What do people think of this national governemnt idea that the Greens have been proposing?
I have to say I think it’s definitely worth a shot. There is absolutely no chance of a budget by any party making the required changes without bringing down the government unless there’s some sort of agreement with the opposition in advance.
It’s highly likely that FF won’t be in governemnt in 12 months time so it makes sense to have the opposition involved. It’s too easy to dismiss this as a stunt or a chance to let FF off the hook because this is a bigger issue than petty party politics. Let the parties come together to agree on the economy and work out some sort of plan together that will make the required changes.
They can still have a go at eachother over every other topic and still debate the economy sensibly but we might be able to get real econcomic reform through if people put their parochial prejudices to one side for a while.
Probably unlikely to happen but if they were prepared to do it in the 80s why not now?
I would be in favor of it.
We can’t afford the a new party coming in and taking 12 months to find to their feet.
It’s not like any party has 12 outstanding candidates for ministers jobs, whoever gets into power you will be left with at least half the ministers being utterly clueless.
there is no other topic. it’s the economy stupid. (not directed at you Rock)
political reform should be important, but won’t.
fuck em. there’s no way an effective opposition should let FF squirm out of this one. an economic clusterfuck entirely of their own making. let them outline the 4-year plan, and allow FG/Lab to come in and implement, all the time shrugging their shoulders and saying “the markets” won’t settle for anything less. hammer them while they’re in opposition.
parochial? they don’t come much more parochial than Cowen’s FF. to take the supposed moral high ground now would be to invite the charge that “they’re all the same”, and demeans the ethos of politics
national government? i could be wrong, but i’m pretty sure there already is a forum where our elected representatives can come together to discuss the pressing issues of the day, and they can even have a vote on any proposals brought forward.
4 year plan. fine, get on with it. but let’s all have a vote. just for fun, we could call it an election. let’s hear everyone’s proposals in detail, and we all get to vote for the proposal we like best. majority rules. can’t complain then when the axe falls.
They’re talking about a National Government now, the same cunts fucked off on Summer holidays for three months during the biggest crisis since the Emergency and let the country run itself.
A great idea in theory. I think there should be thirty in Government. The minister and the opposition equivalent. People would run for the job they wanted i.e Lenihan, Bruton & for example Eddie Hobbs or some other muppet would run for finance. The one who gets the most votes gets the job and the one with the second most votes gets to be in opposition keeping an eye on him.
That way your minister for transport would have to be someone with experience in transport industry rather than someone who is a good local politican.
I’d have a 3 provincial councils aswell where all elected local councillors would meet every couple of months.
Think of the money we’d save on travelling expenses, salaries etc. The Government would be Dublin based and they’d meet every weekday. They’d have no input on a local level only on Macro stuff. With no party politics you could have Michael O’Leary as minister for transport (if you wanted).
The reality is though this proposal is a pile of bollox from the green party who know they’ll never again get another politican elected.
You’re placing way too much faith in the electorate.
The only way to effectively ensure that happens is to have a presidential style election of who’s going to be the next taoiseach, where the taoiseach gets to create his/her cabinet, appointing people from any walk of life that are suitably qualified, these people should not be elected themselves and should not have to spend time worrying about being re-elected, if they fail to perform, the president (and whole administration) get fucked out at the next election(held every 3 years).
Reduce the number of TDs by half at least (have 1 TD per ~ 75k people, make it harder for Johnny who fills potholes & kisses babies to get elected), remove the party whip situation, allow free votes on all matters. Force TDs to attend the dail 4 days a week. This pairing shit will have to stop. Leave local politics to county councillors. Any TD found interfering with Planning/Medical Card/Legal etc matters to be struck off immediately.
This national government is the biggest heap of shite I’ve ever heard of, FF trying to weasel out of the shit storm they caused.
I’ve zero time for FF and am about as far removed from a FF supporter/voter/sympathiser imaginable.
But this budget should not be about getting FF out of power. There’s an election to do that and there will likely be an election next year anyway.
The idea of letting FG/Labour in to implement a plan they didn’t formulate is what needs to be absolutely avoided. They’ll just use the excuse that they didn’t create it for anything that goes wrong and the end result will be no help for the economy at all.
I think there’s obvious merit in the idea of letting the main parties agree even on a broad strategy now so there’s some sort of unity of purpose. We’re in enough of a mess financially without some needed reform being voted down because a TD in Westmeath wants a new set of traffic lights for Castlepollard that didn’t make the budget.
Unfortunately I don’t think there’s any other way of taking the pettiness out of Irish politics in the short term.
As an example - say FF/Greens/Inds decided they wanted to remove the mobile phone allowance from people on social welfare in this budget. It’s hardly the worst move in the world and it’s not very controversial and could probably be argued that it’s not really worthwhile or affordable these days. You can have an uproar over that because of some poor 80 year old man living on his own in Leitrim who needs the phone and can’t afford to pay for it and all of a sudden there’s people on the streets protesting about this issue* and a load of rural TDs pull their support for the government and the budget is voted down and we have a general election.
Now the new parties in government can’t implement that change and have to cut something else more worthy just to play the politics game. If we had agreed cuts/tax changes etc at the outset we could avoid that and the required economic reform just might have a chance of getting through.
*No harm in a protest if people are arguing about the right things.
Natonal Government will only happen if FG absolutely rule it out and the Labour see another opportunity and call for it.
There is no party thinking of the greater good out there as they are all watching their backs.
The best thing we could do right now is reduce the number of TDs that we have. This would, hopefully, make people think more about the people they vote to represent them in the Dáil and reduce the influence of ‘tradition’ come polling day.
An added bonus would also be reducing the cost of the paying their wages. At an average of €112,000 if we cut 50 of them, and let’s face it in relation to most other countries we have way too much representation, that would be a saving of €56,000,000.
Your idea above, while wonderful in theory, is impossible. It just won’t happen.
We don’t have a presidential style govenment. We would need about 3 referenda to bring in those reforms and we’d probably end up with Bertie as president anyway.
The national unity government thing is at least plausible - if it’s framed by time and restricted to certain policies.
So we should just accept things are the way we are and just get on with our lives? I have 3 kids under the age of 4 and I’d sooner pack everything up and fuck right out of this country rather than subject them to the pantomime that passes for government here. The present system has too much fluff and too many hiding places for lazy self centred poltiticians, who only care about getting re-elected.
It probably is a pipe dream, but we need to have some major overhaul of our politcal system, I’m seriously disillusioned with this country, the present lot have managed to fuck up everything they have touched up to now, why should we let them have a national government that they control, just so that they can point the finger around in 6 months time during the election campaign and say ye were all involved in this.
you’re really jumping through hoops to get the agreement you’re talking about
it’s not that difficult, just call the damn election, and let the people, rather than the politicians, decide.
we are after all going to have to live through the resulting mess.
the bond offers being put off til january gives us the perfect opportunity.
the EU have made it easier by telling us how much to save, and how long we have to do it.
we really are being spoonfed on this one, there’s no need to fling out the constitution just to allow the veneer of “consensus” on the budget. FF (or more specifically, the current Dail) have no mandate, and no right, to make decisions that last into 2014.
FG have this one right (and it’s not often I’ll say that)
there is room to maneouvre on how we go about framing the budget. that’s your election platform right there.
we decide, not them. this national government kite is just a sideshow, a distraction we could do without.
either they get on with trying to fix their mess, or step aside and let somebody else have a go, somebody who doesn’t think “tough decisions” means tearing up the capital budget to prevent them having to make the necessary cuts in the less politically acceptable areas.
Sorry, I didn’t mean we shouldn’t make changes - just don’t think they’re likely and certainly not in the short-term. So I’m talking about something that might actually get us out of the present mess.
I don’t believe FF will still be in power by the end of next summer. If I did then I probably wouldn’t support the idea but I think they’re doomed anyway.
What I want is for the government to fall for genuine reasons not because Lowry or Healy-Rae or some other clown decides they won’t support a perfectly reasonable proposal.
So if there is a vote taken on the budget you might have FG/Lab voting against it for very good reasons. You might have some oddball backbenchers or quasi-FFers voting against it for entirely ludicrous reasons and the outcome is an election and the opposition are forced into coming up with different ideas that they’ll have to choose because they were compelled (politically) to criticise everything in the first budget.
Get some form of co-operation (even at a high level to say X from this dept X from that X from tax) and at least there’s a broad consensus on how to make the required changes.
Don’t think it would work. You need an opposition. Look at the one piece of business that all the TD’s are together on and that is the running of the Dáil. They still have a seanad and they were all getting away with blue murder on expenses etc for years. It would be like turkeys voting for Christmas. FF out, FG to get a new leader and go from there.
