Leo Varadkar resigns as Taoiseach

What do you envisage him changing or improving?

If he improves anything at all in 10 months, will you and MrB accept that Varadkar was useless in comparison?

I wonder if a scandal leak is incoming, did Leo leak himself 😁

OR years to get an appointment.

Nope. Wouldn't call myself a fan. However, he has been the best available Taoiseach, given that the leader of the party I vote for - Greens - doesn't have the numbers.

Out of LV, MM and MLMD, Leo stands out a mile as the best.

Tis a fair assessment.

I don't think you understand the numbers. Having large hospitals where doctors are treating large numbers of patients instead of small hospitals where doctors are treating small numbers of patients results in better health outcomes overall for the population.

Yes, for a single person in the back end of nowhere, they might have less chance of surviving a heart attack, but in general, the population, that is everyone, lives longer and healthier lives.

It is why all modern countries are built around cities unlike Ireland where we cling to stupid notions of dispersed ribbon rural living.

To me Josepha will be remembered for being in legal cahoots with Maria Bailey's drunken swing fall that time.

To a large extent, it is about affordable accommodation. Unfortunately since coming to power in 2011 FG has done all they can to increase house prices, and this in particular forces trained Irish people out of the country. Replacing expensive Irish workers with cheaper immigrant workers from the Philipines, Ukraine and elsewhere may look like sound economic policy to FG, FF and the Greens, but a lot of the electorate isn't happy with this policy as the emigrants are sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, cousins and friends of those who remain.

This isn't intended to be an anti-immigrant post - it is a criticism of a poorly thought-out Irish government policy.

Other countries with large numbers of immigrants do not typically have a large outflow of their own nationals at the same time as an influx of immigrants, and many Irish people are angry that this is happening. The problem isn't usually described in these terms, but this is in many ways precisely what is happening.

Yep. FG had no credible opposition in 2011 and immediately turned to the dark arts. Irish Water was a prime example of corruption, waste and cronyism. The New Politics guff was all lies.

He has a certain way of speaking and a voice that makes it sound like everything is completely, absolutely under control and everything is being worked out. Calm but also a slant to it that things are getting done to improve the situation. A very dangerous leader in that respect.

I think Varadkar's resignation symbolises the end of wokeism in Ireland, or at least the start of a countermovement to it, and it's far beyond time for it.

Up to recently the only truly anti-woke and anti-left people were the likes of Gemma Doherty, John Waters, the Healy-Raes and a few smaller independents and commenters and being on the right and anti-immigrant was seen as being uneducated and a bit of a joke.

Other countries have engaged in runaway leftist elitism as well based on social constructs but they all produced right countermovements against it long ago. Ireland has been about 10-20 years behind all those countries.

This is why I believe Varadkar has resigned. Varadkar is used to being liked and to being "right" and to being the smartest guy around, same as when he trained to be a doctor. It was easy for him to brush off the criticisms before as people who weren't educated about the matter. Now with Elon Musk and others calling him out it doesn't suit his ego so he wants to take himself out of that situation. Hopefully that's it, and it's not that the country is completely bankrupt after paying foreigners to come here, rats fleeing a sinking ship sort of thing.

Er well if he has the keys to the sweet shop and eats all the sweets won't his teeth fall out?

Edit: someone beat me to it

The leadership change is happening because Leo resigned - are you suggesting that he was pushed and Simon was about to orchestrate a heave against him. Otherwise what you're saying about change of leadership not having occurred doesn't make sense.

I think it was a case of Leo jumping before he was pushed but I don't know if he was told to jump.

If Simon Harris wants to hit the ground running, here's one simple thing that he could do. Outlaw property companies from buying out complete housing estates and renting them out forever. That's it. Just one little thing to let us know that he does want his party to change for the good of it's citizens, and not large corporate property interests. Have a go Simon, it's not that hard.

Am not going to try to answer your questions suvigirl. My post was made in a particular context, if you don't get it already best to just leave it.

Would be a positive indeed.

But thats a difficult one when its the investment funds that make the apartment complexes viable in the first place... Dont bite the hand that feeds you and all that.

Which is why pretty much everything that is being built is being built in Dublin.

Perhaps a heavy increase in direct govt funding toward housing development could happen.

Lets hope so.