Worst In Class

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cover-feb

‘sup?

The latest issue of Village magazine, on shelves now.

Via Village editorial:

This edition of Village explores at length the extent to which the coalition government delivered on its Programme for Government. It’s a fair test and it shows that, beyond economic stability, the Government has been a disappointment.

Labour certainly does not have the Fine Gael appeal of consistency. It never does what its manifestos promise. Worse, a number of its senior TDs have allowed themselves to appear smug and ideologically jaded or even, in Alan Kelly’s case, dangerous. Because of the elasticity of its conscience Labour has long attracted the wrong type of representatives.

Fianna Fáil is tainted by its reckless past and the incoherence of its platform. It believes serving the people and business in equal measure is viable. It has learnt little beyond the need to regulate the banks.

Sinn Féin’s commitment to a Left agenda is unclear bearing in mind its defining preference for irredentist nationalism over ideology, its governing strategy in the North and its willingness to coalesce with Fianna Fáil. Its performance at local-authority level is not impressive or particularly leftist. It is cultist, and ambivalent about democracy and transparency, and its leaders lie casually about its, and particularly its leader Gerry Adams’, past.

Renua seems like a somehow unendearing chip off Fine Gael’s Christian Democratic block, with a penchant for propriety.

The Independent Alliance (dubbed Shane Féin) is utterly incoherent of policy and membership. If ex-stockbroker Mr Ross and turfcutter Michael Fitzmaurice ever breathed an atom of the same political air, Village cannot imagine where it was.

Village has a weakness for the Social Democrats, whose mild platform is essentially the same as Labour’s, though strangely more pro-business, but whose small membership is more prepossessing. Its antipathy to water taxes is expedient but regrettable.

The radical Left offers the huge appeal of integrity and seriousness but its opposition to property taxes is inexcusable, and its focus on opposition to water taxes rather than a broader anti-inequality platform, including opposition to the iniquities of Nama, corruption and the resurrection of the developer classes has sold its revolutionary ideology short.

The Green Party’s policies are often radical, and its agenda mature, but it is not hard-minded and it achieved so little in the last government that it is difficult to be enthusiastic.

The non-ideological, non-visionary parties of the pragmatic centre hold little appeal, even when mitigated by somewhat more thoughtful ones.

A coalition of the parties of the left, radical left and the Greens would, as always, best promote Village’s agenda, if no doubt imperfectly.

FIGHT!

Village magazine

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24 thoughts on “Worst In Class

  1. joe

    the buffoonification of Alan Kelly is a [redacted] project in support of Lowry (all politics is local). surprised the Village are propagating it.

    1. Joss

      So you’re saying that Alan Kelly acts like a total b****x just because [redacted] told him to?
      Well that changes everything.

      1. joe

        he is as stupid as any minister could be. but we wouldn’t be hearing so much about it if he wasn’t in the same constituency as ‘my best friend’

    2. BobbyJ

      Village has long argued that Alan Kelly is a poor Environment minister. I don’t think they are jumping on any bandwagon

      1. Kieran NYC

        And to be fair, the fact that he’s a totally incompetent bumhole isn’t an entirely novel concept.

        Mostly cuz it’s true

  2. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

    Village, take your ‘agenda’, and your buddy Enda, and stick them both back up the enda you plucked your water-charges from.

    Yours faithfully,

    Disgruntled.
    Jobstown.

    1. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

      Get a grip Clampers.
      It’s right-wing nonsense, masquerading as left-of-centre populism when such a position doesn’t even exist.

      1. Harry Molloy

        How could it possibly be right wing? Did we read the same thing? Is everything that’s not Cuba right wing?

      2. BobbyJ

        Have you ever read an issue of Village magazine? It ain’t right wing and it ain’t left-of-centre populism.

  3. Jake38

    Nicely summarized, particularly the Shinners………….However, “The radical Left offers the huge appeal of integrity and seriousness but its opposition to property taxes is inexcusable”….. kinda glides over the fact that their economic “policies” would return us to the stone age.

      1. Rob_G

        Oh but they would – at one point, Ruth Coppinger claimed that the Govt should nationalise Dell.

        – I wonder how all of the other large multi-national companies operating in Ireland would feel if we (forcibly) appropriated a private company?

        1. Kieran NYC

          Now, now. You know Moyest would agree with her.

          He wants a loss-making company to increase their wage bill by e5million and pay tram drivers an ordinary decent wage of e65,000 after all. Nationalisation’s too good for ’em.

    1. Harry Molloy

      My biggest feaR WITH THE LEFT IS THAT THEY’RE TOO FRACTURED AND DIVISIVE TO FORM A STABLE GOVERNMENT, STABILITY IS IMPORTANT TO ME

    2. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

      And the Left is not worth considering because it isn’t quite Left enough and let’s just leave that there where we left it.

      Who writes this crap?
      -Do they know that people can read it?

    1. sǝɯǝɯʇɐpɐq

      Finish your sentence Declan.
      Don’t be so shy.

      Make some sense, or just a comprehensible sentence.

      Something.
      Anything.

      Ask your supervisor if you need help.
      I’m in no hurry.

  4. Ultravox

    “Labour certainly does not have the Fine Gael appeal of consistency. It never does what its manifestos promise.”

    The Village editorial writer can ask the Labour Leader in the Seanad about that. Her name is on the front cover….

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