Democracy my arse
Wonderful!
We now have a new gubmint after an election that took place at the start of February. Yup – five months to sort themselves out.
In that election, the clear favourite was SF [Sinn Féin] who topped the polls just about everywhere and the only reason they didn’t have a clear majority of seats was that they didn’t run enough candidates.
The outgoing mob FG [Fine Gael] were dumped into third place with the likes of Varadkar and Harris [our boy child Health Minister] barely scraping in after many counts and recounts.
The one clear message that everyone agreed upon was that Ireland wanted a real change in governance. They were sick of the old FG/FF [Fianna Fáil] mob and wanted something new.
What did they get?
The old FF/FG mob again.
What really pisses me off was the political manoeuvrings whereby SF were deliberately and unashamedly excluded from any negotiations to form a new gubmint. I am no great lover of SF but they were the clear choice of the electorate and to exclude them from negotiations was anti-democratic in the extreme. FF and FG have been political rivals for some reason despite having almost identical manifestos, but they were prepared to put the rivalry to one side just to keep SF out and to get their arses back into the high pay jobs.
And to cap it all, our new leader is Micheál Martin.
He s the cunt whose most proud achievement was to bring in the smoking ban.
Is it no wonder that I am thoroughly disillusioned with Irish politics?
On 24% of the vote, Sinn Fein might have secured 40 seats – still 40 short of a majority. What's surprising is that the deal was not between them and FF.
The winners in the process will be Fine Gael, who will emerge as the real Centre-Right Conservative party and the Labour Party, whose leader is a much more accomplished performer than moaning Mary Lou MacDonald
I found it quite staggering that both FG and FF were so adamant that they just wouldn't even talk to SF. This was deliberately excluding the wishes of a quarter of the electorate. As I said, I am no great fan of SF but if I had voted for them I would be rightly incensed. Fortunately for FF/FG they can rely on the electorate having very short memories!
As much as you get all up in arms over your gubmint, I'd trade you ours here in the USA for yours faster than you can say, "What ya mean I can't smoke here, ya twat!"
Also, told you I'd drop in again. Been a while.
Cheers!
Fair point!
Welcome back [again] Dave!
A similarly offensive fudge could have occurred in the UK, the Labour and Conservative parties would have buried all their supposed historic differences just to keep the Brexit Party out of any power if necessary.
It exposes their real principles, they will play whatever tunes they can with your 'democracy' just to cling on to power.
That, Muddy, is perfectly true. I have come to believe that a strong desire to stand for election is sufficient grounds for disqualification.
If there was no financial incentive and just a desire to implement policies it might weed out a few?
This is why we end up with extremists. People realise that you can't temper these parties you have to defeat them. Perhaps next time we will end up with 50+% SF and then we will see some changes. Not all for the good though.
Come on over to to my side of the pond. Then you can be disillusioned about US government…and the various State governments (all 50 of ’em or 48 if you don't want to travel to Hawaii and Alaska)…and the too numerous to mention city and town governments. Think about all the stuff you could post about then.
On second thought, never mind. I like you where you are, sir.
Yep, already mentioned that to him! G'dad, Kirk and I with our families are just going to come live with you until after 1/21/2021, k? Do you have a couple of extra rooms?