If there was a general election tomorrow, I’m not sure I’d bother voting.

In last year’s US presidential election, there was a clear choice on offer. Both parties offered a pretty distinct social platform, and each an economic platform that had some differences. In the UK general election in May 2015, the European question will mean that voting for one party over the other will probably have a profound difference on what sort of country Britain will be post 2017 referendum, if it happens. The point is that the results would shape daily life.

The same cannot be said of an Irish general election. In the last 36 months we have experienced life under Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and Labour. We can also see, looking North of the border, what life under Sinn Fein would look like, and it does not look that radically different than like life down here. Sinn Fein will of course claim that a govt south of the border has greater room for action, being a sovereign state. This is true. But the reality is that Sinn Fein is moving towards a policy centre which will make it pretty much where Labour are now. Talk to people in Donegal or Kerry or Monaghan about their Sinn Fein representatives, and they will tell you that aside from waving the tricolour they no more want to frighten the horses than your average Fianna Failer. Radical socialists they are not, as their bitterly disappointed leftwing voters will discover. Life under a Sinn Fein coalition will not even be as left wing as France under Hollande.

Of course, says you, there’s always the Greens and the People’s Front of Killiney. True, but the Greens, despite their best intentions and efforts, showed just how resistant the rest of the Irish political establishment is to reform. As for Joe and the gang: Jaysus, they couldn’t even run a parliamentary group of seven people without splitting four ways. They are populist panderers, not even socialists, so don’t be holding your breath.

So just don’t vote? Surely that’s a cop out/Is this what the Men/Women of 1916 stormed a biscuit factory for, etc? Not really. I’d still vote in a referendum, and if they reform the Seanad and elect the panels I might vote in that. But even that would be purely for the sport, that I enjoy a good election count and the transfers and all the rest. But would it change much. Nah. This country, and here’s the thing, does not want change. We are actually a politically content people. The fact that a majority of our voters support FF or FG in polls confirms that. So move along, there’s nothing to see here.

Kerry County Council to make drink driving compulsory.

Kerry County Council yesterday passed a motion by Cllr. Tommy Hardneck (Ind Fianna Fail) to make drink driving compulsory in the county. Addressing the world’s media yesterday, Cllr. Hardneck declared “Firstly, this is a road safety issue. Look at the statistics. When was the last time you heard of two drunk drivers crashing into each other? The problem is caused by sober drivers panicking at the relaxed but controlled manner of a fella who has had a few jars to calm his nerves. If everybody was as relaxed as that on the roads, we’d have far less fatalities. Secondly, there are the economic benefits. Requiring everyone to drink more will create jobs, in the same way that Clare used to kidnap American tourists flying from Dublin to the States, make them land in Shannon and force them to buy Foster and Allen’s Greatest Hits DVDs. This is the drink version of the Shannon Stopover.”

The councillor was speaking from an upturned 1994 Toyota Camry “resting” in a ditch, and attacked the EU for insisting on ditches and draining around the country and how it was the ditches that were turning Irish roads into death traps, not drink.  

Britain threatens to shoot Britain unless Europe does what Britain says.

Listening to David Cameron’s speech on the EU, I was reminded of that scene in “Blazing Saddles” where sheriff Bart threatens to shoot himself  to avoid being shot by the townsfolk. The problem he faces is that the threat Cameron is making is not greater than the threat major concessions would cause for other leaders of other EU countries. Imagine anyone of them coming home to tell their home parliament that they had agreed to letting Britain undercut their home businesses by freeing the UK from EU employment legislation?

There is also an issue which has been raised by über blogger Jon Worth: if there is a referendum between leaving the EU or signing up to a Tory negotiated right wing version of British membership, what will progressive pro-Europeans in the the UK do? At least in every Irish referendum there is the option of voting for the status quo, a choice that Cameron will deny the British people. Labour and the Lib Dems could always promise that if they were returned to power they will just opt Britain back into social rights, I suppose.

But what of the nightmare scenario? What’s that, you ask? The ultimate nightmare, that Cameron loses the 2015 general election and so the referendum is called off, and we spend another ten years listening to British Eurosceptics banging on about the evils of the EU? Oh lordy. I think I’d prefer if they left.

http://youtu.be/fFl3pWbfVX8

Danny Healy Rae makes a point.

The recent hoohah over Danny Healy Rae’s motion to permit drink driving in certain circumstances misses the point. Aside from the fact that he was addressing a serious issue, that of rural transport, consider the fact that most Kerry councillors didn’t even vote on the motion. What are we to take away from that?

What I read from it is that most councillors saw the motion for what it was, a stunt. If the council had actually been voting to permit drink driving, councillors would almost certainly have taken a position on such a controversial proposal. In fact, let’s be honest, if Danny Healy Rae thought that his proposal could actually become law in Kerry, would he really have suggested it? Imagine when the first drunken driver with a Healy Rae permit knocks somebody down, the first victim of Danny’s Law? Would he really want that? Unlikely.

But what really leaps off the page is the fact that so much attention is given to yet another bunch of politicians getting paid to not make actual decisions but to debate a motion calling on someone else to actually do some work. The truth is that the country would be better off if Danny Healy Rae did have the power to let people drink and drive in Kerry, because people would then sit up and pay attention to the things he does.   They would go from publicity stunts to real live decisions. Sure, it would mean that other counties would warn tourists not to enter Kerry for fear of being mown down by a legalised drunk behind a wheel, but so what? That’s the will of the people in action, and a beautiful thing it is too.

A great book: The General-Charles De Gaulle and the France he saved.

One thing that really strikes an Irish reader of Jonathan Fenby’s excellent “The General” are the parallels between De Valera and the general. Both men built a political movement based on a set of personal values, both men had a certain flexibility when it came to using force to overthrow democratic institutions they did not approve of, and yet both men ultimately remained anchored to democratic beliefs. Both betrayed sections of society (The IRA and the French Algerians) who had believed that the men in question were their strongest supporters. Both were replaced by protégés who abandoned large sections of their creed, and left parties that essentially became vehicles for ambitious but politically flexible individuals like Chirac, Haughey or Sarkozy.

Having said that, De Gaulle can also be used as an example of an historical figure like Harry Truman who just happens to be in the right place at the right time, and whose values are those needed. That’s not to say that De Gaulle was without talent. In the 1930s he was one of the few military figures to argue for armour based modernisation in a French Army that spent four times as much on horse feed as it did on petrol, and his book on the subject was found, with approving handwritten notes, in Hitler’s bunker in 1945.

De Gaulle’s return to power in 1958, ahead of a potential military coup which he may tacitly have supported, allowed him to create a political office, the French presidency, which remains to this day the most powerful (read unchecked) elected office in the democratic world. To his credit, it did allow him to finally put some order on France’s Italian style political chaos. Where he was not a success was in foreign policy, where his paranoia about the United States mixed with his inability to grasp European unity fully led to France striking dramatic poses on the international stage (like leaving NATO’s military structure) which did little to enhance France’s actual global influence. Indeed, De Gaulle’s opposition, whilst out of power, to the creation of a European Army in 1950 can be traced right through to 21st Century France being unable to defeat Libya without US military help, a task surely a 60-year-old combined (and probably French led) European Defence Force would have been able to achieve.

When he left office in 1969, he left not as a result of the 13 attempted assasination attempts on his life but because the French people had voted against a proposed senate reform (ironically to turn the French senate into something similar to the Irish vocational model). He then came to Ireland, where he made a passionate “Vive Quebec Libre” style speech at a banquest held in his honour in favour of a United Ireland which didn’t get picked up by the media because the microphone broke!

Many people from FDR to the French Left were convinced that he would attempt to become a dictator, and he could have given it a serious go, but he didn’t, in fact securing French democracy (although turning a blind eye to the thuggishness of his secret service). But for resisting that temptation, he deserves the mantle of greatness.

Fenby is always readable, keeping De Gaulle’s tale moving with just enough quotations and anecdotes to keep it interesting.  

 

Questions I’d like an Irish pollster to ask.

Every time there’s an opinion poll published a certain type of poll-junkie comes rushing out of the bushes to throw massive extrapolations on the results. But what I find interesting is just how uninformative the actual polls are. They tend to give a shallow glimpse at voter thinking but rarely explain what, why or how voters have come to the decisions they have arrived at, or what values shape those beliefs.

Here are a few questions I would love to see asked of voters. But a warning: Yes, they are leading. My point is that I would like to see the person being polled challenged as to how strongly they hold their beliefs, and whether they believe that they should be held to the standard of their own beliefs.  

1. Do you believe that the government should increase taxes more, or cut spending?

2. Do you believe you personally should pay higher taxes to fund services for the vulnerable in society?

3. If yes: how much extra per week would you be willing to pay?

4. I have a selection of charity direct-debit forms here. As you are willing to contribute more to help the less well-off, will you fill in a direct debit of your choice for the amount you stated you were willing to pay extra in taxes to help the vulnerable?

(Purpose of question: I believe that many voters claim that they would “happily” pay a higher contribution to help those less well-off than them, but would change their minds when actually asked to do it. The statistical difference between those who claim to support the concept, and those who actually do donate the extra amount would be very informative)

5. Do you believe you are over taxed?

6. Including income taxes, VAT, PRSI and USC, what percentage of your gross income do you believe you pay in tax? (Compare answer to actual percentage of tax paid by individual)

7. What’s the highest proportion tax you believe you should pay, percentage wise?

8. We have calculated the percentage of tax you actually pay. If it is lower than the amount you say should be the highest level you should pay, would you be willing to donate the balance to a charity of your choice?

9. Are you better at spending your money than the government is?

10. Do you believe people who earn more than you pay enough tax?

11. If someone who earns less than you believes that you don’t pay enough tax, are they right?

12. If not, why not?

13. If a person who earns more than you declined to pay extra tax because (use answer 12, above) would you say that was a valid excuse?