I vote without it? I live in a small town, know everybody, have loadsa id anyway, I don't want to be turned away!

MagnumForce

Im voting Green, It's like throwing your vote away, but more fun. Everyone should vote GReen and get them in power, then watch as they realise they've no idea what to do or how to run a country properly, then they'll dissolve the Dail and we'll get to vote again, and we'll all vote green again, and eventually the Greens would have to be like "Please, stop voting Green". It's my evil plan and i'm sticking to it.

I just wish we could get Senator David Norris as Taoiseach some how, or better yet, President! His inaugeration speech would be about gay sex and Ulysses. That man is a legend!

Tim Robbins

MagnumForce wrote:

Im voting Green, It's like throwing your vote away, but more fun. Everyone should vote GReen and get them in power, then watch as they realise they've no idea what to do or how to run a country properly, then they'll dissolve the Dail and we'll get to vote again, and we'll all vote green again, and eventually the Greens would have to be like "Please, stop voting Green". It's my evil plan and i'm sticking to it.

I just wish we could get Senator David Norris as Taoiseach some how, or better yet, President! His inaugeration speech would be about gay sex and Ulysses. That man is a legend!

I am surprised any atheist would vote SF. Nationalism is a bit like Religion. In most cases, you are indoctrinated at birth, told your Irish and act Irish.
Nationalism is also a mad made construct and yes there 100 of nations and they can't all be right Isn't my analogy hillarious

Colm O'Gorman, the lad from the one in four campaign, is PD. He seems to be the only politician with a gripe against the Catholic Church.

http://www.colmogorman.ie/

I also liked that Cafe Bar license bill McDoweel tried to bring in. Seemed a good idea.

Also, I am quite surprised how many people are voting Green. I would have thought there would be a correlation between atheism and scientific understanding.
The Green's don't seem to be the most scientific literate, check this link out:

http://taint.org/2007/04/10/134819a.html

Dades

Why is no-one actively seeking the non-religious vote, godamnnit?

And for feck's sake don't vote for the Greens.

Tim Robbins

The Atheist wrote:

Why is no-one actively seeking the non-religious vote, godamnnit?

And for feck's sake don't vote for the Greens.

You're man O'Gorman (PD) seems to have set up an educate together school down there.
Maybe people should include links / info to anybody pushing a secular society.
http://www.colmogorman.ie/index-4.html

aidan24326

The Atheist wrote:

Why is no-one actively seeking the non-religious vote, godamnnit?

Too afraid to scare off the traditional catholic vote, which is obviously much greater in number. The census figures showed <5% atheist/no religion, although the national figure was c.160,000 which is still alot of votes. Certainly any politician who camapigned for non-denominated schools would get my vote for a start. And the removal
of outdated religious references in the constitution also.

And for feck's sake don't vote for the Greens.

I agree. As MagnumForce said it would be interesting to see them in power, or see them try to actually put some of their policies into practise. They have some decent ideas (and some unworkable ones), but they would be bad news for the economy IMO.

As for Sinn Fein, I wouldn't vote for them if they were the only party.

Did anyone see the Late Late last night? They had Dunphy,Waters and some Fianna Fail trumpeter on. When the issue of Fianna Fail going into government with SF came up, the FF guy (some kind of party election honcho or something) said that Bertie "would rather take a chainsaw to his own legs than have Mary Lou McDonald in cabinet"


Good man Bertie. He has some taste anyway

I have voted for FF in the past, but am starting to think they've had long enough in government now. Maybe a stint in the opposition would do them good. Give Kenny and Rabbitte a go.

The figures point to a FF-Labour coalition though.

Scofflaw

frankscott wrote:

Hi, I got my polling card a few weeks ago, but can't find it anywhere now, dawter came home and 'tidied'!!

Can I vote without it? I live in a small town, know everybody, have loadsa id anyway, I don't want to be turned away!

Should be fine. I usually don't even get mine.

The Atheist wrote:

Why is no-one actively seeking the non-religious vote, godamnnit?

And for feck's sake don't vote for the Greens.

OK, I'll bite - why not?

cordially,
Scofflaw

JC 2K3

toiletduck wrote:

Where's the option for the Christian Solidarity Party?

lol, the leader, Cathal Loftus was a sub teacher in my school 4 years ago.

Oh man, the fun we had in those classes. We're talking most incompetant teacher EVER here, not just someone who let the class get a bit rowdy and couldn't control it, but he was an absolute joke. We'd be throwing paper at him, walking around the classroom as we pleased, mocking him in every way possible. And his voice, it was SO funny, really droney kinda North Dublin accent.

He was an idiot. And keep in mind that at the time we had no idea of his hardcore Christian stance, hell I was still a Catholic, so his religion has no bearing on my judgement of him. He could be the most incompetent politician ever if elected....


Anyway, I hate the PDs. They're probably a more intelligent party than others, but they're policies are so right wing. They seem to want to create a souless capitalist conformist state. They know how to run an economy well, but they don't seem to care about real people.

I'll probably vote Greens. They won't be powerful enough to implement any of their extremist environment policies, but they'll be a welcome liberal influence in the governement.

PDN

Tim Robbins wrote:

You're man O'Gorman (PD) seems to have set up an educate together school down there.
Maybe people should include links / info to anybody pushing a secular society.
http://www.colmogorman.ie/index-4.html

My impression is that most of the posters on the A&A board would find the charter of the Educate Together Schools pretty offensive:

Recalling Article 26.3 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

"Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children"

Parents are entitled to participate actively in decisions that affect the education of their children. In particular, they have the right to decide what kind of school reflects their conscience and lawful preference,

Parents should, to fit in with the ideals of Wicknight et al, sit their 4 year old sprogs down and explain the different kinds of schools that are available to them. They should say, "Well, this is the kind of school I would prefer you to go to, but lot's of people think differently. So, what kind of school do you want to go to?"

I think we should all boycott the United Nations and Educate Together for being so totalitarian, for trampling upon the rights of children, and for undermining the concept of secular society by suggesting that parents should enforce such choices upon their children.

rediguana

PDN wrote:

I got 2 voting cards for 2 different addresses. Does this mean that I can vote twice?

After all, the old Sinn Fein election slogan for their supporters in the North was always "Vote early & vote often".

Vote early and often? Haha. Those SF bastards are funny, if nothing else!

Give me your voting card - I'm registered in Cork-South-Central but I live in Blackrock, Dublin. I'd vote for the PD's if I could.

The Greens are too crazy (as well as being tediously boring), SF's policies (even the ones that are nothing to do with punishment beatings etc) are worrying. Labour / FG / FF are all kind of similar for me.

The PD's don't seem to showboat as much as everyone else.

rediguana

The Atheist wrote:

Why is no-one actively seeking the non-religious vote, godamnnit?

And for feck's sake don't vote for the Greens.

Atheists / Agnostics are probably statistically associated with non-voting behaviour, so why court them?

As for the Greens, I think it's a good thing that they have some representatives in the Dail, as long as there are <6 or so.

toiletduck

I shall be voting for the PDs. My atheist stance doesn't really affect who I vote for, except when FF come around and I'll ask them about Bertie comments...

Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

My impression is that most of the posters on the A&A board would find the charter of the Educate Together Schools pretty offensive:

I'm not exactly certain why you think so?

PDN wrote:

Parents should, to fit in with the ideals of Wicknight et al, sit their 4 year old sprogs down and explain the different kinds of schools that are available to them. They should say, "Well, this is the kind of school I would prefer you to go to, but lot's of people think differently. So, what kind of school do you want to go to?"

I think we should all boycott the United Nations and Educate Together for being so totalitarian, for trampling upon the rights of children, and for undermining the concept of secular society by suggesting that parents should enforce such choices upon their children.

Oh, I see - the hidden 'conclusion' being that there are so many religious schools because so many parents want their children to go to a religious school?

Not a historical accident at all, then....

cordially,
Scofflaw

Schuhart

I’ll go into enormous detail that no-one will read, but will make me feel better for posting it. In short, religion plays no conscious part in my decision and I'm not looking for an actively secular party.

FF/PD don’t have magic economic policy. They just keep taxes low so that firms choose to set up here from abroad. I don’t want to go on for ages, but I know the reaction to this can be ‘well, isn’t that what you’re meant to do’. In short, no, as it leaves us in this Hobbit like existence of dependence on foreign markets without any real strategic appreciation of what that involves. The only new Irish company really flogging its ass around Europe is Ryanair, and its in a market that just can’t last.

Plus there’s an amount of imbecility in the FF/PD outlook that has to go, basically in the whole decentralisation/national spatial strategy/one-off housing space that will be familiar to people who participate in some of the discussions on the commuting/transport forum, although they have wider implications than just transport.

Fine Gael don’t provide an alternative and their commitment to rebuild the ludicrous Western Rail Corridor (don’t suggest this has to do with regional development until you’ve read some of the many threads on this topic on commuting/transport) is almost a symbol that they are indeed FF lite.

I’ve never understood the way some talk about SF as if we should all be chomping at the bit to vote for them once we’re convinced the guns are gone. With or without guns, they’ll always be last preference for me.

The Greens are inexperienced, but to an extent they are the only party attempting to address the agenda we need to move towards.

That leaves Labour almost by default, but at least they do vocalise some useful policies like removing the idiocy from the decentralisation programme and having some positive vision for Dublin – other parties still seem almost apologetic that the city might actually have as much right to exist as Claremorris.

We also have a reasonably sensible independent TD – Catherine Murphy – who left Labour in a spat over a promised Senate seat. I’ll likely give her no 1 as she hits the right notes on issues like class sizes and transport. Labour will be 2 and Green 3. Our local Green is inexperienced, but I’d prefer that to voting for imbecility. But, in terms of this poll, I’m Atari Jaguar.

Scofflaw

Schuhart wrote:

I’ll go into enormous detail that no-one will read, but will make me feel better for posting it. In short, religion plays no conscious part in my decision and I'm not looking for an actively secular party.

Ha! I read it all. Tend to agree.

cordially,
Scofflaw

PDN

Scofflaw wrote:

Oh, I see - the hidden 'conclusion' being that there are so many religious schools because so many parents want their children to go to a religious school?

Not a historical accident at all, then....

cordially,
Scofflaw

No, not at all. I believe the religious schools are indeed due to historical accident. I would much prefer that only strictly non-religious schools are funded by public money.

The 'hidden' conclusion is that I was roundly criticised on another thread for arguing that parents should have the right to choose what faith (or indeed no faith) in which to raise their child. The body of opinion was that children should be left to make up their own minds. So, to be consistent, it would seem to me that the same logic should apply to the kind of education that the child receives.

Dades

My personal feeling about Enda Kenny is that he would crack immediately under torture. In fact he wouldn't even get that far as he'd probably have made a deal with his captors at the expense of his fellow captives.

A difficult theory to prove, I know.

Scofflaw

PDN wrote:

No, not at all. I believe the religious schools are indeed due to historical accident. I would much prefer that only strictly non-religious schools are funded by public money.

Ah. I beg your pardon, then.

PDN wrote:

The 'hidden' conclusion is that I was roundly criticised on another thread for arguing that parents should have the right to choose what faith (or indeed no faith) in which to raise their child. The body of opinion was that children should be left to make up their own minds. So, to be consistent, it would seem to me that the same logic should apply to the kind of education that the child receives.

Indeed. Personally, I don't think religious education is bad for children. I'm not particularly bothered in the case of my own daughter - if she wants to become an atheist, she must do so not because I wish her to be one, but because she decides to be one.

After all, someone who has no knowledge of religion can hardly call themselves an atheist.

cordially,
Scofflaw

The White Rose

Originally Posted by frankscott
Hi, I got my polling card a few weeks ago, but can't find it anywhere now, dawter came home and 'tidied'!!

Can I vote without it? I live in a small town, know everybody, have loadsa id anyway, I don't want to be turned away!

Bring a passport or Drivers licence.

Once your on the register your ok to vote, card or no card

2Scoops

The Atheist wrote:

My personal feeling about Enda Kenny is that he would crack immediately under torture. In fact he wouldn't even get that far as he'd probably have made a deal with his captors at the expense of his fellow captives.

A difficult theory to prove, I know.

Unlike, say, Bertie?

Although I do like the idea of torturing politicians:D

pH

No party has a particularly secular agenda, but which party do folks reckon is the most Liberal? I really wish Ireland had a liberal party but failing that, which of the main parties would be considered most liberal on social issues?

I want to vote liberal damnit - and I'm thinking Green perhaps or Labour? any ideas?

The_Minister

Tim Robbins wrote:

So I go for PD. Not saying they are perfect.

This wouldn't have anything to do with them once trying to introduce a new Constitution without reference to God now, would it?:p

EDIT: For those of you who think that PDs are evil right-wingers, I suggest you read some PD policy. The PDs were set up to be a classic European Liberal party.

Dades

pH wrote:

I'm thinking Green perhaps or Labour? any ideas?

Anyone who admits to voting Green will receive a hemp sweater and one week ban.

Scofflaw

The Atheist wrote:

Anyone who admits to voting Green will receive a hemp sweater and one week ban.

Did I already ask why so strongly anti-Green?

cordially,
Scofflaw