Politics in Ireland

In both principle and practice PR is more democratic. Theres no way you can slice it that makes it less democratic.


It is leading to weak governments but clearly that is what the people want.


FPTP allows for strong governments specifically because they can ignore large parts of the electorate.

That's undemocratic but tends to make it easier to get stuff done.
 
In both principle and practice PR is more democratic. Theres no way you can slice it that makes it less democratic.


It is leading to weak governments but clearly that is what the people want.


FPTP allows for strong governments specifically because they can ignore large parts of the electorate.

That's undemocratic but tends to make it easier to get stuff done.

Undemocratic but gets stuff done is one of the arguments used to try and justify a one party state.
 
Oh yeah I know.

But wouldn't an occasional benevolent dictatorship be nice every now and then.
 
Take it down before I choke on my foie gras
Mind in case you get any of it on your charvet shirt.

I remember a great line of Dermot Morgan's on an old scrap Saturday CD that was in the house, in persona as CJ

"in an effort to integrate in Europe more successfully we have adopted some French protocols. Before we commence proceedings all ministers must kiss me on both cheeks. I then pull up my trousers and we proceed with the meeting"
 
In both principle and practice PR is more democratic. Theres no way you can slice it that makes it less democratic.


It is leading to weak governments but clearly that is what the people want.


FPTP allows for strong governments specifically because they can ignore large parts of the electorate.

That's undemocratic but tends to make it easier to get stuff done.

i prefer the model where stuff gets done
 
Say what you like about him, but he would have more balls at the moment and we would probably be at the same level as the UK now in terms of the Covid path.

haughey was the most talented man to ever lead this country , a fair bit of badness came with it unfortunately

still rate him far higher than most we have had in the top job
 
haughey was the most talented man to ever lead this country , a fair bit of badness came with it unfortunately

still rate him far higher than most we have had in the top job
In the early 1960,s Paddy O Keefe of the Farmers Journal said he was a dangerous person and he used to go hunting with him .
A political party should be strong enough to rein in bully’s . Fianna Fáil was weak and has suffered because they let haughey away with it . John McGuinness is one of the most widely respected politicians across all parties.
 
In the early 1960,s Paddy O Keefe of the Farmers Journal said he was a dangerous person and he used to go hunting with him .
A political party should be strong enough to rein in bully’s . Fianna Fáil was weak and has suffered because they let haughey away with it . John McGuinness is one of the most widely respected politicians across all parties.

never liked o keefe myself , well from the pieces he wrote , i never liked him
 
My father allegedly had fisticuffs with him one time. O Keefe had great vision when agriculture was very backward .


i only remember reading him from circa 2001 until he died , i rarely agreed with anything he wrote , he was an important figure admittedly
 
I remember reading somewhere about the man that first brought Charolais cattle into Ireland back in the sixties. He had been years trying to get them in but the Dep stalling him. Eventually he was told to lodge x amount of money in some bank account. He deposited the money and straight away he got the go ahead from the Dep. Guess who was minister for agriculture at the time.
The man was rotten to the core.
 
Say what you like about him, but he would have more balls at the moment and we would probably be at the same level as the UK now in terms of the Covid path.

Whatever Charlie did , was for the good of Charlie , and accidental if it the country benefited.

As for blaming the government for the current high Covid numbers,
Unless you had the Gestapo patrolling streets , ports , airports etc , you wouldn't have lower numbers .
The number of people who regard it their God given right to socialise, party , meet with friends , not to mention Larry The Leech 's grip of the meat industry , all mean it increased in leaps and bounds .

People are not willing to be responsible for their own actions.
 
I remember reading somewhere about the man that first brought Charolais cattle into Ireland back in the sixties. He had been years trying to get them in but the Dep stalling him. Eventually he was told to lodge x amount of money in some bank account. He deposited the money and straight away he got the go ahead from the Dep. Guess who was minister for agriculture at the time.
The man was rotten to the core.
My grandfather owned a pub and haughey came in canvassing with a couple of local ff councillors in tow. He waltzed in and called for a drink for the house and waltzed back out without ever putting his hand in his pocket 😅
 
My grandfather owned a pub and haughey came in canvassing with a couple of local ff councillors in tow. He waltzed in and called for a drink for the house and waltzed back out without ever putting his hand in his pocket 😅
Jack Charlton used to do something similar, he'd buy a round for the house and write a cheque for it, the cheque would invariably get framed and hung on the wall so they were never cashed :clap:
 
As for blaming the government for the current high Covid numbers,
Unless you had the Gestapo patrolling streets , ports , airports etc , you wouldn't have lower numbers .
The number of people who regard it their God given right to socialise, party , meet with friends , not to mention Larry The Leech 's grip of the meat industry , all mean it increased in leaps and bounds .

People are not willing to be responsible for their own actions.
And the media making a circus out of it...
"Give us clarity, give us a plan". How can anyone give clarity or devise a plan when they don't know what way infection numbers are going to go? The media want the government to say something so that when it doesn't happen, they will be able to slate them in a few weeks time.
 
I went over to reddit to dig this out. A bit where some lad ranked all taoisigh and wrote a bit about them.

Little piece of advice. Say you’re a politician and they decide to make a TV series about your life. If the guy they cast to play you is Lord Petyr Baelish himself, consider that you may have been a shady motherfucker.
“I did warn you not to trust me.”
“I did warn you not to trust me.”

CJ was already fairly synonymous with shady motherfuckery before he even became Taoiseach. As Minister for Finance in the late sixties under Jack Lynch, Haughey became embroiled in the Arms Crisis. See, it was around this time that the Troubles were being particularly Troublesome, by which I mean things were threatening to blow up into a full on civil war and hundreds of Catholic refugees were fleeing south to escape the violence. Haughey and another minister named Neil Blaney were put in charge of a committee to distribute humanitarian aid to Catholic communities in Northern Ireland that were under siege and apparently at some point the group decided: “Know what this situation needs? Guns.”
Spongebob
Soooo…a plan was hatched to import weapons into the country to be given to the IRA with the help of a Belgian Nazi (I am not making any of that up).

While that plan would, no doubt, have worked BRILLIANTLY, the Garda Síochána (the fuzz) sussed it out and informed Lynch what Haughey had been up to. Lynch did……………….nothing, so the Gardaí instead went to our buddy Liam Cosgrave and essentially said “look, there’s all kinds of treasonous shady motherfuckery going on here, can SOMEBODY do some governing or is that too much to ask?” Cosgrave put pressure on Lynch and Haughey and his co-conspirators were arrested and sentenced to lengthy prison sentences for supporting terrorism.
Homer Laughing
No, of course not. Haughey was expelled from the cabinet but remained as a back bencher, slowly rebuilding his political influence and waiting for the right moment to strike like a cancer in remission. He was eventually recalled to the front bench in 1975, became Minister for Health in 1977 and after Lynch resigned in 1979 Haughey was chosen to succeed him as Taoiseach. The frustrating thing about Haughey is that, unlike Cowen, he absolutely had the ability and the intelligence to be a fantastic Taoiseach. He did really good work in the Ministry for Health, spear-heading the first anti-smoking campaigns and legalising contraception.
Thanks Charlie! No. Seriously. Thank you.
Thanks Charlie! No. Seriously. Thank you.

Plus, in a country where politicians tend to be less “Hollywood ugly” and more “circus ugly” he actually cut a rather dashing figure. He was charming and charismatic in a line of work where charisma and charm are in very short supply and he inspired incredible loyalty from many of his followers. But Haughey had ambitions and ego far beyond what could be satisfied by the premiership of a small, peripheral European state. Haughey dreamed of leveraging the relatively modest position of Taoiseach and becoming a statesman of global significance.

Know what’s crazy? He kinda…sorta…did? Unlike almost every other Taoiseach on this list, Haughey had a huge impact not just on Ireland but on the world at large, even though he’s certainly not famous outside of this island. How did that happen?

Okay, little bit of backstory required. And apologies, it involves the European Union which means it’s going to be super complicated.

See that circle? It's the starry rabbit hole of madness.
See that circle? It’s the starry rabbit hole of madness.

So, the upper house of the European Parliament is the Council of the European Union, and it’s run by the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, to be confused with the President of the European Council. Yes I said “to be confused” because face it, you’re going to confuse them and that was probably the point. Anyway. The presidency is rotating which means that every country in the EU gets a turn at basically running the entire continent.

And if you could not tell Greece we'd really appreciate it.
We keep sending Greece on a beer run when it’s their turn and if you could not tell them about this we’d all really appreciate it.

Right, so. In 1990 Ireland held the presidency and there was a big summit in Dublin to discuss piddling inconsequential political minutiae like trade reform and tarriffs and oh yeah THE BERLIN WALL HAS JUST COME DOWN REALITY AS WE KNOW IT HAS CRUMBLED WHAT DO WE DO!!!!?!

This might prove to be of some lasting significance.
This might prove to be of some lasting significance.

Weird as it might seem now, after the wall came down German reunification was by no means a sure thing. Most countries in Europe were decidedly less than giddy at the idea of Germany once again being large and in charge (jeez, you make one mistake). The British were particularly opposed, because Margaret Thatcher is a monster from European folklore who sneaks in through the cracks in the windows to feed on the tears of disobediant German children before snatching them away to her cottage in the forest that runs on chicken legs. The French, more understandably, were also opposed but more in a “well I suppose we could be convinced.” kind of way. What the French wanted was closer economic and political integration for Europe, essentially the basis for the modern EU and it was Haughey, in his capacity as president of the European presidency of the Council of the European Union council, who was able to get enough of the other nations on board in exchange for French support for German unity. This, then, means Haughey played a crucial role in both the reunification of Germany and the foundation of the European common currency, i.e. two of the most important events in the history of post-war Europe.

So why isn’t he further up the list? Well, not to get judgey or anything, but he was kind of a crook. And by “kind of” I mean “holy shit”.

Haughey was famous for buying things like fancy suits, race horses and…um…an island.

Haughey's island

Now, the Taoiseach’s salary is generous, but it’s not “Bond villain” generous so people were understandably confused as to how he could afford all these clothes, mammals and landmasses on a civil servant’s salary. Now, there were only really three possible scenarios for how Haughey got the money.

1) He saved up his confirmation money like his mother told him to.

2) He was too crafty for the fairy king.

3) He was on the take.

By the time a tornado of various scandals (a “scandalnado” if you will) had forced him from office, if was pretty obvious that he’d been accepting bribes from businessmen both domestic and foreign. However, this being Ireland, we decided to be sure in the usual manner; a series of tribunals that cost the taxpayer millions and were only completed several years after Haughey’s death in 2006. As is the way of our people.

Of the many, many, many shady deals that came to light, it emerged that Haughey had accepted a five figure sum from a Saudi businessman to support his application for Irish citizenship. This, to me, was the worst betrayal of all. Irishness is not something you can buy. It’s something that’s earned by Americans whose lives have spiralled out of control until the village judge orders them to rebuild the wall of the stern but kindly farmer they crashed into while DUI and over the course of the summer the American learns the simple ways of the villagers while in return helping them attract tourists to their sleepy hamlet until one day the farmer puts his hand on the American’s shoulders and mutters “Now, you are one of us.” That’s the way it’s supposed to be. And Charles J. Haughey forgot that.

Pros
As you can imagine, he’s quite popular in Germany.
As Irish politicians go, he could be fairly progressive. For example, he’s the reason why Irish artists don’t have to pay taxes on any income that comes from creative work. Which, as someone trying to make a living as a writer, I am quite okay with.
"Thanks Charlie! No. Seriously. Thank you."
“Thanks Charlie! No. Seriously. Thank you.”

He was pro-business to a degree that bordered on the unladylike but he did make Ireland a more attractive place to do business.
Margaret Thatcher hated him. Hated him. Loathed every particle in his being. So, you know. He can’t have been all bad.
Cons
Haughey often gets compared to Richard Nixon but in some ways he was an even more formidable an animal. Haughey had Nixon’s intelligence, drive, and ruthlessness but he also had something that Nixon famously lacked; Charm. But all of that talent, drive and ability was put in the service of one cause: Charles J Haughey. It’s often said of Nixon that he could have been a great man if he had been loved. Charles J. Haughey could have been a great man if he’d loved anything other than himself.
 
Whatever Charlie did , was for the good of Charlie , and accidental if it the country benefited.

As for blaming the government for the current high Covid numbers,
Unless you had the Gestapo patrolling streets , ports , airports etc , you wouldn't have lower numbers .
The number of people who regard it their God given right to socialise, party , meet with friends , not to mention Larry The Leech 's grip of the meat industry , all mean it increased in leaps and bounds .

People are not willing to be responsible for their own actions.

We have so much dithering going on in my eyes at the moment and again tonight that I couldn't see Haughey tolerating that, that's more my point.

Everyone has to be responsible for their actions, I happened to be in town today, every second person not wearing a mask, it beggars belief.
 
And the media making a circus out of it...
"Give us clarity, give us a plan". How can anyone give clarity or devise a plan when they don't know what way infection numbers are going to go? The media want the government to say something so that when it doesn't happen, they will be able to slate them in a few weeks time.

You can always have a conditional plan, if case numbers drop below X for a week in a row, Y will happen in 7 days. It's not that difficult really.

People need some hope soon.
 
You can always have a conditional plan, if case numbers drop below X for a week in a row, Y will happen in 7 days. It's not that difficult really.

People need some hope soon.
Boris has set a date to lift all restrictions on socialising I believe.

They needed something to distract from brexit and get national pride built up a bit and they're playing a blinder
 
Boris has set a date to lift all restrictions on socialising I believe.

They needed something to distract from brexit and get national pride built up a bit and they're playing a blinder

It sounded very ambitious to be honest but Boris looked like he could do with the hairdressers opening soon :laugh:
 
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