The wondrous adventures of Sinn Fein (part 3) Mod Notes and Threadbanned List in OP

Standard procedure here from the usual suspects with the usual deflections.

Well, you are once again on the wrong thread, aren't you?

When someone on the Sinn Fein thread talks about paedos and rapists, the natural response is to think of Liam Adams and all the others that SF and the PIRA helped avoid justice as Gerry Adams admits on his own blog.

The unnatural response is to whatabout, deflect and divert, as you did.

I was lucky enough to get into the Liberty Hall one to see what the hype was about - unaffiliated, non-registered to any party, just showed up early and got in ahead of the massive queue that formed.

It was about as far from a Trump rally as you could imagine. If you've ever been to a public meeting of a protest movement, it was more like that, combined with a mini Ard Fheis kind of atmosphere - a panel of SF members (to my memory Mary Lou, Michelle O'Neill, Pearse Doherty, Eoin O'Brion, and Louise O'Reilly) each made a speech thanking those in attendance for their votes and talking about different issues they'd like to address in government, giving an update on the attempt to form an alternative government and how the numbers were for that, and then basically opening the floor up to a Q&A session wherein people could both ask questions and make suggestions. They then sort of flipped the Q&A around and asked people what their main priorities were, if they had comments, etc.

It was like a town hall meeting. Honestly, the only reason the establishment was so bewildered and frightened by it is that so, so many of them never bother to actually talk to the public. I've said this before, but Enda Kenny, much as I disliked him as Taoiseach, must be credited for openly admitting to this after the 2016 election - he acknowledged that for reasons he hadn't yet figured out, FG had missed the public's mood and been entirely blindsided by the electoral drubbing they received. This is exactly why - establishment politicians never seem to interact with the public except from raised podiums and VIP areas, opposition politicians come out and walk among the voters and talk directly to them. Those in the establishment only do this at election time, at which point it's far, far, far too late - I can tell you from having lived in Dun Laoghaire my entire life that SF holds public meetings on an extremely regular basis and everyone, from party members to die hard opponents, is welcome to show up and contribute.

Obviously it's been a while because of the pandemic, but when I was younger such meetings were often held in what was then the Kingston Hotel in Dun Laoghaire and has been the Haddington Hotel for several years. They've also had meetings in the Royal Marine, Sallynoggin Inn and The Graduate, which are all bars and hotels within walking distance from where I live - I'm sure they've had many others further afield which I haven't personally come across, as well.

Apparently FF used to hold meetings like this in a past life, but it's been a loooong time. FG, on the other hand, I've never heard of holding an entirely public meeting in a public place where anyone can just walk in off the street and talk with senior party members about policy in the way people could at this SF meeting.

Maybe if other parties tried this approach, they'd actually know how voters are feeling about this issue or that issue, rather than relying on numbers and spreadsheets to make assumptions about how people should be feeling?

They don't realise most young people see the IRA campaign of the 70s and up to the 90s as completely legitimate, the old timers on boards complaining about it are wasting their time.

I'm actually one of those old-timers also and I remember the Good Friday Agreement, an overwhelming vote in favour and a line been drawn in the sand. Nasty things happened on all sides north and south and across GB.

But I like to think things have changed.

SF are part of that change now.

I'm entirely pragmatic - I think we should fix things in a way that works and benefits the most people to the greatest degree. I'm not sure if there's a political umbrella for that. I think our government has been doing that pretty well for the last decade in recovering from the property crash.

I'm curious as to who you think should be 'damaged' in future, and what the outcome of that will be? And who do you think has been 'fisted' since the crash?

Sooner rather than later the hardline unionists will be a thing of the past and we will be left with a decent, well minded group of unionists open to the prospect of a United Ireland.

It's already happening, unionism is falling apart, I only seen a video online the other day of a young protestant and his friends in the heart of the Shankill genuinely discussing a United Ireland and it's benefits, they faced minor intimidation but nothing serious.

Times are changing.

Thanks for taking the time to answer that, and comprehensively.

I don't have time to address your points in the detail that they merit, but one key thing I would point out is that this is not an Irish problem - it's a problem globally in wealthy countries. We have some unique local factors (the aforementioned property crash that killed development and created debt), but the problem of property price inflation is everywhere you look. And it's not even confined to property: just about every type of asset has massively inflated over the last 5 years or so.

I think this is very important context to bear in mind before pinning all the blame on Irish politicians. Voting in PBP or whoever will not change this background.