Irish Current Affairs

Just watched interview with Jeffrey Donaldson interesting to see what happens next week and what's in Queens speech, can't see both sides being happy and unfortunately no one sitting together anytime soon
What are your thoughts on the Alliance party.
I’ve just seen Naomi Long interviewed on the RTE news at the counting centre and I think she’s pretty much the first person from NI that I’ve heard echoing a lot of my own feelings towards the likes of The DUP.
It’s just talk now and has to lead to action some time soon, but I’d be most interested in your own views and @AlexWilliamsGloves and any others from NI.
Particularly a unionist view.
 
What are your thoughts on the Alliance party.
I’ve just seen Naomi Long interviewed on the RTE news at the counting centre and I think she’s pretty much the first person from NI that I’ve heard echoing a lot of my own feelings towards the likes of The DUP.
It’s just talk now and has to lead to action some time soon, but I’d be most interested in your own views and @AlexWilliamsGloves and any others from NI.
Particularly a unionist view.
Bit hard to judge who I'd vote for if I was at home. Made friends with someone who's a green (party not religion) I'd vote for him all day long. In answer to your question I'd struggle to vote for an alliance person at moment.
 
What are your thoughts on the Alliance party.
I’ve just seen Naomi Long interviewed on the RTE news at the counting centre and I think she’s pretty much the first person from NI that I’ve heard echoing a lot of my own feelings towards the likes of The DUP.
It’s just talk now and has to lead to action some time soon, but I’d be most interested in your own views and @AlexWilliamsGloves and any others from NI.
Particularly a unionist view.

Thats who I ordinarily vote for....this time I voted:

1 - Green Party (the candidate is a mate of mine, plus I genuinely think he would be brilliant)
2 - Alliance
3 - Alliance

Plus some more you don't need to know :-)

I like Naomi Long, she gets a really hard time but she's genuine...obviously all my own opinion, other will disagree. As you know I come from a traditionally unionist/loyalist area, but my life is completely "mixed"....for me, Alliance Party are an attractive option for moderate unionists...and some moderate nationalists who don't (didn't) buy into the hardline of Sinn Fein, and to lesser extent SDLP.

To me, historically, moderate unionists would lean towards Alliance if considering not voting for a purely unionist party....whereas I believe moderate nationalists would have leant towards the SDLP.

I think the SDLP leader is correct in saying that the more moderate, wavering SDLP voter saw this as an iconic moment to get the first Nationalist First Minister and voted Sinn Fein. The Sinn Fein vote has increased by the amount that the SDLP vote has dropped. The Alliance voted has increased by the same amount at the UUP have dropped....the DUP will pretty much always stay the same...its the battle of the middle ground

The Alliance Party are very much the non-sectarian party, they don't identify as unionist or nationalist. Very simply, they are the Lib Dems in the Tory/Labour argument :-)
 
Just seen Geoffrey Donaldson interviewed on RTE.
Apparently it’s all the EU’s intransigence’s fault. They’re the reason he more than likely won’t sit in the assembly.

I really think they have a cheek having the D in DUP.
 
Bit hard to judge who I'd vote for if I was at home. Made friends with someone who's a green (party not religion) I'd vote for him all day long. In answer to your question I'd struggle to vote for an alliance person at moment.
We're probably talking about the same guy :-)
 
Bit hard to judge who I'd vote for if I was at home. Made friends with someone who's a green (party not religion) I'd vote for him all day long. In answer to your question I'd struggle to vote for an alliance person at moment.
I don’t know much about her, other than the views she gave about getting the Assembly up and running again.
 
It’s all a load of tosh. The north does not need a unionist or a Republican Party to prosper. Bin the whole lot off and start again with no religion and no Green/orange divide. Stormont is a parody of a political institution. We need the young voters to ignore both and vote down the middle for real change. The DUP still think it’s the 70s. Sinn Fein are trying to sneak away from the past by electing anyone not associated with the troubles.

The North will be dragged into the future one way or another. Both parties have failed to address the concerns on the doorsteps. Housing, Eduction, Hospital waiting times, Costs of living is hammering so many people, farming industry is on it knees. So I won’t be congratulating any party today as the incompetence and damage caused by these 2 idiots will continue unabated into the future. The north celebrates when the political institution collapses as we get a chance to get on with what is important in our lives…stressing out about Newcastle on Sunday ;)

All you will hear over the next days is tit for twat crap. Fuck em all.
 
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It’s all a load of tosh. The north does not need a unionist or a Republican Party to prosper. Bin the whole lot off and start again with no religion and no Green/orange divide. Stormont is a parody of a political institution. We need the young voters to ignore both and vote down the middle for real change. The DUP still think it’s the 70s. Sinn Fein are trying to sneak away from the past by electing anyone not associated with the troubles.

The North will be dragged into the future one way or another. Both parties have failed to address the concerns on the doorsteps. Housing, Eduction, Hospital waiting times, Costs of living is hammering so many people, farming industry is on it knees. So I won’t be congratulating any party today as the incompetence and damage caused by these 2 idiots will continue unabated into the future. The north celebrates when the political institution collapses as we get a chance to get on with what is important in our lives…stressing out about Newcastle on Sunday ;)

All you will hear over the next days is tit for twat crap. Fuck em all.
I agree with some, if not all of what you say.
Although as I stated before SF are not the party for me, I don’t see it as them sneaking away from their past.
I think they are no different than any nationalist party on this island in that they were born out of conflict.
If you want to go back 100 years FF and FG were born out of a civil war and effectively were a split in the original SF that picked up arms
in a Rising as they saw a democratic vote on the whole island not carried through by the then British government. Craig saying they’d rather be under German rule than Home rule.

There was a further Democratic vote on the island after the WW1 which also wasn’t followed through as it wasn’t accepted by Unionism, who with the backing of the Tories were armed to the teeth.
However Carson was not in favour of splitting the country and Craig took over and chose to take an unnatural border that favoured a unionist majority.
I won’t defend De Valera’s part in the Catholic church’s role in the new Republic, although I accept the necessity of a penniless state to hand over health and education, but the unionist party in the North were equally borne out of the threat of violence.

I know this would not be a popular view of it from a unionist side but the rise of SF in the north and the paramilitary arm of it was as much a consequence of Unionist management/mismanagement of keeping politics in the north both sectarian and unfair.

However, I totally agree that the way forward is with the young voters not giving a fnck about any of that. Because each side has their own perception of the history of it.

I do feel that we are Democratic down south and have grown up a lot in the past 30 years or so.
We voted overwhelmingly for the GFA and would have seen this as our generation drawing a line under the past and turning a new page for a consensual future.

I believe the two sides of the coin are dealing with this differently up north. Nobody denies what SF’s goal is. They never hide it but in their defence whatever their history they do seem to have signed up to waiting their time and promoting their goal Democratically.

I could be totally wrong and merely seeing this as a Southerner, but it always appears to me that Unionism seems to basically say we’ll support democracy as long as we are in the majority.
This is not 100 years ago. This is not even 30 years ago.

The reason unionism is in the state it is, is their support for Brexit and the Protocol that they got at the second bite of the cherry.

One thing I’ve never understood is that they would rather see the GFA brought down when I always saw it as the one thing protecting their Britishness going forward, but I’m beginning to see now why.
Democracy doesn’t come into it.
They would like to go back to the good old days where they had guaranteed rule and if that means not accepting the protocol they aided in getting signed off then so be it. If they don’t get that fine they won’t do the job they have just been voted in to do. They won’t sit in the Assembly.

How about setting up the Assembly and then sitting down with businesses in NI and addressing the issues.
Come up with something constructive.

Anyway.
Enough from me.
I agree that this just goes round in circles and so am I and I had more or less given that up in here.
I really had thought I’d seen real progress on this island in my lifetime although I never really thought a United Ireland would be something I’d live to see. Still don’t.

I had hoped however, my young lad would grow up in a new era of perhaps duel citizenship or at least choice.
UK and GB don’t fill me with any confidence of a cooperative future.
Then again the world at the moment doesn’t fill me with any such confidence either.
 
I cannot stand Sinn Fein, and I don't know anyone who can. I dread the thought of them being in government here in the south, so have huge sympathy for the ordinary people of NI having to put up with them now as the biggest party. They're a despicable organisation and I cannot understand their supporters, north or south. Current affairs these days is so depressing.
 
I cannot stand Sinn Fein, and I don't know anyone who can. I dread the thought of them being in government here in the south, so have huge sympathy for the ordinary people of NI having to put up with them now as the biggest party. They're a despicable organisation and I cannot understand their supporters, north or south. Current affairs these days is so depressing.
I have my own issues with them that revolve more around policy.
I and nobody I know would vote for them either. Both north and south I think the fact that they are more focused on an all Ireland is to the detriment of the actual task of running an economy.

Perhaps that is changing, but I don’t think, for the betterment of my lot, should they end up in government. I think I would be the poorer for it.
They still have a gobshite ‘up the RA’ element In their support yet, that never fail to ruin any progressiveness that they try to project to the younger generation.
It will take the dying out of that element both north and south before any real progress will be made in the party.

I agree with Wolviedihno that a rise of the middle ground up north would be the preferable future, but down south a real alternative to FF and FG was long overdue. It wasn’t there and in it’s absence the youth who don’t have our political baggage have helped them fill the void.
 
I have my own issues with them that revolve more around policy.
I and nobody I know would vote for them either. Both north and south I think the fact that they are more focused on an all Ireland is to the detriment of the actual task of running an economy.

Perhaps that is changing, but I don’t think, for the betterment of my lot, should they end up in government. I think I would be the poorer for it.
They still have a gobshite ‘up the RA’ element In their support yet, that never fail to ruin any progressiveness that they try to project to the younger generation.
It will take the dying out of that element both north and south before any real progress will be made in the party.

I agree with Wolviedihno that a rise of the middle ground up north would be the preferable future, but down south a real alternative to FF and FG was long overdue. It wasn’t there and in it’s absence the youth who don’t have our political baggage have helped them fill the void.
Is it not just the urban working classes who used to vote for FF that are now voting SF? I have always considered that we are lucky in Ireland to be governed by non-ideological centrist parties. Regrettably, those days are now over.
 
Is it not just the urban working classes who used to vote for FF that are now voting SF? I have always considered that we are lucky in Ireland to be governed by non-ideological centrist parties. Regrettably, those days are now over.
One thing the rise of Sinn Fein has done is cause the FF and FG parities to go into coalition rather than have them in government, such is their loathing and revulsion.

It truly is the death of civil war politics in Ireland.
If you need to look for a positive.
 
I cannot stand Sinn Fein, and I don't know anyone who can. I dread the thought of them being in government here in the south, so have huge sympathy for the ordinary people of NI having to put up with them now as the biggest party. They're a despicable organisation and I cannot understand their supporters, north or south. Current affairs these days is so depressing.
My father shares your views, but in the South anyway, Sinn Feins success is due to the corruption of FF and the fucking non entity that is FG and labour.

The health service, high taxation/poor services, homelessness and the abomination of the housing market has driven younger voters who did not grow up in the troubles into SF. SF have also been clever an put front and centre good communicators with no historical link to the IRA. People like Mary Lou and Pierce Doherty are far more effective communicators than anything FG/FF have.
 

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