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

FFG are getting truly desperate now :-) Just recently we have Taoiseach Leo detecting a rise in homophobia, Minister Darragh has uncovered suspicious leaflets in Malahide and now Tanaiste Martin thinks Irish MSM are cheering for SF! They're all ignoring the dominating fact that when voters said no more unchecked immigration and no hate speech laws, FFG responded by saying f*** *ff.

There's still a chance we might get to see one of them pretending to cry out of "despair for our fragile democracy and the European project". They really are that shameless :-)

https://twitter.com/NewstalkFM/status/1701230857543934004

Tanaiste Martin thinks Irish MSM are cheering for SF!

Even from a purely cynical political perspective, I don't see the point in Martin banging on about SF at this stage. People who are strongly anti-SF don't want to hear 'impassioned rhetoric'; they want to hear a commitment from the party in question that they won't be putting SF into government. FG will give them that commitment, FF won't, so the bulk of the anti-SF vote, however sizeable it is, will be gravitating to FG and the best thing Martin can do about SF is stay off the subject as much as possible.

You believe ratings by a right wing economics mag?

"The index considers the health, education, income and living in a given country to provide a measure of human development which is comparable between countries and over time.[1][2]

The HDI is the most widely used indicator of human development and has changed how people view the concept"

For a widely based authoritative report, which is widely used, you can't get better than the UN's Human Development Index which puts Ireland 8th in the world, up 6 places since 2015. Pretty much accurate.

If you think the Economist is right-wing, or an "economics mag", then you probably need to educate yourself rather more on political matters before commenting.

The UN HDI only measures:

Life expectancy at birth   

Mean years of schooling

GNI per capita (PPP $) 

Its a far less practical measure of day to day quality of life that people experience in the first world because its so weighted by income - something thats more relevant in the developing world. And particularly so for a state like Ireland with such a distorted by multinationals GNI.

The Economist's (globally respected, regularly cited in academia) measure includes stability (crime and political), healthcare (more generally - not just lifespan), culture, environment, education and infrastructure - all factors that are far more relevant for day-to-day life. Thats why its very commonly used by expats when deciding where to re-locate. And thats why Dublin scores so poorly.

Theres a reason the #1 complaint of every large American MNC in Ireland these days is their difficulties convincing foreign staff to move here. That wouldn't be happening if Ireland actually had a world leading quality of life.

Did you just copy paste directly from wikipedia? Lol. Well, good to see you're doing some basic research to educate yourself to a leaving cert level I guess. That aside, did you even read what you posted? "The extreme centre is the paper's historical position.'"

A publication that's pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, in favour of decolonisation, in favour of public healthcare and public education, pro-wealth taxes, and aims to be "the enemy of privilege" amongst other things is nowhere near right-wing. Its stuck to consistently classically liberal, centrist, positions throughout its history - endorsing politicians from both sides of the left/right divide, as your quote also shows.

Its ranked as consistently very centrist in academic studies of media. Something anyone with any basic knowledge of political science or media would know:

(the red square right in the middle above Forbes is the Economist, in-case you also don't recognise the logo...)

No, you said, and I quote directly and in full: "You believe ratings by a right wing economics mag?".

Which very clearly shows you have absolutely no education in what you're talking about.

A mag that supported Harold Wilson, Tony Blair, Lula da Silva, Olaf Scholz, Pedro Sánchez and Kevin Rudd is left-wing by any definition. Unless you think they were all heroes of the upper class.

Do you see what I did there?

It regularly supports elements of politicians platforms from either side of the political spectrum. It endorses who it thinks is the best of a bad bunch regularly.

Again, in actual academic studies its consistently shown to be completely centrist. As its stated editorial policy aims for.

Which anyone who has done any sort of university level study of political science would know. You're only further exposing your intellectual ignorance here.

Economist is pretty good at these things but the comments so far is a bit misleading (the original article is behind a paywall, had a sub myself for years), wiki article on the article here:

City quality of life indices - Wikipedia

Dublin is ranked #33 of 221 cities that they included. I do agree that the government should put more budget into Dublin (given how much it subsidises the rest of Ireland) and prioritise it's infrastructure.

What plans to improve this do other parties have to contrast with FF/FG/Green ?

So 98.7% of gardai have no confidence in the Garda Commissioner. Minister Helen's response: we need to protect the most vulnerable in society i.e. the 1.3% as that minority are the "most vulnerable in society", anyhow that 99% of gardai are probably racists who also objected to FFG immigration policy and hate speech - LOL!

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/2023/09/13/huge-majority-of-rank-and-file-gardai-vote-no-confidence-in-garda-commissioner/

Its not so much "pulling the intellectual card" as being horrified at your complete lack of education on something you're trying to comment definitively on. Its basically a Dunning–Kruger effect study come to life.

I'll take that post as an admission that you had absolutely no idea what you were talking about on the Economist's political positioning, though.

You could learn a lot about politics if you actually did some reading on it to educate yourself, it might give you some more rational views about these things.

@CarProblem Where'd that come from?

Sounds pretty dubious anyway. A government cannot 'make itself poorer'. It has no money except for other people's money - taxes or borrowing. Tax cuts are not 'giving' anything to the taxpayers, just taking less off them. Borrowing is just deferred taxes.

On the Economist, why am I totally unsurprised:

Truth is they and the British establishment at best didn't care if the Irish lived or died, at worst regarded a large population reduction as welcome, the Irish Highland Clearances.

Their actual actions on planning permissions speaks otherwise, investing more in education and healthcare will do nothing without also making the painful choices around how they are structured, they are a black hole for finance that will suck up all the money they get while offering little returns.

I'd agree with the loosened licensing laws, though I think FF/FG/Greens are also planning to bring this in.

Public transport should be first and forefront, what concrete plans are in place for this that differ from FF/FG?

The question is what rural spending are you proposing to stop to allow Dublin the extra funds? Which party reflects that plan?

I get what you're saying, but pointing at an Economist article that doesn't say what you claim isn't a good start. Ireland consistently ranks high in a lot of the rankings, public transport is one where we score low, if SF guaranteed to get MN, Dart+, Luas expansion and get the bus connects in place (ignoring the protests) that would show they have a plan, but I haven't seen any of that from them or any of the opposition, promising to spend more is meaningless (all parties will say they'll spend more during the next election cycle) without actual plans in place.

Yes, all 3 lack how they'll manage it without wasting the money, housing isn't about money but about enabling the industry to build, the opposition party plans (when they're not objecting to builds) is to make much more of the available housing for social tenants squeezing out those who are trying to buy, the numbers built won't change, but who gets them will (though we'll see if their "profitless" building ever happens 😁).

The surplus are temporary and driven by massive corporate tax receipts, they can't be allocated in a sustainable way as they may disappear (did you learn nothing from the last construction led crash?), this means lots of targeted once-off measures and infrastructure, again, if the opposition parties have better concrete public transport plans, please list them so we can compare and contrast with the current plan for government (fast-tracking MN and Dart+ for example). Similarly, show where the opposition are planning to re-structure the health and education systems and ultimately make their unions squeal to get changes made, otherwise the budget increases are wasted.

I suspect you are avoiding making any of those hard decisions because the opposition parties are also avoiding them, which makes their plans for government unrealistic.

If your goal is to move Dublin into the top 10, then transport is the major issue to fix, to fund that, sustainably, you need to cut rural funding, so list what your planned cuts are, or stop talking nonsense.

(and again, Ireland is in many of the top categories for quality of life, happiness etc).

Correct, and that leads you to the conclusion that the Greens are the party to vote for.

The opposition party plans do literally the opposite of what you're claiming on housing. The current FF/FG government is currently taking huge numbers of private housing out of the market through both HAP and long term leasing of units for social housing - ie literally squeezing out those who want to buy. All of the left-wing parties want to instead massively increase the building of social housing by the state, getting the state out of the private rental market so its not competing with buyers with their own tax money.

The current budget surplus may be temporary, it may not be. It can absolutely be allocated in the meantime for once off spending on things like education infrastructure, health infrastructure, and transport infrastructure that improve our quality of life immediately and have huge long term benefits. There is no requirement whatsoever to cut spending in other areas to do this as you claimed.

Transport isn't the major issue to fix, housing is the #1 issue in Dublin in every study and survey. But even taking transport in isolation - its the definition of something that can benefit from once off spending from the current budget surplus. Money invested into new roads, railways etc is not a recurring expense.

If you're too lazy to do the research yourself here are links to some of the party policy documents that discuss transport so you can compare for yourself. Theres plenty of discussions of specifics that go above and beyond the current government's plans, including but not limited to cutting public transport fares by 20%/50% for under18s, rural bus schemes, new rail infrastructure, school transport buses, etc:

https://www.socialdemocrats.ie/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Moving-People-Not-Cars-Public-Transport-Policy.pdf

Metronorth and Dart+ have made near zero progress in the last 12 years of FG dominated governments. If they had actually been "fast tracked" construction would have begun long ago. Holding them up as achievements of the current government is rather hilarious. They're both far more likely to actually be built under a left-wing government that spends money on infrastructure.

Ireland, Dublin specifically, was ranked #37 in 2022's quality of life index. It is nowhere near "top". Its shockingly low compared to our wealth peers in Northern Europe like Amsterdam, Vienna, Copenhagen etc that are regularly in the top 5. This is entirely down to bad political decision making.