Voting reform, Dail Scandal and Politican's greed [See post 172]

Jolly Red Giant

L1011 wrote: »

Considering your clear disrespect for the idea I don't want to know what revisionist nonsense you believe the history to be

Is that the best you can do?

L1011 wrote: »

Your pathetic justification for taking expenses you didn't have to shows you have little connection with reality, truth or fact when it challenges your viewpoint

My few hundred euro of expenses here and there do little in the scheme of a budget of €66billion.

And - to give you an example - I pay more income tax every week than each of the vulture funds paid in tax in a year after FG/LP invited them into the country.

Now you and others can crow about the fact that I use expenses to fund socialist and community campaigns - I make no apologies for it - without this money and sacrifices from working class people everyone would be paying €1,000 a year in water charges.

The fact that you cannot accept the some people have a different valid point of view is not my fault. I do not begrudge you having your opinion - maybe you can have the decency to show the same respect to me rather than casting aspersions on whether I have any understanding of 'reality, truth or fact'.

Mezzotint

The voting system is just fine how it is and has tended to drive consensus building politics.

The parish pump stuff, in my view, is driven by exceptionally weak local government. If we devolved more power to city and county councils and reformed how they were structured, giving more power to the elected representatives, then TDs might start focusing on national politics rather than council issues like street lighting, potholes etc.

In most European countries things like urban transport, local policing, schools and so on are all local or regional government issues.

PR-STV seems to work exceptionally well and has a avoided much of the insanity that's currently afflicting first past the post systems.

You won't resolve Ireland's over centralised administration and lack of devolved regional power by playing with the electoral system. We need actual reform of the structures of government, not the voting system.

The one area we do need to look at though is the creation of a permanent electoral commission to oversee the maintenance and development of the voting infrastructure and running of ballots.

There are many far more mundane issues like ensuring the register is working properly. There are serious issues with lack of a single database etc. There are also issues with some of the mechanics of voting eg overly complicated ballot paper designs and that court ruling that's removed the discretion of returning officers to interpret spoiled votes.

An electoral commission could also look at voter education on the mechanics of the system and improvements to procedures, ballot paper design etc etc etc.

It could also look, independently, at constituency reforms, rather than having them played with by people who've a vested interest in gerrymandering.

My view of it is enhance what we have. There are huge positives in the PR STV system.

sheepsh4gger

Whatever the system it is still a pointless endeavor.
It's scientifically proven that being an 'informed voter' is a waste of time.

loyatemu

you'll always get Healy-Rae type TDs, it's just the nature of democracy. You could argue if you want the Dáil to be truly representative of the people a certain proportion of TDs should be ill-informed muppets in flat caps and/or crooks.

BrianBoru00

Why are the Healy Raes the problem ?
I've far more issue with Varadkar / Harris / Ross / Murphy who are also parish pump politicians but very little in ability making ridiculous decisions that appease the SJWs without making any real changes..

Batty Boy

One only needs to look at the Waterford forum on this website with all the people claiming that nothing is being done for Waterford because there haven't been a cabinet minister from the area the past decade.

ArmaniJeanss

BrianBoru00 wrote: »

Why are the Healy Raes the problem ?
I've far more issue with Varadkar / Harris / Ross / Murphy who are also parish pump politicians but very little in ability making ridiculous decisions that appease the SJWs without making any real changes..

Varadkar is almost the opposite of parish pump - when elected he immediately said that he had been elected as a national TD and wasn't going to be available to deal with pothole issues in Dublin West. He's pretty much stuck to that as TD, minister and Taoiseach.

Capt'n Midnight

So far in NI of the 18 seats there's already 8 non-runners because of FPTP.

DUP and UUP have stood back in one constituency each
and the SDLP and SF have each stood back from three.

Mezzotint

Mezzotint wrote: »

The voting system is just fine how it is and has tended to drive consensus building politics.

The parish pump stuff, in my view, is driven by exceptionally weak local government. If we devolved more power to city and county councils and reformed how they were structured, giving more power to the elected representatives, then TDs might start focusing on national politics rather than council issues like street lighting, potholes etc.

In most European countries things like urban transport, local policing, schools and so on are all local or regional government issues.

PR-STV seems to work exceptionally well and has a avoided much of the insanity that's currently afflicting first past the post systems.

You won't resolve Ireland's over centralised administration and lack of devolved regional power by playing with the electoral system. We need actual reform of the structures of government, not the voting system.

A good contribution.

Local councils are currently glorified debs committees.

BrianBoru00

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

Varadkar is almost the opposite of parish pump - when elected he immediately said that he had been elected as a national TD and wasn't going to be available to deal with pothole issues in Dublin West. He's pretty much stuck to that as TD, minister and Taoiseach.

You're having a laugh . . . . or you're extremely naive

1. He was not elected as a "national TD" - there's no such thing.
2. It doesn't really matter what he said - he has been caught out at not being quite truthful a few times.

He has done nothing of note to spread the wealth beyond the pale.

- He has objected to planning in his own constituency as it was high rise while out of the other side of his mouth stating high rise is the way forward (just not in Castlenock)
- one of his photo ops - opening a new post office in his constituency while allowing closure of rurally located offices
- Announced on his own website the allocation of extra gardai to his constituency - consistently getting new gardai when several districts have had no new gardai in several years.


He is 100% parish pump.

Mezzotint

I'd also add to that post that we've a tendency to assume that Dublin's over-represented or that power is in Dublin. That may be the case physically - i.e. the Government actually sits there, but the councils in Dublin are as powerless as anywhere else and that's very visible in the lack of proper transit infrastructure, issues with housing and the poor state of a large chunk of the city centre i.e. whole swathes of the north inner city in Dublin are in very poor shape.

The fact that Dublin, Cork and several other cities don't even have a transit authority is utterly bizarre by European or North American standards. How exactly can those cities plan anything if they can't implement it? The whole thing ends up being thrown to QANGOs - CIE, NTA, TII as well as becoming national political footballs where say Cork's need for a transit update suddenly starts being a matter of debate involving TDs from hundreds of km away who've never set foot in the place.

Fine Gael's proposal for executive mayors in the cities also was incredibly badly communicated and seemed more about reshuffling power from councils to a single individual executive, without actually providing any clear roadmap or proposal for extra powers to be devolved to those cities. It's hardly surprising that Cork and Waterford turned down such a vague nonsense. If anything, it actually shows their electorates were very engaged and not willing to take a leap of faith into some undefined situation.

Even the way that they've merged Limerick and Waterford cities with their respective county councils actually undermined urban government in those areas by creating a big dilute mess of a regional authority without a proper city council. The Mayor of Limerick, whenever they are eventually elected, will actually be the executive mayor of a small city and a big rural area and could well be representing the farmers of West Limerick for all we know.

I'm extremely glad that Cork resisted that merger as it would have been an utter mess. Given the scale of County Cork, it would have been like merging Dublin City with Kildare, Meath, Louth and Wicklow.

In general though we seem to have no real plan to devolve power to cities and regional authorities and other than debate in academia and political commentary, there's no real discussion about it in politics as the TDs are quite happy to be glorified councillors and local fixers. A large % of them have no real focus on national politics at all.

I'd love to see a Citizens Assembly on total reform of Local Government structures and a proper debate on it that takes it beyond the vested interests.

There's all sorts of scope for solving other issues too like bringing education and aspects of health and policing back into regional or municipal governance and accountability to a local electorate. It works very well in plenty of other places around Europe and North America.

What really annoys me about FG has been the tendency to try to reform by abolishing - town councils - scrapped. Seanad - attempted to scrap. City Councils - tried to scrap (and successfully did so in Limerick and Waterford).
Removing layers of democracy achieves nothing other than lack of accountability, removal of idea generation, localisation of policies and the over-centralisation of power. All it's doing is enhancing this parish pump national politics issue.

The LAST thing I'd like to see is political parties taking over control of party lists, or to assume that regional representation is something that should happen in the Dail though mixed member voting. And we would be throwing ourselves to the wolves if we ever opted for a British/American or French style first-past-the-post.

Also, we should be somewhat more appreciative of the weird system we do have. PR-STV used in national elections like this is extremely unusual and Ireland's probably the longest established fully proportional democracy in existence. We should be looking to our own strengths, enhancing what we have, not trying to scrap it in favour of, what many would consider, inferior ways of doing democracy.

L1011

You do not respect the idea of representative democracy and are attempting to promulgate revisionist history to justify it.

There is no requirement to not challenge someones point of view when it is based on nonsense.

As for €1,000 water charges - keep doubling down on the nonsense, you might convince someone

L1011

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

The reason it's 3 to 5 seats is to balance out the effect where big voter getters benefit in three seaters, while more than five means the last person can get in with a tiny vote.

I'm not sure that concern over someone getting a "tiny" vote (it'll still be thousands of votes) is worth limiting proportionality.

NI had only six-seater constituencies until they decided to reduce numbers. They should have reduced the number of constituencies instead but they didn't want to break the connection between Westminster and Stormont constituencies.

This gave good proportionality and led to results that would not have happened with 5, e.g. PBP in Derry and a Unionist in Belfast West (that went long before the seat reduction though, but that was due to demographic changes)

Topgear on Dave

Jolly Red Giant wrote: »

Writing a few numbers on a ballot paper every few years is not democracy - I am in favour of participatory democracy based on workplace and community based committees

If we are not voting, how do we decide who goes on the committees?

L1011

L1011 wrote: »

Only by making constituencies larger and breaking old boundaries to reduce the parish pump link

The Scottish system is a mess and preserving preferential voting is critical, as is avoiding lists - the ability to reject a specific candidate is critical

the problem with rejecting a candidate in the current system, is that it leads to less toxic candidates getting elected.

You end up with someone getting in on the Nth vote simply because they aren't a complete dick, or often because they are the lesser of several complete dicks.

CrabRevolution

Brussels Sprout wrote: »

If the goal is to remove parish pump politics changing the voting system is not the right way to go about it.

Look at the 2 most obvious examples of this type of politics: The Healy-Rayes and Michael Lowry. Since they top the polls in every election they are going to prosper regardless of what voting system you have in place.

The root of the problem is that county and city councils are toothless. All od the real power is in Dublin. This has opened up a loophole whereby there is a market for the sort of politician to prosper at a national level who should ideally only be elected at a local level.

If you want to reduce parish pump politics you’d need therefore to devolve more powers to local councils. Personally I’d be in favour of this. I would also be in favour of paying councillors a living wage rather than the stipend that they currently earn. Perhaps we would then see an increase in the quality of councillors as well as a reduction in the number of TDs in the Dail who have zero interest in national legislation.

While generally agreeable, I think you're being overly idealistic. A large driver of politics around the country is the notion that Dublin gets everything and is stealing from the rest of the country.

Even if the City and County councils were given more power, you'd have politicians being elected to the Dáil on the same message they currently give "We'll fight for X county against those city slickers". At best you'll have the same TDs arguing that their buffed up county council isn't getting enough money compared to Dublin.

How often do we see "There's no minister for Donegal/Waterford/Roscommon etc."? Everyone everywhere in the country reckons they have it the worst and need to send someone to the Dáil to fight for their county. As long as the "It's Dublin's fault" mindset persists, nothing will change.

L1011

Aegir wrote: »

the problem with rejecting a candidate in the current system, is that it leads to less toxic candidates getting elected.

You end up with someone getting in on the Nth vote simply because they aren't a complete dick, or often because they are the lesser of several complete dicks.

With less candidates usually running in 3 seaters you get much the same result.

Jolly Red Giant

L1011 wrote: »

You do not respect the idea of representative democracy and are attempting to promulgate revisionist history to justify it.

I do not regard the system of representative democracy that exists under capitalism as a form of democracy that represents the interests of 99% of the population.

Representative democracy was established to represent the interests of 'men of property' - not to allow the mass of the population an input into the decision-making process of government. Women, workers and people of colour had to fight to get the limited democratic rights that exist - and the 'men of property' are constantly attempting to undermine and subvert the democratic process - just as Jeff Bezos and Amazon have attempted to do in Seattle this week by dumping $millions into a city council election in an attempt to buy control of the city council.

L1011 wrote: »

There is no requirement to not challenge someones point of view when it is based on nonsense.

I have zero problem with anyone challenging my point of view - and I will debate the issue with anyone - however, if you do want to challenge my point of view then I suggest that you need to produce evidence to back up your claims of 'nonsense'.

L1011 wrote: »

As for €1,000 water charges - keep doubling down on the nonsense, you might convince someone

Like here - in 2010 - before the bailout - Fianna Fail (supported by the GP) proposed a €500 a year flat charge on water - during the discussions on this Mary Hanafin said that if water charges hadn't been abolished in 1997 they would not be €1,000 a year.

Jolly Red Giant

Topgear on Dave wrote: »

If we are not voting, how do we decide who goes on the committees?

Who said that participatory democracy didn't involve voting?

johnnyskeleton

Mod Note:

Ok there have been a lot of threads opened recently that all cover the same ground. So they have been merged into three threads. The general thread is a catch all for Irish Government business, bar particular gripes about spending schemes etc.

The second thread is for specific issues relating to government spending on particular schemes e.g. rural broadband, housing schemes, the dreaded water infrastructure etc:

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057983142

This thread is a merger of the threads on the Dail voting scandal, politicians being in it for the money (or the interesting discussion on how the current system traps people in capitalist representative democracy) and electoral reform have also been merged into one mega thread on, basically, politican's behaviour as opposed to their policies:

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058025402

So basically there are now three threads instead of 10 where you can complain criticise or lionise your government:
1. A general thread for general gripes, policies and actions;
2. A spending thread for wasted money, brilliant public works, or anything in between; or
3. A thread about the politicians themselves, and the system that gets them into power.

There will obviously be some overlap, but try to keep it on topic.

The bielection (and indeed any other general election thread) will be separate, and any unusual or particular social policies (e.g. the hate crime thread) are also sufficiently discrete as to get their own threads (for the moment)

Also, please try to keep things civil.

blanch152

https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2019/1112/1090330-threats-politicians/

"Over half of TDs who responded to a survey by an RTÉ radio programme claimed they had received a death threat, while several female TDs said that they had been threatened with rape."

This is a disgrace, nobody should be subject to that.

We have seen the worst aspects of this most recently with the burning of the SF TD's car, but previously also with the picketing of a Minister's home with his heavily pregnant wife inside.

Unless some respect is given for the office, we will see the standard of TD continue to drop.

Dytalus

blanch152 wrote: »

https://www.rte.ie/news/politics/2019/1112/1090330-threats-politicians/

"Over half of TDs who responded to a survey by an RTÉ radio programme claimed they had received a death threat, while several female TDs said that they had been threatened with rape."

This is a disgrace, nobody should be subject to that.

We have seen the worst aspects of this most recently with the burning of the SF TD's car, but previously also with the picketing of a Minister's home with his heavily pregnant wife inside.

Unless some respect is given for the office, we will see the standard of TD continue to drop.

I can understand getting upset at TDs, even angry. But you'd think there'd be an acceptable line that's well short of death/rape threats, trashing private property, and intimidating their families. I've intensely disagreed with TDs and parties before, but I've never had the urge or desire to threaten them over it.

I know it will result in shouts of "suppressing dissent" from some corners, but when TDs are being threatened and harassed the Gardaí should come down like a ton of bricks on whomever is responsible. Otherwise, as you say, who'd even want to put themselves in that kind of firing line?

James Brown

While I do believe many politicians either don't connect with the fact or care that their actions and cute hoorism have real world real life and death consequences, there is no room for such behaviour or threats.
I could see maybe someone distraught with grief over a death or losing their business, but still no excuse.