Local Elections 2019

Itssoeasy

Joan burton saying there is 20 years cooperation with the Green Party. The Green Party are everyone's best friends and all the parties are falling over themselves to be closer to them.

jos28

Itssoeasy wrote: »

De Bert is on the wireless. The lemmas political family tree looks healthy from what's been said on the radio.

Looks like Charlie's grandson will gain a seat in Clontarf. All depends on transfers but he will probably benefit from Deirdre Heney's surplus

https://www.rte.ie/news/elections-2019/results/#/local/dublin-city/clontarf

Dirkziggler

Fan of Netflix wrote: »

There wasn't even a green candidate at all standing in Cavan or in many areas Sinn Fein lost seats. SF trying to spin it due to some green wave is nonsense. It was their own incompetence, so many fall outs and people quitting the party.

I think the traditionalists regarding the abortion referendum and not giving members the choice. Peadar Toibín for one. This could of possibly alienated a huge portion of the vote.

Itssoeasy

Dirkziggler wrote: »

I think the traditionalists regarding the abortion referendum and not giving members the choice. Peadar Toibín for one. This could of possibly alienated a huge portion of the vote.

Not giving people a free vote on such an emotive issue was idiotic.

Dirkziggler

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Not giving people a free vote on such an emotive issue was idiotic.

I agree as a member of Sinn from was a pure call from leadership. I am pro choice but removing the choice of the membership reads like a dictatorship when they were trying to push it to come across overly liberal

Itssoeasy

Dirkziggler wrote: »

I agree as a member of Sinn from was a pure call from leadership. I am pro choice but removing the choice of the membership reads like a dictatorship when they were trying to push it to come across overly liberal

And I understand that she was New as leader and she probably wanted to show she was the leader but the phrase pick your battles come to mind.

Eric Cartman

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Not giving people a free vote on such an emotive issue was idiotic.

But sure look at renua, that was a free vote but all the key players were against abortion and tge party got labelled that way, SF trying for a lefty image could never risk 4-5 bigger names coming out against abortion and them being labelled as a party that way

AndrewJRenko

digzy wrote: »

Just listening to her now. Sounds like someone who ran without believing she’d win a seat and completely unprepared for that outcome.

Sure not to worry, Trump got away with the same thing so she'll probably survive.

Dirkziggler

Itssoeasy wrote: »

And I understand that she was New as leader and she probably wanted to show she was the leader but the phrase pick your battles come to mind.

She's the wrong woman for the job. Pearse or Declan for leadership in my opinion.

Itssoeasy

Eric Cartman wrote: »

But sure look at renua, that was a free vote but all the key players were against abortion and tge party got labelled that way, SF trying for a lefty image could never risk 4-5 bigger names coming out against abortion and them being labelled as a party that way

Anti abortion isn't the only issue Renua got labelled with.

Eric Cartman

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Anti abortion isn't the only issue Renua got labelled with.

It was the one that made them irrelevant though, there was space for fiscal conservatism and lowering taxation, but you throw that one on the fire and they just became the iona party.

Dirkziggler

Renua couldn't win a game of Bingo.

Policies are years behind
https://www.renuaireland.com/policies/#tab-id-3

AndrewJRenko

Blueshoe wrote: »

I didn't though did I?
Bot

Bot?


Wouldn't a bot be LESS likely to mix up posters than a human?

tabby aspreme

Sitting SF councillor gone here, local radio will be much easier to listen to.

amcalester

Dirkziggler wrote: »

I agree as a member of Sinn from was a pure call from leadership. I am pro choice but removing the choice of the membership reads like a dictatorship when they were trying to push it to come across overly liberal

Isn’t that the point of Sinn Fein though? That there are no free votes and issues are decided by the party with councilors, TDs and MEPs merely voicing these decisions.

knipex

So you want means tested Grants to cover the entire cost of any upgrade to insulation or energy efficiency ?

Can such grants be reclaimed if the house is sold within say 5 years ??

ForestFire wrote: »

Tell me, can the homes that are in most need of upgraded insulation avail of these grants realistically?

In most cases you need significant money yourself, as the grants only cover part of the work.

So we have a aystem where the poor are taxed with the rest of us to subsidise peope who have money to make their home better.


Tell me, how is a 5k grant on a luxury vehicle benifit the average person?
Do you think all these rich people, who buy these cars, would not do it without the grant?
Will the sale of luxury cars save the planet, because I can tell you, before electric vehicles become affordable to all, the grants will be gone, and the free charging yeah only the few elite early adapters will get that also from our taxes.

Our carbon taxes currely are Subsidising the rich only and not an effective way to really target emissions reduction.

Itssoeasy

Regina Doherty not getting an easy interview on RTÉ radio.

Itssoeasy

Mary Lou on RTÉ radio now. Not that cheerful which is understandable. She sounds shocked.

Eric Cartman

Dirkziggler wrote: »

Renua couldn't win a game of Bingo.

Policies are years behind
https://www.renuaireland.com/policies/#tab-id-3

The taxation , law and order, entrepreneurial policies are all pretty solid there. Other parties could do with adopting some of the lessons. The abortion thing and uninspiring candidates sank them . Did they even field any candidates this time round ?

Itssoeasy

Mary Lou saying she is frustrated with the assembly being not working hurting the SF vote. Its not just unionists that need to work btw. It takes both of the main parties up there to tango so to speak.

Dirkziggler

Eric Cartman wrote: »

The taxation , law and order, entrepreneurial policies are all pretty solid there. Other parties could do with adopting some of the lessons. The abortion thing and uninspiring candidates sank them . Did they even field any candidates this time round ?

Law and order breaches Human rights charter and mandatory consecs on life is against our constitution. They can tariff you if accepted but not issued consecutive life sentences. But yeah them policies are fine if you are right wing.

knipex

Deleted User wrote: »

The Green Party's default comparison countries are Scandinavian/European, and this emphasis makes it intellectually and culturally unique in Ireland. The Green Party is, as it was 30 years ago, a complete breath of fresh air in Irish politics where the entire myopic mentality can be summed up as "Let's never do anything until after the Brits have tested it". Long may it stand out by opening Irish minds to kinder and more enlightened ways of running our society.

The green party in government spoke long and hard about various topics but practical, day to day terms have 4 big impacts on Irish society that genuinely changed people attitudes or the way something worked.

Regulations on insulation within buildings (however poorly enforced). While a big positive and something I support is did have the side effect of increasing building costs significantly but its main failing was and is in enforcement and inspection.

Wind power, how it is subsidised with most subsidy now indirect rather than direct. The funding of the distributed generation system and the connections to the sometimes, questionable windfarms. It had resulted in Ireland having one of the highest electricity costs in Europe and rather than shutting down fossil fuel plants is drove investment in the least efficient but fastest responding gas powered plants. We now have more fossil fuels plants not less.

Diesel cars. They single handedly turned generations of motorists from petrol to diesel.

Wood fired stoves. The proliferation of wood fired stoves in middle class areas in towns and villages all over Ireland, both for room heating and water heating.


The last two, while reducing carbon emissions, have probably have done more to set back air quality in Ireland than anything FF and FG combined have done. Particularly when burning half seasoned firewood bought off some guy on done deal that came from god knows where.

Every mechanic, petrol head and engineer in the country knew Diesel engines while emitting lesser carbon were dirtier than petrol, particularly when used for short trips in urban environments. I remember being scorned by a Green party minister at the time when I tried to point this out to them. They had this look that was equal parts, sympathy, contempt and sneering for the yokel who didn't understand the green agenda.

seamus

To be fair, the Greens can hardly be blamed for the fact that every car manufacturer on Earth was producing fraudulent emissions figures.

If we'd known the real figures then, chances are the electric fleet would be much bigger now.

emo72

My kids are voting for greens. Signing me up for carbon tax to save the world. I wonder will they be happy when they don't get their iPhones off santy Claus.

Eric Cartman

seamus wrote: »

To be fair, the Greens can hardly be blamed for the fact that every car manufacturer on Earth was producing fraudulent emissions figures.

They can however be blamed for altering the motor tax system to only account for one component of emissions and ignoring advice on diesel from many cancer and environmental experts

Donald Trump

emo72 wrote: »

My kids are voting for greens. Signing me up for carbon tax to save the world. I wonder will they be happy when they don't get their iPhones off santy Claus.

Don't be silly.

Santy Claus travels by reindeer. Zero emissions except for a few of his own from eating too many mince pies on his travels. No carbon tax for Santy!

Itssoeasy

Itssoeasy wrote: »

Well if no changing of leaders will fix that issue they might as well keep Brendan howlin there for the foreseeable future then.

I quite like Howlin as leader as he reminds me of what a rank hypocrite he is and why I would never vote Labour again - many of us will not forget his role in giving raises to his advisers that smashed through all pay limits, while turning around and telling the rest of the country that they must take cutbacks. The Labour Party has no place on the Left anymore, not even left of centre, since the ignominy of the double standards of all the Labour Party's senior politicians during the crisis.

I always had time for them prior to that, and Michael D. Higgins' establishment of TG4 - in the face of quotidian attacks by Kevin Myers and his ilk - was culturally and intellectually something to be deeply admired. I really feel they collectively acted with great dishonour in the period 2011-2016, imposing often savage cutbacks on the less well off/middle while giving themselves and their advisers pay rises. There really is no defending that. Some of these same "leftwing" politicians are now whoring themselves out as "consultants" to private corporations, while they draw down the pensions they steadfastly protected in those years.

It would be nice if Ireland had a genuinely left-of-centre party. We have parties for the not working class/welfare class (PBF/SF/SP), parties defending low taxation on the superrich (FG & FF), but no party for those of us who pay marginal tax rates of over 50%, and are being pulverised by the highest mortgage interest rates and highest childcare fees in western Europe, as well as paying €60 or so of our after tax income for each GP visit. These massive outflows for basic services are not normal in advanced European societies where taxpayers get much more back in services. Ireland is a very rightwing state for those of us in the middle.

Matt Barrett

Matt Barrett wrote: »

Yet Fianna Fail who actually support Fine Gael in their endeavors are up over all. Looking to blame Sinn Fein is great. Let's FF snake back in to keep things warm for FG. Nightmare IMO.

FF will come back because SF wasted their chance. SF will then learn and come back when FF waste their chance. That's generally the way things work in our conservative politics. I used to give Sinn Féin a high preference in the 1990s when the Sunday Independent and all O'Reilly's rags launched their acerbic attacks on John Hume and the Peace Process. I also gave similarly strategic high preferences to FF under Reynolds for precisely the same reason. The fact that at the same time the Blueshirts were led by John Unionist and Avril Doyle was telling us that "the Famine was a shared experience between the British and Irish peoples" ensured SF would always get a high preference under a PR-STV system (i.e. my SF transfer would get the marginal FF candidate elected into the final seat - and he'd know where that transfer came from so would want to keep it).

However, despite Sinn Féin being the largest party on Dublin City Council they refused to change the title from the royalist 'Lord Mayor' addition back to its original, medieval 'Mayor' title. A simple, symbolic thing that many of us who voted for it in hope in the 1990s were watching. Just how many Irish republicans died so that Sinn Féin could celebrate having a "Lord Mayor" of Dublin? In actual power in Dublin, they just took the soup when it came to republicanism. Not a single British royalist streetname in Dublin renamed either after heroes of the Irish tradition. No different to the Blueshirts or Fianna Fáil (both of which kept a wigged judiciary going in this state until the past 10 years). Let's not kid ourselves here.

The reduction in building standards and apartment sizes in Dublin is more of the same. In this context, their criticisms of other parties for the housing crisis is just offensive to our intelligence. It all doesn't help that the uncouth, cultureless ruffians who often speak for it consider anybody paying marginal tax rates of 55% as being "rich". It's possible to be Irish republican, acutely feel our country's history and traditions, be left-of-centre, love Irish and Irish culture and pay high tax so politically SF would have been smarter to get a better definition of "rich".

knipex

seamus wrote: »

To be fair, the Greens can hardly be blamed for the fact that every car manufacturer on Earth was producing fraudulent emissions figures.

If we'd known the real figures then, chances are the electric fleet would be much bigger now.

Loads of people tired to explain the concerns and worries re particulate emissions from diesel engines and to a lesser extent wood burners.

Wood burners are a particular issue with wood that's not properly dried.

The greens focused on one element of emissions, c02 and ignored everything else.

Zubeneschamali

Eric Cartman wrote: »

But sure look at renua, that was a free vote but all the key players were against abortion and tge party got labelled that way

From the Renua website right now:

All Renua Ireland candidates for public office must commit themselves to our pro-life stance.