The political future

starbelgrade

nesf wrote: »

Not a hope in hell. I'd see FG/SF happening first tbh, at least in the next 10 years anyway.

I predict a riot. Well, not quite - a rainbow coallition & history repeating itself (alebeit with different colours in the rainbow).

View

nesf wrote: »

Not a hope in hell. I'd see FG/SF happening first tbh, at least in the next 10 years anyway.

Based on the opinion polls, the numbers could be there for that alright. It is hard to imagine the negotiations on a possible coalition would be easy though!

Het-Field

The only way change will occur in Irish politics is if Fine Gael and Fianna Fail collapse. However, that collapse would need to stimulate the conglomeration of the liberals and the conservatives in both parties into two separate blocks. Any overflow of "socialists" "left leaning social democrats" would be required to join The Labour Party.

This would promote an ideologically based political system, and would do away with the tribelism which has wrecked Irish politics for years. I have met people who have said to me "sure my family vote Fianna Fail, who else would I vote for", and "he is a good local Senator. Its an indictment of our system that these people dont understand that pollitics should be personal, and not tribal or parochial.

European political models are what we must aspire to, i.e. where people vote on ideologies rather then individuals. We must do away with a system which indoctrinates young people before they could vote, and doesnt seek to actualise them politically.

Once the tribal nature of FG and FF is eliminated, then I feel our politicans will become more responsible.

Cork Boy

1. FF did not 'ride the wave of cheap credit'. Their active de-regulation of the financial markets opened ireland to world wide "cheap" credit.

2. Praising Lenihan & FF for now taking the necessary steps to correct the finances is like praising someone for trying to come up with a cure for aids when it was them who fcked you in the a-hole in the first place.

3. A Lab/FG coalition with any significant labour strength will be no good - we need a single party govt to take decisive action.

4. Parties do not need to be wiped out to save our future, we need to punish parties who do the wrong thing and not re-elect the likes of Bev Flynn, Mike Lowry, Bertie Ahern (who was re-elected while being dragged through the tribunals), etc.

5. We do need more power devolved to local govt. Your TD shouldn't be your go-to man to have a pothole fixed.

6. To those who say Kenny won't make a good taoiseach, he only dragged the party back from oblivion and is not afraid to have a strong team around him (unlike bertie who shipped off anyone getting too much attention).

7. To those who won't vote kenny cos he's a bore, its attitudes like that that got the following elected - Haughy, Ahern, Bush, Reagan, etc.

8. David McWilliams' 'Follow the Money' should be FG's election campaign, anyone who votes FF after reading that waives the right to ever give out about our govt again.

9. Voting for anyone (incl FG, Lab, SF, FF) because your parents did makes you a brain dead, dependant idiot child.

Rant out

RedPlanet

Cork Boy wrote: »

5. We do need more power devolved to local govt. Your TD shouldn't be your go-to man to have a pothole fixed.

I'm in 2 minds about this.
Yes it sounds nice on paper, but this is precisely the reason why silly housing estates were built in unsuitable locations - like flood plains (Sallins, Co. Kildare).
It is the local Council that re-zones the land.
After that, it's an avalanche of local invested interests piling on the pressure to get the planning signed off.
It takes an extreme intervention (John Gormley) to put the madness to a halt, and piss off the local council.

View

RedPlanet wrote: »

I'm in 2 minds about this.
Yes it sounds nice on paper, but this is precisely the reason why silly housing estates were built in unsuitable locations - like flood plains (Sallins, Co. Kildare).
It is the local Council that re-zones the land.
After that, it's an avalanche of local invested interests piling on the pressure to get the planning signed off.
It takes an extreme intervention (John Gormley) to put the madness to a halt, and piss off the local council.

A fair point but it needs to be remembered that one of the very few powers local councils have here are their zoning/re-zoning powers. Hence, what the council does is of extreme interest to people with a property link but of almost no interest to anyone else. This results in a situation where you just have one pressure group pushing the council in one direction, so we have decisions like the above.

In other places, councils have lots of powers - they can raise taxes, issue bonds (i.e. debt), run the local schools, police etc. Hence, in these systems what the council does is of interest to an awful lot of people. This results in multiple pressure groups trying to get the council to make decision on a lot of topics - hence no one pressure group can dominate the council. It also means it is easier to get groups to oppose bad decisions as it is a matter of getting existing pressure groups to oppose the decisions, rather than outside pressure groups needing to be set-up from scratch.

recedite

onedoubleo wrote: »

So I did a bit more research and found out that none of the secondary schools actually had figures for the number of pupils in sixth class of the local primary schools. The next logical step in my head was to tell someone who would do something about it. I sent an e-mail to my 4 TD's asking them to set up and email list to open a better line of commuinication between them. I have since recieved countless emails about how my idea has merit and will be discussed at x y and z committee but nothing has actually been done about it.

.

These guys don't give a toss, as long as the country can still borrow enough money to keep paying them big salaries and expenses, with their long holidays. Classic parish pump politicians.

T runner

Ordinary man wrote: »

It seems everyone is calling for a change in government after all that has happened but is any party ever going to make a difference? All the politicians up in the Dail had to know and accept the waste and near fraud that went on over the years. Surely if in power they won't be any different. The future td's are trained in by them and so it continues. Thats my opinion, whats yours?

I feel a huge part of the problem is how candidates for election are selected and the difficulty of talented people to amke it onto our ballot papers.

The fact that a few professions form the vast majority of TDs (including 22% publicans!) reflects this.

RedPlanet

It's possible that FF won't be in the next government.
However i think it really depends on how a few matters play out.
When Brian Lenihan takes over the party, i can totally see them being back in power.

It'll all depend upon how Cowen is removed (personal "health" issue sensationalized to the hilt?).