Fine Gael celebrate expulsion of “dangerous radical” from party.

Fine Gael: It's disgraceful when the help get uppity!

Sources in Fine Gael are praising party leader Enda Kenny for shrewdly engineering the departure of George Lee from the party. A party spokesperson said: “We knew from day one that fella was going to be trouble. Sure he walked into the parliamentary rooms with a load of bukes under his arms. Bukes! And just because he was an expert in economics, sure that doesn’t mean he gets a say in nuttin’. He kept using sentences in the party meetings that didn’t have “Fianna Fail are a crowd of gougers” in the middle of them! Sure, he needs to know his place: Did any of his family fight the irregulars? Does he have any breedin’? Was Eoin O’Duffy ever to tea on the family ranch? Has he ever shot a tinker? And what sort of name is Lee anyway? I can tell you one thing for certain: It is days like today that will let the ordinary people of Ireland know exactly what sort of people run Fine Gael!”

The irrelevence of Irish political parties.

Having attended two political public events in the last week, one common feature which struck me was how irrelevent the current political parties are to the debate. They have the power, there’s no question of that, but what was striking was that in conversations about issues, on everything from the economy to energy supply to immigration, die-hard members of parties either could not participate in the discussion, because they could not seem to understand the issues, or did not wish to voice an opinion because that was, surreally, seen as some sort of hostage to fortune.

FF seem to spend their time out manouvering each other, and FG spend their time wishing they were as sucessful as FF. That’s it. Do you really think they are having in-depth debates in either party on the issues mentioned above? The worrying thing is that it means that nearly 75% of our national parliament (our two main parties) are made up of people who aren’t really interested in how the country is run, but are there because it is a good job with a pension. It’s like having a doctor who isn’t really interested in medicine. 

Most Irish people aren’t ideological. They tend to have both right wing and left wing opinions on issues, and Irish parties have always recognised that by being centrist. But we have now reached a situation where the main parties have effectively stepped out of politics to avoid alienating people, and are now not part of the discussion as to what sort of country we would like to be.

Would we be better off giving Fianna Fail and Fine Gael their own play-parliament to call each other names in, and have a seperate parliament for debating political ideas? Oh, and before anyone from FF or FG start listening their policy issues, a challenge: Will you let me give you a list of policy questions to be answered, on issues that are normal to be debated in other democracies?

Leviathan.

Went to Leviathan to hear some political cabaret and debate on the subject of reforming the constitution. Interesting debate and thoughtful input from Elaine Byrne, Brendan Halligan, Gerard Hogan and Ronan Mullen. A couple of points struck me:

1. There is a division in Irish society between those who believe that we all played a part in our current difficulties (and I’m one of them) and those who feel, even though they voted for FF, that it has nothing to do with them.

2. Ronan Mullen got booed (unfairly) for making the very reasonable point that Irish people seem more interested in being angry than in discussing ideas about how our society is shaped. He’s right. 

3. How our political parties have almost no relevance to the current debate. The fact that we have had 12 reports on political reform by Oireachtas committees which successive FF/FG and Labour govts have done little with says something.

4. Particularly enjoyed the audience member who shouted out “10% of the population are foreigners!” as his big observation.

This would be a terrible crisis to let go to waste…

On a roll…

Having enjoyed Chris Mullin’s diaries, and Henry Porter’s thriller “The Dying Light” I’m now enjoying John Gardner’s “Moriarty”, telling the tale of Sherlock Holmes’s arch nemesis.

It’s great to have such a good streak of enjoyable reads. Next is a history of Britain in the 1970s. That’ll soften my cough, no doubt.   

Boosting turnout? We should pay people not to vote.

What did this poster even mean?

Every now and again we hear a call for the need for political parties, government and candidates to “reach out” and “engage” with various groups in society who do not participate in the political process. In many cases, there are good reasons. It’s good, for example, for political parties to attempt to communicate with new immigrants, because this helps them learn about their rights as voters.

What does my head in, on the other hand, is the obsession with reaching out to groups of people who are well aware of their political rights, but just couldn’t be arsed. Take the obsession with engaging young people with politics. In my days in youth politics, we squandered vast amounts of time and money trying to get our fellow young people involved in politics. We organised piss ups, we tried to dumb down issues for them to understand, and for what? So that basically people who were interested in politics spent less time actually discussing issues but instead pandering to people whom we’d be better off with not voting at all.

It’s the same with turnout. In Britain, Labour have become obsessed with boosting turnout at all costs, including making the electoral system open to abuse through postal voting. For what? So that people who think that spending 15 minutes voting every 5 years is hard should be consulted on the direction of the country? Yes, it’s their right. But I’ve a right to think that people like that are unlikely to have given much consideration to who they’re voting for or why.

“But, politics is so complicated!” They whine. Yes, it is. Running a €150 billion economy is complicated, as is brain surgery and air traffic control. Get used to it. Not sure about an issue? Ask your TD, or look it up on the web, but up your game, because we’re fed up pandering to the drooling vegetable vote.  

We’d actually be better off offering every voter a tenner not to vote when they arrive at the polling station. That way, everyone’s right to vote is protected, as it should be, but those who refuse the tenner are far more likely to be taking the damn thing seriously.

Assisted suicide.

Terry Pratchett makes his point here. Yet another “divisive” issue that our well-paid legislators (And I use that word cautiously) run screaming from, lest they be required to have an opinion. For my money, I can see both points of view, and feel this needs to be discussed.  

Without public consent, Turkish membership will destroy the EU.

What starts as a debate about Turkey may end up being about the EU itself.

There are very good reasons for letting Turkey join the European Union. Turkey is an important country, a developing democracy, a vital cultural link to the Islamic world and a physical link in terms of running pipelines to the middle east free from the clutches of Moscow. We would benefit from having a Muslim member of the EU, and helping Turkey avoid becoming Iran is in our interest.

Despite all that, letting them in will destroy the EU. Yes, destroy it, and here’s why: There’s huge public opposition to it from amongst ordinary Europeans. I know people of moderate opinion, who have no interest in politics, who suddenly become aggrieved at the idea. Is it racism? No doubt, many opposed to Turkey are racist. But there is more to it than that. There is a feeling that the EU has lowered its standards of late (I bet I don’t have to name the two countries in question) and that Turkey will be let in without being a free, democratic nation by European standards. And that’s not the worst part: The worst part is that there are snooty types in Brussels who dismiss these views, and feel that the great affairs of state such as this have nothing to do with the hoi-polloi.

They will be seriously mistaken if they take that view, because Europeans will point to the incoming Turks, and they won’t vent their anger on them (Well, the nazi scum will, but nothing new there) as much as associate the EU with them.

The EU forced the Turks on us. The EU is the problem.

There is talk, to gasps of horror in Brussels, of referendums in the member states to decide this. The people will almost certainly vote no. Brussels would be far better suited trying to figure out a way to convince ordinary Europeans that Turkish membership is a good thing, rather than trying to block ordinary Europeans expressing their democratic views in a ballot. 

The alternative is that they may awake to discover that the people are no longer debating Turkey but the union itself.

The Blueshirts’s Law and Order policy.

Saw this, and thought this is how FG would really like to do it.

Right wing methods to deliver left wing aims.

The National Treatment Purchase Fund is one of Mary Harney’s successes as minister for health, and yet here is an example of a hospital refusing to work with it to reduce the suffering of patients.

Why? Many opponents of the NTPF are opposed to it on ideological grounds, believing that paying public money to private hospitals is wrong, even if it relieves suffering.

What is the difference between those bound by that ideological straitjacket, and those Thatcherite/Republican lunatics who are opposed to government spending on ideological grounds? Sod the ideology and the “It’s all very well in practice, but will it work in theory?” nonsense.

The NTPF works, using the free market to provide access to treatment regardless of income. Most people who are suffering want treatment, and don’t give a toss who provides it or owns the hospital. The purpose of a government is to reduce suffering, and that is exactly what the NTPF has done for 165,000 people. You can read some of their stories here.

Books you should read: A View from the Foothills.

A well-written glimpse behind the ministerial door.

I’m only a third the way through it, but I can already recommend Chris Mullin’s “A View from the Foothills” as well worth reading. Mullin, a British Labour MP, former minister and Birmingham Six campaigner, as well as writer of the excellent political thriller “A Very British Coup” has published his diaries from his time as a junior minister, and they’re an absolute treat for anyone interested in British politics, or indeed, how decisions are made in politics.

The book is peppered with little vignettes of Blair and others, but also underlines how much of modern politics and government is taken up with time wasting nonsense. The one depressing line running through the book is the sense of helplessness amongst even ministers about how to shape society in a better way. In particular, his picture of an entire underclass (experienced through his northern England constituency)  that is completely dependent on welfare funded by the rest of society whilst at the same time completely ungrateful about it is pretty grim. He also rails against the fact that sucessive governments, both Labour and Tory, have actually improved the living standards of the great majority, yet the prevailing culture is that everything is worse then it has ever been.

Funny, fascinating, touching, and easy to pick up and put down. Possibly the British political book of the year.