pathetic- the modern day aristocrats are getting the thick peasants wound up so as to do their dirty work for them
Indeed. The amount of forelock tugging and peasant kowtowing exhibited because of this hunting bill is breathtaking. It sickens me in this day and age. This country is a disgrace. We have never thrown off the shackles of peasantry.
The RISE arguments were what nationalised it. They came up with this notion of D4 telling rural Ireland what to do and the media, the opposition and some govt backbenchers all bought into it.
FF members werenât party to the drafting of the programme but they knew about it at the time. I knew about it. It was public knowledge and raising objections a few years later is nonsense. Labour went for this one because they felt this was a chance to defeat the government. That was their motivation. They supported the government where they couldnât be defeated anyway but because there was a unified opposition and rumblings of discontent among some backbenchers they went for them on this issue. Pathetic really. Theyâve had better chances in the past and theyâll have better chances again. Tommy Broughan in fairness couldnât stand it and Michael D fell ill rather suspiciously and cowardly.
I think youâre stretching the horseracing comparison a bit. Thereâs no prey for one thing.
+1
There are hundreds of horses killed every year at the track and on the gallops not to mention shot at home. Rather pales the odd deer casualty into insignificance but anyway. I expect the Wards will just get a pack of foxhounds now anyway and actually hunt to kill next season in any case and send their 150 deer off for slaughter.
The RISE arguments nationalised it, yes, why wouldnât they try to nationalise it and bring in more support? They were at every, dare I say, cock fight in the country warning that coursing would be next, which is probable. Gormleyâs party wants to end the shipping of cattle out of this country, never mind the rest of their wish list. Now that would be an attack on rural Ireland. The Greens are a largely urban party, thatâs why it can be characterised as a rural urban divide.
protecting the enviroment is also a rural issue
I supported the green ban on pernicious Solus lightbulbs, NCC.
This is kind of peripheral to the main debate here, but Labourâs tactics on this were dreadful. Firstly, they would have been better off supporting it on the grounds that it would have made it likely that more FF backbenchers would have voted against the Government. Without the prospect of losing the vote, it would have freed them up to vote against. A relatively large number of backbenchers voting against would have had more long-term impact, given more of a feeling of the Government losing control, even if the vote was won. Secondly, by abandoning their principles for (flawed) political expediency, they are seen as part of the problem of this whole ridiculous story. The part of Cliffordâs article about the whole ridiculousness of the situation was very strong. I thought he overplayed the developer part of it, and Iâd agree with SSâs criticisms of him on this.
Iâd agree, for their own sake Labourâs position was a bit nuts, I would have thought most of their electorate would have supported this ban. Even if they defeated the govt here, it was hardly the issue it was wise for them to take a principled stand over. Liam Cahill is a Labour man though, maybe he gave them a nice seminar on the issue or something! He might have made Eamon Gilmore an honorary whip with the Wards?
I donât always agree with Fintan OâToole, but he is a super writer. Itâs a particular pleasure to read him when you are in full agreement with him, like I am today.
Where is the passion of TDs when âthe rural way of lifeâ is being slowly strangled by policies of more much consequence than stag-hunting?
BEFORE THE battle of Waterloo, the Duke of Wellington surveyed the Irish troops who were his primary cannon fodder and remarked: âI donât know what theyâll do to the enemy but, by God, they surely terrify me.â
I canât help wondering when people in rural Ireland will have the good sense to be terrified by their own shock troops.
In the hoo-haa over John Gormleyâs relatively minor animal welfare legislation, deputies from Fianna FĂĄil, Fine Gael, Labour and Sinn FĂŠin have been queuing up to give performances of more overwrought melodramatic intensity than any fat lady dying in an opera.
TDs who usually make the boring priest in Father Ted sound like Oscar Wilde after a few too many absinthes have been working themselves up into the most lurid flights of oratorical fancy.
Thus, banning the Ward Union stag hunt (headed by Ray Burkeâs old pal and prominent Anglo Irish Bank client Mick Bailey) is âan attack on rural lifeâ (Bernard Durkan), on the âtraditions of those living in rural Irelandâ (Phil Hogan), on âordinary, decent people ⌠[who] are being terrorisedâ (Mattie McGrath), on ârural Ireland and its traditionsâ (Johnny Brady), and so on.
It is an assault by an alien (James Bannon pointed out darkly that Gormley âdoes not have a rural heritageâ) on the pure race of Gaels. Shane McEntee told the DĂĄil that the stag-hunters âare true Irishmen. There is not an ounce of English blood in them.â
It is an affront to the ancient Celts â Bernard Durkan pointed out that âFionn Mac Cumhaill was a great hunterâ.
It is, even, a prelude to genocide. Willie Penrose, who last time I looked was a barrister based in the elegant and sophisticated town of Mullingar, posed as the last of the Mohicans, plaintive voice of an ancient tribe being driven to extinction. âDoes the Minister want to get rid of us altogether? Will he take our blood and get rid of us altogether?â
It is amusing to listen to these middle-aged men working themselves up into paroxysms of passionate outrage in defence of endangered humanity. But one canât help wondering where all this passion goes when âthe rural way of lifeâ is being slowly strangled by policies that are much more mundane but also of infinitely more consequence.
The âtraditions of those living in rural Irelandâ surely include, for example, going to the post office. Post offices in rural villages donât just provide services, they are also part of the texture of social life. It is often the postmistress who notices that Johnny from the back of the hill hasnât been in to collect his pension and wonders if thereâs something wrong.
Over 500 rural post offices have closed in the last eight years and at least another 200 more are under threat. Where are the hysterics in the DĂĄil, whereâs the high-flown rhetoric, whereâs the backbench revolt?
What about the winding down of Postbank, which was successfully building a decent business supplying financial services through those post offices? The destruction of this bank, which was filling the huge gap left by the withdrawal of services to many rural areas by the mainstream banks, has been met with a shrug of the shoulders.
Both this year and last year, Bus Ăireann has cut back substantially on rural bus routes. Fifty routes have been scrapped or greatly reduced and a further 47 are under threat.
Rural communities, which already have at best a minimal public transport service, have been worst affected yet the howls from TDs have been muted.
Have we ever had a backbench revolt over drinking water? If there actually were a conspiracy to wipe out rural Ireland, making people drink crud would be a good way to start.
During 2007, which is the most recent year for which we have full figures, almost a third of private group water schemes in rural Ireland were contaminated at least once by E.coli. As well as getting bullshit piped at them from the DĂĄil, rural dwellers have the privilege of having it delivered through their taps.
One could go on and on listing real issues that actually shape peopleâs lives in rural Ireland â access to decent quality broadband, the closure of village Garda stations, the scrapping of the Rural Environment Protection Scheme (Reps) scheme. None of them ever produces the kind of grandstanding to which we have been treated on the animal welfare legislation.
Why not? Because dealing with such issues involves actual political struggles over the choices we have to make and the way we use our collective resources. You have to talk about all of those embarrassing things like money and power and priorities.
You have to think about what it is that makes rural life sustainable and whether we have any real commitment to creating it.
It is much easier to feed rural people a diet of exaggerated self- pity and paranoia about âthemâ up in Dublin. As long as rural people keep lapping it up, they will not stop to wonder why their great champions actually do so little for them.
ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZâŚ
Is that the sound of you sleepwalking towards the death of rural Ireland?
NoâŚ
Any more questions?
+1
that guy finbar is a shit journalist
His points are tainted a little by his indulgence in pointing out that Mick Bailey is a member of the club. You would think Mick Bailey was the devil incarnate the way every journalist in the country cites his membership as a reason to close down the Ward Union. Letâs hope Mick isnât also a member of Dunsaughlin GAA or they too could fall into the crosshairs of people like Michael Clifford and Fintan OâToole.
No, thank you. That was all.
Iâd agree with you up to a point, but the broad thrust of his article was that rural people have allowed their communities to decline in a lot of cases, and are only seen to be moved by this fairly inconsequential legislation. The TDs only start making noise when pressured by a slick lobby group on this issue, and do very little to serve the community at other times (other than âsortingâ medical cards of course, and other nonsense that can be looked after by State bodies rather than the peopleâs representatives). And the people keep voting back these TDs.
Well thatâs because weâre not organised on other issues. RISE would be a useful vehicle but of course it is a Ward Union production. A broad based rural lobby group would be useful however I doubt it would get consensus on field sports. As for the TDs, I donât know why they got so het up about the stags but I think alot of TDs are supportive of field sports so didnât want to sell out the Wards. Iâd agree that they rarely show similar concern for much more important issues!
âWeâ???
Country folk.