Labour Days

It's hard to take the smile off Eamon Gilmore's face in recent days. Despite the very best efforts of most of the mainstream to pit him as the weaker leader when compared to Enda Kenny, he came home with 37 seats in the new Dáil. He now has a negotiation team together and one would feel that the programme for government will be completed by the end of the week. All that needs to be decided then is who gets what side of the bed.

In a years time Gilmore would have had the benefit of John Gormley's autobiography, How to Ruin a Party in One Dáil Term. But alas he won't have that foresight to gauge from and one could only hope that come the time when we must choose again, that the Labour Party won't be dealt the same fate.

This is the trouble with coalition government and particularly ones that are made up with left right alliances. The fractures could start early. How quick the split comes after that is anyone's guess. Make no mistake about it, Fine Gael will be as ruthless as the shower we have just relegated to the political wilderness.
If Labour go along with them, this new found popularity will be short-lived. The mainstream media for the most part are Capitalist driven, pro-right and pro-European. So in an area where so much power is held when it comes to forming the view for the Individual, there is only one party going to cut most of the slack when it comes to being dished out.
Fine Gael have already strongly voiced that they are coming after the margins of society where doing a nixer will be a crime, but bankrupting a nation has six figure pensions attached. They will slash and burn further and blame the Fáilers for the need to do it.

Labour should consider who they are and what and who they represent very carefully. Never before in the history of the state has Ireland had an opportunity to move toward a more socially driven model in all areas of governance, be that in economics or how we choose to get around the place. Shaping societies can and will be big business in the future. Most countries have not got that far yet and Ireland lags behind most. Yet an opportunity exists if people are willing to grab it.

Failed politician Pat Carey's last act in the Dáil was to sign off on the remaining construction of the Corrib pipeline, despite objection. It's a blatant abuse of power in my opinion given the timing.
Corrib runs deeper than just a big oil company v ordinary folk. Why have successive Fianna Fail governments played into the hands of Shell by giving away our national resources while austerity measures are forced down the throats of citizens?
Citizens made pay for the crookery of developers, bankers and politicians. We have sat back and taken it. We won't address the future shaping of our country until we address those injustices first. For these are not the type of people who should be giving us direction in any shape or form. They have bankrupted the country and the citizen while in the process of bankrupting themselves. Yet they are let off the hook, by those we elect to guide the well being of the land and the people. We chose wisely last week, but unfortunately in this realists mind, not wisely enough. But it has to take its natural course. It's just to bad we have to live through the live version of it.