Election 2007

[WeAreRovers]

Totally agree...indeed was surprised to see WAR use the line in the manner he did.

To prove that Weller patronises and looks down on the working class in the exact same way that socialists do.

KOH

[bennocelt]

Sorry mate, that maybe the perception but the SBP and eminent political scientists disagree. That misperception has cost Labour dearly since and is costing them to this day. Witness Rabbitte's current flip-flopping which is going to lose lots of votes.

http://www.sbpost.ie/post/pages/p/st...388-qqqx=1.asp

KOH

come off it
im talking about the average man on the street, that article was talking about Polls done, funny how they never ask the right people!!!!!!!
there was a strong sense of anger among traditional labour voters when they went into power with FF, i know casue my family were involved with labour at the time, and so were a lot of people i knew, but that fuc ked it all up for them
perception? i dont think so, as i felt it and so did a lot of people i knew!
and i wont be voting for labour this time around
SF will be getting my vote

[bennocelt]

Sometimes democracy is a curse cos you feel morally obliged to vote for someone, anyone. Too many people fought too long for us to have votes to go throwing the right away. But sweet jesus, looking at what's on offer, I could almost put up with a couple of years of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or whatever, if it meant I didn't actually HAVE to vote for any of this lot.

.

man that was brilliant
POTM

[pete]

Sometimes democracy is a curse cos you feel morally obliged to vote for someone, anyone. Too many people fought too long for us to have votes to go throwing the right away. But sweet jesus, looking at what's on offer, I could almost put up with a couple of years of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or whatever, if it meant I didn't actually HAVE to vote for any of this lot...

Sounds like the South Park Douche and Turd episode

[kingdom hoop]

Sometimes democracy is a curse cos you feel morally obliged to vote for someone, anyone. Too many people fought too long for us to have votes to go throwing the right away. But sweet jesus, looking at what's on offer, I could almost put up with a couple of years of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or whatever, if it meant I didn't actually HAVE to vote for any of this lot.

for a while now i have been thinking that political democracy should be confined to being the success of the 20th century but that the 21st century is time for a new revolt. president bush is the most obvious black sheep of democracy and perhaps global warming democracy's biggest catastrophe. politically i would align myself towards a meritocracy(a la singapore for eg). surely the most important organisation is the state and as such needs to be lead by capable people who are more than just your average bertie or george. at this stage in history the autocratic one man band is not going to re-emerge, so its now time to ditch political democracy and welcome a new era where we can choose between the best(most suitable) our society has to offer.

i propose....dr.nightdub as our new leader with me being his right hand man.

foot.ie - brothers in arms, let us unite

[SÓC]

FF will lose some seats, as will the PDs, FG will gain a few as will Labour but at the end of the day the make up of the next Dáil wont be dramatically different to this one.

I'd really really hope for a FF/Lab government simply because they'll get things done. Even Rabbitte has seen the writting on the wall from as far back as six months ago. I do always laugh at the "Not good for Democracy to have one party in power for so long" line. Surely what is good for democracy is that the people get to put in power exactly who they voted for?

I'm a card carrying member of FF and I do think Macy makes a good point about the membership. There are a lot (maybe even more than most people believe) of left leaning folk in FF who are totally fed up with the PDs and seeking assurances that FF will make a priority of changing partners after the election.

[strangeirish]

Sometimes democracy is a curse cos you feel morally obliged to vote for someone, anyone. Too many people fought too long for us to have votes to go throwing the right away. But sweet jesus, looking at what's on offer, I could almost put up with a couple of years of dictatorship, absolute monarchy, or whatever, if it meant I didn't actually HAVE to vote for any of this lot.

Ah man, come over and live in the US and we'll have a right craic Dr.Nightdub. We can enjoy having our phones tapped, watch Fox News 24 hours a day, have your private information sold and if we are lucky, we might even get drafted into the military.
*strangeirish, we're watching you! (Dept. of Homeland Security)*

[pete]

While a lot of people don't like McDowell i like him sometimes as he says what he means & just gets on with things without discussing things to death & seeking consultation on everything...

Maybe I am the only one...

[kingdom hoop]

i would agree pete that mcdowell tells it straight up which is refreshing, the unfortunate thing is that what he thinks is usually not what people want and he is too headstrong to admit that he is even 5% wrong, an ideal barrister in other words but not such a good politician.

[Soper]

My opinion doesn't matter, but I want whichever party/ies that will ban fur farming to get in.The last votes was a bit childish, with each member sticking to the party line.

[Macy]

i would agree pete that mcdowell tells it straight up which is refreshing

But he doesn't. Just because he shouts loud and insults people doesn't mean he speaks truthfully.

[pete]

But he doesn't. Just because he shouts loud and insults people doesn't mean he speaks truthfully.

Take for instance the garda reservists. I don't know if I agree with or not & is not a big issue one way or another. When the garda "union" moaned he just pushed ahead anyway. The opposite of Bertie who seems to think everyone has to agree before can start anything except obviously if want to build a Bertie Bowl

[Macy]

Take for instance the garda reservists.

Which covered the fact he hadn't met his targets on real cops. When the PD's start getting all tough, look behind the headline grabbing story to get the real facts. Take their latest hardline stance - they seem to be ignoring the fact there are no beds for these 1500 consultants to actually utilise. Much better for them to paint the consultants as the greedy bad guy rather than face the facts that....

• elective surgery's are practically non existant because their are no beds
• there are no beds for elective surgery because all the beds are taken up with "solving" the A&E Crisis
• solving to the PD's obviously means just shifting the problem to another area of the health service
• This pushes more people into the national treatment purchase fund
• More people in the treatment fund gives them more opportunity to tout what a great success that it is at solving the Health Services problems

[pete]

TBH I almost never listen to anything on the Health Service as cannot be solves in current manner. Its a bottomless pit of money & I don't think as bad as people make it out to be. Private health insurance does seem to be becoming more irrelevant though... Saying that I would not oppose a public health system for all costed from taxes as long as could get some sort of costing for it...

[Jamjar]

If our system of democracy is proportional representation....then why doesn't Mary Harney get 2 seats in the dáil ?

[BohsPartisan]

If our system of democracy is proportional representation....then why doesn't Mary Harney get 2 seats in the dáil ?

Class

[Student Mullet]

Originally Posted by Student Mullet
That's my poinion too. I voted green last time and probably will again but a lot of their policies are completly loony.

Out of curiosity, which ones?

Sorry for taking so long to answer. I wanted to have time to answer properly and I've a day off today before heading to San Marino.

I read through their energy policy last night and a few things stuck out.

Here's a chunk of the document, I've highlighted the relevant bits.

2. How We Use Energy

The flow chart below shows in graphic form how we use the energy that is provided from these various energy supplies. The most notable feature of such a presentation is that almost 20% of our energy supply is lost through waste heat which is released unused from power stations in the generation of electricity. This is described below as an Electricity Transformation Loss and accounts for a similar amount of energy as that used in the combined agriculture and residential sectors. An advantage of using renewable supplies for electricity generation is that such transmission losses are avoided.
If we ignore this transmission loss then industry accounts for some 19% of our energy use. This percentage has been reduced slightly in recent years due to the closure of energy-intensive plants such as IFI and Irish Steel as we switched to higher value added industries.

There is a law of thermodynamics that dictated how much of a heat source can be converted into useful work (in this case driving an electric generator). It's about 70% for a gas plant and modern plants get pretty close to that. The number is lower for coal and peat plants and I don't know it off the top of my head. There's similar laws for non-heat plants like wind & water. The document calls this a transformation loss and is OK up to this point.

Then 2 things happen. Firstly the transformation loss turns into a transmission loss (which is a completly different thing) and the claim is made that these losses don't occur for renewable sources. I'm hoping the first point is a typo, though it is repeated. But the second point is completly off the wall. The basic claim being made is that burning turf is wasteful because you loose heat up the chimney but burning wood or grass or whatever in the same plant is somehow different and has no hot fumes leaving up the chimney. I have 2 issues with this. Firstly using words like 'loss' or 'waste' is misleading since converting the energy stored chemically in a fuel to electricity uses some of it up and there is no way to avoid this, it is simply the cost of doing business. Secondly, this is true for renewable fuels just as much as it is for fossle fuels.

The same argument is true of the non-heat plants. A wind turbine doesn't extract all the energy from the wind passing through it (very little, in fact), we don't count that cost because wind is free but it exists just the same. The same is true of hydro plants. The only example I have is the pump storage station up in Wicklow which returns about 70% of the electricity put into it.

On the subject of transmission losses, this is the energy lost from the wires across the country heating up as electricity passes through them. This accounts for about 2% of the electricity generated. The green party's proposal to remove it is:

Move to a 'distributed' energy grid

The ESB is currently spending two billion euro of taxpayers’ money building up the electricity grid in a manner which promotes the use of large fossil fuels power plants and hinders the development of renewable energies. We should instead have followed the approach of the British Government which made a strategic decision five years ago to move to a so-called 'distributed energy grid'. This involves a switch from promoting energy flows from a few major centres to the periphery, to a system where power is generated by a large number of small-scale localised centres and used locally.

Which basically amounts to every town and city generating as much energy as it needs (and no more) so that none is transmitted across the country. This flies in the face of common sence. If we do switch to wind, wave and bio fuels, we can be almost certain that the bulk of the power will be generated in the west of the country and in rural areas and then transmitted to the east and urban areas. If wind power is to become more widespread it is dependant on a lot of interconnection across the country and internationally to allow for variations in wind strength, the exact opposite of green party policy. This really strikes me as a case of ideology and wanting to 'empower local communities' getting in the way of proper policy.

Having said all that. It doesn't put me off voting for them because I think that if they do get into power thay'll drop (or be made drop) the parts of their policy which won't work and I think that they have the correct basic motivation in a lot of areas.

Next week: Student Mullet will (if he finds time) lay into the green's 'rail freight' policies.

[pete]

I believe the UK electric grid allows local generators of power to add it back into the grid? I don't think we have that facility here so if you had say a big wind turbine out your back garden you could not add back in the left over energy into the grid?

I think the irish grid has a big problem with peak usage as opposed to overall usage. We will have problems generation enough power at peak times in the near future. We will probably just import from Sellafield anyway...

Interesting that the Sunday Business Post has General Election poll with result of FF/PD 40+3 & FG/Lab 22+12 whereas MRBI opinion poll had FF/PDs at 37+1 & FG/Lab 26+11. 9 point lead down to 1 point. Also has Greens at 8% which would make them king makers. However the MRBI must be misleading as PDs will get more than 1% of seast even in complete collapse.

[BohsPartisan]

What will happen if they are only left with McDowell. Anyone think they'll disolve?

[Student Mullet]

I believe the UK electric grid allows local generators of power to add it back into the grid? I don't think we have that facility here so if you had say a big wind turbine out your back garden you could not add back in the left over energy into the grid?

You can do the same here but you don't get paid for the extra.