General Election 2024

[tbrick18]

TBrick18:

What do you think of Sinn Fein (along with the DUP) plotting to take £800k off an autism charity for their own pet community projects?

I actually can't get my head around either of them even thinking of doing it.

Callous, greedy, selfish, uncaring pricks.

100% would not agree with that - like I said, plenty I dont agree on.
But also need to put into context, local councils and central government are not running in the same way.
For all we know the Belfast council counsellors were on a solo run - I can see any of SF/DUP leadership being happy with putting there name to that decision.

[weareros]

SF's north performance gets brought up because they tend to be most vocal that 26 county is a failed state after 100 years of tweedledee and tweedledum.

Education gets brought up but "Republic" has the most university places per capita in the EU. Indeed it has the highest percentage of population with a university degree.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1084737/eu-27-adults-with-tertiary-education-attainment/#:~:text=Ireland%20was%20the%20European%20country,hold%20a%20tertiary%20education%20title.

It also has twice the amount of university places per capita than North (btw i blame Unionists for that and their sectarian policies). But in 1960s FF had a good vision for education and we now have 3rd level universities spread all around the country. I generally detest FF but credit where credit is due.

Health gets brought up but an impartial and renowned observer - The Lancet - rates Ireland as 8th best healthcare system in world. Of course there's issues but doctors and nurses in north are coming south for better pay and conditions. People live longer too.

The south's big surpluses can be credited to the vision of Ruari Quinn of Labour to reduce corporation tax to 12.5%, now 15% under OECD rules.

Stormont had the opportunity to follow suit but they have to convince the British exchequer that they will make up what they'd lose (which is not much as north only brings in about £1bn in corporate tax). They didn't even try as if yet.

Don't get me started on agriculture. It's well known that the SF/DUP 2014 "Going for Growth" strategy is the reason there's so much pollution in the North. I'd say it's also responsible for the higher levels of botulism in cattle with all these big farms mixing chickens and cattle. Any farmer worth their salt will tell you that cattle coming into contact with chicken shit causes botulism. Of course it's one of the reasons Ulster Farmers Union are crying about veterinary medicines. The EU has banned the medicine used to bypass unsafe sanitary farming methods that Going for Growth championed. But bring these up and sure they have no real power.

[tbrick18]

NHS metrics, waiting lists etc are much worse here than in the rest of the UK, no party here is willing to make difficult decisions - we can't blame everything on the Brits.

Just this week it's been reported that the £11m Stormont was going to raise by removing the rates cap, so that those with the highest valued homes pay higher rates, will not now be realised this year because they didn't have a meeting in time about it - so it will now be 2026.

Hadn't heard that - but it is ridiculous.
Why was the meeting not held on time? Having first hand experience of working with NI Civil Service - I wouldn't be too quick to point the finger of blame unless the facts are known.

[tbrick18]

SF do make the effort alright unlike DUPUDA who govern for their side only.
The Orange order and their adherents making their usual bigoted disgrace of themselves over the Deputy mayor of the area switching on Christmas lights in Broughshane.
Knuckle daggers then damaging the premises of the Community group who provided the tree and lights.
No unionist councillor condemning that.

Meanwhile kneecap win their case against the Brit Government.

And give half of the £14,500 to a community group on the Shankill Road.

Brilliant!
I'd say there was some conflicted views in the Shankill about getting money from Kneecap.

[tbrick18]

Are you for real?

My point is with the surplus of money about in the 26 counties, FFG have made a mess of it.

Look at the housing situation - a complete mess.
Look at the health system - a mess. They made a mess of the mid-West hospital situation. Never mind the 'still being built' children's hospital.
Carers and people with disabilities - it's a mess.

Look at education. A shortage of almost 2, 000 teachers on the eastern seaboard and all Foley is worried about is spending millions on phone pouches. You couldn't make it up.
They've cut SNA's at school also.

They've closed garda stations all over the country. In rural areas, people take turns at going to mass such is their fear of being broken into.

They said they'd stop the USC charge...but guess what?

Fisheries - a mess.

This is just a sample.

I listened to Harris this evening on with Matt Cooper. He kept talking about what he was going to do. Cooper got exasperated and said, Simon, you've been in power, you were the Health Minister and Taoiseach. Wtf didn't you do something about it then? It was embarassing listening to Harris...'I've made it my priority to..' etc. etc.

You must feel pretty exasperated when every election rolls around in the North and SF start saying what they're going to do. I know I certainly do.

Social Housing waiting list is actually nearly as long in NI as ROI despite having 1/4 of the population. Child poverty rates are double in NI. Murder rate 50% greater. Suicide rate is 30-40% higher. If you think the ROI health system is a mess then NI must be a crisis. 11% of the ROI population are on an outpatient waiting list whilst in the north it's 19%. Waiting lists times are almost double in the north.
Consultant pay in ROI is almost double what it is in the north. Teachers pay starts at 44,000€ and rises to 87,000€. In the north it starts at 30,000£ and stops at 38,000£.

The NI Executives only positive contribution since being reformed is to start the A5 in which 600 million of the funding is being provided by the last FFG-Green government from a 800million cross border fund. And there's the 24 million that the Irish government are spending on NI schools. Apart from that, it is all about the cuts at Stormont, except of course to MLA pay and expenses which were increased massively at the start of this year. However in the FFG-Green government they gifted back 10% of their ministerial salary to the state this year despite increasing the public sector pay. Someone spoke about politicians lining their own pockets, no-one is worse for it than SF. Just look at McMonagle or O'Donnaile, bounced from one publicly funded role to another. SF have just the same "jobs for the boys" culture as FF or FG.

I've no doubt your stats are correct - but you have to look at the different contexts between NI and ROI.  Things like suicide and murder rates can be directly linked to the troubles, so not all as direct result of government.

ROI have their own government with full responsibility for borrowing, spending, taxation etc.
NI have had to live within the context of Tory austerity for years and now we have to bear the consequences of being out of the EU even though we voted to stay. So it's not a like for like comparison.

And when you talk about no-one being worse than SF for lining their pockets - that's not even true in NI. DUP regularly called out for having the highest expenses across the political spectrum. One particular DUP MP has been in hot water for his acceptance of "free" family holidays etc.

I get it, you don't like SF. But you're using your dislike of them to paint a picture that they are responsible for all of the problems in NI, and that's blatantly not the case.
There's plenty I disagree with SF on, but I will say, they make a concerted effort to govern for all sides of the community here and that has to be commended.

You're right I don't like SF but it's because there's such a disparity between what they stand for and what they do. They chose to take the dept of finance and economy portfolios in the Executive. If these are such powerless figleafs as you suggest then why pick them? Surely they should have chosen health with its massive budget and tried to fix the crisis there.

Instead they chose to ignore the health portfolio as it's seen as too big of a problem to handle and too unpopular a position to take. When it comes to the hard decisions SF and the DUP regularly walk away from them to persevere their own necks. Which, when you're attacking a government across the border for failing people, who are partially bankrolling the portfolios in which you do control, is a really cynical strategy.

I'm not blaming SF for all the problems in the North, I'm just saying they wilfully ignore many of them for their own political expediency.

Again not all SF's fault but I see where you're coming from.
Remember major changes in policy or spending have to be agreed by the Executive, so getting agreement on major change is difficult due to the constant political point scoring and DUP's endless attempts to not being seen to be agreeing with SF.
DUP have had finance for a long time until SF became the biggest party and so got the opportunity to take it away from them - a political coup in itself. But there is still only so much they can do without executive agreement.
In short, it's rarely possible for any of the parties to do everything they want to do because of our system of government.
There's no one-throat-to-choke for failures.

But I stand over what I've said in that I think SF are trying to govern for all and to do the right thing for all communities in health, education etc. DUP on the other hand, only ever govern for their own.

And for the record, I don't believe I've attacked the government across the border for failing people.
In fact I agree that ROI is in a much better state than NI - part of the reason I'd be voting for a UI.
Could ROI be better than it is today with better governance? That is the real question - it's not a "ROI is better than NI" argument. That is like comparing apples to oranges as we have different governing structures and confines.

[Saffrongael]

SF do make the effort alright unlike DUPUDA who govern for their side only.
The Orange order and their adherents making their usual bigoted disgrace of themselves over the Deputy mayor of the area switching on Christmas lights in Broughshane.
Knuckle daggers then damaging the premises of the Community group who provided the tree and lights.
No unionist councillor condemning that.

Meanwhile kneecap win their case against the Brit Government.

And give half of the £14,500 to a community group on the Shankill Road.

Brilliant!
I'd say there was some conflicted views in the Shankill about getting money from Kneecap.

There wouldn't have been one, the "powers that be" in both areas work very closely together when it comes to funding etc, if one gets the other gets

[tbrick18]

SF do make the effort alright unlike DUPUDA who govern for their side only.
The Orange order and their adherents making their usual bigoted disgrace of themselves over the Deputy mayor of the area switching on Christmas lights in Broughshane.
Knuckle daggers then damaging the premises of the Community group who provided the tree and lights.
No unionist councillor condemning that.

Meanwhile kneecap win their case against the Brit Government.

And give half of the £14,500 to a community group on the Shankill Road.

Brilliant!
I'd say there was some conflicted views in the Shankill about getting money from Kneecap.

There wouldn't have been one, the "powers that be" in both areas work very closely together when it comes to funding etc, if one gets the other gets

I didn't know that - but it's actually good to hear.

[Saffrongael]

SF do make the effort alright unlike DUPUDA who govern for their side only.
The Orange order and their adherents making their usual bigoted disgrace of themselves over the Deputy mayor of the area switching on Christmas lights in Broughshane.
Knuckle daggers then damaging the premises of the Community group who provided the tree and lights.
No unionist councillor condemning that.

Meanwhile kneecap win their case against the Brit Government.

And give half of the £14,500 to a community group on the Shankill Road.

Brilliant!
I'd say there was some conflicted views in the Shankill about getting money from Kneecap.

There wouldn't have been one, the "powers that be" in both areas work very closely together when it comes to funding etc, if one gets the other gets

I didn't know that - but it's actually good to hear.

Well a lot of it ends up in "salaries" like most of those community setups

[dec]

Exit poll

FF 19.5
FG 21
SF 21.1

[gallsman]

Plus ça change

[Nanderson]

Exit poll

FF 19.5
FG 21
SF 21.1

Interesting to see the difference in seat numbers considering percentages are so close

[armaghniac]

FF likely a bit disappointed with that. They may still get a similar number of seats as they pick up transfers from independents, especially as their candidates are longer established than FG in many cases.

Independent Ireland on 2.2%, we were aren't America or Romania.

[Blowitupref]

Exit poll

FF 19.5
FG 21
SF 21.1

And others

IO 12.7%
SD 5.8%
LAB 5.0%
GP 4.0%
AON 3.6%
PBPS 3.1%
II  2.2%

[Harold Disgracey]

Seems as if turnout was quite low particularly so with young people.

[Armagh18]

Seems as if turnout was quite low particularly so with young people.

They're all in Oz.