Public opinion is one thing, facts are another

micosoft wrote: »

They won't ever be asked 27% of social welfare spending goes to pensioners or to the unemployed and I can't think of a single modern democracy that would suggest such a state of affairs.

Exactly, they wont - they're much more likely to prioritise investigating and learning about subjects where they will be asked to make decisions. So why the concern that people clearly haven't been studying up on budgetary spending? Its a perfectly understandable by-product of a system built on the belief that the people are ignorant, red necked, knuckle dragging thieves who would ruin the wondrous system of government we have if they were allowed a significant if indirect say in it.

We live in a party based parliamentary democracy where people vote for candidates who represent parties that have clearly defined manifesto's and policies. I suggest the voter informs themselves and vote for candidates who represent the party whose manifesto most meets the voters informed preferences.

Manifestos are almost entirely works of fiction. All mature Irish voters know that politicians are instinctively honest but to get elected they are forced (forced I tell you)to lie to the feckless, ignorant, stupid, blank faced cattle...uh I mean Irish citizens who are valued participants in our democratic state. The only use an Irish voter gets out of a party's manifesto is dependant on the papers texture and how well bound it is.

The wise, mature, experienced Irish voter knows you don't vote on national issues which you have no influence over, and which your TD is very unlikely to have any influence over, and over whom you will have no influence in any case. Instead they rationally elect whoever did good local work or has a proven track record in delivering government spending in the local areas.

It's a totally different topic/discussion but given only 14 out of 166 TD's were voted in as "Whipless" independents it's safe to say most people would disagree with your preferred political system.

Most people are fairly rational - "Whipless" independants dont yet have a good track record in delivering government spending in their area.

That said, the support for independants is on the rise, and the support for "whipped" parties is as weak as it has ever been with a greater share of voters prefering "none of the above", which is the biggest factor in Fianna Fails supposed resurgence.

@Vladimir Kurtains

Nobody is obliging you to vote for someone under a party whip. You can always vote for an Independent.

Yes, I can.

It is notable how the present government has entirely avoided any improvement in the presentation or delivery of information, but have embraced obfuscation and spin in a way the Bertie would be proud of. They could have said that the country was in a mess and that they were going to improve information delivery so that people had a better chance of seeing it coming next time, but they have chosen not to do this.

Sheldons Brain wrote: »

It is notable how the present government has entirely avoided any improvement in the presentation or delivery of information, but have embraced obfuscation and spin in a way the Bertie would be proud of. They could have said that the country was in a mess and that they were going to improve information delivery so that people had a better chance of seeing it coming next time, but they have chosen not to do this.

I don't think it was lack of information that led to the current mess. More like it was interpretation of that information. For example if you go back to to the housing bubble, rapidly rising prices were very widely reported but this was interpreted as a positive thing for the most part and proof that the doom-mongers were wrong. The Irish Times, publisher of this survey, was one of the cheerleaders of the bubble.

Similarly, banks were happy to report that their rate of lending was increasing by 25% a year as likewise they interpreted this as a positive thing. The banks had no lack of information but failed to grasp the big picture.

Sheldons Brain wrote: »

It is notable how the present government has entirely avoided any improvement in the presentation or delivery of information, but have embraced obfuscation and spin in a way the Bertie would be proud of. They could have said that the country was in a mess and that they were going to improve information delivery so that people had a better chance of seeing it coming next time, but they have chosen not to do this.

I frequently wonder how much of bad government communication is actually deliberate. My experience of communication by large organisations is that the initial intent is transparency, but that final result is opacity. Watching the communication of something going from initial intent to final outcome is quite similar to watching pinball.

In this case, say Noonan decides that the financial position of the country needs to be communicated clearly to the public. What that means, practically speaking, is that Noonan tells the DoF and agrees with the CBI, that this needs to happen. Various civil servants get together and look at what can be communicated - which will result in awkward discoveries where they find they don't have some sets of information, that they do have others but they would need work to be publication-ready, that some information is potentially commercially sensitive, while other information makes particular people, organisations, or units, look bad. Various interests will drag their feet because they don't want the information public, or because they don't want to commit to providing it regularly, and so on. Some of what is provided will be incomprehensible without specialist knowledge, different parts will have been assembled by different people at different times using different criteria and reference points, and so on. At the final stage it will be discovered that there isn't anybody with the necessary breadth of knowledge and the time to regularly out all of what is finally available into a comprehensive context which makes any sense to the general public, or even the media. Some while after that it will be discovered that the data is being criticised by external users, none of whom were consulted during the process, although that's because there were no external users until the data was actually released.

And finally, nobody will read the information except for a few journalists, who will mine it for sensational nuggets with not much relevance to the whole, and sometimes without any real understanding of what's being said in any case. And that, because it will be put in front of people without any effort on their part bar moving their eyeballs, and will have been tarted up to look interesting, will be what the public actually gets. The end result is not very different from the current situation.

cordially,
Scofflaw