Why? Why?

electrogrimey

Koyasan wrote: »

P.S. The people will now get the bad planning, dodgy rezoning, and housing estates built on flood plains with no public transport or education facilities that they deserve.

As far as I can see why already have far more than we deserve!

Mr.Micro

Originally Posted by Koyasan
P.S. The people will now get the bad planning, dodgy rezoning, and housing estates built on flood plains with no public transport or education facilities that they deserve.

It would make no difference which party CC was elected, at least in this neck of the woods. CC from all the parties were involved with planning, even supporting re zoning for profit. Its the law that needs to be enforced here as corruption is not restricted to any one political party.

Mr.Micro

Mr.Micro wrote: »

It would make no difference which party CC was elected, at least in this neck of the woods. CC from all the parties were involved with planning, even supporting re zoning for profit. Its the law that needs to be enforced here as corruption is not restricted to any one political party.

Great point although, I think the law needs to be more than just enforced.. A thorough investigation of the decisions of the people who were in power, and criminal charges applied to those who abused their positions. As it is, they'd just hold expensive investigations with no punishments.

Until there is a system in place where politicians are personally responsible for the decisions they make, there will continue to be the same types of corruption. But then I don't expect any Irish politician to ever agree to such changes in their "safe" system of powermongering.

DB10

It is disgraceful. There was a very good candidate in my area who promised to address all the local issues and was standing for the first time.

The local council had already been attacked from all ends for some of their shady dealings and disgraceful selling out and failure to listen.

Yet the the same people were voted in because of FF and FG followers voting for the party and not the person.

fly_agaric

Koyasan wrote: »

I would recognise that FF are desperate to remain in power, no matter (1) what and that a new programme for government could be negotiated that was even Green-er(2).

The Greens pull the plug now & they can kiss their party goodbye! (edit: the current parliamentary party anyway)

Their "emergency stop" button for the current coalition has become a suicide switch. FF will know this and concessions made will be minimal.

is_that_so

electrogrimey wrote: »

What people don't realise is that councillors actually do have quite a lot of power, not just the little Cllr. on their next election poster... The whole property developer/Fianna Fáil tag-team against the economy was made possible by the fact that Fianna Fáil controlled all the councils, who they used to rezone land etc (even if they no longer have that power, the damage is done).

Not true, the Minister for the Environment can overturn large scale rezoning using the 2000 Planning and Development Act. Gormley is really the first one to use that power, even though it was available. The new expected and much needed Planning and Development Bill 2009 will give further powers.

electrogrimey

Well as I already said, the damage is done, and no amount of acts giving power to the government will help if the government is run by the same crooks as the councils were. Any power we can take off Fianna Fáil is to me a good thing...

Koyasan

Mr.Micro wrote: »

It would make no difference which party CC was elected, at least in this neck of the woods.

I don't know what your neck of the woods is, but I can tell you that in West Dublin and North County Dublin, there is a significant increase in scrutiny of development and rezoning projects, and the blocking and ammendment of dodgy projects (Edmundsberry, Adams, etc. etc.) when the CC has Independent and Green members compared to when it has FF, FG and to a lesser extent Labour members.

I see a link between this and the acceptance of donations from Developers (the declared contributions are all online and you can see that FF, then FG, then Labour receive large donatiosn from such groups.)

My comment was not in relation to the past corruption (FF, FG and Labour in relation to Liffey Valley to give just one example, Trevor Sargeant being physically assaulted by a FFer at a meeting when he held up a cheque[bribe] he had received) but in relation to the future bad planning that will result due to the County development plans being made. The people who voted for FF,FG and Labour councillors who receive donations have only themselves to blame now. An alternative existed and they choose not to take it.

Darragh29

Effluo wrote: »

Hi everyone,
I have to get something off my chest and feel quite foolish for not posting this here before the actual elections.
I suppose it was really only when the election results came in was i finally awoken to what i find to be a rather disturbing truth.

Nearly half of the Irish electorate made a mistake in the process of deciding who they were going to vote for in their "local" council elections.


A stat came out yesterday from rte and it read that 54% of people who voted on Friday for the local elections voted for people and what they believed the people could do for the community, while 46% voted for parties and voted due to the way that the economic crisis has been handled....

Am I the only person who see's something vitally wrong here?
These are local elections which concern the running of county councils and town councils...

I voted for the people which I believe will do the best work for my community, what the hell happened to everyone else!!!

Can anyone of that 46% answer intelligently and back up their answer to why you would vote in a local election on a national matter?
It's just.....

........

Are 46% of us really that thick?

On the face of it OP, your argument makes sense. However, when you stratch the surface a little, you could come to the conclusion, as I did, that we have a party in this country called Fianna Fail which has f*cked up our country with p*ss poor policy decisions over the last 12 years, which has pandered to every vested interest that could be inflicted upon a country, and has failed the people of this country. We are now in a very serious situation with regard to one matter in particular which is unemployment.

Now the same party that has been running the nations affairs for the last 12 years, who are responsible for a financial regulator that appeared to be afraid of regulating banks, a central bank that was literally sound asleep, a government that pandered to big business interests, that brought us the annual ATM we now know as "benchmarking", the party that has created an absolute monster of inefficiency in the public sector, the party that has half the children in this country being taught in portacabins after the biggest boom the country has ever seen... 10,000 people a month joining the dole queue and not a sign of a strategy in place to stem job losses, some 12 months after this problem first emerged.

That same party, Fianna Fail, think it's ok to knock on my door and tell me that they might have f*cking ruined the country, but they can be trusted at local level because. "sure you know yourself, it's only local issues you need to think about"...

I personally see that mantra, "consider local issues only please", as an affront to my intelligence. Fianna Fail need to be opposed on every front, local level, national level, European level, everywhere, so that this vexatious cancer that has eating away at our country and ruining the hope of the Irish people, can be dropped into the political dustbin for once and for all.

Darragh29

Another thing... As a voter, my opinion with regard to how I think I should vote, is nothing less than absolute. I can vote any particular way for any particular reason or indeed for no reason at all!

This same issue was thrown up in the Lisbon referendum on the last occasion, that basically if I was voting on anything at all, other than the substantive issue that was the text of the treaty, then I was an ars*hole who shouldn't have been allowed to vote... I decided that I didn't like the way when we are asked for a national opinion on EU treaties, that you can vote any way that you like, but you'll keep voting until you give the right answer. On this basis, I voted no, and will continue to vote no until I start seeing an EU that respects the Irish constituency...

To ask people to not consider wider issues that might exist around an election I think is to treat them with contempt...

Bragadin

I'd like to think i'll always vote for the issue on the ballot paper. I'm as dissatisfied with the current government as much as anyone, and the party did factor into my vote, but i looked at their local policies first and voted accordingly.

It feels like a diservice to my democratic right to treat every ballot as a general oppinion poll (thats what the general election is for), sabotaging the government in this manner eventually punishes the electorate as much as elected.

ChocolateSauce

conchubhar1 wrote: »

i personaly can not give a vote to anyone who stands with fianna fáil or the greens, still after the mess they helped create.

Agreed. I couldn't bring myself to vote for anyone in FF unless they were well and truly spectacular, and I can only name three people who fit that criteria, and none of them a FFers- Senators Ivana Bakic and David Norris and Cllr Luke "Ming" Flanagan.

irish_bob

ChocolateSauce wrote: »

Agreed. I couldn't bring myself to vote for anyone in FF unless they were well and truly spectacular, and I can only name three people who fit that criteria, and none of them a FFers- Senators Ivana Bakic and David Norris and Cllr Luke "Ming" Flanagan.

i take a fianna failer over any of those three stooges any day and i hate FF