What if…Ireland elected a socialist government?

Finally. A People’s Government!

It was a combination of global events that swept so many governments from power. The global economic meltdown, the war in Eastern Europe. The invasion of Taiwan. The ruling SF/FF/FG coalition just didn’t have the ability to see beyond “business as usual” and ended up with 40% of the Dail between them as the loose Coalition Of The Left took the majority under its charismatic Marxist leader.

To the surprise of the new opposition parties, the new government moved to introduce legislation immediately.

A right to occupy unoccupied buildings that hadn’t paid their vacancy tax was rushed through in days, as was a bill to nationalise all vulture fund holdings in Ireland.

A bank run started on the night of the election result, with everything from credit union accounts to Prize Bonds to State Bonds being cashed in or transferred out of the jurisdiction of the state to the extent but by the time the new government temporarily banned money leaving the state it was already too late, with the banks and the credit unions and other institutions in serious shortage of liquid cash.

The new government also introduced legislation to nationalise all childcare facilities across the country under a new national child care service which would provide free childcare to all who needed it.

Continue reading

A few thoughts on the Family & Care Referendums.

1. Fianna Fail and Fine Gael backbenchers have just been humiliated over a referendum to deliver a policy that neither really care about. It must surely raise a desire in both parliamentary parties to remind their cabinet colleagues that they work for them, not the other way around. FF backbenchers in particular must be tempted to do a Progressive Democrat over Roderic O’Gorman and his comments on the AG’s advice.

2. This referendum must surely have an impact, certainly in FF and FG, on the influence of left-of-centre NGOs on those parties. The question has to be asked: what is the political gain to pandering to them? The referendum has called into question their ability to actually mobilize first preference votes, and let’s be honest: the Labour party is the defacto parliamentary wing of the NGO sector.

3. Are there now actual votes to be had taking on a few taxpayer-funded NGOs? What would be the political downside, for example, to slashing the funding of the National Women’s Council? After all, if we have learned one thing this weekend, they simply can’t claim to be the voice of the majority of Irish women.

4. Once again Fine Gael’s inability to grasp issues that actually matter to its base or potential voters is on display. Where’s the referendum on making it easier to jail lads with 250 previous convictions? What’s the plan for stopping people destroying ID documentation mid-flight? Has anyone in the FG PP actually spent a few hours in an A&E recently, and if so, what are you going to do about it?

5. Finally: Michael McDowell has absolutely got to be itching to put on his Dublin Bay South canvassing shoes once again…

An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Far-Right Patriot.

He is a warrior, only not with a shield and sword but an iPhone through which he confronts the globalist establishment and their (taps nose) paymasters.

He’s a great man for shouting abuse at Guards, calling them names and helpfully suggesting alternative uses of Garda resources. Everyone who disagrees is corrupt and has been paid off.

The first thing he thinks of every morning is Klaus Schwab, which is funny because Klaus Schwab doesn’t think of him at all.

None of his fellow patriots ever seem to notice how he always has money to throw around, or how the Guards always seem to be informed about their events. That’s because they don’t know he’s been a Garda informer since April 2019. That moment where he was accidentally outed by a Guard at a protest was clumsily edited out, but he got away with it.
The big mouth doth protests too much.

An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Politics Free Candidate.

Two types of candidate dominate modern Irish politics. The first is the crook, who is actually in it for the cash. The money is good, and if he plays his cards right, there could be an opportunity for more.

Then there’s that curious creature: The politics free candidate. The enigma wrapped in a puzzle wrapped in a ballot paper. The man or woman who goes into politics even though they aren’t actually that interested in politics in the first place? Surely the same as the first type, you say? Curiously, no. They get the good money, but often they spend much of it getting reelected. They aren’t particularly corrupt, so what are they in it for?

Sometimes it’s family. The father was a TD or councillor, and so they will be. It’s what they do. But ask them where they stand on elected mayors, or a carbon or property tax, or neutrality, and they’ll look at you with the face that says “Why are you asking me this? Why don’t you ask someone in authority?” In short, they tend to not actually have any opinion on the issue. Many of them become cabinet ministers, and still, on day one, arrive in their new departments not with the thought “Finally! Now I can do something about X!” but instead tell their secretary general to keep on doing “Whatever the last fella was doing.” The party tells them what they believe, they memorise the talking points, and you see them three weeks later on The Frontline blankly declaring that loading Jews up on to trucks for “evacuation” is a perfectly reasonable policy.  Not because they are bigots or intolerant, but because that was what it said on the piece of paper.

But here’s the thing: Never mind them. To them, it’s a 9 to 5 job, a means of paying the bills. Ask yourself: Who are the f**kwits who vote for them? Who are the people so devoid of any idea as to what they would like their society to look like that they vote for these guys, the equivalent of a jug of tepid room temperature water, because iced water would be leaning too much to one side of the water temperature issue?

See  them? We should be rounding them up on trucks.

Ireland 2035: Gardai protest growth of Private Police.

Galway 2035.

Garda unions have lodged a formal protest with the Mayor of Galway following the decision of the City Council to outsource public order duties to National Police Service of Ireland Ltd. Under the decision of the council, the Garda Siochana will no longer be responsible for non-national security policy in the boundaries of Galway city. This has followed a three-year trial period where the NPSI policed the city alongside the Gardai, as they were entitled to do under the 2014 Private Security Act.

Addressing a press conference, the mayor stoutly defended his policy: “The reality is that, after three years patrolling public areas, dealing with tourist crime, public order and safety issues, our polling has shown that the people of Galway overwhelmingly preferred dealing with the NPSI over the Gardai. They found them more responsive, more courteous, more professional, and the fact is, they are better at solving crimes than the Gardai.” The Garda unions complained that NPSI have more resources than the Gardai, a claim disputed by the mayor. “Since the government devolved policing budgets to the county councils, we found that the cost of putting a single Garda on patrol, when you weigh in salary costs, pension and early retirement, is the same as two and a half PSNI officers. NPSI officers tend to be younger, fitter, better trained and have more modern equipment than the Gardai, because their budget is not overwhelmingly spent on pay. Galway just cannot afford the Gardai anymore.”

The Director of Public Prosecutions was criticised by Garda unions earlier in the year when an email from within her office admitted that NPSI’s in-house  unit of barristers supervising investigations had meant that NPSI files tended to be far better prepared and generally stronger cases than those submitted by Gardai. Garda unions demanded more resources. The email stated: “It should be noted that NPSI cases tend to be founded on presentation of forensic evidence, CCTV footage and corroborative statements to a much greater degree than Garda files, which rely overwhelmingly on confessions by an alleged guilty individual. There are also far more cases submitted, per head of population, by the NPSI than by the Gardai. It would seem that the NPSI seem to “see” more crimes committed than the Gardai. Having said that, the Gardai continue to lead the NPSI on road traffic violation charges, particularly during good weather.”

The decision follows six years of legal battles, where Garda unions attempted to force the DPP not to accept files prepared by the NPSI, claiming that as a private organisation it could be corrupted. Previously, the court had ruled that the DPP had to consider properly prepared documents indicating that a crime had been committed, regardless of their source. The case memorably collapsed in the High Court last year when former FBI agents, brought in as consultants by NPSI, conclusively proved that not only were investigation standards in the NPSI higher than the Gardai, but that anti-corruption measures within the NPSI were far stronger than in the Gardai. A further embarrassment was caused when the Garda Ombudsman, charged with regulating the NPSI, admitted that the NPSI cooperated with her office to a far greater degree than the Garda authorities did. Garda unions demanded more resources.

Ireland 2035: Surprise Yes vote on Wexford Nuclear Plant.

Wexford 2035.

Despite a series of opinion polls predicting defeat by a 10 point margin, Wexford County today voted by 57.1% in favour of the ESB proposal to build a nuclear power plant at Carnsore Point. Leaders of the NO campaign were quick to condemn the result, pointing out that the voters had been bribed by the Community Gain package that had been promised by the government if the proposal was ratified by the voters of the county.

Under the package, every existing home will be entitled to a a tax free lump sum of €5000 each year, as a recognition of the county’s willingness to “bear the burden” of hosting the nation’s sole nuclear power plant. It is hoped that the scheme, which will last for 20 years, and cost the ESB approximately €28 million per annum, will protect property prices in the county.

The leader of the NO campaign, Sebastian Wilcox-Smyth, speaking from his home in Dalkey, said that the people of Wexford had no right to impose nuclear power on the “ordinary people”, and would be taking the matter to the High Court. Wilcox-Smyth was involved in a controversy during the campaign when it emerged that his group, People Before Everything, had previously campaigned against the building of wind farms near anywhere “where human beings dwell.” The YES campaign suggested building them on Mars.

Ireland 2035: Live! From Leitrim!

Dateline June 2020. Leitrim.

Counting is continuing in the county plebiscite to legalise prostitution and gambling in the county, following a turnout of 72% in the vote yesterday. Opinion polls have shown the result will be very close, but Mayor of Leitrim Billy Murtagh (Independent) has expressed confidence that the people of the county will endorse the proposals of his administration. The Mayor told reporters “When I was directly elected Mayor of this county by the people last year, I told them that Leitrim, like every county under the new devolution and local government laws, has an opportunity to make its own economic way, and it is my belief that this county can be the Las Vegas of Ireland. We’ll even take a more relaxed approach to drink driving, although I understand the Sligo Police Department will have checkpoints on the county border, as is their right. We will of course have proper regulation, but this is going to be the entertainment capital of this whole island, and remember, what happens in Leitrim stays in Leitrim!”

Opponents of the plan include both of Mayor Murtagh’s opponents in the mayoral election. Angela Hartigan, the Fine Gael candidate, has savaged the idea saying that “it will turn Leitrim into the gutter of Ireland”. She has proposed that Leitrim, because of its important place in the heritage of Ireland, should have its economic growth subsidised by other more prosperous counties. “Leitrim is entitled! It just is!”

Although Leitrim is the first county to exercise its powers under the new legislation, other counties and their mayors are looking on with interest. Mayor Tom Morray (Sinn Fein) of Louth has said that he is considering copying the Leitrim proposals. “It would be a shame not to use our position so close to Belfast for economic advantage. The north of Ireland is absolutely crawling with perverts willing to pay good money. Of course, we’d probably have to put in a few gay knocking shops as well, you know, for the DUP lads, but sure, a euro is a euro.”

Interestingly, not all counties intend to use their new devolution powers to liberalise. Some members of Roscommon County Council are discussing designating North Roscommon as a “family values area” with a ban on the sale of pornography, restrictions on drinking, off licences and nightclubs and a tough zero-tolerance approach to law and order to attract Leitrim residents with young families.

“Not everyone wants to live surrounded by hos and bitches jiving like it’s New Jack City,” Thomas Hartigan, a local farmer and undertaker, remarked.

An Occasional Guide to EU politics: The Lonely MEP.

Twitter-phoneHe found one of those apps that tells you how much time you spend doing things, and it gave him a fright. Apparently he spends two-thirds of his day on Twitter trying to pick fights with people back home. What’s worse is that they’ve got the measure of him now, and just ignore him. He doesn’t get mentioned on the news, or in papers. He’s just gone. Like he’s dead.

He was going to show this crowd out here in Brussels, boy was he! But of course they’re well used to him and others like him coming out and shouting. Even Paisley tried it back in the day. Know what happened? Nothing. They ignored him. Anti-Christ this and Anti-Christ that and they just ignored him and went for lunch, and this guy ain’t no Big Ian.

He finds that he’s getting up later in the day, and watching a lot of boxsets in his apartment. The other MEPs from his country, the men and women from the parties he was going to make a holy show of when he got out, now just treat him like one of those fellas you buy a Club Orange and a pack of Tayto for down the pub on a Sunday afternoon. They don’t even argue with him now, just give him that “ah, bless, the poor creature” look. The women ask him is he OK? One even offered to sew a button that had fallen off his good jacket back on. He spent a whole day walking around not knowing that he was trailing a long piece of toilet paper on his shoe and nobody’d said anything. One of the Dutch MEPs thought he’d been trying to make some sort of avant-garde protest about waste.

He’s afraid to spend too long on the phone back home because he knows some bastard will FOI it, and he can’t even go home because it’ll effect his voting record, the one thing the public (or at least the media) seem to get stroppy about at election time.

What on Earth was he thinking coming out here?

An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Fairweather Revolutionary

Repost: “We’re not taking it any more! It’s time the country be taken back by the ordinary people! Feck the bankers and the political parties!

It’s time for a country based on social justice and equality and housing and health and education as rights! Yes to free healthcare! Yes to free education! Yes to…sorry, say that again…you want to pay for free healthcare by doing what?…means testing children’s allowance….now, hold on a minute there…putting Capital Gains Tax on private residences…wait there one minute now…the rich should pay higher taxes, but not ordinary people like me, yes, I know I bought my house for €300k and it’s now worth €500k, but that’s MY MONEY….tax MY profit???….to fund free healthcare and social justice?…….get away from MY money, d’ya hear, that €200k profit is MY money, not yours! Get your stinking thieving hands off my filthy lucre!”

An Occasional Guide to Irish Politics: The Professional NGOer.

It’s all about hedgehogs. If you don’t care about the welfare of hedghogs, and want to spend whatever it takes to ensure hedgehog utopia, you’re a bastard. Never mind the old, and the sick, and poor children, and the third world, the beauty of being in the non-governmental organisation sector (the “third” sector, as it calls itself audaciously, in that it wants public money and pay, but private sector independence from the state that gives it its shekels) is that you can live in your defensive spined creature bubble and live there alone. If they don’t give you what you want, and you’ll always want something, they are absolute monsters.

Not that the money they give you will actually be spent on hedgehogs. It’ll be spent on websites and glossy brochures and fundraising drives the purpose of which is to fund more resources for more websites and brochures and fundraising efforts. And let us not forget the European angle: The vital need to go to Europe-wide hedgehog welfare conferences to consult with other concerned bodies. But the main thing is that at the end of it all the hedgehogs get the money they need. And they will. Eventually. When the NGO has gotten itself an “appropriately” remunerated chief executive and training officer and community liason officer and new “branding” and new offices in the city centre (Never in the more affordable suburbs, curiously enough.) and a development plan which seems to focus on getting more public funds for next year’s development plan.

Then, finally, money will be spent on hedgehog welfare. Normally for a shovel to scrape them off the road after they’ve been driven over by a truck.