From left: Eddie Hobbs, Lucinda Creighton and John Leahy
I’m all in favour of the members of a party deciding its policies. But every substantial political party in Ireland has been built around a substantial idea — an idea that can generate real passion.
This [Reboot ireland] is the flimsiest foundation stone any party has ever had under it.
There’s no anger here, no passion, no conviction.
It all reads like it was written by people who fancy themselves as marketers, or merchandisers.
Some political parties want to fight for the poor and the downtrodden. Some want to fight for the free economy. Some have single, critical issues, such as the environment.
This crowd wants to champion human inventiveness.
When the party’s founder, Lucinda Creighton, is asked about the first national campaign in which it will be be involved, the referendum on same-sex marriage, she says that she’ll “probably support it”, but her party won’t take any position on it.
If that’s her idea of leadership, God help us all.
New party needs a reboot already: it’s devoid of passion or purpose (Fergus Finlay, Irish Examiner)
To call Reboot Ireland fuzzy would be an insult to Gerry Adams’s teddy bear…
…Reboot Ireland would like to be the new PDs. It wishes to appeal to the same small business and professional class that is fed up both with government in general and with current politics in particular. But neither side of the PD equation is available to it. The economic formula of cutting taxes and deregulating everything has been disastrously discredited. The social side of the liberal agenda doesn’t work either, because the rebooters have their origins solely in their opposition to even minimal reform of the most draconian anti-abortion laws in the developed world. Hence the fuzziness. The new party is a solution in search of problems – or at least of problems that can be addressed with right-wing policies that don’t appear to be too right-wing.
Reboot And Be Damned (Finatan O’Toole, Irish Times – unavailable online)
Previously: A Terrible Rebooty Is Born
(Sam Boal/Photocall ireland)
…at last…a subject where Fergus Finaly is well able to lecture…political irrelevance.
Posted this up over the weekend
6 Curious Things About #RebootIreland, Creighton and Eddie Hobbs.
http://soundmigration.wordpress.com/2015/01/04/rebootireland-creighton-hobbs-6-things/
Not bad, but very easy pickings, in fairness.
It’s easy pickings because they’re so transparently shit.
10 Reasons Why #RebootIreland Isn’t A Reboot At All: http://www.buzzfeed.com/peurgomies/rebootmyarse-9-reasons-why-rebootireland-isnt-188bz
Also Eddie Hobbs trashed the Reform Alliance in February 2014.
https://twitter.com/colettebrowne/status/551825300473266176
To put it succinctly, if you are going to launch a new party the first thing you should have is a name. The fact that they don’t – says everything you need to know about this crowd. They appear totally amateur and devoid of real ideas let alone policies. In an era where marketing is king, the first thing you must have is an identifiable brand and from that you build your movement through hard work and persuasion.
Thick.
your contributions this morning are concise and to the point, Freia.
I dunno, I think thick is a great name for the party
The moniker ‘thick’ already applies to Sinn Fein, People Before Profit, The Socialist Party, The Green Party, Labour, Fianna Fail, and Fine Gael.
ah you mean “Tick”
Hmm. from your criticism, Lou, I would have to deduce, that you are not one of the happy band of the 500 or so “professional volunteers”.
“The economic formula of cutting taxes and deregulating everything has been disastrously discredited.” Fintan O’Toole.
Yes, the huge deficit exists because we’re not taxing enough, it has nothing to do with the expenditure side at all. Oh no sir eee.
The Irish Deficit is wholly founded and fuelled by the national payroll and benchmarked superanns.
The boondoggles like Incinerators, Mater Site Children’s Hospital…. don’t help. But at least they are not recurring annually. In the main.
And it just keeps incrementing along
so the deficit is just the public sector pay bill. I know, let’s sack everyone.
No
But at least attempt to bring pay pensions and allowances into line with peers in Europe
And as for automatic increments
They should have been suspended by Linehan Jnr. R.I.P.
You seem to think incremental rise just keep going and going. They stop you know and not everyone is on huge money. And only the very top have descent pensions. I pay (including pension levy) over €250 a month into my pension, Yet my pension is shit. I’d opt out today if I was allowed to.
Also i get zero allowance. It’s just not good “news” when it comes to public sector unless it’s bad news. The vast majority don’t have allowance, gold plated pensions, but that never makes the news.
Sack everyone and just remove all social welfare as that costs a huge chunk. If you are not working you beg, steal, starve or die. But that won’t end well… usually with beheading’s for the ruling classes.
They do have a mission tho
Money
Creighton repeatedly referred to the citizens of Ireland as consumers, nothing more than consumers in an economy, not once did she refer to us as citizens in a society – Harney did the same, now she sits on boards of private companies she was supposed to regulate. The requirements of a humane society are secondary to this crowd, just like the PD’s.
Like I said
Money
Hear, hear!
I did enjoy reading the above, but I think ya nailed it here Kolmo!
The thing that strikes me is that people are still at the point where “the PD’s” is the end of a lengthly ponder on who this crowd are.
That’s where I started.
Which proves that it doesn’t takes a great political mind to see.
This is basically the PD’s.
They could just shorten it to the Cretins
With Hobbs on
But surely Eddie Hobbs, the peoples champion, wouldnt do this just for the money would he?
When it comes to running an economy, the very last people you should listen to are the left-wing commentariat! The likes of Fintan O’Toole and Bernardo Finlay (spend and tax) are still championing inane left wing economic policies that failed miserably in the 1970s!
We have a media which is overwhelmingly dominated by the semi-literate left who denounce and demonize anyone who challenges their perception of ‘social economics’ (which of course is bunkum) Seriously, I wonder how many of our media pundits have ever studied economics, accountancy, taxation or indeed finance. I would guess few if any?
You think our media is left wing? Really? I obviously live in a different country to you. You wouldn’t know left wing if it hit you with a hurl.
And here I was thinking ‘to hurl’ was to vomit..
Perhaps, you meant a hurley stick?
I’d say he meant hurl. ‘Hurley stick’ is what people who’ve only ever seen pictures of hurling in books call it.
More assimilation needed
Yes Freia, beyond being a monosyllabic uneducated ignoramus who cannot seem to express herself, is there anything else you wish to add?
If you are going to engage in ad hominem you could do it more eloquently – but sadly god gave you a mouth but not the brains to fill in the gap!
Ha, true enough, tell us again Louis how you wished Sinead O’Connor was dead!
That was gas altogether.
And you’re Gore Vidal are ya?
Wind it in
F
And you’re Gore Vidal are ya?
Wind it in
FFS
Christ BS!
Reply to Louis LaPrick BTW
Would you ever give over, with going on about, “engaging in ad hominem”.
That’s the sort of thing Americans do, to demonstrate how “sophisticated” they are. It makes you sound like a bit of a **** – in fairness.
Constantin Gurdgiev.
Really what we need in this country is more politicians educated in the areas they work in.
I propose we need less politicians in general. I would suggest a cut of at least 400% if not more
The poignancy of a homeless man expiring at the gates of Leinster House was not lost on me as I have long advocated turning the latter into a homeless shelter
We also need politicians to be working in those areas.
Like Leaving Fitzgerald in Dept of Children.
That said:
Bottler is a Doctor.
Shatter is a solicitor.
Yes, the damned liberal left wing media that, for some reason, highlighted a new right wing party with no policies and no ideas on the front page of their newspapers for two days after they announced nothing.
So far, Reboot Ireland/the Regressive Democrats look to me like a bad table quiz team in need of a fourth player.
Ireland has seen a lot of new parties come and go but I cannot remember a time when a former minister of state held a press conference where absolutely nothing was unveiled apart from a hashtag and the promise of having something slightly less vague to announce ‘sometime’ in Feburary.
However, despite offering no policies, Ms Creighton needs a million euro of goodwill from the pockets of Europe’s most economically beleaguered taxpayers in order to fund/purchase/rent/invent her as yet unformulated ideas. Parties have been publicly funded in the past – Daniel O’Connell kind of invented the idea with the Catholic Rent and de Valera revisited the crowd sourcing idea when launching FF in 1926. However, asking for a million quid from the public with no information on what is being funded is a form of Irish tragedy and comedy constructed in a way only one as divorced from the reality of Irish household budgets as the leading member of a power-couple earning a cumulative annual income of €235,000 of your money per annum could.
Returning to the table quiz metaphor, the public, and especially the media, should not be forced to play the game here. Ignore the set-up: go and ask Creigton the hard-hitting economic questions which she has hoped will be deflected onto Hobbs and get Eddie Hobbs to tell you what his feelings are on abortion, Savita Halappanavar, and any other social/moral question he is likely to have to decide upon in the scary and unlikely event he becomes George Lee Lite and enters the Dáil. I suspect he will have some very interesting answers.
Political parties are not table quiz teams. Each member will have a vote if they make it to the Oireachtas and I want to know how Eddie Hobbs (and whoever John Leahy is) will vote on social issues and I want to know if Lucinda has more nuanced views on economics beyond repeated iterations of #BSCITWIWTDB and other such policies concocted in a snug in Castlebar c. 2010.
Senator FHE has been very quiet of late but I assume she’s busily watching reruns of the Sunday Game/Match of the Day so she can represent Reboot Ireland in the sports round.
I think they’re holding Forgetful Fidelma back as a secret flibbertigibbet weapon.
Either that or she forgot that the launch was on.
Or she got fonged off the train from Galway for having no ticket.
She was attending the launch of the Galway Frape Crisis Centre. A noble cause.
She might have forgotten to tax her car so can’t get around as much as she would like to.
Don’t forget Peter Mathews, he will pull in the middle age bigot crowd just as lucinda needs them.
Implying all middle aged bigots are also fools?
I think the dim middle aged bigoted demographic’ is rather smaller than you imagine, it just gets more air time, probably because of their entertainment value.
Or as someone here joked a few days ago ‘I Can’t Believe It’s Not Fine Gael’. Total damp squib whatever they choose to call themselves. Michael Fitzmaurice would make a better fist of starting a new party – at least he doesn’t speak in meaningless mumbo jumbo – but he too is dyed-in-the-wool Catholic conservative on social issues, so although likeable, he’s not radical enough to inspire hope for real change. Maybe Stephen Donnelly might step up?
“hope for real change” – call me a cynic but LOL
No, in fact – ROFLMAO
Donnelly is in the Shane Ross camp.
What exactly are rural values?
Given that only 37% of the population live there anymore, they already ignore the remaining 63% or urban population.
Coming events cast their shadow and PD Nua rebooted in a Jackboot
won’t rescue the right….the political class that have bled the Country
for the last 4 years face decimination….this their pensions, perks and
privelages its all about and not the future of Ireland..
Are they abolishing the 3 Principle Austeritiy Taxes….USC, Property Tax
and Water Tax…..the Greek Elections will tell a tale and the later Irish
one will decide it all and they know it and so do their Masters in Europe:
Welcome Eirigi, come on in.