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budget 2008
While I'm not of the opinion that our current elected representatives are infallible (or anywhere even close to), I do believe that on the occasion of the national budget, opposition speakers should not be allowed to make solely negative comments. Instead, each opposition spokesperson for finance should have to make their own budget, showing how they'd have done things differently.
This not being the version of Ireland where I AM KING, of course, we have the usual scenario: most of the lobby groups who commented on the budget commented positively, and the only outspoken negative comments have been a bunch of largely meaningless soundbites from the losers of the last election. I mean, seriously. What does "he talks the talk but he does not walk the walk" actually mean in the context of this budget?
Hint to the guys on the wrong side of the house: if you came up with some plausible alternatives instead of just negating whatever the incumbents say, people might actually consider voting for you next time around.
This not being the version of Ireland where I AM KING, of course, we have the usual scenario: most of the lobby groups who commented on the budget commented positively, and the only outspoken negative comments have been a bunch of largely meaningless soundbites from the losers of the last election. I mean, seriously. What does "he talks the talk but he does not walk the walk" actually mean in the context of this budget?
Hint to the guys on the wrong side of the house: if you came up with some plausible alternatives instead of just negating whatever the incumbents say, people might actually consider voting for you next time around.
yeah! very annoying.
I wonder have you tried a message to the newspapers on that subject?
Green party did it too before they were in government.
But (I'm probably biased :-P) also sneakily wrote "proposals" like some stuff on eco-building. Ideas from which later appeared in government proposals. yay. This taking over the world by pushing good ideas (and some sneakiness of course) could be fun. :)
Of course it just seems that green is all fashionable and mainstream now so maybe the ideas would have had to be taken up anyway (by parties wishing to remain populist & mainstream). Damn. Was slightly more comfortable when green wasn't fashionable.
Green party have a policies section on their website.
Could that be a good idea for a political party?
And (after looking at other parties websites) the stuff in the policy section looks like policies and is comprehensive. Some of them do seem to be starting to have scarily slick front-page pictures though. Hmm.
http://www.greenparty.ie/en/policies/
Do Fianna Fail have policies? They definately have news but maybe websites aren't for policies:
http://www.fiannafail.ie/
Maybe ... they actually don't have real written down policies :-O
Maybe ... if they need something they can look up the Green Party website :)
Fianna Gael seem to have ~policies~ but clicking on a couple they're really jazzed up and sound-bitey. Very slick. Not comprehensive.
http://www.finegael.ie/Campaign/index.cfm/pkey/1084
Labour have policies, well, they have ... 4 ... ideas and policies :-D
http://www.labour.ie/policy/
PDs also have manifestos, links to press articles and various stuff on their policies section. Seems a bit better than Lab/FF. Maybe same as FG in content value? Hard to quantify.
http://www.progressivedemocrats.ie/our_policies/
Yikes. Sinn Fein have stuff on policies and policy documents. Not fully comprehensive but better (more meat) than FF/FG/Lab.
http://www.sinnfein.ie/policies/