Ireland’s leader Leo Varadkar, has just announced snap election for February 8th?? that’s about 3 weeks, how does a legitimate public debate and campaign by opposition party’s have a proper chance to lodge an alternative to this self proclaimed ‘Government of Ireland’ who instead of getting any real progress on the fundamental outstanding problems people face, has capitalised with such self sloganeering at every photo opportunity they can spin and insinuate themselves into? Fine Gael has taken and modeled its policy’s and political marketing prompts so often from the vicious UK Torys. So no surprise they have now gone for this ultra snap election rush job, just like the now far right fraudulant and regressive, pro wealthy Johnson’s Conservative party just got away with successfully last month. Rush elections are like a non violent coup against public consciousness.
Fine Gael doesn’t really like democracy in practice, it snubs most public debates in favour of authoritarian announcements. It plans to dominate the next 3 weeks with some simplistic slogans directly pitched at the well off upper and middle income earners, ‘who get up early for work and pay high taxes’ clearly targeted slogans and promises to satisfy the favoured egos and pockets of the well off and struggles of middle incomes only, while trying to insult the left and less well off, so that they react strongly and angrily, so Fine Gael by this strategy cynically expects to further divide their targeted upper and middle income section from the ‘angry’ rabble, who can then when they naturally protest, be made seem hostile towards those better off than them. So that alone in the voting booth better off voters will fear any change and vote against the angry rabble that Fine Gael hopes to have pitched against them. People can be promted to doubt and fear change easily, even when they are standing in shit.
Varadkar and Fine Gael is a totally cynical government of spin and lies. It coasts along and has fixed nothing really, because market rule and privatisation their main ideologies, are now well discredited by the reality of recurring recessions inflicted on most societys over the last few decades, these failed and counterproductive ideologies are deliberate mistakes that have not and will not solve the problem of funding a proper health service, building vastly more good homes and their facilities, creating a dignified and progressive welfare system through an ‘Unconditional Universal Basic Income‘ for all, so that crap jobs and crap pay will not be necessary for citizen’s to have to accept, taxes on the further income you earn are then a natural means test, this basic income will be spent in the real economy so it goes right back in, its a good idea for humanity and it realistically puts the citizen in charge of their working life’s choices, with a work force that is not desperate, and on this universal level playing field, profit will have to be made by producing good things well and paying workers fairly for it. People have much more as yet untapped potential and spirit to offer society than subservience to the perpetually wealthy’s business ideas.
This government promotes and praises only the well off and has degraded the welfare system by forcing in since 2015 an already fully discredited ‘Job Path’ programme, a costly hoax they again took from the UK Conservatives, it is run not to succeed but to inflict cruel humiliations on those with the least, it pleases and fulfils the incorrect assumptions of those born better off. It is not a good, fair or successful incentive for people to prosper and work to. (A majority of opposition politicians and partys in the Dail voted to end the government’s Job Path programe in January 2019 after hearing long and all damming reports presented about its bad results. But Fine Gael using fears of Brexit as an excuse, has since September extended it for a further two years against the Dail vote, to try and prove themselves right, at its victims expense.)
But if our basic income needs become unconditional, safe and secure, all people can confidently aspire to contribute a working life doing something they believe in or at least something that pays them more to grow their basic income into one that allows more of the luxuries and pursuits they wish to do.
Sinn Fein are a national party that is socially progressive, embracing of minorities, refugees and immigrant community, and has the strongest ambition I can see, in a large party, to get real progress actually begun soon on our countries largest failings and continuous shortcomings in health, homes, enviornment, education, and working opportunity’s for the variety of potential ideas people in Ireland might realise, and I hope they will support a more progressive welfare system that’s unconditionally there as a foundation for all. Also a real support for community workers, culture the arts and sport!
Sinn Fein who delivered the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace and progress to Northern Ireland, has said it wants to form a government and will embrace coalition. A coalition is actually well suited to being a more democratically vital and responsive form of government. A coalition of progressive left would be good, but Ireland’s Greens and Labour will seek to pitch themselves as more conservative left coalition partners separate from Sinn Fein on the left and willing to do a deal with either Fine Gael or Fianna Fail (who are the two largest partys, they represent perhaps a half of votes). All these partys often disparage and insinuate dark things about Sinn Fein because of the ‘Troubles’ in the north that have mostly ended since the Good Friday Agreement all signed north & south in 1998. Its bizarre the Democratic Unionist Party in Northen Ireland work in government with Sinn Fein but the interests of established Southern party’s will not.
Sinn Fein and Fianna Fail could in fact form a strong coalition, if Fianna Fail’s present leadership can embrace this, it could be good and possible, it depends on, can Fianna Fail truly remember again their more progressive and ambitious origins that emerged out of Ireland’s revolutionary era?
Last week in Spain, though hardly reported here in Ireland, a new ‘centre’ left coalition of the large Spanish Socialist party, similar to Fianna Fail (perhaps) & Unidados Podemos a smaller but significant and tenaciously progressive anti public austerity party, formed together a new brave and necessary coalition. This offers a hopeful parallel.
I was happy earlier today when I read that Spain’s new goverment has begun the healing, by bravely appointing Dolores Delgado as atorney general, she has proven herself interested in taking a fairer approach towards Catalan’s elected leaders suffering the extreme of imprisonment for their political actions.
My dear friends and your friends and those you know and meet, please lets elect something braver, more ambitious and progressive for our society and the economy that must serve it.
Satisfying corporations with a race to the bottom is self destructive. It causes the destructive undercutting of societys funding through the need of courting corporate business through lowering the wages and state taxes they pay and the enviornmental needs they need to follow are posponed. Only International agreements can universally agree higher treshholds in wages, taxes and the vital regulations all business must pay and follow everywhere, this can effectivly coral corporate power inescapably and put all big business on a level playing field to continue to compete but in a fair and creative way that proves healthy for our central interest which is life of society’s and all the living enviornment in this world we share,
Lets elect a new government and give them a chance to try the better ‘ideas that have been held back for a generation’, if we find we don’t like it, then vote them out again. But don’t elect the same government, that despite its constant pretences over and over of new ambitious plans, new revised timetables, has not even begun to truly solve our main problems, after a decade they have proven they can’t. They spin progressive but have lead no real change, they only eventually followed ‘Repeal the 8th and ‘Marriage Equality Referendums’ once good people and community groups had developed awareness and the reality of suffering in families and people’s lives had actually delivered the lessons into our public opinion to accept and find them popular, then they got on board when the polls told them it would be a slam dunk, now they spin they lead it all along.
Now, mindful of the polling on a ‘green tide’ this party in government for a decade casts out a flurry of new ambitious proposals they suddenly promise to do for the future, so from going slow, rolling back on targets and doing nothing much for a decade in power on enviornment, all these spin masters need do is make radical sounding proposals to journalists, and suddenly they’re playing it that yes perhaps Fine Gael is too ambitious for the enviornment?!! but hey thats how we roll the poll, quick lets have the election, don’t debate below the surface, poll me there Collette!
Its just too expensive for many to live with quality and realise their potential or find a place to even live a life in, Fine Gael have not improved or even really hoped to solve our seemingly intractable problems, despite the spins and hypes they issue to distract and temporarily satisfy polls, their tested and repeatedly failed ideologies have not and can not solve or fix the problems people come to suffer and that hold so many of us back.
-besos Antonio
P.S. the artwork I present is called ‘Dawn Tide‘,
its a large 3.5 foot sq. pencil and ink drawing, with special sawdust, wood & fabric features in relief! From a series imagining fresh scenes at the birth of an Irish Republic. Drawn from multitudes of people’s mystery traces caught on film.
Its sub heading reads ‘ Pearse rises & Nelson falls, a new morning awakens in Dublin after 1916 ‘. by Antonio Carty
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