Who Should Be In Government?

astroguy

After reading the thread entitled "We get the politicians we deserve", and agreeing with much of what the OP was saying, it got me thinking as to who should be in Government. If you leave the civil war politics and the stupid allegiences of always voting for a particular party aside, who would vote for the current government again. It seems to me that a FG government wouldn't be any better, and most people agree that the Greens have really screwed up the chance they had. What have Labour got to offer? It seems that there isn't a lot of choice if you want change, as history in this country has shown us that most parties will end up the same once they get into government.
What do people think about this?

Sulmac

Almost* anyone but Fianna Fáil.

* leaving out the loony parties with no real policies beyond ideological dogma (though even that might exclude every party we currently have).

Liam Byrne

astroguy wrote: »

It seems to me that a FG government wouldn't be any better

There's no way of knowing. And while FG have shown that they're not as committed to the level of change in the political establishment and expenses as I'd like, at least they're not as tainted by questionable actions, cronyism and downright corruption.

But it is a valid point; "better than FF" is simple to achieve (simply put the interests of the country first, and think beyond the next election and your own seat) but that's still not good enough......we need people committed to doing what's right in the interests of long-term social change, equality, open-ness and honesty.

InReality

Its a good topic for debate !

Most parties converge to the middle ground once they get elected , and as circumstances change , get advice from civil service etc.

It can be quite difficult to implement manifeso's for all sort of reasons.

Going on history , there has been little difference in policy between in govt between say FF & FG because the FF & FG divisions is mainly old civil war politics and not policy based !

I think who/ ( as in people) are in goverment can make a huge difference however.

If Lehihan had been in power instead of Ahern we would have defo have a diffferent country to now , maybe still fecked but not so badly.
Its not accurate to say sure anyone would have done what Ahern did over the 10 years , any lessing in populism from Ahern's level could mean a lot less hurt now.

I don't think parties should be so long in power either , even if they were doing wonders for the economy

Riskymove

astroguy wrote: »

After reading the thread entitled "We get the politicians we deserve", and agreeing with much of what the OP was saying, it got me thinking as to who should be in Government.

I think you missed the point

Its our political system which results in the kind of person we get as TDs (i.e. local issues, focus, populism etc)

all our TDs are elected the same way and therefore the focus is on competing with each other for local votes


If we had a different system we may have a proper divide between national and local politics