Running for Office

Irish people want a public representative and aren't too keen on listening to someone else's ideological platform.

If you seriously want to get into politics, you start by becoming involved in your local area. Get a few neighbours together and form a neighbourhood watch. Maybe get some bin bags and clean up the local park, and make sure everyone knows you do it. Set up a "XXXX local area residents association" and get to know people and what they want.

The next step is to get your name out there and your intentions known. Very few independents win on their first election attempt unless they have some other celebrity factor going for them. People generally are reluctant to vote for someone they don't know over someone they do, so getting to know people is the next step.

After that, you can start discussing policy, but bear in mind that people will realise straight off whether what you are advocating is achieveable or not. For instance, if you are running for a local council, there's no point having a social welfare platform as that is handled by the national government.

As for your policies, the following issues arise:

- Abolish at least half of all golf courses inside the M50, buy the land back at market price and build 1/2 bedroom apartment complexes to ease housing problems.

No one who likes golf or any other outdoor sports will vote for you if this is your plan. People want more housing, but definitely not at the expense of local amenities. As this would happen at a local council level, people won't care that you are trying to solve a nationwide housing shortage, they will hear that you are trying to take away their pitches and clubs.

If it's pitched as solely based on golf clubs i.e. to cock a snook at the perceived posh people who play golf, be careful. Lots of working class people play golf/pitch and put and they like going to the local club in walking distance. They will see your attempt at anti-elitism to be even more elitest, as only those with cars will be able to play golf in future.

- People on the dole for more than 4 months must register 10 hours of community/charity service per week to continue being paid.

Tons of problems with this. If someone works for a charity, they will see their job being threatened by this; people don't like the idea of enforced work, you will be accused of trying to set up work houses; the problem with social welfare isn't that people don't do community work, it's that there aren't enough suitable jobs and it costs too much in general; etc etc.

- Scrap motor tax, add a couple of cents to petrol. The bigger the road user, the more you pay.

Haven't the current government already floated this idea?

- Make Irish non-compulsory in schools and make other languages available earlier.

This is Ireland so we should learn Irish.

- Increase cycle lanes here, there and everywhere.

Fine, as long as it is not done by blocking road lanes or footpaths, which is what most people think will happen when you promise more cycle lanes.

- Increased taxes on empty properties to stop hoarding.

Seems fine to me, but I don't own any empty properties.

- Decriminalise drugs, legalize weed.

It reads like this is thrown in at the end as an afterthought, whereas in reality it is a massive policy position compare to the others which are fairly standard manifesto promises. I agree that decriminalising drugs could be to the benefit of the country at large and there is much academic literature on it. But it is politically toxic because there are few votes in favour of it, but a lot against. If you knock on the door of someone who had a relative with serious drug problems or died as a result of drugs, they will get angry and upset at the suggestion of legalistation. Similarly, if you call around to a family with children, they won't think of the benefits to society at large, they will think that you are going to put their child in harms way.

So decriminalisation of drugs as a stand alone policy is not a particularly popular idea.

Ultimately, all of these are different issues or ideas rather than a particular platform. People want to understand in simple terms how a politician would deal with all issues that come up.

For example, the people who vote for Paul Murphy don't know or care what his specific proposals on income tax are. They are aware that in general he is in favour of reducing tax at the lower end and increasing tax at the upper end. They know he is in favour of more public spending and has no time for private corporations or enterprise. This is all encapuslated in his socialist platform. By contrast, when people vote for the local FF/FG candidate, they know they are going to get something that is not based on ideology, but is based on practicality and compromise. They don't need to know what a FF candidate's policies are, as they know that if in government they will take the path of least resistance and do what is the most popular and least controversial thing.