FF/FG/Green Government - Part 3 - Threadbanned User List in OP

And just announced another 35% increase in Electric prices by SSC , I'll say again 35%

Blocked 🤔 do you mean by FF controlled councils, FG controlled councils, Individual FFG TD'S, there so many, help me out. I'm not aware of any councils controlled by the Greens. I know you have details of opposition parties objections but let's stick to FFGG

Who's jumping around in Glee BA 🤔 the expected figures are outrageous and Shameful, are you happy about this, I'm certainly not 😡

Sorry, Dempo, but the bias is in your mind. The real problem with the Irish media is the fear of defamation cases. That is what the Council of Europe is concerned about.

No need to apologise Blanch, honestly it's fine, just pointing out the patently obvious 😏

Considering that we have taken in 45,000 refugees from Ukraine in the last six months, it is remarkable that those numbers are not higher.

Full employment, yet we have continuing record homelessness, a housing crisis, a broken health service, rocketing energy prices while companies make massive profits etc etc

'Something is rotten in the state', to paraphrase old Shaky.

What part of "soft power" don't you understand? It is probably a stupid question as you seem to be willing to waffle about everything from databases to the media and fill posts with copy pasta to make it look like you have a clue. You don't! Publications tend to be very wary of upsetting large advertisers. That's a fact of life in the publishing business. You don't really seem to understand that business.

The Examiner is now owned by the Irish Times. That may have escaped your notice.

Vincent Browne approached John Bruton about running as an FG candidate. Luckily for Irish journalism, Bruton did not make him a candidate.

There was one very good Health journalist with the Business Post who got an advisor job. She really understood the field and did great reporting so hopefully politicians listened to her advice. Then there was one of Varadkar's biographers from the Indo who got a job as an advisor. A host from Newstalk got a job as an advisor. It is much more common than you realise.

Soft power, by its very nature runs on a nod and a wink. Political correspondents can't afford to have their sources go silent so they are very careful about problematic stories. After a while that can turn into a kind of self-censorship. You can do your own digging for the link from the 2016 GE with the polcorr claiming that a minority government supported by Independents was impossible. In 2016, the impossible happened.

The Village Magazine and The Ditch got some very good stories and one of them involved Varadkar leaking a confidential document to his friend. The Ditch got the ABP story and the Troy story. It is funny seeing an FFG poster on a forum trying to disparage them as being "fringe publications". Vincent Browne had high hopes for the Village Magazine but this is Ireland. Getting people to pay for good investigative journalism is always difficult. As for your ridiculous statement about the Village Magazine needing money to run, all publications, print and online, need money to run.

One can see how Paddy Cosgrave has become a bete noir for you FFG supporters. He's playing you at your own game. The problem for FFG is that the media landscape shifted. Denis O'Brien no longer has a major share in IN&M (the Indo and Sindo). He was forced to crystalise his €500 million investment in IN&M shares for about a €450 million loss. The Belgian Mediahuis company now owns IN&M. O'Brien also sold off his Communicorp radio stations to the German Bauer Group. The Indo still is extremely pro-FG and DCU's FuJo did a survey of how various publications treated the parties in the 2016 GE.

Mediahuis bought IN&M in 2019. Interestingly, when the Irish media landscape changed FF and FG started to decline. The Sindo has already started to reposition itself as a more centrist publication under a new editor. IN&M has also installed a new content management system and paywall as Digital is a major part of its strategy now.

In the 1980s, small towns often had two or more radio stations. It represented a threat to the stultifying control of the media. FF brought in a licencing system that ended most pirate radio stations in 1989. Ownership rules were conveniently relaxed in the 2000s and it led to radio stations being taken over. Despite concerns about concentration of media ownership, there was no political will to do anything about it.

A free press is much more than press release recyclers, future SPADs and institutionalised "political" correspondents. It includes small publications such as the Village Magazine and The Ditch that manage to get the stories that the large publications don't. But when these small publications break stories on FFG, they become, in your words "fringe publications" as you seek to delegitimise their existence.

Your ranting seems to get progressively unhinged. "These independent medias also has a crackpot element to them." The word 'media' is already plural. Media plurality is the foundation of a free press. The Web has helped with that. Someone once said that the media's relationship with the political establishment should be like that between a dog and a lamppost. That rarely seems to be the case in Ireland. A few decades ago, Troy Story would never have received much coverage and it would have been quietly sidelined. It would be no suprise to see FFG pining for those days.

Regards...jmcc

Full employment is great on the surface but context rarely discussed, Record numbers of young people on low incomes, actually a lot of adults too, Cost of living impacts these people far greater, it's wonderful to have a full time job, it would be better if these folks could afford their rent or actually find a place to live.

I won't criticise governments achievement re employment but context is important, especially in these times when many will struggle to pay bills and have to make stark choices in the coming months. Disposal income is diminishing almost weekly and this is going to have an enormous effect on the home economy and whilst there's a lot of Kite flying, it remains to be seen if FFFG have any plan for what's coming which even to most optimistic analysts say is going to be Grim.

13th on the World Happiness Index.

There is a lot going wrong in the world today, all over the world, thanks to Putin. Like during Covid, our government is doing well compared to most.

Excellent post JMCC, intelligent, coherent, articulate, keep it up please.....