From top: Wales Green Party assembley election literature; Dan Boyle
Wales goes to the polls today and a ‘richly rewarding’ position as Wales Green Party campaign manager comes to an end for the author.
Dan Boyle writes:
This is what it all come down to. After eight months a project is coming to an end; a phase of life has been lived through.
Today is polling day for elections to the National Assembly for Wales. The whim I followed then now makes sense to me. I needed to get away so I better understood what home was to me.
While the experience has not been been without frustration, there are many warm and happy memories I can take from having been here.
Not least of those will be of people who choose to promote their values, knowing of the difficulty of being able to persuade others – the apathetic, the cynical and the unthinking.
For such people to have one person who shares their values, elected, would be a victory. Those of us who have been through that so many times realise what often follows that becomes the start of a whole new set of problems.
Progress is being made though. I hope that a breakthrough can be achieved. Not to recognise any contribution I have made, because that really isn’t important. It should happen because The Greens in Wales deserve it to happen.
I would argue the political culture of Wales would be better should Greens be elected to the National Assembly.
Welsh politics, like Irish politics, has too many elected representatives who are politically bland, politically blind, politically mute.
The people I’ve been working with; people of passion, ability and commitment, are immeasurably better than many of the time servers the voters of Wales have been led to believe represent what is supposed to be their best option.
There are differences, some nuances; interpretations where communications were sometimes less than clear. My hands off managerial style has as often frustrated as it has amused.
Despite these it has been a positive experience. For me a richly rewarding one.
An ideal world for me would be one where when I write a sentence, like this last sentence, it would be understood in the context in which it was meant. When I write ‘richly rewarding’ it rarely has anything to do with money. This has been a position, a job, for which I’ve received payment.
It hasn’t been a position in which I’ve made money. I took up the position not intending to make money. I continued to rent in Cork, always having intended to come back.
The reward has been doing something interesting, getting to know people I otherwise wouldn’t have known; enjoying the scenery and the history of a beautiful country. That is reward.
The past is another country, one I’m greatly looking forward to be returning to. Like it has before it will frustrate me and it will make me angry, but more often than not that frustration and anger will be about myself.
I’m coming home Cork.
Díolch Cymru.
Dan Boyle is campaign manager for the Wales Green Party and a former Green Party TD and Senator. Follow Dan on Twitter: @sendboyle
“Welsh politics, like Irish politics, has too many elected representatives who are politically bland, politically blind, politically mute.”
>helped support the Fianna Fail government whose incompetence derailed the country and made life inestimably worse for an entire generation
Lol
Deffo not mute though in fairness is Dan
Sure you’re wasting your time Dan, didn’t you hear the news….
“God above is in charge of the weather and we here can’t do anything about it” says our esteemed Danny Healy Rae
I know. Healy Rae’s and kneejerkers like above in Ireland. UKIP here. Trump in the US. Ignorance truly is bliss. It’s not going to stop me trying though.
What’s your view on the near-total media blackout around Tory election fraud?
There’s 26 MPs concerned and they only have a majority of twelve, yet bugger all on it anywhere except C4 News days before polling >_<
Well that’s bloody typical. They’re some shower.
Nice pic ahjayzis, btw.
Sad, but true….
Don’t know why I was shocked by Healy-Rae’s blatantly calculated them-and-us grandstanding-at-the-farm-gate performance. Using climate change as a wedge to divide rural voters from the pointy-headed EU hippies who want to take away their combustible cows is such catastrophically irresponsible short-term vote-getting – talk about the mediocrity of evil. Argh.
Kind of like campaigning against Irish Water while tendering for Irish Water contracts.
ARGH!
Now now, careful, or Tubs will be here to shout over you so you can’t make your point.
I like Healy Rae. It’s nice to be reminded how mediocre and politically immature as a country we remain.
Very little normal politics going on here. Everything is being swamped by the Brexit referendum. It’s more that than a conspiracy.
TTIP leaks being mentioned at all Dan?
Ah come on, Dan.
Stealing a general election is a far more important story than the Labour antisemitism stuff the BBC spent an entire week obsessing over.
And yet;
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChcigOLWYAEVTiZ.jpg
The election laws here are arcane. By elections can occur. But those ‘convicted’ are free to stand again. I’m not sure which of the 26 seats could be considered marginal. Horrible voting system.
These are prosecutable frauds though.
“Making a false declaration in relation to candidate spending carries a punishment of up to a year in jail and/or an unlimited fine – and anyone found guilty is barred from standing for election as an MP or holding elected office for three years.”
I just think the dearth of reporting is so antidemocratic on the eve of an election. Newsnight ran with the US election and Hungary last night >_<
Not to mention they’re running an out-and-out anti-Muslim campaign against Sadiq Khan from Cameron down, called out by Muslim Tories and the likes of Peter Oborne alike, none of which got near as much coverage as Livingstone and Shah being muppets.
The bias is breathtaking.
BBC is awful huge fear of the government because of its charter.
The whole mess actually paints Irish democracy and media in a really good light.
Hey, now steady on lol
Nope. Reality is Tory government would endorse TTIP quicker than EU would.
Yikes !
Thanks Dan
As long as Israel continues illegal occupation and treating Palestinians like prisoners in their own country then anyone can say anything they like about Israel as a country, and it will not be considered antisemitic, but anti-Israel……… as far as I’m concerned.
Act like a complete c**t, get treated like one. Illegal, is illegal, is illegal.
The Welsh green party seems very “middle class” (Alice Hooker Stroud, Grenville Ham, Pippa Pemberton, Frances Bryant, to name a few). Might be difficult to appeal to the “ordinary folk” and prevent the Welsh greens going the same direction as the Irish greens, too many noble intentions and policies that cost people money.
Your sarky comment above about Danny Healy Rae doesn’t help the green cause Dan. How about some rational debate instead of your more than occasional name calling?
Now, what Healy Rae said was:
“If we go back to the 11th and the 12th centuries, this country was roasted out of it and in the 15th and 16th centuries we were drowned out of it. In the 1740s, we’d a famine that we lost over three million people because of two years of bad weather”.
Now we know that the planet has been warmer and cooler in the past so Danny might have a point to make (I personally don’t agree with him, but I also don’t think that taxation will solve global warming).
I haven’t heard the Irish GP make any comment about this, in fact the only comment I’ve heard from the greens is your “Healy Rae’s and kneejerkers like above in Ireland. UKIP here. Trump in the US. Ignorance truly is bliss”. Hardly constructive is it?
Huh? Is this where your heart says creationism is a theory just like Darwin’s evolutionary theory and we need to teach the kids all of the theories?
You seem to start with the notion that what Healy Rae had to say has some merit…it doesn’t. Simply because a moron like Healy Rae or Trump make a statement doesn’t mean that the rest of us have to take it seriously.
“Your sarky comment above about Danny Healy Rae doesn’t help the green cause Dan.” …considering what he is responding to, it is more than appropriate imo.
Clampers, like it or not (and I don’t), rural Ireland is full of Healy Raes who want to do the opposite to what Dublin says. Look at the talks on government formation and the demands from rural TDs.
My point is this, you don’t win them over by slagging them off in public, especially when you’re considered a Dublin 4 political party to begin with (which is how the greens are perceived) and 20% of irish greenhouse gases are produced by cattle!
Ryan and Healy Ray on Radio Kerry. No slagging or sneering. Guess which of them invokes the Pope?
http://media.radiokerry.ie/mediamanager/embed/player/podcasts/9/item/56428
How do we handle it then? Listen respectfully and pretend it’s a totally valid opinion worthy of respect?
It’s anti-science, anti-intellectual bull that shouldn’t be pandered to.
We rightly condemn people fear-mongering about basic life-saving vaccines – the stakes are arguably far higher when it comes to climate change.
Brilliant headline..in fairness.
Thanks realPolitichks, Dan’s choice.
It’s very clever..
…it would appear that your tallies are not very green Dan…but you certainly are consistent.