A government ideology. April 19, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Meant to post this up earlier, Mary Regan in the SBP offering deeply critical analysis of the government and in particular the dispute in Bus Éireann.
Ross also ignored the wider policy dimension to the BÉ row that went beyond the industrial dispute between workers and management : the suspicion that this is part of a government ideology that is anti-rural and anti-public service.
Interesting, is it not, that that perception – which those of us on the left would sense most acutely has found some further legs, and while Regan suggests that the chaotic aspects of the government suggest it is not fit for purpose one might also suspect that this is in no way inconvenient to the government.
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
very easy for Ross to ignore the wider implications when opposition keep asking him intervene in the Expressway issue when they knew he wouldn’t rather then bringing up the issues/reports not dealth with re Bus Eireann that go back many government, at least one. #mlt https://www.businesspost.ie/opinion/failed-marriage-may-need-quickie-divorce-384652 was this written before the report was finalised seems like FFG got their way so I don’t know whats she complaining about.
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Being anti-rural seems like a bad idea for FF-FG a lot of their support is rural FG has made in-roads in Dublin recently but has a lot of rural supporters similarly when FF was decimated in 2011 many of their remaining seats were rural. They can’t rely on the left having no rural roots since SF already has a rural support base. So hopefully as others have suggested this will majorly backfire.
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aRE FF/FG anti-rural?
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The anti-rural thing is well played by the demagogues, some posing as leftwingers down the country. They satisfy the people with cargo cult type airports and “development” which is not development, while neglecting things that could make a difference. McCreevey destroyed balanced development of at least a generation. This country can sustain maybe 4/5 centres of development outside Dublin. And that is it.
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Country vs city is a continuing trope for Irish right-wingers as witness attempts to use it against the water charges movement. The Bus Eireann saga shows exactly how much governing parties most of whose votes come from outside Dublin actually cares about the interests of non-city people (“rural” is too simple as in practice most of this population lives in small towns – there is a different set of questions needed to think about the relationship between FG/FF, the IFA etc. and small farmers).
What never seems to occur to the “blame Dublin” brigade is that it is precisely in the cities that people vote for the parties who support public transport etc. There are real problems facing people living in rural Ireland but as for the past 100 years part of the challenge has been that the rural poor tend to line up behind the rural rich, vote for FF and FG, keep going to church, support the IFA etc.
The most significant “anti-rural” politics in this sense is that pursued by the very organisations that “rural Ireland” consistently supports and in whose interests it is invoked. Blaming “Dublin” for this has always been a way to keep the problem going.
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There have been attempts at vaguely leftish or republican farmers’ parties over the decades, none of which survived long.
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