Christ, this whole thing is making me incredibly angry. This post would have been considerably longer except Noel Whelan said pretty much everything I wanted to say. Where does this gobshite get his sense of entitlement from? Because he was on the news every night for a few years? If he had so much to offer, why did I near nothing from him other than bland denouncements of NAMA with no real alternative given over the last nine months?
My main problem though is with this notion that heās been kept quiet by the big boys in FG. He wasnāt co-opted onto the DĆ”il by FG, he was elected by a huge majority. If heās not happy with his role in FG, whatās to stop him from using his mandate to speak forcefully from the backbenches. He was probably the only TD with the profile to get seriously heard doing that. Donāt give me bullshit praising him for not taking the ā¬80K as an Independent or whatever it is. Heāll still be taking a pretty penny from the public purse in his new/old job. Nothing should be considered more precious than being granted the right to represent the people in the national legislature. Nobody put a gun to his head to make him go looking for votes.
But thats the point, he was always going to be more than a lone backbencher, what was to stop him using his profile & huge mandate to be heard.
Hear that fucking eejit before the break on about how we should elect local gombeens who know local issues! The sooner his ilk die off the better for this country.
He was brought in on the basis that he was going to be involved in shaping the response to the financial crisis. And once he was in that didnāt happen, letās face it, Fine Gael used him as a celebrity vote winner. He didnāt want to be that kind of politician so he left.
I think that the reality is that you canāt though, that ultimately the system is much bigger than any one individual regardless of their conviction. In other words there are pressures and obligations that maintain the current system that make the rules for the people in that system. Now the argument is that he could have created a political movement that would have challenged that system but itās not often someone comes along who can do that.
I think thatās the key point. Lee leaving politics isnāt going to reform it, he would be more true to his representative had he stayed in, used his undoubted public persona to attempt change things from the inside. The more I think about it, the more I think that George wanted it easy and nothing in life is easy.
Also with regards to young Brennan, if he is half the politican his Dad was then heāll be better than most. Then again that could be the problem - far too many TDs in there living off a family name.
But why is he limited to what FG want him to be? Rightly or wrongly, his celebrity and mandate gave him a voice in the backbenches that would have to be listened to. If he spoke out on anything, it would have got massive coverage. If he was serious about it, thatās what he would have done. What are the great ideas and policies that he keeps banging on about?
Instead, he slinks back to his cushy job in RTĆ. (As a matter of interest, does anyone know if his leave of absence had a time limit? Did that influence his decision?) He convinced 27,000 people to give their vote to him, and now heās taking the piss out of every single one of them.
As an aside, his childish parting shot at Kenny by saying there are murmurings about him is absolutely pathetic and completely undermines his claim that he was about some new kind of politics. I hope they donāt put him back in the newsroom, because Iāll just be able to ignore him if he has his own show.
Do you really think that he could have though? I donāt think anything short of a mass movement can change a political system. A well intentioned guy who used to be on the telly isnāt enough anyway. If anything itās the Irish people who want things easy.
How frustrating is it that the likes of the interesting points made by Lee and the two academics about the nature of the political system are
allowed to be made and then simply ignored and the ususal current affairs media/party political discourse carries on as if nothing has been challenged. Iām at the stage that any current affairs coerage that doesnāt involve Vincent Browneās infectious exasperation and wit just leaves me seething.
It is an Irish trait more than anything I would say to run ourselves down - no more so than on this website. We are a joke of a country because a stack of snow brings us to a standstill (it brought the UK to one as well), our whole political system is a disaster (yet we have peace in the North and our economy appears to be holding up - just about, much like other countries). I am not trying to say for one minute that we are perfect and the whole treatment of the Celtic Tiger was extremely reckless but we are not that bad, and running ourselves down unjustifiably the whole time certainly doesnāt help matters.
Lee has jumped on the back of such a view. Here is our hero, the man to take on the system, except that he didnāt even bother trying because he never had the stomach for it. He was an economist expert on RTE - this does not mean that he deserved to be Taoiseach.
Every TD has the ultimate public forum to speak up in. Most would be ingored by the general public if they used it, but Lee wouldnāt have been becuase of his profile. If he actually had something fresh or original to say, which I strongly suspect he didnāt, it would have been heard and the leadership would have been very wary of leaving such a heavy loose cannon floating around. I canāt believe youāre swallowing the horseshit heās coming out with to be honest.
The ultimate public forum? The ultimate public forum is the mainstream media, Leeās complaint is that someone in the media has a greater capacity to exert pressure for change than someone in that system, because within the system you shut your mouth and tow the line or you wonāt get anywhere. This seems to be playing out as an argument between people who believe that a great orator can rise and rock the system, and people who say thatās a fairytale. The evidence would seem to support the latter.
If Leeās resignation was to actually be seen seen for what he claims it is and actually started a genuine debate on the political system it might
have been a bigger contribution thatn any he could have made in the Dail. On the basis of that show it will do nothing of the sort because the RTE/Irish Times media is just as big a part of the system.
If Lee returns to RTE is he going to champion the cause of root and branch politial reform or will he just report/analyse as always? :rolleyes:
What do you make of the likes of Yates farmer with his āoh this is just feeding cynicismā argument? I think that the cynicism is justified because by now, we should know that the system is corrupt as fuck. Incidently I would say that from living in England i found them to be way, way more negative than us. Youād only have to watch the likes of HIGNFY to understand that, although it takes on a more whimsical tone in that forum.
I donāt think heās a great orator. In fact, I think heās a rather dull economic journalist that got ideas above his station. I donāt believe heās a great loss to public life. My point is that if he actually had something to say, and he bothered to speak out, he would have been listened to and his views carried in the āmainstream mediaā (what a fucking tiresome phrase) because of his high profile. The FG leadership could not have left him floating out there, he would have hurt them. They would have to have brought him and his ideas into the tent. If you read beyond the first sentence of my post you would have got that.
Anyway, more to the point, he has let down his constituents. Being a TD isnāt like a normal job that you can give up if you donāt like your first few months. He has a duty to speak up and serve out his term.