Local/ EU elections who will you Vote for

Independent only. A vote for a party candidate, no matter how good they are locally, will be viewed as an endorsement of national strategy.

Yes I will use my vote to protest. It's one good way to deliver a message these days. Alternative to protesting outside their houses as we know that's not liked. There's a serious democratic deficit as far as I can see. The lack of regard politicians at local & national level have for the public is palpable.

Yeah we should vote such luminaries as the ex beauty queen, the ex jockey, the ex president of the GAA, etc, etc.

The old establishment are getting worried me thinks.

Funny how if things were going well we would told to vote for the candidates of the party that has done this, that and the other for you.

What will the excuse be when it comes time for the general election?

Let me guess, ff and fg strategy will be "you have to vote for us or the shinners will get in and they will be much worse".

Nearly given up on voting such is my lack of faith in Politicans actually doing anything.

Crime is the biggest issue in our area & the Aontu candidate is the only one who gave me a reasonable response to my issues so i'll vote for him.

Anyone with a half coherent immigration policy which unfortunately rules out about 95% of candidates.

Just like the other 80% of the electorate if polling is to be believed.

we seem to going to have referenda on everything including the colour of Simons door, except migration policy.

While the colour of the door may effect Simons neighbours, I imagine the current wave of immigration will effect considerably more but no poll on this little nugget.

I Wonder why

The European elections seem to have a number of poeple who have followers on tiktok who like them complaining about the government and that has qualified them into been a good person for election

How about trying it, suck it and see what happens like. Mightn't at all as bad as some vested interests like to point out.

Will vote Independant Ireland in the local elections.

I'd give a vote to the Farmers Alliance but I'm not seeing any movement from them lately about running candidates.

I'm in the Midlands North West constituencey for the European elections so might vote for Michelle Smith but haven't fully made up my mind on it yet.

Oh I don't know maybe have some form off plebiscite on the current mess.

And yourself ? Or are you happy enough with the current situation, sure it'll be grand im sure.

I see the Soc Dems are running Rory Hearne here in the Midlands North West.

He is just the sort of candidate that would suit that lot.

I'd like to see Boylan do well but he will have his work cut out for him.

I'm sorry, but your post is all over the place…

You think the UK will lose a generation to us? That is nuttery of the highest order, we can't even house our own youth. We have more young adults in their 30s living in the bedroom they were children in because they can't afford to move out than anywhere else in Europe. Nobody who is capable of paying rent or buying a house will be moving here for some time to come….absolutely nobody.

For something tossed off in a few minutes on a Friday night, I think it was no more all over the place than your hysterical brain dump! I mean I didn't even get to that doozy about the war "that nobody wants to end".

What does that even mean I wonder (?), though I think I know unfortunately.

You got me. The UK are obviously not going to lose "a generation" to us, as you say where would we put them all?

I would predict however that we will have a net inflow of UK citizens to here in coming years, not a net outflow of Irish citizens to the UK from here. I think Irish people that leave probably will not go to the UK.

I won’t be voting for FF/G, the greens because I’m not insane, SF, Soc Dems, PBP or Labour.

It’s slim pickings out there to be sure.

I think Chairman Xi has called for "peace" talks on the "Ukraine crisis" while Chinese companies are making bank (re)tooling up Russia and shielding it from Western sanctions so it can keep going in its efforts to destroy Ukraine.

So that is probably the kind of peace you mean, shaft Ukraine up the bottom and cut them off, smile at Putin, shake his hand and tell him what a great job he and his army have done liberating the New Russian Territories of Ukraine!

I just challenged the broader point you made that this was some worst ever era in recent European history, needing some very radical/protest/populist politics. A unique era of chaos, violence, upheaval etc. across the continent, not just in Ireland wasn't it:

"The entire continent is politically unstable, not just Britain. I've never seen the amount of protests we are seeing, the farmers of Europe have been picketing in massive numbers, by the way, these are the people who provide our food. France is more unstable than the UK in recent years, riots, protests, church attacks, terror attacks…Germany has seen massive political swings after the disastrous Energy and Immigration policies of the Merkel years….there's a war nobody seems to want to end on the European border, record level of inflation is killing the middle classes, accommodation crisis everywhere it seems, massive energy price rises, more draconian climate policies to come"

I guess you have rowed back from it now. On challenging specifics, I feel like I've already spent too much time on this and if you want me to write an essay for you arguing against each point backed up with statistics etc…well you are out of luck and all you'll get is below.

Point 1. This relates to Ireland and root of it is the f-ckup laissez faire "property market" mismanaged by multiple govt.'s as long as I've been alive and now completely cracking up under strain of population pressure/immigration. I don't think it applies everywhere.

Point 2. I think inflation in Eurozone has decreased back towards more normal levels this year. I believe that war you think everyone is so gung ho for had something to do with it in 2022/23. Maybe aftermath of Covid as well?

Point 3: Thank that war, and also Ireland's stupid short sighted "nimbyist" or "banana" (i.e. entirely electorate driven) energy policy for this one.

Point 4: I don't know (situation across Europe), I do know there are more Ireland-specific issues affecting the SMEs here.

Point 5: Yes there are large farmer protests, but this has happened before. Farmers are a strong lobby group in most countries and they do come on to the streets and make themselves heard when they are not happy. It is not good of course but it just doesn't feel to me like some special harbinger of doom coming for us all.

Point 6: On a new mental health crisis, I don't know. People do seem to talk about their mental health and their sufferings a lot more. Maybe they used to just quietly drink themselves to death or suicide in the past? I admit the phenomena of social media use and the internet etc. are probably bad for mental health generally. I don't see a bunch of radical populist politicians fixing this, more likely to be fixed by some normal politicians finally getting up the courage to take on the tech MNCs and their revenue generating models and put in some restrictions on social media/the internet (which will be called anti-free speech I am sure).

Point 7: Health system - another fine Irish mess that is.

Proint 8: France's riots. Yes France has had riots...Think there has always been a culture of taking to the street in protest there far more than here or UK, so again they have had violent riots in the past. However I agree with you country does not look so politically stable, and we don't know what next elections there will bring.

edit: On migration to/from the UK was kind of interested so I googled that. There's a decent net inflow of immigrants each year from the UK and that has been going on since 2016 despite the housing problems, and what a hellscape the country seems to be acc. to you.

"In the year to April 2023, the UK experienced strong migration flows. Estimates have shown that 14,600 people left Ireland to live in the UK, up from 13,400 last year and 18,400 people moved to Ireland from the UK, up from 12,800 in 2022 (See Figure 6 and Table 5)."

https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/ep/p-pme/populationandmigrationestimatesapril2023/keyfindings/

No Government party will get my vote.

No right wing nut jobs will get my vote.

Any political party that leans left, or is left, or Independents that are left will get my vote.

Any Eu candidate that has local issues like housing in the leaflets isn't getting my vote, it's not their job.

My council is doing an OK job on housing that are are actually building a fair amount if it. But they are also forcing stuff on my local area that isn't popular and they are letting the council officials away with to much. I watched one meeting online and only the FF councilor asked any hard questions and voted against something. So he has to get my first or second vote after that. It's who I'm not voting for, not greens not FG or other FF, not current Labor. So we'll see

Local elections are broadly irrelevant, local government in Ieland has so little power, many councillors use it as a stepping stone to the Dail. Councils can be useful platforms for some though so in that context, hopefully as few of the anti immigration types polluting communities with hate and violence win, unfortunately one or two may get elected at local level, none of them will get elected for Europe.

Niall Boylan may get a reasonable vote in Dublin but he won't get any where near the seats.

Looking forward to the humiliation of the likes of Blighe and Dwyer in Europe too

More broadly on the Euros, hard to see huge change -

FF/FG/SF will take 8/9 of the 14 seats.

Greens 1/2

INDs will take 3/4 Flanagan/Daly/Wallace/Mullooly/McNamara

Aontu may take 1, can't see anything for Labour/SocDems/PBPA

MNW the hardest constituency to call, that's where there could be some interesting outcome.

I don't think the UK is "fucked" either, and didn't say that myself. That would be more gloom and doom-mongering, and going against what I was trying to say.

I agreed a lot of your specifics are real things (maybe bar inflation, which has done its damage in 2022/23 but is easing).

However many of those are Irish (rather than European) problems.

They also don't indicate some catastrophic situation IMO, needing to take a punt on radical politics, throw over the table in hope it gets better and these problems get fixed (somehow). It almost always makes things worse (as UK has experienced recently - unfortunately they have only had bad political choices before them lately, a Comrade Corbyn govt. would have been dire as well I think!).

Even in terms of Ireland's recent-ish history let alone Euopean history (60s - 1990s say) current situation is not disastrous. We have clear problems, it could be better.

On the UK, there is no way we will lose another generation to them. If an exodus happened on scale of the 80s and previous decades (those were not some halcyon days in Ireland!) we'd lose them to the US/Aus./Canada or perhaps to countries in Europe with better prospects.

Places they can do better in than they can here at home. That is not the UK this time. As I pointed out, the British are coming here!

…funnily enough, immigration could very well be one of the quicker ways in solving our housing 'supply' problem, as its not a housing 'demand' problem, wont be happening though, so we need to embrace this problem, as its gonna be around well into the next decade….

labour are all over the place alright, they never done the soul searching required after past failures….

Proper working class parties like Sinn Féin and PBP who will ensure that the weakest and most vulnerable have a strong safety net.

I will not vote for any of the nouveau fascist parties who have labelled the “foreigner” as bad.

Ok. What clear and precise wording would you have for this non-constitutional referendum?

Ok well if you're going to get pedantic about it my original post didn't say it was a requirement. I said that they are "typically" for making changes to the constitution since every referendum in my memory (and possibly in the history of the state) has been for that purpose.