John Mortell’s blog

Gavin has a pretty strongly-worded post over on Public Inquiry and his blog. It’s pretty strong stuff and I encourage you to read it all but I’m just going to put the end here and it really covers one of the main reasons I just don’t care about politics in Ireland anymore and am more than seriously considering leaving a.s.a.p:

As a nation state, we are a failure. As a democracy, we have failed. As a country we are bankrupt, both morally and financially. We are the emerging market, banana republic of the European Union. Our political system is broken. It is beyond redemption.

Some will reply that I am a socialist, or other such attacks. I am actually right of centre economically, I just recognise what is standing in front of me for what it is. An almost incalculable political and financial mess – generations are being saddled with the debts of the oligarchs, and the taxpayer is being lied to by its own government.

The only hope is this: That the people, in whose hands all power rests, will realise the appalling vista of a broken Ireland – a country in need of radical political reform – and demand that it is changed.

If it is not, everything that has happened, will continue to happen, and we, the citizens, will continue to pay the price.

And not to be too pessimistic, but how likely is it that change such as the type Gavin asks demands of us is likely? For myself, in most elections where I have been eligible to vote I have found myself deciding by first eliminating people I cannot/will not vote for and then deciding who is the best of what’s left. In a country where the two biggest parties in Fianna Fail(ure) and Fine Gael are the same party effectively, which hardly a brain cell between them and with the third party of Labour being ineffective at best, where is the hope for this change?

At least Italy had its ‘Tangentopoli’ moment where the worst of a beyond redemption political class was thrown out, but is such a thing even possible in Ireland? Even looking at Italy today, despite a near-dictatorship at the top and half the country seemingly run by the Mafia, it seems that Italians have a media asking questions and a Judiciary that at least tries to do its job. Will Ireland ever even get to that lofty basic standard? Personally, I no longer believe so, but I hope that I am wrong.