vote green

johno2 wrote: »

Despite what you'd like to believe, the people with the expensive mortgages are precisely the people that caused this economic problem. They fueled the bubble. I was sent mortgage application forms that I never asked for by 2 different banks, one which I didn't even have an account with. I knew I couldn't afford the repayments so I used the forms to light the fire.
Fact! People were greedy. Fact! They bragged to each other about how well their property portfolios were doing. (I overheard young 20-somethings doing this) Fact! Other people are not responsible for the dilemma your choices put you in. Fact! We can pull out of this, and avoid a repeat performance if we stop denying the real reasons behind it. Fact! You're looking for a scapegoat so you don't have to look inwards and acknowledge that you played a part in this mess. Fact! The Green Party policies require an upfront cost to implement them, but they will pay for themselves in the long run and continue to benefit everyone after they have been paid off.

johno

For your information I dont have a huge mortgage or a massive portfolio of houses and wants one of the "greedy" people as you put it , I am self employed and anything i have I worked for . Germany had a green government for a while and they put the country on its knees and its only in the last couple of years starting to recover, a lot of industry closed up or relocated because of stringent rules and regulations and a lot of employment was lost. Should we go down the same road save the world is all well and fine but for gods sake save the country first don't put your foot on its neck and push it under. When I left school in the eighties out of 35 in my class only about 6 stayed in the country the rest were scattered to the four corners of the world and here we are 30 years later back to where we started and I am sorry to say I don't believe the tree hungers party are the ones to get us out of this mess after all your party members spent the last number of years in government and presided over the whole sorry saga of the banks and nama , but thats just my opnion

yeahme wrote: »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arbpu1xKAow



Right im off for now but will leave you with this. The exended version is a lot better by the way. But I think he gets his point across fairly well.

You're right, we should all stop listening to the scientists and take the word of the comedian.

As to whether I'll vote Green, they're pretty much the only party taking environmental issues seriously, but I'm beginning to lose hope that politics - particularly the politics of small countries - can make any real difference. With the amount of spin put out there by fake-science organisations set up by big polluters, it's little wonder the science is doubted by less informed people, but that does cause significant problems for any government trying to legislate for environmental causes. I'm glad the Green Party got a chance to do that here, but the global impact of their work will be small. It won't make any great difference until China and the US get their act together.

To be honest, though, I've all but given up on voting on environmental issues. If I lived in a larger country that had more impact, then maybe, but here it seems almost pointless, so on an issue like this we must necessarily be a country that hops on the bandwagon rather than the country that gets it rolling. I've also abandoned the notion of voting economically. The suggestion of renegotiating the IMF deal doesn't seem feasible to me: even if it were to take place, it would be a token gesture and wouldn't make any real difference.

So that means I'll pretty much only be voting on social issues, which at least makes my job easy.

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

You're right, we should all stop listening to the scientists and take the word of the comedian.

As to whether I'll vote Green, they're pretty much the only party taking environmental issues seriously, but I'm beginning to lose hope that politics - particularly the politics of small countries - can make any real difference. With the amount of spin put out there by fake-science organisations set up by big polluters, it's little wonder the science is doubted by less informed people, but that does cause significant problems for any government trying to legislate for environmental causes. I'm glad the Green Party got a chance to do that here, but the global impact of their work will be small. It won't make any great difference until China and the US get their act together.

To be honest, though, I've all but given up on voting on environmental issues. If I lived in a larger country that had more impact, then maybe, but here it seems almost pointless, so on an issue like this we must necessarily be a country that hops on the bandwagon rather than the country that gets it rolling. I've also abandoned the notion of voting economically. The suggestion of renegotiating the IMF deal doesn't seem feasible to me: even if it were to take place, it would be a token gesture and wouldn't make any real difference.

So that means I'll pretty much only be voting on social issues, which at least makes my job easy.

You sound like someone who probably has some similar views to myself on certain things but I'd like to respectfully take issue with a couple of things.

Firstly, the general tenor of what you've said is that voting on environmental issues and voting on economic issues are two competing alternatives. This is false. Environmental problems routinely cost our economy huge amounts of money in the short term and the long term.

Some simple examples:
the huge cost we're all now paying for having had poor town and residential planning laws;

the huge amounts we lose trying to clean pollution out of our water supply;

the commercial (and personal) value of time that is lost due to traffic congestion;

the high per-person cost of services due to having a population that is not distributed across the country in a well-organized fashion;

the amount of money we would have saved if we had introduced stricter home energy efficiency requirements ten years ago.

Longer-term, think of the huge amounts of money we will lose in a warmer, fast-changing climate with a greater frequency of extreme weather events. I really could go on and on.

Our economy and our environment are not separate things. Acting as if they are has damaged both of them. And we will continue to damage both of them if we continue to act as if they're separate. Most parties in Ireland don't get this. The greens aren't perfect, but they do get this. That's the main reason that i'll probably vote for them.

Secondly, you said "If I lived in a larger country that had more impact, then maybe, but here it seems almost pointless". This is understandable and common, but ultimately i think it's the wrong approach, even on the biggest issue of climate change. I think the best way for us to have hope that big issues can be tackled is if we can look at ourselves and say that we are trying to play our part.

Here is why: our country is well-educated on environmental issues, we have a cross-party consensus on the reality of climate change, and we even have a system where a green party can get into government. If a country such as this cannot introduce smart climate change legislation, how can we expect any other country - of any size - to introduce it? If we don't do it, we can't expect other countries to do it, and we can't have hope that anyone else will. If we do it, we can have hope. If we do it well in a clever way, we can set an example.

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

Thank you very much for the considered responses Tarobot and barclay2. I'm not going to reply point-by-point as I don't disagree on any particular points that you both have made.

For me it's really a case of prioritising, not between environmental issues and economic ones (as I don't think any party has any real means to lead us out of the economic mire we're in right now), but between environmental issues and social ones. I've also seen so much ineffectiveness and weak-handedness in climate legislation in particular internationally that I've become rather cynical about the whole process working politically.

I certainly understand the "lead by example" argument, and it's something that we've successfully done before on small but important matters (smoking in public areas and plastic bags). But I think serious climate legislation requires a much stronger push than these things because it's far more complex than simply banning something or taxing it, and would require a great deal more public support.

I will probably include a high preference (not first) for the Green candidate in my constituency (I quite like the suggestions of changes to the political system in their manifesto, if nothing else), but in my constituency in particular he doesn't stand a snowflake's chance in Hell, in the middle of Summer, on a particularly balmy day.

I would argue that environmental and social issues are not unconnected either, but i won't go on at length about it. Two quick examples:

quality public transport, an environmental/economic issue, is also a social issue. Car-dependent societies disadvantage those who can't afford a car.

town planning, an aspect of environmental/economic policy, is also an aspect of social policy - green areas and youth facilities facilitate social inclusion and can discourage anti-social behaviour.

Just on the issue of your local green candidate having a snowflake's chance in hell - don't let that stop you voting for him/her. If you agree with them more than other people, you should vote for them. If they do get very few other votes, then they'll be eliminated after the first count and your second preference will be redistributed to your next preferred candidate.

By the end of next weekend hopefully the Greens will be a footnote in parliamentary history.

They put party before country.
Just like their coalition partners.

hinault wrote: »

By the end of next weekend hopefully the Greens will be a footnote in parliamentary history.

They put party before country.
Just like their coalition partners.

I'm guessing this is in reference to staying in government for, some would argue, too long. Correct me if i'm wrong on that, you didn't support your claim with any specifics.

They stayed in government until they could help put through a piece of legislation they felt was necessary for the country - even though they knew it would make them even more unpopular. And THEN they left government to face electoral destruction.

Saying that is "party before country" puts the truth exactly backwards.

If they had left government so that someone else could put through difficult legislation, THAT would have been party before country.

You may also have meant their original decision to enter coalition with FF. They entered government with a party that had just been given a uniquely strong mandate to govern. Furthermore, they and the whole country knew that entering government with FF has historically been a self-damaging political decision for small parties in Ireland - and they did it anyway. They did it because they wanted to fight for policies that they felt were too important to leave until the next election. Leaving those policies until the next election would have been politically wise for them - it would have been party before country - but they chose the far more demanding job of going into government.

A costly political decision for them, yes. Party before country, no.

vaalea wrote: »

social aspect is huge in green party, but it's big on sustainable growth and support of community/small business/etc... as said already it all ties in together
you have checked out http://vote.greenparty.ie/vision ?
Economy, Community, Sustainability.

Sorry, I'm not getting my meaning across. There are particular social issues which the Greens have no particular stance on which I'll be voting with independents and other parties on before I vote Green.

hinault wrote: »

With all due respect that is all baloney.
If FF had a uniquely strong mandate they would have had an overall majority and would not need to go in to coalition.

The Greens were members of the government.
A government of collective responsibility remember.

They voted through the Bank Guarantee.
They voted through NAMA legislation.
They even stood up in the Dail in support of Willie O'Dea - even after O'Dea had tried to defame a Limerick City Councillor.

I welcome the political extinction of the Green Party.

Regarding the mandate to govern. We voted, we gave no party an overall majority. Yet someone had to lead the government. So we had to ask - on the basis of peoples' votes, what party has the moral authority to lead the next government?

Of the mandates we gave, Fianna Fáil had by far the strongest. If the greens had supported a FG/Labour government, they would have supported two parties whose combined mandate was not as strong as the mandate we gave FF. They got more seats than FG and Labour combined. You argue that FF's mandate was not uniquely strong - who, then, had an equally strong or stronger mandate to lead the government?

On the banking guarantee, i do think the greens supported a flawed policy. The blanket nature of the guarantee - covering senior bondholders instead of only depositors - was a mistake. But it is odd to think the greens deserve any more punishing for it than non-government parties.

Here is why: if any other party had been in the greens position, they would have done the same thing. FG supported the guarantee. SF supported the guarantee. Labour voted against it but not because they thought it was the wrong idea in principle - Gilmore said at the time that they supported it in principle but felt "some questions have not been answered".

If a government without the greens had been in place, the same thing would have happened. FG would have made the same mistake. It certainly sounds like labour would have made at least a similar mistake. SF would have made the same mistake.

Voting for any other parties instead of the greens based on the mistaken banking guarantee does not make sense, because they all would have done it too.

Tarobot wrote: »

The banking guarantee was vindicated by Patrick Honohan's report. NAMA has yet to prove to be the complete disaster most people are predicting.

The failed economic policies you're referring to were laid back in the early 2000s by Fianna Fail and the PDs. It was in 2002/3 that the housing bubble really took off and covered up the other parts of our economy that weren't performing.

It was late 2007 that the veil was finally lifted on what state our economy was really in. Do we really have that poor a grasp of economic cycles? Blaming the Greens for the economic crisis is like blaming firefighters for a fire because they were the last ones at the scene.

:D:D

I don't know many firefighters who pour oil (voting for the bank guarantee) on the fire (economic implosion).

The party that you appear to support were central to the decision to socialise what were/are private bank debts.

Party before country.