Can you spot a leader for Ireland?

[jinnyjoe]

I watched a report from a north american indian in how they chose their future leaders; they used to watch children at play and said they could spot the future leaders instantly in their play and the way they dealt with other children. Could you spot a future Irish leader (as yet unknown) and if so why?

[Binn Beal]

Thankfully, Ireland is a democracy and has no use for 'leaders' other than elected representatives and collective responsibility.
The people of the Middle East are now in turmoil trying to find a way to depose their leaders and the leadership system. In Europe we acheived this, by and large, in1848.

[jinnyjoe]

Thankfully, Ireland is a democracy and has no use for 'leaders' other than elected representatives and collective responsibility.
The people of the Middle East are now in turmoil trying to find a way to depose their leaders and the leadership system. In Europe we acheived this, by and large, in1848.

Hi Binn Beal , point taken, but as you know well what I meant was natural born leaders, who lead for the good of the people and not for their own gain. There are very few of us are born natural leaders and I was just wondering have any of you good people spotted or identified any as potential leaders. Every good democracy needs a good leader or else we would all travel around like sheep.

[Binn Beal]

I don't accept that at all. Too many good people have struggled and died to establish democracy.

I know there is a trend in RTE and other media and commentry outlets to talk of 'leaders' as necessary to society, and the USA is positively obsessed with the notion.

I'll stick with democracy - warts and all.

[Sam Lord]

I don't accept that at all. Too many good people have struggled and died to establish democracy.

I know there is a trend in RTE and other media and commentry outlets to talk of 'leaders' as necessary to society, and the USA is positively obsessed with the notion.

I'll stick with democracy - warts and all.

You actually live in a plutocracy.

[Binn Beal]

How about kleptocracy?

[Sam Lord]

How about kleptocracy?

There have been aspects ...

[C. Flower]

I watched a report from a north american indian in how they chose their future leaders; they used to watch children at play and said they could spot the future leaders instantly in their play and the way they dealt with other children. Could you spot a future Irish leader (as yet unknown) and if so why?

Perhaps the answer is to choose our leaders from amongst the under 13s. :-)

[Binn Beal]

I will watch the lacrosse results with added interest.

[jinnyjoe]

Perhaps the answer is to choose our leaders from amongst the under 13s. :-)

You know I've often thought that Cass, maybe through this austerity we might just produce a nation that are not self obsessed and have a social consience, we can but hope.:)

[jinnyjoe]

BTW, my 5 yr old daughter told me to turn off the water whilst washing her teeth this morning as I was wasting it!! As they say education, education all the way.And I still say the best of our politicians are yet to come and as C.Flower says they will be from our now primary school kids.

[C. Flower]

BTW, my 5 yr old daughter told me to turn off the water whilst washing her teeth this morning as I was wasting it!! As they say education, education all the way.And I still say the best of our politicians are yet to come and as C.Flower says they will be from our now primary school kids.

Pre-puberty, young people tend to be visionary and to have the good of the species at heart. From 13 to 18 thought processes are displaced by hormones and exams. There's a resurgence of interest in politics from 18-25 after which parenting sets in, again displacing all rational contemplation of political issues, for most normal people, until they become grandparents and again take on a longer view.

I think we would benefit from at least listening more to the under-13s and over 65s.

[Sam Lord]

There's a resurgence of interest in politics from 18-25 after which parenting sets in, again displacing all rational contemplation of political issues, for most normal people ...

Just about all the political people I ever knew remained active after having children. I can't really recall one person going passive in order to parent. If they gave up politics it was for other reasons. Did I know a lot of abnormal people?

[C. Flower]

Just about all the political people I ever knew remained active after having children. I can't really recall one person going passive in order to parent. If they gave up politics it was for other reasons. Did I know a lot of abnormal people?
:D;)

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

A funny thing about our culture is that even though now we have the theoretical appearance of democracy we may actually have gone backward in terms of getting the right people into leadership positions.

Firstly Ireland exports much of its leadership potential for reasons of convenience. One notable example at least I can think of is a man born, educated and reared in Dublin who currently holds no less than eight honorary degrees from UK universities. Highly regarded.

There are plenty of quite wealthy Irish people (and unfortunately some who fall through the cracks because the wrench from home was too much for them) in the UK and I could name quite a number but won't for reasons of their privacy and I don't want some idiot chasing them down for 'green jersey' money.

For thousands of years we had petty kings who were strong leaders and a number of strong female leaders at that who also led warriors, families and sects. They were elected.

If a strong leader of a sect had a weak son or daughter then they simply were not accepted as leaders and it would pass to a stronger warrior thereby holding up the sect's viability and ability to protect themselves.

It was only with the Normans and some others who had hereditary leadership hierarchies that this was diverted into oppression of the island and a certain aping of these new customs.

We were Brehon for thousands of years since before the pyramids of Eqypt were built and our social, legal, inheritance systems worked for us because they were natural to us and interestingly also to Welsh, Scots and Britons and those social constructs worked.

Now we have a distorted and bastardised version of Norman law and we think it is natural to us. It isn't.

There's only one way to get strong capable leadership and that is promotion on merit. We certainly and obviously do not have that to any great degree.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I'm so glad that someone else mentioned the North American natives in this regard because thats who our cultural history before the great suppressions remind me most of when I think about it.

Sound mad? One example. The Tain Bo Cuilgne is a story of youths counting coup in high spirited fashion on another neighbouring sept.

Sounds exactly like what the young braves of North American used to do as I understand it.

Our hospitality laws were sacred as they were to the natives in NA. Our social laws were eerily similar in some ways and our feeling for the land was and sometimes in a flash one might say still survive. We have places were bad spirits are rumoured to walk and we had many gods, a pantheon like the tribes of North America had.

Odd statement at first but you have to read our pre-suppressions culture and if you keep that comparison in mind it does seem to gain ground.

[Binn Beal]

I would never vote for anyone with wealth, anyone who has university degrees or anyone who is good at sports to represent me.
I would also oppose any notion of 'leaders' especially strongmen leaders as this runs contrary to representative democracy.
The Tain legend is best represented in Ireland today by the gangs of Limerick and West Dublin. If you want string leaders, why not select one of these gang leaders?

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Well under the Brehon laws the sort of skangers you'd find in Limerick would have been attended to long before now.

Sanctions were quite imaginative back then and of course the penultimate sanction for such people who preyed on their own sept or community was to be declared 'out law' which was far more serious than some doddery old FF hack in a wig being paid to prevent further cost to the prison system and dumping skangers back to reoffend in their community again and again.

Youthful high spirits were firmly directed outwards to cattle-rustling and of course a family's name plus the restitution principles were good brakes on annoying one's own community too much. Cost yer Da money and you could find yourself on a boat to somewhere else with nothing to your name.

'Out law' meant the Brehon laws of hospitality were suspended for you and you were cast out of the community to scrape living off the woods more or less. No shelter could be offered to an 'out law' and anyone doing so faced serious fines and sanctions and loss of land and all sorts.

Being a skanger back then carried serious and rising penalties.

I agree however that wealth is not a good measure of leadership skills. Some of the most sociopathic nerds and weaklings have been made to look strong by that measure these days and I do know a bit about some of these 'hedgies' and bankers.

Traders used to be directed to the back door and they've got out of hand in my opinion ego wise since people started opening front doors for them.

[C. Flower]

Well under the Brehon laws the sort of skangers you'd find in Limerick would have been attended to long before now.

Sanctions were quite imaginative back then and of course the penultimate sanction for such people who preyed on their own sept or community was to be declared 'out law' which was far more serious than some doddery old FF hack in a wig being paid to prevent further cost to the prison system and dumping skangers back to reoffend in their community again and again.

Youthful high spirits were firmly directed outwards to cattle-rustling and of course a family's name plus the restitution principles were good brakes on annoying one's own community too much. Cost yer Da money and you could find yourself on a boat to somewhere else with nothing to your name.

'Out law' meant the Brehon laws of hospitality were suspended for you and you were cast out of the community to scrape living off the woods more or less. No shelter could be offered to an 'out law' and anyone doing so faced serious fines and sanctions and loss of land and all sorts.

Being a skanger back then carried serious and rising penalties.

I agree however that wealth is not a good measure of leadership skills. Some of the most sociopathic nerds and weaklings have been made to look strong by that measure these days and I do know a bit about some of these 'hedgies' and bankers.

Traders used to be directed to the back door and they've got out of hand in my opinion ego wise since people started opening front doors for them.

I would have very mixed feelings about leaders. Decision making processes, especially with IT, can be much broader now and involve large numbers of people. But there are times and places where you need one person to be given charge to make quick decisions - captain of a ship is an example.

Although I think I had this discussion before with an anarchist who was very persuasive about democratically run ships crews... ?

The Greeks used to draw lots for their leaders and there is something to be said for that.

Another way of excluding the power hungry is to have "single term" leaders - but then they go and have a coup and extend their term to indefinite.

Arming the entire population, like the Swiss, is one way of removing this as a possibility.

Every leader can be replaced. The problem in Ireland at the moment isn't leadership, its the population. We're taking a long time to get around to representing our own interests.

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Every leader can be replaced. The problem in Ireland at the moment isn't leadership, its the population. We're taking a long time to get around to representing our own interests.

Agree very much with this particularly the last sentence.

[C. Flower]

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Some people are making a start. Every Sunday.