Anyone Read The Financial Times Editorial Yesterday?

irishproduce

[QUOTE=FT - http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/de38ea96-2722-11e0-80d7-00144feab49a.html#axzz1BzUXs1DP]

Ireland’s coalition has become the first eurozone government to fall as a result of Europe’s debt crisis. That is unsurprising. Yet, the justifiable anger of Irish voters at being saddled with the debts of their reckless bankers cannot itself explain the extraordinary implosion of Fianna Fáil, the party that has long dominated Irish politics.

Brian Cowen, the prime minister, was forced into calling early elections on Thursday, to resign as party leader on Saturday, all after winning a confidence vote from his parliamentary party on Tuesday. His discredited leadership had been challenged after undisclosed meetings with Sean FitzPatrick, the banker at the heart of the financial crisis, came to light. What followed was utterly cynical.

Six members of the cabinet resigned and Mr Cowen tried to give an electoral leg-up to lesser-known Fianna Fáil MPs with scattergun offers of ministerial portfolios. This reshuffle – and eventually the government itself – was scuttled by the party’s Green coalition partners, leaving Fianna Fáil in meltdown and mutiny.

These factional antics, as Ireland faces arguably the worst crisis in its history as an independent nation, could turn the expected Fianna Fáil rout at the polls into electoral annihilation.

That may be richly deserved. This is, after all, the party that through its cronyism and incompetence artificially prolonged the boom of the 1990s into the credit and property bubble of the past decade, and then gave a blanket guarantee to its banker friends that has ended in the humiliation of Ireland becoming a ward of the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Fianna Fáil will almost certainly be replaced by a coalition of the centre-right Fine Gael and centre-left Labour parties. But it will be vacating a lot of political space, some of which will be taken up by populists, including the Republicans of Sinn Féin, now poised for a breakthrough in the south.

It is thus vitally important that the campaign now opening properly addresses the issues of governance and accountability raised by the crisis. Whether creditors of the banks should share the pain of the bail-out with taxpayers will – and should – be a dominant theme, and the mainstream parties must take ownership of this and not leave the field to the populists.

This should also be the occasion for the independent voices clamouring for a new politics in Ireland to come forward and lay out their stalls. Irish voters, and the future of the republic, need no less.[/QUOTE]

Sums it all up nicely doesn't it...:mad:

Insect Overlord

Want me to move this over to Politics for you, OP?
Or maybe After Hours, for less scientific discussion.

It's not a Limerick City-specific issue, so it doesn't really belong here.

irishproduce

If you want to IO. I kind of wanted to see what Limerick folk thought considering election shortly. I'm in Limerick and wanted to gauge the opinions of fellow Lim people. Please don't put it in AH...you know yourself.
Thanks

liammur

irishproduce wrote: »

If you want to IO. I kind of wanted to see what Limerick folk thought considering election shortly. I'm in Limerick and wanted to gauge the opinions of fellow Lim people. Please don't put it in AH...you know yourself.
Thanks

Yes, it can be a good idea to have national issues discussed locally, I've often done this regarding job announcements, none of which are unfortunately announced here!

irishproduce

While I understand what you allude to Liam, I think with this election, we might need to look further than the local issues this time. The link I referenced is a just one example of the opinion others hold of us internationally...lest there be no jobs at all.

liammur

irishproduce wrote: »

While I understand what you allude to Liam, I think with this election, we might need to look further than the local issues this time. The link I referenced is a just one example of the opinion others hold of us internationally...lest there be no jobs at all.

I don't buy that but i respect what you are saying.
You have to look locally first. This is the huge mistake willie o dea made, he neglected limerick and nobody else came to our rescue.

irishproduce

Hopefully Willie is finished now. I worry for those that are unable to see the fruits of the behaviour of his party and where it has left us. In light of everything, we need them out completely and to break the mindset of associating them with our politics indefinitely. In an exercise to open my own mind and allow perspective, i'm gonna have a look in on the Left/ socialist night in Absolute tomorr night. Not much interest in voting for them but need to expose myself to different thinking in order to make an informed choice. Either way, good riddance FF.

liammur

irishproduce wrote: »

Hopefully Willie is finished now. I worry for those that are unable to see the fruits of the behaviour of his party and where it has left us. In light of everything, we need them out completely and to break the mindset of associating them with our politics indefinitely. In an exercise to open my own mind and allow perspective, i'm gonna have a look in on the Left/ socialist night in Absolute tomorr night. Not much interest in voting for them but need to expose myself to different thinking in order to make an informed choice. Either way, good riddance FF.

Interesting. You seem well informed to me.
I agree with left policies, but not the way they carry them out.

gaf1983

irishproduce wrote: »

Hopefully Willie is finished now. I worry for those that are unable to see the fruits of the behaviour of his party and where it has left us.

Regarding the fruits of the behaviour of his party, certainly if you were to look at his website you wouldn't know which party he belonged to:

http://willieodea.ie/

It'll be interesting to see what sort of vote he does get.

Good editorial, it sums up well in these two paragraphs a lot of what went wrong:

These factional antics, as Ireland faces arguably the worst crisis in its history as an independent nation, could turn the expected Fianna Fáil rout at the polls into electoral annihilation.

That may be richly deserved. This is, after all, the party that through its cronyism and incompetence artificially prolonged the boom of the 1990s into the credit and property bubble of the past decade, and then gave a blanket guarantee to its banker friends that has ended in the humiliation of Ireland becoming a ward of the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

um7y1h83ge06nx

gaf1983 wrote: »

Regarding the fruits of the behaviour of his party, certainly if you were to look at his website you wouldn't know which party he belonged to:

http://willieodea.ie/

It'll be interesting to see what sort of vote he does get.

Good editorial, it sums up well in these two paragraphs a lot of what went wrong:

Peter Power does the same antics with his ads in the local newspapers, no mention he is a member of FF.

If either call to my door I will make a point of their websites/ads and ask straight out "Are you ashamed to be a member of Fianna Fáil?".

I wish they would stop insulting out inteligence. :rolleyes: