for lefties too stubborn to quit
No embargo for us yesterday, a chairde! And today say what you like (as originally suggested by Dr. X) – any thoughts, information, observations about the vote, voting patterns, atmosphere and attitudes at the polling places – or as usual whatever you like feel free.
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The Cedar Lounge Revolution
Just back from voting at Stanhope St. – actual queues at two out of three tables at ten past eight. Looked like about 10% marked off already on the page.
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It might be worth drawing up lists of the parties on either side as it will show the polarisation of society and the fulfullment of Marx’s prediction that society is dividing into two opposing classes.
There were individuals who alligned themselves with the class enemy who I will personally never have any social or business dealings with, ever. I take my class war personally.
Where would be the best place to post such lists?
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Wolfy Smith had his little black book as I recall.
Where to post such lists? Facebook. In the real world pasted to walls or lamp posts.
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I voted no…… at the Limerick County Library at about 9.20 this morning……….no queues…………I noticed that 2 of the 3 tables where the people who gave you your ballot paper had bibles on them……..at booth 2………..where I voted, I asked why they had only a bible there and not the Thora or the Koran…………or indeed other religious documents related to other religions………..In a word I made my objections known………I believe it is wrong to have any religious items placed in full view of voters.
The man at the polling booth laughed…….the woman smiled…………after I had made my mark on the ballot paper and returned to put it in the box…………the bible was covered by some other publication………….lest I be offended.
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The bible is there if they want someone to swear as to their identity, it’s likely that one of the desks has a Koran, you can also affirm (swear without a religious book). This is permissible, though I’ve never seen it happen. Also I think that those who hand you your ballot have to swear to do it correctly at the start, they make the Oath to the Returning Officer. No big conspiracy.
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Making your objection known to the staff at the polling station is ineffective. They have no managerial responsibility other than running the station on the day. You should make objections to the returning officer and to the Department of the Environment, who set the rule the front-line staff have to implement.
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No queue in Castletown Kilpatrick NS this morning at 9:15. One of the officials was battling with a scissors to take down an SF “Níl” poster from the lamp post outside. Not too many names crossed off the list at that stage, but it’s early yet.
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For the record, I voted NO.
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LATC For the record, i don’t think anyone here thought otherwise, just for the record I will also be voting NO later.
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Happy Days: Coulson charged with perjury and Sheridan’s conviction looking increasingly unsound. A can of worms is opening for the UK establishment….
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BBC said that of particular significance is that Coulson is alleged to have committed the perjury while he was working in No. 10.
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Won’t be around since I have already fled from the devastated Irish economy. But wouldn’t vote even if I was there 🙂
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It turns out that there is at least one silver lining to the stormy grey cloud of economic collapse and mass emigration.
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Labour Party Yes posters right down the street at the Drumcondra polling station and no sign of any attempt to take them down.
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To Leftatthecross re earlier posting. You misunderstand but later, as I appear to be off subject.
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Voted in Rathmines about 8 this morning, not a soul about the place but myself. Very few names crossed off and the people manning the polling station looked excited to see me
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I will be voting No later on in St Vincents School in Glasnevin. My son will be voting Yes. I have failed, failed utterly as a father.
In other news, 2 tickets for Ireland-Spain and Ireland-Italy are in my possession and the train tickets arrived yesterday from the nice people in Polish rail. Me and my younger son are mucho looking forward to a swim in the Baltic, a trip to Gdansk shipyard and watching the Boys in Green training in Gdynia. And Robbie scoring again and again.
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I envy you, Joe, enjoy the Euros!
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Younger son is hopefully not the one who voted yes.
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Nah, the young boy is only 15. The older lad was never into football. Just reading and music. But, for the record, I love them both equally.
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Aljazz looking at Iceland and Ireland
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/05/201252874716394428.html
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Outside St Michael’s Community Centre in Inchicore this morning for a couple of hours trying to sway voters at the last minute. At the risk of being cliched, voting was ‘steady’, possibly even ‘brisk’ up to about 11am and then died away a good bit. Speaking to comrades at other polling stations, the pattern seemed about the same.
Response was pretty positive and spoke to two voters who hadn’t made up their minds, so hopefully pushed them the right way. Also met a No voting Labour supporter.
Giving someone a lift to vote and then off to deliver sample ballots in strong No voting areas.
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‘A steady trickle’ in Lucan at lunchtime. Steady trickle outside not helping.
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Just voted in Stoneybatter at lunchtime. Apart from the person I went to the station with, there was one other voter there. Almost nobody had been crossed off the page my name was on.
I was voting No, of course.
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Referendum Commission TV ad (‘tomorrow we’ll decide’) just shown on Attheraces (Thursday 1.55). Surely that shouldn’t be on on day of poll?
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Voted this morning in Crumlin about 10am – very sparse and only a couple crossed off the sheet. There was a Portuguese TV crew there interviewing people – after explaining my No vote (pretty incoherently I’m afraid so I assume it won’t be used) I asked them how others said they had voted. They had been there 40 minutes and had yet to meet anyone who admitted to voting Yes. Combination of Crumlin and Portuguese TV bias or hopeful signs?
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On a completely unrelated note, I nearly spat my coffee on my computer screen a little earlier, after seeing this article on the SWP’s website:
http://swp.ie/content/egypts-revolution-continues-despite-poll
In it they call for a vote for the Muslim Brotherhood in the second round of the Egyptian elections. I don’t mean that a biased reader could infer such a call from some kind of muddy or unfortunate phrasing. They are explicit about it.
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A lesser evil vote. Perhaps thy will do the same for Obama.Their comment box would not take a comment from me. I hope it is a local thing and they will educate the comrades a little
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I don’t see how it’s a “local thing”, Jim. The same article is in British Socialist Worker and it’s on the front page of the Irish SWP’s website.
The Egyptian Revolutionary Socialists, their sister group there, have a statement out, carried on the British SWP website, in which they call for a vote for the Muslim Brotherhood and also call for “the formation of a government across the whole political spectrum”.
http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=28595
It’s bizarre.
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And depressing.
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awful … would they also call to vote for Paisley or an Opus Dei candidate?
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Does anyone know what the other Tahrir Square radicals are saying about the 2nd round? I had the impression they were all leaning towards the left-wing Nasserite in the first round (he came first in Cairo and some of the other cities); are they calling for abstention in the second round or going for the MB candidate?
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I reckon it will split roughly 56-44 for the yeses with less than a 50% turnout. Which will then be portrayed as a massive mandate for Kenny and austerity generally.
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FG,FF and Labour are the troika parties.Grosely overrepresented in the Dail on these estimates. Many YES voters are reluctant ones, browbeaten. they will punish these parties next time out.
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I reckon Dublin will vote no – apart from DS, DL and maybe DSE – and most of the rest of the country, except for Donegal and maybe one or two other places will vote yes. It’ll be carried in about the proportions you give, maybe a little tighter.
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Dublin SW, MW, NW and Central to vote no, also the two Donegals and Cork North Central. That’ll probably be about it. Maybe Dublin SC as well. Hope I’m proved terribly wrong
I love the way that the poor turn-out is already being explained by the biblical deluge which apparently confined the majority of the electorate to their houses yesterday.
The ‘all of Europe grateful to noble Paddy’ headlines anticipated by the Yes side not to materialise. And the ‘certainty’ apparently to be felt by all in the event of a Yes vote not to appear either. I’ve a feeling quite a lot of people will, very soon, feel they were codded into a Yes vote, especially when it will be a while before they get to vote on anything again.
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Maybe Dublin SC as well.
Biggest ‘No’ tally so far is from Cherry Orchard – next biggest from Moyross.
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And apparently a tally of 60% no from Dublin North, so add that in as well. Though elsewhere it does seem to be running the way of the Yes side. Still think it’ll be about 56-44 maybe couple of points lower on Yeses.
The fact that No will probably win in the Dublin area portends very bad things electorally for Labour, and good ones for SF and the ULA in the city.
I have a nagging feeling that no would have won had FF supported it and dragged their supporters with them as suggested by O’Cuiv. They’ll be sorry they didn’t because only a fool would think that Martin will get any credit for the Yes any more than Dukes got credit for the Tallaght Stratetg except for from a few crazed fanboys.
I think the big disparities in the result may indicate the division of the country into our version of Red and Blue states.
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Yes.
With the near- death of that peculiar cross class alliance that was FF, this government may have finally instituted class politics in this country.
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It’s intriguing to see the widespread media use of the term ‘working class areas.’ Turns out we’re not ‘all middle class now’ after all.
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Slugger had a piece on the winners and losers from the Referendum. Can’t say I’d agree with its findings though.
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Yep, utter balls from beginning to end. Slugger is a useful resource for Northern politics, but has rarely had anything interesting to say about the South.
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I think that it’s probably weighted too much to media events… For example on the ground the ULA campaign has been very good where evident. SF likewise. I can’t believe that the court case yesterday was a serious hit for them. Can’t speak for FF outside of Dublin but I didn’t think their profile was that high in it. And I’m racking my brains to remember if the LP or FG even bothered putting a leaflet through the door, much less whether they came around.
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Yes, it read like it was written by someone outside the South without a real feel for the campaign here. And it felt like that, because that’s what it was.
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Only canvasser I had was Emer Costello. No sign of Paschal
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Didn’t get one…
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FG came to our door and got a volley of abuse for their trouble.
I was disappointed not to get anyone from Labour, but perhaps their local people remember the door at this point. Our local FGers never learn.
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I got a Labour canvasser – still have him actually.
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I’m living here (Cherry Orchard) a bit over five years now and in all that time, with various general, local, presidential and referendum campaigns, not once has a canvasser ever called to the door.
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Got one FF leaflet in the door , one from Paul Murphy and one from the UKIP crowd and that was it. No canvassers though..
However I did write to the parties and they posted out stuff to me….. except Labour where my local TD called to the door with the requested leaflets!
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WBS, did you not get Joe & Emer last night?
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Joe & Emer around at teatime knocking doors
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I disagree. I think he is right on Sinn Fein. the McGuinness campaign and now this sees them in pole position.In the 20s and 30s Labour refused to support the anunities campaign. This left it to FF.This is happening again. Between ULA and its constituents I gave up counting the different campaigns.
There is no big vision as far as I can see.Look at Greece where the far left are sidelined.
A friend was at the SF Ard Fheis. Lots of young people and enthusiastic.
Don’t tell me that SF will compromise, I know. But being right does not mean that after them will be anyone’s turn.
The question for the SWP and SP is do they want the ULA to be a real national player or a fringe operation.
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This is nonsense, Jim. Or at least the premise behind it – that the ULA are blowing some massive opportunity relative to Sinn Fein – is nonsense.
Sinn Fein is a much larger organisation, which is in a position to present itself as an alternative government. It is peddling much easier sounding solutions than the wholesale transformation of society and it is completely untested by office in the South (few of their voters know or care about their dismal record in the North). It would be nothing short of amazing if SF did not grow at the moment and did not at this point find it easier to gain support than a much smaller and much more radical organisation. Judging the socialist left by its failure to grasp opportunities which are open to SF rather than to the socialist left at the moment is every bit as silly as judging the socialist left before the last election for its failure to grasp opportunities which were open to Labour.
This doesn’t mean that once SF get into government and continue with right wing business as usual (as they will eventually do and as they are already doing in the North) that people will “inevitably” turn to the socialist left, of course.
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Not quite following, Mark.
I accept that there are ‘opportunities’ open to SF outside the cities that would be entirely new ground for the ULA – Donegal, Cavan-Monaghan etc.
I don’t quite see how you think you lot can’t be going toe to toe with them in Dublin and maybe Cork? In terms of seats and vote, the ULA now are where SF were before the last election, and, in a much more rigid electoral jigsaw in the 80s, the WP were picking up 10% + of the vote in a much smaller Dublin.
I get the management of expectations bit, but I’m getting old and have lived through quite a few ‘historic opportunities’ from the left, and I’d hate to see another one go to waste.
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‘For the left’ – why is it impossible to type anything longer than a para here these days without the text disappearing under the line?
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I’m not sure what part you aren’t following, SoS.
I’m certainly not saying that there are no opportunities for the socialist left. There are – just as the collapse of Fianna Fail support represented an opportunity, albeit less of an opportunity for the socialist left than for Labour and SF, so too the collapse of Labour support represents an opportunity, albeit less of a one than it is for SF. That no other force (at least as far as the union bureaucrats can help it) is going to take the lead in real struggles on the ground against austerity measures represents an even more important opportunity.
I just think that we should be clearer about what possibilies are or are not open to us when we are assessing how we – the socialist left – are doing. And the possibilities open to the main opposition party, untested in government, and peddling much easier sounding leftish populist “solutions”, are not the same as those open to a much smaller and more radical group. The advantages SF are not simply better organisation in rural areas, but size, media coverage, and the less radical and risky seeming nature of their alleged alternative. Further, they are in position to present themselves as a government in waiting in a way that we simply are not.
That doesn’t mean that I think that the socialist left has little possibility of advancing both in organisational and electoral terms – far from it. There are very real opportunities there.
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I’ve been reliably informed that the slugger bloke is a Tory – who cares what he says about anything.
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I would not be surprised. A lot of the enthusiasts for how blogs were going to overthrow the “MSM”, etc. were Tory/libertarian sympathisers.
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Voted No just now on North Strand. Very quiet polling place to be honest. I was a bit surprised. East Wall Community Centre was a lot busier half an hour ago.
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Voted No this morning at 9am in a rural polling station in Wexford. Not a soul in the place. However, commuters working today may be out in force later…
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Just voted No in Rathfarnham. Quieter than it would normally have been and slightly less than half the names crossed off.
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From looking at twitter and facebook, does anyone else find the proliferation of photos of ballot papers showing the way people voted a bit disconcerting?
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I just find facebook and twitter disconcerting.
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I know that feeling.
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Voted No in Drogheda. Most of the names crossed off on the sheet. Polling station quiet at a time when most commuters are home, fed and ready to vote.
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Exit poll?
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There’s none being conducted.
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Ah well, we’ll know soon enough..
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RTE is painting a class map of Ireland with the results. Apparently they can say ‘middle-class area’ – which is mostly Yes – but can’t manage any term for the under-class areas that are ‘showing a No bias’.
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Noticed that – pointing out the tally in DSE, they said it was running 60-40 ‘even’ in boxes from Ringsend and Irishtown……but didn’t finish the thought, so if you weren’t familiar with those areas, you might (though you wouldn’t really) wonder at what point was being made.
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BBC muppet was using “affluent areas” and “low income areas”. Class is so last century.
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RTE have described Ringsend and Irishtown as, ‘less affluent areas.’ A less affluent hero is something to be.
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🙂
But still fucking Skangers, when speaking private-lee
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Must propose that in a motion at the next WP Ard Fheis, change the name to “the Skangers’ Party”, Workers is so last century too. Or “the Party Of the Less Affluent”. Just as well that RTE clique departed the party then…
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A tell-tale use of the dog whistle is RTE’s comment that the No vote was high in ‘inner-city working class areas.’ In fact the working class areas which voted against the referendum are largely located well away from the centre of the various cities. But, y’know, ‘inner city,’ nudge nudge wink wink.
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Must propose that in a motion at the next WP Ard Fheis, change the name to “the Skangers’ Party
How about a reversion to ‘Sinn Fein, the Less-Affluent Party’?
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would the Socialist Workers Party become the
‘Socialist Less-Affluent Party’ or SLAP for short.
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It would be a great election slogan, ‘Oi, do you want a SLAP?’
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Making members of the SWP, when out in the open, Slappers.
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‘RTE have described Ringsend and Irishtown as, ‘less affluent areas.’ A less affluent hero is something to be.’
😀
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Also noticed FG TD for Longford-Westmeath James Bannon saying that the lack of under 35s voting had a big effect on the result, he’d noticed hardly any of them voting in his constituency.
You would wonder about the long-term effect of the main parties deliberately discouraging younger voters from turning out, e.g. by always choosing elections on a day when students won’t be back at home, in case they might vote the wrong way. It doesn’t say much for the belief of our great and good in democratic principles.
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You can’t cast a postal vote from Australia.
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By and large you can’t even cast one from Dublin.
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A ‘Yes’ vote it looking likely. But is there not an argument to be made that established precedent here is the EU referenda require two separate votes? Would there be enough substance to that to stand up a court challenge to a ‘Yes’ vote today?
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It is a victory for Left as it has not only united and mobilised the No class but has forced the pro-bankers parties to join together and show their colours while also revealing the interest of RTE, IT, the economists and commentators.
Hopefully, SF and ULA will build on this block of voters, which is almost half the population.
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That was one of the good things about the Referendum campaign. There were no religious nutters like Coir to muddy the waters over Abortion and other issues.
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David Quinn did try.
From his column on 28 April:
“As the Government itself knows and has pointed out plenty of times, people often use referendum campaigns as a way to protest against some aspect of Government policy that has nothing to do with the referendum itself.
…
However, the Government seems to have completely forgotten this lesson because on issue after issue it is treating pro-life and pro-family voters with ill-concealed contempt.
…
A new law on mandatory reporting of child abuse is being introduced, which will require the breaking of the seal of confession. This is highly unusual among Western democracies. Indeed, many Western countries explicitly protect the seal of confession in their laws.
…
In next month’s referendum, every vote is likely to count. Faced with such a radical social agenda, pro-life and pro-family voters may feel they have no other choice than to vote against the fiscal treaty, whatever the merits or demerits of the treaty itself.”
http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/david-quinn-every-vote-counts-in-fiscal-treaty-referendum-but-the-governments-attitude-may-force-prolife-voters-into-no-camp-3094601.html
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I’d also suspect that the disloyalty of the ‘less affluent’ will further strengthen FG’s determination to punish them with austerity. Those who take the side of the subversives should expect no mercy from the guardians of Irish democracy. Vengefulness has always been one of FG’s strong suits. Labour, like the Greens last time out, are now imprisoned within a vicious circle. They can’t leave the government any time soon because to do so would be to suffer electoral annihilation but every month they stay makes that annihilation more certain and more severe.
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Abolutely. Savage cuts are on the table in any case due to our ‘commitment’ to reduce the government deficit to 3% of GDP by 2015. I can guess that the slack will not be taken up in tax increases for the better-off.
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+1
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Brian Hayes is praising ‘the people of Ireland’ for ‘putting their country first.’
No voters, of course, were motivated by more selfish considerations such as the well-being of their families.
I do think this will prove to have been a pyrrhic victory as every increasingly unpopular austerity measure by the government will be justified with reference to the mandate given by the people to the coalition in this referendum. Even in the immediate future the contention that a Yes vote would give us ‘certainty’ will ring incredibly hollow as even the most rabid Yes partisan will have to concede that things don’t feel one iota more certain than they did yesterday.
You have a weak government who are unable to do anything to fix the economy taking consolation from the fact that this was one battle they were always going to win.
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Quite depressing that a yes vote is coming through. From anecdotal conversations with (elderly) neighbours, they voted yes, as they were afraid for their pensions, even though they admitted they had no understanding of what they were voting on. I declined to tell them, even more so, under the budgetry strictures of the ESM, cuts are a-coming. The duplicitous way in which this treaty was passed: fear and scare-mongering among powerless people, will not be forgotten.
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Fine Gael are going to love the ‘big social divide’ that is apparent from the no/yes tallies so far.
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I don’t suppose there’s much point in going over this today, but the depressing thing about this referendum and this treaty is its sheer meaninglessness. Whereas, with previous treaties, one way or another, complex as they were, we were voting for actual changes in the structure of the EU, and thus, accusations that either side was confusing the issue at least had some reference point, this treaty is pure aspiration – all we are effectively doing is allowing various bodies to make stuff up and then apply it as they see fit. The notion of a ‘structural deficit’ and attaching some kind of metric to it is as ‘real’ as calculating the surface area of the head of a pin, adding to that the mass of an angel and deciding that no fewer that 10, and no more than 12 can take up residence.
The ‘yes’ we have delivered is purely reflexive; it has no content apart from the the act of surrender itself – which is what they wanted.
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Anecdotally, talking to a few people who voted Yes, the vote seems to have assuaged a desire for ‘being positive,’ about the state the country is in. The entire thing, as you’ve pointed out, is largely symbolic. It also seemed to be important to the government parties to reassure themselves that Ireland is, as ever, an object of admiration in Europe.
Expect them, flushed with success, to ride roughshod over all opposition to household, water and septic tank charges.
What was disheartening is how much of the Yes arguments during the campaign ran along the pub talkesque lines of ‘ah sure haven’t we made a mess of our country, we can’t be trusted with it, sure the Germans might do a better job of it.’ It’s only an updated version of the old Gaybo, ‘hand the country back to the Queen and apologise for the damage,’ trope so popular in the eighties but it was surprising to see it being encouraged by the Yes side. A country swayed by an argument like that is a country in thrall to cynicism.
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Or course the eagerness to surrender to one kind of European is only matched by an equal and opposite desire to distance ourselves from the ‘bad’ Europeans.
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The ‘meaningless’ may be so, but the surrender to the status quo of corporate capitalist solutions to the crisis is very real. A no vote would have signalled very strongly to Europe that the current response of austerity is not working in any sense at all. Indeed, the wider question of private debt in the eurozone, and why sovereign nations must shoulder that debt, (especially Ireland) has not, and will not be addressed by the so-called fiscal compact.
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I think it was Behan that said the Queen quote. The muck savages who have been left behind after generations of emigration are in the main the spawn of the savages who allowed the spaleens starve to death at their farm doors during the famine – that in rural areas of Ireland there is over 20% of people who give care enough about humanity and don’t doth the cap to Merkel as they didn’t the landlords before, and voted NO, is the real surprise.
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Last line should read – “that in rural areas of Ireland there is over 20% of people who care enough about humanity and don’t doth the cap to Merkel as they did the landlords before, and voted NO, is the real surprise.” – No surrender to the IFA
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“No surrender to the IFA” would make a fine chant at Euro 2012. I don’t know how the BBC would explain it though.
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I may just be making this up, but I think I remember Shels fans singing ‘no surrender to the FAI’ at one point in their travails. And getting fined for it.
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Sometimes the internet fills me with despair.
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And it’s ‘doff’ the cap.
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A general or specific desperation?
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Combined and uneven?
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Those last two queries are a bit like the lead-in to a big number in a Broadway musical.
(Clears throat). “It’s not general or specific, more combined and uneven but what I’m trying to say is that (swell of strings) I’ve given my Yes vote to love.”
The despair is connected with being on the same page as someone who uses the word ‘mucksavage.’ Occasionally even the CLR can be a bit like a pub where you’re enjoying a very congenial pint and suddenly someone wielding a hatchet comes through the front door.
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I think it’s a better strategy to just ignore the virtual hatchet-wielders, generally, specifically or otherwise.
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IFA fellow traveller
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I’m a hush welly IFA supporter.
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Blissett had a similar point last week which I meant to second.
One thing about OSF in the early days was that it wasn’t stupid. It recognised areas of rural radicalism that were as good or better than those found in urban areas. Sadly as time went on there was a diminishing emphasis on that strand and something of the dynamic which leads to talk of ‘muck savages’. Talk to Brian Hanley and he’ll give chapter and verse on the radicalism of parts of the country after Independence, after the WOI and long into the 1930s and 40s.
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Very sad to see garbage like mucksavages written. But some genuinely believe that stuff. Whats funny is the idiots who’d comment about rural voters ignores that its 1/3 of rural community who voted yes and of course cant actually account for places like donegal who know must be regarded as bastions of the radical rural left.
You cant beat analysis like that can you. you’d almost wonder why the country side doesnt vote left and then you see stuff like that and you wonder how 30-40% even considered voting no.
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That’s only in Cork pubs.
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Jealousy will get you nowhere.
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So the results are in: 60.3% yes, 39.7% no, with turnout of 56%. ‘Relief’ being expressed by government parties, a pyrrhic victory against wider turmoil in the euro zone.So will the euro implode anyway? What of Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy? Will deflationary spirals, lack of access to bond markets, and the need for a second bailout scupper the ‘recovery’ in any case?
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All eyes on Greece now, election on 17 June.
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@LATC
All eyes on Spain first. Though EU might step in to provide the 16 billion.
Syriaza is doing damn well. i thought they’d drift out but they are holding their grounds. The KKE seems to be fading a bit.
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Did I hear someone in the MSM make the slightly strange, but probably accurate comparison of this treaty to the third Home Rule bill in terms of its likely irrelevance in the light of events?
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The third Home Rule Bill was defeated by the House of Lords in 1913. At least by the end of that decade there were better options on the cards.
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It was defeated three times in the Lords, but passed into law under the provisions of the Parliament Act. And then suspended for the duration of the war – by which time etc…
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Correction: turnout of 50.6%.
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Poor under the circumstances.
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A bit of a stuffing, TBH. If I could have locked my neighbours in the house, the no side could have won Dublin Mid-west.
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Yep, depressing.
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From our masters the bond markets:
Ireland Government Bonds 9 Year Note Generic Bid Yield
GIGB9YR:IND
7.44900 +0.08500 +1.15%
As of 12:00:00 ET on 06/01/2012.
Feel the certainty.
(Italian, Spanish and Portuguese bonds are edging down, by the way.)
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‘Feel the certainty’… brilliant PM. And so true.
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I had heard in the last couple of weeks that proposed announcements of jobs cuts in CIE were being held off until after the referendum, confirmation with this evening’s Six One.
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I’d expect a raft of other bad news announcements for public employees now too. Stephen Collins opined in the IT that public sector workers would vote yes because they’d be worried about the effects of a no on the successor to Croke Park. I voted no because I was worried about the effects of a yes.
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My other half is a secondary school teacher. The staff-room conversation all week was strongly for a NO vote apparently. They’re mostly young, on temporary contracts, with mortgages / negative equity. I’m not sure I’d call it as increasing class consciousness just yet, but it’s a good sign none the less.
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Yes, LATC, exactly the type of people that the media would have you believe are ‘cosseted, pampered’ by the CPA. So who the hell is voting yes, then?
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I’d imagine the farmer vote would be strongly YES out here in Meath. Who else? Well only 25% of people actually voted yes. It’s not that many, 1-in-4 only. A few percent for solid FF/FG/LP supporters following party orders, a few percent for pensioners afraid to rock the boat in case it sends the country back to the poverty of their youth, a few percent for people that austerity hasn’t touched, a few percent of desperate people scared into chasing false hopes. It all adds up to enough.
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That’s it precisely. It’s a patchwork coalition…
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The Department of Public Expenditure is planning more redundancies once the Croke Park agreement expires.
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Forced or voluntary?
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My understanding is that they’re not at that stage yet, but planning the numbers. However, they have had a few early retirement schemes, cleared out many contract staff in schools and the health sector.
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Tombuktu is on the money. The numbers are in place and drawn up all that is required is a politically expedient moment to strike.
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Very first poll taken mid April had it at Yes: 61% No: 39%
Today’s result sees the massive swing Yes: 60.3% No: 39.7%
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With a 50% turnout and 60% of those voting ‘yes’, that means that 30% of the electorate has changed the constitution; that should be unconstitutional.
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Not often cited here, but… the December issue of the Sacred Heart Messenger has an article about Fr James Cullen, who founded the Pioneer Total Abstinence Association. It says he attributed the disaster at Vinegar Hill to ‘the treachery of drink’.
That’s a link I never heard before.
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That’s a link I never heard before
It was a matter of strict discipline in the 1916 Rising to throw out alcohol from occupied posts. Tom Clarke, who would have been someone in a position to have heard many stories over the years about earlier insurrections, personally supervised this in the GPO.
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Did you never sing “the boys of Wexford” – “twas drink that brought us down”!
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