Can we have peaceful, national protests yet?

renegademaster

comongethappy wrote: »

And for all your & Renegademaster's anger neither have offered us an alternative?

Will you not accept that many are OK with things, whether you like it or not.

the fact that as many are "ok with things" is the problem ffs.

Silentcorner wrote: »

That is not what the polls are saying

http://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/support-for-government-parties-drop-in-new-poll-1.1743471

Just a reminder, FF suffered a catastrophic collapse at the last GE, Labour are facing the same obliteration...so it would seem that no, many are not ok with our government.

In a democracy, the people only have two weapons, protest or the ballot box. When you consider that support for the 3 main parties is literally tumbling it is perplexing how this is not manifesting itself on the streets. Personally, I believe that there are only a few organisations with the infrastructure needed to actually pull off a successful protest, I have witnessed two mass protests in Limerick since the crash, Farmers and School teachers.

siptu pulled off the largest protest the last few years, 150,000 people on a snowy sat midday in nov 2010, men women and children, kids in buggies despite the freezing cold, snow, ice, soaking feet and wet trousers, the spirits were high but also seriously pi$$ed off with fianna fail, the crowds were enormous, fianna fail called elections within a few days and they were out on their fcuking ears!! it baffles me how such unity hasn't been seen since

bumper234 wrote: »

How do we do this? How do you ENSURE that the politicians you vote in tomorrow will be honest next year?

by calling a halt to this one now and voting in a new government on a new mandate, they have 18 months to make serious ground or they're out to fcuk!! maybe even sooner if it looks like a crock of $hit has been sold to us, again!! eventually, and it could take a few years but we'll never get there unless we try, eventually we might see a decent government being formed, the way it's going now though it's only going to get worse, look at the fcuking polls!! this $hit is going to get real if the polls stay moving the way they going right now!!

bumper234 wrote: »

Let them eat cake!

Jonny7

renegademaster wrote: »

siptu pulled off the largest protest the last few years, 150,000 people on a snowy sat midday in nov 2010, men women and children, kids in buggies despite the freezing cold, snow, ice, soaking feet and wet trousers, the spirits were high but also seriously pi$$ed off with fianna fail, the crowds were enormous, fianna fail called elections within a few days and they were out on their fcuking ears!! it baffles me how such unity hasn't been seen since

Because Fianna Fail were voted out and replaced - replaced by a government that has dealt with the crisis and recovery relatively well

comongethappy

renegademaster wrote: »

by calling a halt to this one now and voting in a new government on a new mandate, they have 18 months to make serious ground or they're out to fcuk!! maybe even sooner if it looks like a crock of $hit has been sold to us, again!! eventually, and it could take a few years but we'll never get there unless we try, eventually we might see a decent government being formed, the way it's going now though it's only going to get worse, look at the fcuking polls!! this $hit is going to get real if the polls stay moving the way they going right now!!

Christ mate..... That is your solution??

A government gets 18 months to placate your anger or forcibly removed!

No rational metrics.... Just your anger as the only measuring stick.

Frankly, a juvenile idea.

yosserhughes

What we want is a change to the policies that are being imposed on us by the present government...IE, a change to the policies that are placing savage financial hardships on the ordinary people of the country(home tax,water tax,carbon tax etc),policies that have turned our health service into a total mess,policies that have nearly every second shop in every town in rural Ireland closed down,policies that have destroyed the lives of every vulnerable citizen in Ireland...and I could go on and on and on...

comongethappy

yosserhughes wrote: »

What we want is a change to the policies that are being imposed on us by the present government...IE, a change to the policies that are placing savage financial hardships on the ordinary people of the country(home tax,water tax,carbon tax etc),policies that have turned our health service into a total mess,policies that have nearly every second shop in every town in rural Ireland closed down,policies that have destroyed the lives of every vulnerable citizen in Ireland...and I could go on and on and on...

Please do!

You want to reduce taxes.... Great me too.
Are you going to accept the subsequent spending reduction to offset that??

As it stands Ireland is just above OECD average for tax take..... We are still taxed much less than the nations at the top of that table (& thank god IMO).

Health care costs rise.... Funding doesn't match . Its sh*t but its reality.
Again.... Do you want the greater tax burden to keep health spending ever rising?
When by most metrics, public health in Ireland rates very well.


We can't have it all folks..... Money is not infinite & it has to come from somewhere.

zoomaway

RichardAnd wrote: »

Protests in Ireland will never go down well. I can't comment on the social phenomena or phenomenon that allows this to be so, but if someone tries to question the power that be, they will probably run into some of all of the following groups of individuals.

The "sheeple": I don't need to explain this portmanteau. Anyone who falls into this group will invariable be someone who may well know that they are being screwed, but they are too meek to do anything about it. Governments love sheeple. In Ireland, they just need to tell them that protesting and the like will upset their credit rating and the good little boys and girls will fall into line.

The lazy: I would say that this is the largest group I will attempt to describe. These guys know well that the system is rigged, but they won't do anything about it. After all, why protest when Fair City and Facebook are calling...

The begrudgers: Everyone know what I mean by "begrudger." People in this group don't care how badly they get f**ked. Their only concern is that everyone else gets screwed with them. This group is very easily herded by any government.

The smug. The smug professional. We all know someone like this, and we probably all want to smack him. This type of person will gladly go along with any edict the government hands down. When anyone else attempts to question the said action, the smug individual will immediately lambast the inquisitive soul because the smug and effete professional has convinced himself that accepting everything the state throws at him makes him some kind of intellectual.

I have a particular loathing for this group. This board is swimming with such people, but you’ll rarely find them in real life. The reason is very simple; these people are cowards. They only taut their supercilious crap on a board because they can do so anonymously.

Most of these people are probably upper middle class “professionals.” It’s likely that they are in a position where they will (or believe they will) be insulated from economic hardship. You won’t find many of these guys on the dole.

So true!
Don't think Irish people are really that united when you look beneath the surface. Huge issues. Maybe because we were colonised and pushed off the land.In any case until we figure out ' who we are ' as a nation and cut through the crap we are at nothing. I dislike the last group you mentioned too some of them are complete gob *hites.

hatrickpatrick

marienbad wrote: »

When your house is on fire you don't care about the ethics of the firemen. That is for a later day.

You do if they pilfer all your belongings and shoot your dog whilst putting the fire out...

twowheelsgood

renegademaster wrote: »

the fact that as many are "ok with things" is the problem ffs.

The electorate, or at least a substantial number of them are “ok with things”, not because they see no shortcomings or failures of the government but because they believe that their performance in managing the economy is better than any alternative government that has a realistic chance of coming to power after a general election. (Their current dip in the opinion polls almost certainly follows the fallout from the Garda controversies. But rightly or wrongly, this and issues like this will have close to zero impact on the results of the next general election. It really is about the economy)

Even if you could mobilise the sort of protest that your are hoping for, even if you could force the government to call a general election would you have any expectation that a new government would perform any better?

Many of us have been quite surprised at the speed of our recovery (how much you credit the government for this is another matter) and do not think it reasonable to expect it to have gone much better.

You are entitled of course to have unreasonable expectations, to imagine that there is a political / economic mastermind out there who could eliminate our deficit / debt / unemployment/… problems but many of us are a bit too realistic for that.

marienbad

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

You do if they pilfer all your belongings and shoot your dog whilst putting the fire out...

Well with the state this place was in when they came to power it was best to shoot the dog as we couldn't afford him/her

hatrickpatrick

Jonny7 wrote: »

Because Fianna Fail were voted out and replaced - replaced by a government that has dealt with the crisis and recovery relatively well

And yet on a different issue has tolerated an utterly unacceptable level of scandal and shenanigans without ever breaking ranks for the public good. This is toxic to a functioning democracy.

marienbad wrote: »

Well with the state this place was in when they came to power it was best to shoot the dog as we couldn't afford him/her

So just to clarify, are you saying you're ok with the breaching of pay caps by senior ministers to award old friends, the primary care centre controversy, the charities scandal, the government's response to the GSOC bugging, and the ongoigng saga of the Garda scandals?
Or are you saying that you simply don't care about them because they're irrelevant to the economy (apart from the pay cap issue which is being repeatedly overlooked)?

marienbad

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

And yet on a different issue has tolerated an utterly unacceptable level of scandal and shenanigans without ever breaking ranks for the public good. This is toxic to a functioning democracy.



So just to clarify, are you saying you're ok with the breaching of pay caps by senior ministers to award old friends, the primary care centre controversy, the charities scandal, the government's response to the GSOC bugging, and the ongoigng saga of the Garda scandals?
Or are you saying that you simply don't care about them because they're irrelevant to the economy (apart from the pay cap issue which is being repeatedly overlooked)?

No I am not saying that at all. It is not an either or situation as you seem to think it is .

When this lot came to power the had no choice as to what issues to face , the ship was sinking and seemed beyond saving. The speed of the recovery has been so remarkable that if anything I have trouble believing it . But turned it around they have . Do you accept that ?

As to the scandals , some of these have been going on for years but I do have concerns as to how they are handled from here on in.

But you seemed to be ignoring the bigger picture . What are the alternatives ? What of the electorate ?

It is easy to berate the health minister but this is a country that elected Lowry , topping the poll year after year because he could bring a casino to his constituency or the bould Bertie despite his 'dig outs.

So who do you suggest we put in power or should we just go straight to the revolution ?

renegademaster

comongethappy wrote: »

Christ mate..... That is your solution??

A government gets 18 months to placate your anger or forcibly removed!

No rational metrics.... Just your anger as the only measuring stick.

Frankly, a juvenile idea.

christ mate yourself, i was only making a suggestion, it's not like i tried to rush it through the dail or something, chill, maybe they need a whole 2 years, if they concentrated on running the country and not feathering their own nests and dodging the truth we could see things being done a lot quicker around here

bumper234

renegademaster wrote: »

christ mate yourself, i was only making a suggestion, it's not like i tried to rush it through the dail or something, chill, maybe they need a whole 2 years, if they concentrated on running the country and not feathering their own nests and dodging the truth we could see things being done a lot quicker around here

The thing is though that you may be unsatisfied while others maybe quite happy. You give them 2 years but who decides after 2 years weather they are doing a good/bad job?

comongethappy

bumper234 wrote: »

The thing is though that you may be unsatisfied while others maybe quite happy. You give them 2 years but who decides after 2 years weather they are doing a good/bad job?

Does it matter?

These guys are angry.
Apparently that's all that matters when forcing bi-annual changes of parliament.

Rationality be damned.

renegademaster

bumper234 wrote: »

The thing is though that you may be unsatisfied while others maybe quite happy. You give them 2 years but who decides after 2 years weather they are doing a good/bad job?

i give up, let every corrupt government have 5 years no matter what happens in the course of those years!!

yosserhughes

zoomaway wrote: »

So true!
Don't think Irish people are really that united when you look beneath the surface. Huge issues. Maybe because we were colonised and pushed off the land.In any case until we figure out ' who we are ' as a nation and cut through the crap we are at nothing. I dislike the last group you mentioned too some of them are complete gob *hites.

Maggie Thatcher once commented that the Irish were a spineless race,with the abuse people in the country are putting up with from the government I fear the Iron Lady may have been correct.

bumper234

renegademaster wrote: »

i give up, let every corrupt government have 5 years no matter what happens in the course of those years!!

So you want a new election every 18 months or 2 years?

renegademaster

bumper234 wrote: »

So you want a new election every 18 months or 2 years?

no no, just leave it as is, 5 years for everyone no matter how currupt or appaling the government of the day turns out to be!!

hatrickpatrick

bumper234 wrote: »

So you want a new election every 18 months or 2 years?

When an overwhelming majority of the people demand one.

For Forks Sake

renegademaster wrote: »

no no, just leave it as is, 5 years for everyone no matter how currupt or appaling the government of the day turns out to be!!

You have started threads on this topic both here and over in AH with stunning regularity. Each time, you've been found to be in the minority and not once have you ever proposed what your alternative to the current setup would be....and yet you wonder why you're being ridiculed?

Phoebas

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

When an overwhelming majority of the people demand one.

The overwhelming majority of the people aren't demanding an election now, are they?

alastair

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

When an overwhelming majority of the people demand one.

I'd hold off on your protest within the fortnight then.

alastair

Silentcorner wrote: »

In a democracy, the people only have two weapons, protest or the ballot box. When you consider that support for the 3 main parties is literally tumbling it is perplexing how this is not manifesting itself on the streets.

Those three parties would (if that poll is accurate) currently garner the support of 61% of the electorate, with fairly serious divisions amongst the ideology and desires of the remaining 39% rather muddying the potential for mass protest. And all that following a fairly awful few weeks for the FG team's rep, the inevitable flop in Lab support on the back of coalition compromises, and the slow return to some degree of legitimacy for FF. This is not a nation that feels comfortable outside the middle ground politically, and as long as that remains the case, mass protest will only really be effective on single issues, not broad political change.

comongethappy

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

When an overwhelming majority of the people demand one.

The only way of determining that is through the ballot box.

So you & Renegade want a ballot to determine if we should have a bi-annual genearal election..... based on the only performance metric you've mentioned: "anger".

This thread is great!

hatrickpatrick

comongethappy wrote: »

The only way of determining that is through the ballot box.

So you & Renegade want a ballot to determine if we should have a bi-annual genearal election..... based on the only performance metric you've mentioned: "anger".

This thread is great!

I fear you're being deliberately ridiculous,
The EU parliament has a plebiscite mechanism through which a certain number of signatures mandates a discussion on a particular issue in parliament.
The Obama administration has a Whitehouse petition system whereby 100,000 signatures mandates a response or explanation on the topic in question from the administration.

You act as if it would be technically impossible to implement such a mechanism for impeaching politicians? Of course it wouldn't. Whatever about it being scary, or too democratic, or undesirable - it certainly wouldn't be technically difficult or complicated.

Also: neither myself or anyone else is calling for a different timeline of elections. We're not talking about changing it to anything regular like "bi annual" as so many of ye are suggesting, we're talking about allowing the general public some mechanism to force an "out of season" election on grounds of widespread dissatisfaction either with a TD, minister or entire government.
And I have a sneaking suspicion that you already understand this perfectly and are, as I say, just being deliberately condescending about it.

Finally: "anger" is a simplification. Public dissatisfaction with our employees is a better way of putting it. If a business can fire people on the spot for royally f*cking up, why should the public not be able to?

zoomaway

renegademaster wrote: »

It's beyond time to be out on the streets demanding true change here.

before anyone suggests these things get hijacked can I just suggest we go and outnumber the 20 or 50 nutters that will undoubtably show up, even last week at spains massive protests there were reports of some nutters showing up but they were in a minority of compared to the 1,000,000 honest and decent people who just want change.

until there's some unity here in Ireland the corrupt are just going to keep walking all over us

On the subject of protests wonder will the water charges irk people enough to get them to protest.
I mean as far as I know we don't know how much the charges wil be yet and it's another dip into the pocket for people.

twowheelsgood

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

we're talking about allowing the general public some mechanism to force an "out of season" election on grounds of widespread dissatisfaction either with a TD, minister or entire government.

Are you going to address my point about the distinction between good governance and popular governance? Or do you in fact believe they are one and the same?

comongethappy

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I fear you're being deliberately ridiculous,
The EU parliament has a plebiscite mechanism through which a certain number of signatures mandates a discussion on a particular issue in parliament.
The Obama administration has a Whitehouse petition system whereby 100,000 signatures mandates a response or explanation on the topic in question from the administration.

You act as if it would be technically impossible to implement such a mechanism for impeaching politicians? Of course it wouldn't. Whatever about it being scary, or too democratic, or undesirable - it certainly wouldn't be technically difficult or complicated.

A petition on answering a particular question is not the same as impeachment of a holder of office.

Can you cite an example of where plebecite resulted directly in an impeachment?

Our parliament already has a mechanism to impeach.
It cannot be done by plebecite.
Im eager for you to tell us the country that this can be done.
(Hint: there is none).

What would it achieve is this fantasy world?
The mob impeaching anyone for doing something unpopular?

Really guys...... This is silly.

jmayo

Iwasfrozen wrote: »

I couldn't care less if the most dishonest people in the country were running the show as long as my quality of life was improving. Most people wouldn't.

Exhibit one:
an average member of the Irish electorate.

I know you said you are young, but you would have loved bertie and his gang.

But just remember if it is the most dishonest people in the country running the show, then unelss you are one of the gang you are going to get screwed over eventually.


I think the time for protests is long gone.
The protests should have happened around the likes of NAMA when basically the debts of the well connected trough feeders were being foisted onto the taxpayers.
In most democracies if the government had presided over such a meltdown, cowen et all would haven't had the luxury of eventually resigning, they would be fleeing Kildare St being chased by a mob.

I love how some posters here are saying they are surprised at the speed of recovery.
We haven't recovered, we have survived.
Personal debt is massive and there are huge tranches of people sitting in property that should be evicted, but it now looks like they will be receiving taxpayers money thanks to debt writeoffs through state owned banks.
We still have non functioning banks, with maybe one that can truly be considered to be survivable without the taxpayer.
We have massive soverign debt that we need massive growth to make somewhat sustainable.
We have massive SME debt that hasn't been touched ala Morgan Kellys remarks.
We have still massive numbers out of work and it aint really dropping due to big sustainable job creation.

We have recovered shag all, we are treading water hoping there aint a storm coming over the horizon.

I was in Dun Laoghaire over the weekend.
The same scene of empty shops with for let signs that is visible in every town throughout the country was visible there.
And this is an old established suburb of our capital city, and more particularly in or near the region of South County Dublin where we hear incessant reports of increasing property prices.

I think the ones that are back slapping each other about how great our recovery is are the ones that fall into that smug class of Irish citizen.

Iwasfrozen

jmayo wrote: »

Exhibit one:
an average member of the Irish electorate.

I know you said you are young, but you would have loved bertie and his gang.

But just remember if it is the most dishonest people in the country running the show, then unelss you are one of the gang you are going to get screwed over eventually.


I think the time for protests is long gone.
The protests should have happened around the likes of NAMA when basically the debts of the well connected trough feeders were being foisted onto the taxpayers.
In most democracies if the government had presided over such a meltdown, cowen et all would haven't had the luxury of eventually resigning, they would be fleeing Kildare St being chased by a mob.

I love how some posters here are saying they are surprised at the speed of recovery.
We haven't recovered, we have survived.
Personal debt is massive and there are huge tranches of people sitting in property that should be evicted, but it now looks like they will be receiving taxpayers money thanks to debt writeoffs through state owned banks.
We still have non functioning banks, with maybe one that can truly be considered to be survivable without the taxpayer.
We have massive soverign debt that we need massive growth to make somewhat sustainable.
We have massive SME debt that hasn't been touched ala Morgan Kellys remarks.
We have still massive numbers out of work and it aint really dropping due to big sustainable job creation.

We have recovered shag all, we are treading water hoping there aint a storm coming over the horizon.

I was in Dun Laoghaire over the weekend.
The same scene of empty shops with for let signs that is visible in every town throughout the country was visible there.
And this is an old established suburb of our capital city, and more particularly in or near the region of South County Dublin where we hear incessant reports of increasing property prices.

I think the ones that are back slapping each other about how great our recovery is are the ones that fall into that smug class of Irish citizen.

Off you go and protest so. See what that does for the economy.