A New Party for Ireland

[fluffybiscuits]

We set up a new party, what do we do that is practical?


-Burn the bondholders
-Prosecute those for financial treason
-Ensure banks are run to a new standard
-Increase tax on those earning over €100k a year
-New centralised democracy
-Voting age lowered to 16
-Encourage mutual co-ops
-Grants to start new businesses
-Look at renewable energy
-Improve rights for minorities in Ireland
-Health system that is free or low cost
-Subsidised child care
-Rehabilitation programmes for those with criminal records, the lock them up and throw away the key approach does not work
-Ensure multinationals here sign a document ensuring that they engage in ethically sound practices around the world
-More links between the people of Europe
-Discussion on the NI Question,can we come to a solution?
-Specific secondary schools that teach only foreign languages, Irish,Maths and English
-To boost our universities into the top 10 in the world
-Invest money into research and design - especially science and technology
-Build links with the working class movement in Britian
-Secularise the constitution
-Entrust patronage of ALL schools to a Board of Management
-System to take civil action against orders vicariously acted in child abuse
-Ensure the Vatican plays a role in the above]
-Removal of religion from all schools
-Bring in the right to die
-Legalise abortion
-Ensure those on social welfare have a net to secure them when they lose jobs - perhaps subsidise their wage in their job till new job can be found?
-Proper training courses for the unemployed but give them a wide choice of what they want to do.
-Abandoning the jobsbridge scheme (slave labour)
-Build a stronger Galetacht linked to language learning
-Encourage Protestants to move down from the North
-Give the right to vote to our emmigrants
-Stronger agricultural base to diversify food production
-A series of local projects to grow foods such as bananas, grapes etc.
-Start up a burgeoning wine industry?
-Lower tax threshold for artists.


Thats just a start....

[Richardbouvet]

The setting up of banana and wine industries would suggest we also encourage more global warming.

I'm all for it but the greens would not like it at all.

[fluffybiscuits]

The setting up of banana and wine industries would suggest we also encourage more global warming.

I'm all for it but the greens would not like it at all.

Self sufficient (perhaps simon could help me on this he is good with this!)


Use greenhouses down in Cork or Wexford and use solar panels to keep heat in . We have the experience of producing beer, wine is slightly different but there is room there for an industry built around a co-op.....

[Slim Buddha]

The setting up of banana and wine industries would suggest we also encourage more global warming.

I'm all for it but the greens would not like it at all.

What "greens"? I cannot think of a bigger irrelevance in Irish politics than the Greens now. Utterly discredited outfit

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

I like your list Fluffy and would add that I advocate industry which is sustainable and linked to what we know we are good at- agriculture. Industrially Ireland really has only one large native industry and that has always been farming/agriculture.

However I would link that with a very strong emerging market in the east that everyone wants and where Scotland seems to have made an early head-start- doing exactly what I suggest. Aquaculture- by which I mean supplying an exploding demand for wild salmon in China. Think I've been through it before on another thread here but it is a no-brainer for an island like ourselves and could rescue and revive the marine sector along the west coast.

We have a lot of rich farmland for a small island and that supplies most of out balance of trade pluses with other countries. Wild salmon (top end to avoid attrition rates in fishfarming through disease losses) exports to China are going through the roof and Scotland won't be able to supply the demand soon enough.

We don't see our geographic position clearly enough with the big blue bit to the west out to some 200 miles as potential farmland. Sustainable fish farming, shellfish inshore and salmon/whitefish further out could be an export goldmine both to the US and Chinese markets.

It would bring with it the natural concern to keep the seas clean so ecologically sound. Fish processing plants along the west coast would provide jobs in unemployment blackspots.

I looked into the physical act of setting up a party in Ireland before and it appears there are a number of barriers set in place effectively by the current cartel parties. You have to have a minimum number of supporters prepared to register I believe and there are some bumpf steps to go through.

The better route in my opinion would be off a movement, gaining support and then registering as a party.

However the greatest barrier of all is the following question you will face immediately; 'Whats in it for me?'

The second issue you'll face is a number of people with pet hobbyhorses (the angry Lesbian on the bicycle demanding your position on more cycle paths dedicated solely to Lesbians etc etc) and the godsquad demanding your position on abortion/alien resurrection/the northern question and so on...

[Jolly Red Giant]

We set up a new party, what do we do that is practical?


-Burn the bondholders
-Prosecute those for financial treason
-Ensure banks are run to a new standard
-Increase tax on those earning over €100k a year
-New centralised democracy
-Voting age lowered to 16
-Encourage mutual co-ops
-Grants to start new businesses
-Look at renewable energy
-Improve rights for minorities in Ireland
-Health system that is free or low cost
-Subsidised child care
-Rehabilitation programmes for those with criminal records, the lock them up and throw away the key approach does not work
-Ensure multinationals here sign a document ensuring that they engage in ethically sound practices around the world
-More links between the people of Europe
-Discussion on the NI Question,can we come to a solution?
-Specific secondary schools that teach only foreign languages, Irish,Maths and English
-To boost our universities into the top 10 in the world
-Invest money into research and design - especially science and technology
-Build links with the working class movement in Britian
-Secularise the constitution
-Entrust patronage of ALL schools to a Board of Management
-System to take civil action against orders vicariously acted in child abuse
-Ensure the Vatican plays a role in the above]
-Removal of religion from all schools
-Bring in the right to die
-Legalise abortion
-Ensure those on social welfare have a net to secure them when they lose jobs - perhaps subsidise their wage in their job till new job can be found?
-Proper training courses for the unemployed but give them a wide choice of what they want to do.
-Abandoning the jobsbridge scheme (slave labour)
-Build a stronger Galetacht linked to language learning
-Encourage Protestants to move down from the North
-Give the right to vote to our emmigrants
-Stronger agricultural base to diversify food production
-A series of local projects to grow foods such as bananas, grapes etc.
-Start up a burgeoning wine industry?
-Lower tax threshold for artists.


Thats just a start....

Sounds like the PBPA

(And by the way - there's a few seriously dodgy ones in there)

[riposte]

What "greens"? I cannot think of a bigger irrelevance in Irish politics than the Greens now. Utterly discredited outfit

What about the Labour Party?

[eamo]

Fluffy, I thought you had joined the SWP?

[Apjp]

Fluffy you seem almost mad. Himself me and sidey had a chat the other day and it turns out the biscuits thinks we should have some mad political union to replace the current one. Fluffy repeatedly said he is not pro-Irish sovereignty, and I notice that is not on his list either. Simple things like having a secular constitution are irrelevant when the Lisbon Treaty is your constitution. We had this long bloody thread before on starting a party which Fluffy veered somewhere from liberalism-socialism-unionism. I would not go anywhere near a party which did not recognise Ireland's right to self determination.

[Slim Buddha]

What about the Labour Party?

Still in government, unfortunately, and therefore not as irrelevant.

[Ogiol]

Fluffy you seem almost mad. Himself me and sidey had a chat the other day and it turns out the biscuits thinks we should have some mad political union to replace the current one. Fluffy repeatedly said he is not pro-Irish sovereignty, and I notice that is not on his list either. Simple things like having a secular constitution are irrelevant when the Lisbon Treaty is your constitution. We had this long bloody thread before on starting a party which Fluffy veered somewhere from liberalism-socialism-unionism. I would not go anywhere near a party which did not recognise Ireland's right to self determination.

I find peoples simplistic conjecture that all nationalism is right wing to be, well, simplistic. The irish lefts' allergy to soverignty issues is really, when i boils down to it, disturbing. Its like saying equality for all but under a foreign government! yea that

[unspecific]

I don't think any party with a perfect programme can change things Fluffy. I think one needs a militant social movement, that is capable of consciously toppling the capitalist system to be in a situation where implementing those things would be possible.

A state that belongs to the wealthy confiscating or competing with the establishment is just impossible. Something has to give - either you break them or they break you.

[Sidewinder]

I find peoples simplistic conjecture that all nationalism is right wing to be, well, simplistic. The irish lefts' allergy to soverignty issues is really, when i boils down to it, disturbing. Its like saying equality for all but under a foreign government! yea that

The odd thing is that both here and the darkside forum both currently have very active threads on the broad southern partitionism/national sovereignty/northern ireland topic. Seems to be a live topic this week for some reason, and all the demented little Cruiserologists are putting on a fine display of being three herrings short of a Reliant Robin.

The nutjobbery on display is fascinating, hilarious and disturbing all at the same time. There's a lot of very bizarre "thinking" going on on that island it seems.

[Ogiol]

The odd thing is that both here and the darkside forum both currently have very active threads on the broad southern partitionism/national sovereignty/northern ireland topic. Seems to be a live topic this week for some reason, and all the demented little Cruiserologists are putting on a fine display of being three herrings short of a Reliant Robin.

The nutjobbery on display is fascinating, hilarious and disturbing all at the same time. There's a lot of very bizarre "thinking" going on on that island it seems.

Flavour of the week I reckon! And yes, It's completely shocking, really, to see the level of uninformed sindothink on here about the 6, I mean, this site is a different kettle of fish to others, and in general there's good debate on a wide range of issues and ingeneral a very left bias, but NOT when it comes to the north!

It's gonna be a long road ahead if the damage is to be undone. Its like having some really good and smart friends who suddenly become psycopaths when the topic turns to the north

Anyway, back to the topic, great idea, new party, weh-hey! Where will they fit in tho? Are the ULA to be disestablished? Most of the ideas on the list are fine and things that should have been done long ago, (secularising education being one), but then there are some dodgy ones too!

[Captain Con O'Sullivan]

Why attempt to bring nationalism into disrepute while in the middle of an economic crisis at which no blame can be laid at the door of nationalists?

(1) Corporates (The rentier/merchant class) issuing demands to nations based on how 'systemically' important they are.

(2) An attempt by those on the right and the left to portray nations without borders as somehow something to work towards when displacement of populations has been in the past a direct contributor to extremist violence and polarisation in domestic politics.

(3) The complete failure of the left to oppose (in Ireland's case) although Greece remains vibrant with perhaps Alex Tsipras the only one I know of around Europe who appears to have the nous and the will to stand up against Goldman Sachs placement in Europe.

From my point of view I'm more than happy- I know I bore some with references to history but that gives me an awareness that the political pendulum does swing and with the inevitable backlash against EU/German attempts at removal of self-determination, the corporations moving into an almost open dismissal of the democratic national processes in the markets in which they operate and an emerging renaissance in interest in localism I'm sitting happily.

Ireland is not Greece. Spain is not Greece. But when the Greek solution is attempted on both prepare to watch that pendulum take a swing. And I suspect it will provide a serious boost to nationalism.

All to the good.