Art, media, opinion and ideas
Co. Meath, 1 day after the Lisbon Treaty passes, we presumeOriginally uploaded by Editor_TuppAs Cian on Irishelection pointed out, the Irish Independent yesterday printed a story on the odder anti-Lisbon material available. This story hung on the inclusion of two images from the Flickr pool I had set up earlier in the week.
Elections are moments of truth- when we get as close as we can to really hearing what other people are thinking, albeit as a collective. And one of the more interesting things I've heard from this election was the general feeling (except from some Green party members) that having the Green Party in government could only be a good thing.
Day 23 Originally uploaded by The Labour Party. It's voting day today. The sun is shining in Dublin.
Two sites have popped up in the last few weeks doing things that ought really be done by the Oireachtas website, but probably never will be. Here's Mycandidate. ie, from the Rock the Vote people.
Turning and turning in the widening gyreThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,-The Second Coming, WB YeatsYeats could have been channelling the spirit of the modern political campaign manager. For nearly twenty years political parties and candidates have been successful in imposing previously undreamed controls on campaigns.
Politics is not a horserace. And politicians, contrary to the misleading impressions given by some political correspondents, are not the primary deciders of their own fate. For months we've been treated to articles detailing poll results and trying to find a correspondence with the doings and transpirings of our elected representatives.
Last Saturday's Irish Times opinion page, like most Saturdays, had a piece by Noel Whelan. In this the former FF candidate and FF electoral advisor with a weekly column in a national newspaper laid out the reasons why citizens ought not be permitted to state their opinions publically. It was, he argued unpersuasively, a danger to democracy.
Something we learned today; It won't be called this Thursday (26th April). Nor will it be called on Thursday of next week (4th May). Experts and watchers of this kind of things will be better placed than I to say when it might be called.
I've mentioned before that the number of seats with a winning margin of less than 500 doubled from the 1997 election to the 2002 one- from 9 to 18. Of those, in the last election, two were decided by less than 10 votes. That means that your vote, and the votes of your family and friends, may be enough to tip the election one way or another next year.
Well, what now?It’s all very well to issue a single sustained clarion blast. It’s a little tougher to actually gather forces and have a clear idea of what to do with them. Nonetheless the last few days have seen the bare, tentative sketching of the kinds of things a push for change would involve.
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