What have we come to

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Not the poster you were replying to, but this caught my eye so just throwing in my own two cents:



Doing the same:



The modern West in general went down the rabbit hole of neoliberalism in the early 90s and hasn't come back from it yet. The vote for SF and the left in general is an attempt to emerge from that.



Just not in keeping with the cost of living generally, the cost of housing in particular.



See above. This vote is an attempt to change that through democratic means.



They should be forced to act in a socially responsible manner, and it's government's job to force them to.



Or, we should acknowledge that land is a national resource and not allow people to abuse is in this manner, again through democratic policy making.



And FG has allowed it to continue, hence rejecting both FF and FG.



Caused by the government refusing to change the law around what counts as a business's liability and what counts as someone's own stupidity. FFG have been in power for decades and they have done nothing to address this.



I've never voted for SF before in my life and this time around I gave our local candidate my #2 after Richard Boyd Barrett, specifically because I believes a big enough SF share of seats would allow them to form an exclusively centre to left coalition without including either of the centre to right parties. I suspect many, many people of my generation did the same thing.

Too much baggage, dude.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

Nobody is getting any younger. The people whose youths are rapidly slipping away due to the rising cost of living aren't going to wait around for an alternative to emerge.

Yes, that is a fair point.

blanch152 wrote: »

Fine Gael got 20% of the vote. Why are the Sinn Fein cheerleaders on here still obsessing about them?

Slagging off Sinn Fein will do nothing to attract people like you, but you would never give your vote to Fine Gael anyway. However, there are 70% of people in this country who will never ever vote Sinn Fein and Fine Gael is appealing to them.

The 'ceiling' is being put back up!

Cupatae wrote: »

70% that will never ever vote SF? jaysus we could have skipped the election and just got onto you instead you know the minds of the public so well.

Any chance of next weeks lotto numbers?

blanch was adamant SF had reached the ceiling in their vote before the election and even in the face of the polling was putting that at 17 or 18%.
A few others had big wadges of cash on them not getting more than 28 seats...they haven't been seen here since.

I wouldn't be taking any betting advice of them to be perfectly honest.

blanch152 wrote: »

I had money on SF/FF at 12/1. Still waiting to see will that pay out.

You lost that money when Michael led his party to parity with SF.

Had he gotten the 50 seats he thought he was getting when he opened the door to SF you'd be quids in.

https://www.independent.ie/irish-news/election-2020/martin-opens-the-door-to-coalition-with-sinn-fein-38941313.html

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/fianna-f%C3%A1il-reaction-martin-opens-door-to-government-with-fg-or-sf-1.4167246

blanch152 wrote: »

When I placed the bet, they didn't have a SF/FF/Other option, I will still look for payout if that comes to pass. Probably wasting my time.

I'd have potentially agreed with you until Micheal Martin nailed his trousers to the mast by explicitly ruling out doing business with SF. I've been hearing on the grapevine that there's a lot of dissent in FF at the moment about whether or not this was the right move, or if it was horribly premature given how things have developed afterwards. For all the comparisons being made, there's actually a crucial difference between SF saying they would ideally like a government without FF or FG, to FF and FG categorically saying they won't do business with SF. When FF and FG assumed SF wouldn't do well in the election, they repeatedly made remarks about SF's supposed unwillingness to work with anyone else, now that the tables have turned so spectacularly it just looks bad. And from what I'm hearing, there's a not unsizeable faction within FF which is basically saying "if Martin is adamant that he won't do business with SF, maybe it's time we replaced him as leader with someone who might".

Martin can't row back on what he's said after doubling down on it, so I'd say he's on shakier ground than people realise. It's not necessarily that there are a lot of FFers who actually like SF, it's more that apparently, to a lot of FFers, doing business with SF would be less toxic to their brand than doing business with FG, since it would expose the fundamental fallacy of FF and FG pretending to be opposites for so long, when in face they're a Venn Diagram with a massive amount of overlap. And if that faction in the party proves to be the largest, Martin could easily find himself being sidelined as it would be less embarrassing than having the leader of the party publicly do a 180 so soon after doubling down on a position immediately following a bruising election result.

I wonder if they could get around this by doing a confidence and supply with SF and then spending the next five years (or however long such a Dáil would survive) teaming up with FG to undermine their policies at every opportunity? They seem to be very weary of C&S after the last few years (and who could blame them) but they're really between a rock and a hard place in the sense that an arrangement with either SF or FG will alienate one of two large factions of supporters and members. They can't do another C&S with FG, that'll piss too many people off, but they could potentially do the whole "fair enough Mary Lou, we'll vote you for Taoiseach and then you'll have to break all your promises as the FFG bloc in the Dáil make it impossible to pass legislation" thing.

Do you think you'd get a payout if it was FF and SF but purely because of a confidence and supply arrangement in which FF support Mary Lou for Taoiseach, rather than an actual formal coalition? What was the exact wording of the bet?

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

I've never voted for SF before in my life and this time around I gave our local candidate my #2 after Richard Boyd Barrett, specifically because I believes a big enough SF share of seats would allow them to form an exclusively centre to left coalition without including either of the centre to right parties. I suspect many, many people of my generation did the same thing.

How did you come to your belief that this desired coalition would be in anyway possible? Richard Boyd Barrett can't even get a handful of like minded people to coalesce to form one party, instead he is involved in a hodgepodge alliance akin to a grouping of independents.

Over two weeks since the election and so far we've seen no evidence that even the far left parties have come anywhere close to agreeing on anything and the centre left parties have basically ruled that option out.

Voting left, transfer left is complete pointless protest nonsense if none of the parties of the left can come close to agreeing anything.

Bowie wrote: »

You got my comment backwards. I'm quite literally saying I'd rather FG/FF concentrated on why SF got the boost than slagging them off and making arses of themselves, albeit entertaining to a point. You know, for the management of the county like.

I am a former FG voter. This is the problem. They should be looking to do what works not cadge votes and ignore sections of society because they won't get votes anyway. That's the major issue with the ignorance of Fine Gael IMO. If they made a decent go of it I'd vote for them again. It's more comfortable to believe the lies that people are just out to get FG. That's just sad. It's not about teams ffs.
I don't care if it's 90%, don't be so petty, it's about what's best for the country and the public don't seem to think any party is over another. FF/FG need look at that instead of being so bratty, bitter and nasty.

You make some good points Bowie, and indeed Alan Dukes made more or less the same points this morning.

You are correct when you intimate that where FG went ‘wrong’ was not managing and marketing their successes,and they had some, well enough.

What any Govt. should do is concentrate as far as possible on the main bones of contention which would be in my opinion

Housing, Health, Insurance, Child care costs, Climate concerns.

Big mistake to concentrate on Brexit, Joxer doesn’t care about that.

SF in my opinion haven’t a hope of sorting out those issues as they say they can, no experience, very few serious politicians, will be viewed with suspicion by the money people, will have a trust deficit etc

That’s the way it is, not trying to be cynical.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

It's not necessarily that there are a lot of FFers who actually like SF, it's more that apparently, to a lot of FFers, doing business with SF would be less toxic to their brand than doing business with FG, since it would expose the fundamental fallacy of FF and FG pretending to be opposites for so long, when in face they're a Venn Diagram with a massive amount of overlap. And if that faction in the party proves to be the largest,

If you're going to say that FF And FG are both the same then at least admit that they won the popular vote with twice the number of seats as SF.

Or of the two, which party bumped up public service pay massively to unsustainable levels during the boom, and which party opposed the introduction of water charges?

Seems to me that FF have significantly more in common with SF than FG

I wonder if they could get around this by doing a confidence and supply with SF and then spending the next five years (or however long such a Dáil would survive) teaming up with FG to undermine their policies at every opportunity? They seem to be very weary of C&S after the last few years (and who could blame them) but they're really between a rock and a hard place in the sense that an arrangement with either SF or FG will alienate one of two large factions of supporters and members. They can't do another C&S with FG, that'll piss too many people off, but they could potentially do the whole "fair enough Mary Lou, we'll vote you for Taoiseach and then you'll have to break all your promises as the FFG bloc in the Dáil make it impossible to pass legislation" thing.

A C&S allowing for a SF minister for justice will never happen.

hatrickpatrick wrote: »

The one thing the left can generally agree on is that the neoliberalism of FFG is toxic.

I think that's a fair reflection of the Left's position.


But likewise, the parties of the Centre view SF/IRA as pretty toxic too. Hence the current impasse.